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MY SHIPMATE LOUISE

VOL. II.




NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.


  A FELLOW OF TRINITY. By ALAN ST. AUBYN and WALT WHEELER. 3 vols.

  THE WORD AND THE WILL. By JAMES PAYN. 3 vols.

  AUNT ABIGAIL DYKES. By GEORGE RANDOLPH. 1 vol.

  A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE. By BRET HARTE. 1 vol.

  RUFFINO. By OUIDA. 1 vol.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.




  MY SHIPMATE LOUISE

  The Romance of a Wreck


  BY

  W. CLARK RUSSELL


  [Illustration]


  IN THREE VOLUMES

  VOL. II.


  London
  CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
  1890




  PRINTED BY
  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
  LONDON




  CONTENTS
  OF
  THE SECOND VOLUME


  CHAPTER                            PAGE

      XV. A SINGULAR PLOT               1

     XVI. WE SIGHT A WRECK             22

    XVII. THE ‘MAGICIENNE’             45

   XVIII. ADRIFT                       66

     XIX. NIGHT                        86

      XX. I SEARCH THE WRECK          108

     XXI. WE SIGHT A SAIL             134

    XXII. THE ‘LADY BLANCHE’          156

   XXIII. CAPTAIN BRAINE              178

    XXIV. THE CREW OF THE BARQUE      202

     XXV. I KEEP A LOOKOUT            223

    XXVI. I AM QUESTIONED             245

   XXVII. THE BRIG’S LONGBOAT         269

  XXVIII. I QUESTION WETHERLY         289




MY SHIPMATE LOUISE




CHAPTER XV

A SINGULAR PLOT


It speedily ran amongst us of the cuddy that the dead sailor who had
been so very impressively interred by old Keeling had returned to the
ship, and was alive in some part of her, secure in handcuffs or in
leg-irons; but so much was made of the fire which had broken out that
Crabb’s reappearance lost as a miracle half the weight it would have
carried had it happened alone. Besides, the sense of the people soon
gathered that the business was a plot which had been managed with
astonishing cleverness, and it all seemed plain as mud in a wine-glass
when the whisper went round that Hemmeridge was under arrest as an
arch-conspirator in the matter. And certainly it made one feel far
from comfortable even to think that for the past weeks a ruffian of a
true piratical complexion had been secreted in the ship’s hold, where
his confederates would keep him supplied with tobacco and the means of
lighting it, and where, in his borings and pryings, he was tolerably
certain to have stumbled upon something inflammatory in the shape of
spirits. Indeed, it made me draw my breath short when my mind went to
the rum puncheons and the powder-magazine below, and to the vision of
Crabb, drunk, stupidly groping with a naked light in his hand, during
some midnight hour, maybe, when we were all in bed.

However, the imagination of the passengers would hardly go to these
lengths. Their thoughts held to the fire, and their talk chiefly
concerned it. When the skipper came below for a glass of grog that
night, the ladies so baited him with questions that one pitied him
almost for not being able to enjoy the privilege of venting his heated
soul in a few strong words.

‘I _cannot_ satisfy myself, Captain Keeling, that the fire is utterly
extinguished,’ said Mrs. Bannister.

‘Might it not burst out again, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘There
should be plenty of pails kept filled with water ready to empty if
smoke is smelt.’

‘Perhaps something may be on fire even now!’ exclaimed Mrs Joliffe,
‘something that doesn’t make a smoke; and how _then_ are the sailors to
tell if all is right in the bottom of the ship?’

‘Captain Keeling,’ cried Mrs. Trevor, ‘is it quite safe to go to bed,
do you think?’

‘If a fire should break out,’ said Miss Hudson in a trembling voice,
as though shudder after shudder were chasing through her, ‘how can we
depend upon being called? It is impossible to hear downstairs what is
going on on deck.’

Poor old marline-spike made a bolt of it at last, fairly turning tail
and rushing up the companion steps when it came to the colonel striking
in and topping off the female broadsides by inquiries of a like nature
delivered at the very height of his pipes.

However, the night passed quietly; and when next morning came and the
people assembled at breakfast, all fear of fire was seemingly gone,
and little more was talked about than Crabb and what his designs had
been, the topic gathering no mean accentuation from the doctor’s vacant
place. Somewhere about ten o’clock I was standing at the taffrail
watching the ship’s wake, that was languidly streaming off in a short
oily surface, and wondering whether, if we were to fall in with nothing
brisker than these faint airs and draughts of wind, all hands would not
have grown white-haired and decrepit by the time we were up with the
Cape, leaving the Indian Ocean and Bombay out of consideration, when
the head-steward came up to me.

‘Captain Keeling’s compliments, sir, and he’ll feel greatly hobliged,
providing you’re not hotherwise occupied, by your stepping to his
cabin, sir.’

‘Oh yes, with pleasure,’ said I. ‘Is he alone?’

‘He is not, sir.’

I went down the companion steps, knocked at the captain’s door, and
entered. It was a roomy interior, a very noble ship’s berth, occupying
hard upon the width of the deck right aft, saving, as I have before
described, a sort of small chart-room alongside, bulkheaded off. There
was a large stern window, after the olden fashion, with the blue
line of the horizon gently sliding up and down it, and a shivering
light lifting off the sea to the glass, sharp and of a sort of azure
brilliancy, as though from diamonds set a-trembling. Keeling, in full
fig, his face showing of a dark red against some maple-coloured ground
of bulkhead or ship’s side, was seated at a table. He instantly rose
on my entering, gave me one of his wire-drawn bows, and motioned me
to a seat, thanking me in a few words for coming. On the starboard
hand stood Crabb and the sailmaker, handcuffed, and on either side of
them was a seaman with a cutlass dangling at his hip. On the port hand
sat Dr. Hemmeridge, his legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of
his waistcoat, and his head drooped. He was deadly pale, and looked
horribly ill and worried. Near him was one of the sailors, a young
fellow of some seven or eight and twenty, with a quantity of hair
falling over his brow, a straggling beard, and small black eyes, which
roamed swiftly in glances charged methought with the spirit of mutiny
and menace and defiance. Mr. Prance was at the captain’s elbow; and the
third mate was seated at an end of the table with a pen in his hand and
some paper in front of him.

I bowed to Hemmeridge, but he took no notice. Until the captain
addressed me, I stared hard at Crabb; for even now, with the ugly
ruffian standing before me, my mind found it difficult to realise
that he was alive; that the creature I gazed at was the man whom all
hands of us, with an exception or two, supposed overboard a thousand
fathoms deep. There was, besides, the fascination of his ugliness. The
hunch-like curve of his back, his little blood-stained eyes looking
away from his nose, as though they sought to peer at something at the
back of his head, the greasy trail of carroty hair upon his back,
the fragment of nose over his hare-lip, these and the rest of him
combined into the representation of the most extravagantly grotesque,
ill-favoured figure ever witnessed outside the bars of a menagerie. The
sailmaker’s face was as white as one of his bolts of canvas, but it
wore a determined look, though I noticed a quivering in the nostrils of
his high-perched nose, and a constant uneasy movement of the fingers,
as of dying hands plucking at bedclothes.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed old Keeling with the dignity and gravity of
a judge, ‘I’ve taken the liberty to send for you, as I am informed
by Mr. Prance that when that man there’--inclining his head towards
Crabb without looking at him--‘was lying, as it was supposed, dead in
his bunk, you accompanied Mr. Hemmeridge, the ship’s surgeon’--here he
indicated the doctor with a motion of his head but without looking at
him either--‘into the forecastle, and stood for some considerable time
surveying the so-called corpse.’

‘That is quite true,’ said I.

‘Did Mr. Hemmeridge expose the man’s face to you?’

‘He did.’

‘What impression was produced upon your mind by the sight of the--of
the--body?’

Crabb gave a horrible grin.

‘That he was stone-dead, Captain Keeling; so stone-dead, sir, that I
can scarcely credit the man himself is now before me.’

Hemmeridge looked up and fixed his eyes upon me.

‘It is but reasonable I should inform you, Mr. Dugdale,’ continued
old marline-spike, ‘that Mr. Hemmeridge is under arrest on suspicion
of conspiring with Crabb, with Willett, and with Thomas Bobbins’--he
glanced at the man who stood next to the doctor--‘to plunder the ship.
Bobbins has given evidence that leaves me in no doubt as to the guilt
of Crabb and Willett.’

Crabb uttered a curse through his teeth, accompanied with a look at the
young seaman, in the one-eyed gleam of which murder methought was writ
too large to be mistaken for any other intention. Old Keeling did not
heed him.

‘Bobbins’s story,’ he continued, ‘is to this effect: that Crabb was to
swallow a potion which would produce the appearance of death; that the
sailmaker was to have a hammock weighted, shaped, and in all respects
equipped to resemble the one in which Crabb would be stitched up: that
in the dead of night, when the ship was silent, and the deck forward
vacant, the sham hammock was to be placed upon the fore-hatch by the
sailmaker and Bobbins, and the cover containing that man’--inclining
his head at Crabb--‘conveyed into the sailmaker’s cabin, where it
was to be cut open, the man freed, and secreted in the berth till
consciousness had returned, and he was in a fit state to seize the
first opportunity of sneaking into the hold. All this was done,’ old
Keeling went on, Mr. Prance meanwhile looking as grave as an owl over
the skipper’s shoulder, whilst every now and again a hideous grin
would distort Crabb’s frightful mouth, though the sailmaker continued
to stare at the captain with a white and determined countenance, and
Hemmeridge to listen with a frowning worried look, his leg that crossed
the other swinging like a pendulum. ‘The man Crabb got into the hold,
was supplied with food and drink by Willett and Bobbins, and with tools
to enable him to break into the mail-room’----

‘And I’d ha’ done it too,’ here interrupted Crabb in a voice like a saw
going through a balk of timber, ‘if it hadn’t been for the stinking
smoke of them blasted blankets.’

‘This inquiry,’ continued Keeling, ‘now entirely concerns Mr.
Hemmeridge. You tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that Crabb seemed to you as a
stone-dead man.’

‘The devil himself couldn’t ha’ told the difference,’ bawled Crabb.
‘_He’s_ not in it,’ insolently motioning with his elbow towards the
doctor. ‘Wouldn’t that blooming Bobbins ha’ said so?’ and he darted
another murderous glance at the hairy young sailor.

‘I can assure you, Captain Keeling,’ said I, ‘that the man was
perfectly dead. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Mr.
Hemmeridge was fully convinced the body was a corpse. Convinced,
captain, but dissatisfied too; and perhaps,’ said I, with a glance at
Crabb, ‘it is a pity for more sakes than one that he did not carry out
his idea of a post-mortem examination.’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge in a low, deep, trembling voice,
‘before God and man, I am innocent; and I hope to live to call Captain
Keeling to account for this monstrous slander, this enormous suspicion,
this dishonourable and detestable accusation.’

‘I’ve never heered,’ said the man named Bobbins, in a long-drawn
whining voice, ‘that this gent was consarned. I remembered Crabb asking
what was to be done if so be the surgeon should cut him up to see what
he died of, and Mr. Willett kissed the Bible afore Crabb and me to
this: that if the surgeon made up his mind to open Crabb, Willett was
to show him the bottle of physic, and to tell him that Crabb had took
it for some bad complaint, and that, though he might look dead, he
worn’t so.’

Crabb hove a fearful curse at the man. The bushy-whiskered sailor who
guarded him on the right significantly put his hand upon the hilt of
his cutlass whilst he said something to him under his breath.

‘This is new to me,’ exclaimed Keeling, screwing his eye gimlet-fashion
into the face of Bobbins, and then letting it drop, as if satisfied.
‘Mr. Hemmeridge, I have _suspected_ you, sir; but it’s a little soon
for you to talk of my having _accused_ you. You are a medical man. If
anybody knows death by looking upon it you should. Yet, though this man
Crabb is merely counterfeiting death, you come aft to me and report him
dead! What am I to infer? Your ignorance or your guilt, sir?’

‘Captain Keeling,’ cried I, ‘believe me when I promise you the man
was not _counterfeiting_ death. He was to all intents and purposes
a corpse. How was this brought about? Surely by no exercise of his
own art. The look of the eye--the droop of the jaw--the hue of the
skin--Captain Keeling, it was death to the sight: no counterfeit--an
effect produced by something much more powerful than the effort of such
a will as that man has;’ and I pointed with my thumb at Crabb, who
told me with a curse to mind my own business.

‘Mr. Dugdale, I thank you,’ said Hemmeridge, bowing to me.

Captain Keeling held up a long thin phial about three-quarters full of
a dark liquor. I had not before noticed it.

‘This has been produced,’ said he, ‘by the man Bobbins, who states that
it is the stuff which Crabb swallowed, and which caused the death-like
aspect you saw in him.’ He put the bottle down; then clenching his
fist, smote the table violently. ‘I cannot credit it!’ he cried.
‘I cannot be imposed on. Am I to believe that there is any drug in
existence which will produce in a living being the exact semblance of
death?’

‘Oh, I think so, sir,’ said Prance, speaking mildly.

Hemmeridge sneered.

‘A semblance of death,’ roared old Keeling, twisting round upon his
chief mate, ‘capable of deceiving the eye--the practised eye of a
medical man? You may give me a dose of laudanum, and I may look dead
to you, sir, but not to Mr. Hemmeridge yonder. No, sir; I am not to be
persuaded,’ and here he brought his fist down upon the table again.
‘It is either gross ignorance or direct connivance, and I mean to be
satisfied--I mean to sift it to the bottom--I mean to get at the truth,
by----!’

His face was full of blood, and he puffed and blew like a swimmer
struggling for his life.

‘You’ve got the truth, and be so-and-so to you,’ broke in Crabb.

The armed sailor ground his elbow into the fellow’s ribs.

‘I am merely here to answer your questions, Captain Keeling,’ said I,
‘and must apologise for taking a single step beyond the object you
had in calling me to you; but at least permit me to ask, cannot Mr.
Hemmeridge explain the nature of the drug contained in that bottle?’

‘I do not know what it is,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge.

‘Suppose, sir,’ said Mr. Prance, ‘we give Crabb another dose; then
you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’

‘You don’t give me no more doses!’ said Crabb. ‘Try it on yourselves.’

The captain sat a little, looking at me vacantly, lost in thought. He
suddenly turned to Hemmeridge.

‘You are at liberty, sir; I remove the arrest.’

‘And is that all?’ exclaimed the other, after a brief pause, viewing
him steadily. ‘I must have an apology, sir; an apology ample, abundant,
satisfying.’

‘I will see you’--began old Keeling, then checked himself. ‘You can
leave this cabin, sir.’

Hemmeridge rose from his chair. ‘I leave this cabin, sir,’ said he,
‘and I also leave my duties. Professionally, I do no more in this
ship, sir. You have disgraced, you have dishonoured me. But,’ said
he, shaking his finger at him, ‘you shall make me amends at Bombay,
sir--you shall make me amends at Bombay!’

He stalked from the cabin, old Keeling watching him with a frown, but
in silence.

‘Captain,’ I exclaimed, rising as the door closed behind the doctor,
‘I am persuaded that Mr. Hemmeridge is innocent of all participation in
this bad business. You have on board a gentleman who, I believe, has a
very extensive knowledge of drugs and herbs and the like--I mean Mr.
Saunders. It is just possible he might know the nature of the contents
of that bottle.’

Keeling reflected a minute, and then said: ‘Mr. Prance, send my
compliments to Mr. Saunders, and ask him to my cabin.’

The mate went out; I was following him.

‘Pray, stay a little, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the skipper.--‘Men, take those
fellows forward.--Remain where you are,’ he added, turning to Bobbins.

A seaman flung open the door, and Crabb and the sailmaker passed out,
followed by the second armed sailor, who silenced some blasphemous
abuse that Crabb had paused to deliver, by giving him a shove that
drove him headlong into the cuddy.

‘I am sorry to detain you, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the captain. ‘Mr.
Saunders is a rather nervous gentleman, and it might be agreeable to
him to find you here.’

‘You do not detain me, Captain Keeling. This is an amazing business,
almost too wonderful in its way to believe in. Have you ascertained how
Crabb became possessed of that magical drug?--and magical it must be,
captain, for I give you my word that never showed any corpse deader
than that fellow when Hemmeridge removed the canvas from his face.’

‘I beg your honour’s pardon,’ exclaimed Bobbins, preserving his
lamenting and whining voice, and knuckling his forehead as he spoke,
whilst I could see old Keeling lifting his eyes to him with disgust
and aversion strong in his purple countenance. ‘Mr. Willett told me
that Crabb ’ud say he’d got that there stuff off a travelling Jew that
he fell in with at some Mediterranean port. He bought two lots of it,
and tried a dose on a man who took it unbeknown, reckoning it good for
spasms. He believed as it had killed the chap, sich was his corpse-like
swound; but he come to all right arter four-and-twenty hours, and niver
knowed nothen about it, and believed it still to be Monday when it were
Toosday. This put the scheme he tried on here into his head.’

‘Has he ever attempted anything of the same sort before?’ inquired
Keeling.

‘I dunno, sir. He’s a bad un. It ’ud make a marble heffigy sweat to
hear him talk in his sleep.’

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Mr. Prance ushered in Mr.
Saunders. The little chap looked very small as he entered, holding his
large hat in his hand. He was pale, and stared up at us with something
of alarm as we rose to his entrance, the skipper giving him the same
hide-bound bow that he had greeted me with.

‘Is Mr. Saunders acquainted with the story of this business, Mr.
Prance?’ old Keeling inquired.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the mate. ‘I gave him the substance of it in a few
words as we came along.’

‘It is extremely startling,’ said the little man, climbing on to the
chair into which old Keeling had waved him, and dangling his short legs
over the edge as a small boy might.

‘Your knowledge of drugs and medicines, Mr. Saunders, is, I believe,
very considerable?’ said the skipper. The little fellow bowed. ‘This,’
said Keeling, holding up the phial, ‘is a drug, the stupefying effects
of which, I am informed, are so remarkable that any one who takes it
entirely loses animation, and presents such an aspect of death as will
deceive the eye of the most expert medical practitioner. Is such a
thing conceivable, Mr. Saunders?’

The little man reflected very earnestly for some moments, with his eyes
fixed upon Keeling. He then asked Mr. Prance to hand him the phial,
which he uncorked, and smelt and tasted.

‘I cannot be positive,’ he exclaimed, with a slow, wise shake of
his large head; ‘but I strongly suspect this to be what is known as
_morion_, the death-wine of Pliny and Dioscorides. Mr. Dugdale, observe
the strange, peculiar faint smell--what does it suggest?’

I put the bottle to my nose and sniffed. ‘Opium will it be, Mr.
Saunders?’

‘Just so,’ he cried. ‘Captain Keeling, smell you, sir.’

The old skipper applied the bottle to his nostrils and snuffled a
little. ‘I should call this a kind of opium,’ said he.

‘If,’ exclaimed Mr. Saunders, ‘it be morion, as I believe it is, it
is made from the mandragora or mandrake of the kind that flourishes
in Greece and Palestine and in certain parts of the Mediterranean
seaboard.’

‘But am I to understand,’ said Keeling, ‘that a dose of it is going to
make a man look as dead as if he were killed?’

‘The effect of morion,’ responded Mr. Saunders, ‘is that of suspended
animation, scarcely distinguishable from death.’

‘Could it deceive a qualified man such as Dr. Hemmeridge?’ demanded the
skipper.

‘I should think it very probable,’ answered little Saunders cautiously;
‘in fact, sir, as we have seen, he _was_ deceived by the effects of
that drug, be it morion or anything else.’

‘You can go forward,’ said the captain to Bobbins.

The fellow flourished a hand to his brow and left the cabin.

‘Mr. Saunders, I am obliged to you, sir, for your information,’
continued old Keeling. ‘I trust to have your opinion confirmed either
in Bombay or in London. To me it seems a very incredible thing. Mr.
Dugdale, I thank you for the trouble you have given yourself to attend
here.’

He bowed; and little Saunders and myself, accompanied by Mr. Prance,
entered the cuddy.

‘A most extraordinary business altogether,’ cried the little man: ‘it
is wonderful enough, supposing the stuff to be morion, that a common
sailor should be in possession of such a drug; but much more wonderful
yet that it should occur to him to employ it as an instrument in
probably the most audacious project ever adventured on board ship.’

‘Hemmeridge might have opened Crabb,’ said I.

‘Well, the rogue foresaw it, and provided against it, as we know,’
exclaimed Mr. Prance. ‘There is pocketable booty in the mail-room to
the value of hard upon a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A man like
Crabb will run risks for such plunder, Mr. Dugdale. If the sailmaker
had kept his word and produced the bottle to Hemmeridge, the doctor
would have been pretty sure to stay his hand.’

‘Why, likely as not,’ I exclaimed: ‘but tell me, Mr. Prance--that
fellow Bobbins seems to have been coaxed very easily into peaching.’

‘Ay,’ said he; ‘there’d been an ugly quarrel between him and Willett
ten days ago. I believe the rascal would not have split whilst Crabb
lay snug and secret in the hold, but on his showing himself, Bobbins
took fright, thought of his neck, and being actuated besides by hatred
of Willett, came forward and volunteered the whole yarn.’

‘And how is he to be served?’ inquired Mr. Saunders.

‘Left to be at large, sir,’ answered the mate; ‘and punishment enough,
too, as any one may suppose, of a false-hearted, lily-livered shipmate
who has to swing his hammock three or four months among a forecastle
full of hands. For my part,’ added he with a laugh, ‘if I were that
miscreant, I’d rather be snug in irons along with Willett and the
cast-eyed pirate, stowed safe out of sight.’

He entered his cabin, and Mr. Saunders and I stepped on to the
quarter-deck.




CHAPTER XVI

WE SIGHT A WRECK


The wonder and excitement raised in us by the extraordinary forecastle
conspiracy to plunder the ship’s mail-room passed away in two or three
days. Monotony at sea is heavy and flattening. It passes over the soul
as an iron roller over a lawn, and smoothes down every asperity of
memory into the merest flatness of moods and humours. Hemmeridge showed
himself no more. I never again saw him whilst I was in the _Countess
Ida_. He lay hid in his cabin, where he was fed, by the captain’s
orders, from the cuddy table; but he refused to leave his berth, swore
he would not prescribe so much as a pill though a pestilence should
fall upon the whole ship’s company, and virtually left us all without
the means of obtaining professional advice. His part in Crabb’s and the
sailmaker’s scheme was vehemently discussed, as you will suppose. The
colonel of course was without a shadow of a doubt of his guilt; but
the rest of us, saving Mr. Johnson, who declined to give an opinion,
considered him as wholly innocent.

Little Saunders gave himself a small air of importance as a person
referred to by the captain on his knowledge of herbs, and strutted on
the merits of his suspicion that the liquor was what he called morion.
He took me into his cabin, and climbing into his bunk, produced a folio
volume half the size of himself, with which he dropped upon the deck,
hugging the book to his heart as though it were his wife.

‘Here,’ said he, opening the volume and pointing at it and looking
up into my face, ‘is an account of the growth out of which morion is
extracted. That,’ continued he, still pointing with a little forefinger
and a long white nail, ‘is a picture of the plant in flower. This is
an illustration of the young fruit. Here is the ovary, and here is the
stamen. It is, in short, the well known mandragora of Hippocrates. It
consists of three or four species of stemless herbs, perennial,’ said
he, carrying his eyes to the book, ‘and very hardy. Their roots are
large and thick; and, as I told the captain,’ cried he with a little
movement of triumph, and pointing to the sentence eagerly, ‘it is an
inhabitant of the Mediterranean parallels.’

And then the little chap read out a long description of the flowers of
the mandrake, of the corolla and lobes, of the berries and leaves, and
I know not what else besides, in all of which my ignorant ear could
find nothing of the smallest interest.

He afterwards went with his big book to the skipper, who, Mr. Prance
told me, was impressed, though he was not to be persuaded.

‘He will not believe,’ said the chief officer, ‘that there can be any
aspect in a living body to deceive a medical man into a belief that the
person is dead. I said to him: “How about the folks that are buried
alive, sir?” He answered: “They are unhappy wretches, whom ignorant
and gross persons, calling themselves medical men, lightly glance at
and pronounce dead, and hurry away from. Hemmeridge would know better,
sir. He _does_ know better. I cannot satisfy myself that he could not
distinguish life in that man Crabb. And what’s the inference then? No
matter, sir. I will have this thing gone closely into when we arrive
at Bombay.” Captain Keeling is an obstinate old sailor, Mr. Dugdale,’
continued the mate. ‘In truth, Hemmeridge is as innocent as you or I.’

Three days passed away. All this while the Indiaman was scarcely doing
more than rippling through it. It was hard to realise that we were out
in the mid-heart almost of one of old earth’s mightiest oceans, so
peaceful was the water, so still the heavens, so placid the dim sultry
distances, where sky and sea were blended in a blue faintness, out of
the north-west corner of which the light wind blew without power enough
to swing the foot of the courses or to put a twinkle into the tall
moon-coloured cloths of the topmast studdingsails.

It was a Monday morning, as very well indeed do I remember. I went
on deck at about seven o’clock for a bath; and on looking over the
forecastle rail, down away upon the starboard bow I caught sight of
something sparkling that might very well have passed for the reflection
in the water of a brilliant luminary. The old Scotch carpenter
was leaning against the forecastle capstan smoking a pipe, his
weather-hardened face of leather drooping over his folded arms.

‘Pray, what is that object shining down there?’ said I.

‘Well, it puzzled me, sir,’ he answered, slowly raising his head,
and then leisurely staring in the direction of the appearance: ‘It’s
naething mair nor less than a ship’s hull, sir.’

By this time I was able to distinguish a bit clearer, and could trace,
amid the delicate haze of silver glory that was hanging all over the
sea that way, as it came in gushing and floating folds of magnificence
from the sun that was already many degrees above the horizon, the
outline of the hull of a small vessel, the proportions so faint as
to be almost illusive. She was too far distant to exhibit much more
than the mere flash she made, yet she was an object to constrain the
attention in that wide blank shining calm of sea, and I lingered a
little while looking at her, meanwhile yarning with the old carpenter
about Crabb and the sailmaker and the incident of the fire, and such
matters.

At breakfast there was some talk about this hull, and Mr. Emmett told
the captain that he hoped a shot would be sent at her, as who was to
know but that another cargo of monkeys might be exorcised out of the
fabric.

‘I should rather like to visit a wreck,’ I heard Miss Temple say across
the table to Mr. Colledge: ‘I mean, of course, an abandoned vessel
floating in the middle of the ocean.’

‘I protest I would rather die than think of such a thing,’ exclaimed
her aunt.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Colledge; ‘it would be something to do and
something to talk about. Did you ever board a wreck, Captain Keeling?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I would choose a wreck,’ continued Miss Temple, in her clear, rich,
somewhat trembling voice, but with an air that let you know she
confined her speech to Mrs. Radcliffe and the young sprig opposite,
and old marline-spike, as I love to call him, ‘that had been abandoned
for months, indeed for years, if such a thing could be: a hull covered
with shells and weed and grass, into which the spirit of the enormous
loneliness of the wide ocean had entered, so that you could get to
think of her as a creation of the sea itself, as an uninhabited island
is, or a noble seabird. Think,’ she continued, fixing her large dark
eyes upon Colledge with a light, almost sarcastic smile flickering
about her lips, as though she was perfectly sensible that her
thoughts and language were a trifle taller than that honourable young
gentleman’s intellectual stature rose to--‘think of being utterly alone
during a long, breathless, moonlit night on board such a wreck as I am
imagining. The stillness! the imaginations which would come shaping out
of the shadows! By putting one’s ear to the hatchway, as you sailors
call it, Captain Keeling, what should one be able to hear?’

‘The noise of water washing about below, ma’am--I don’t see what else,’
answered the old skipper, stiffening up his figure, whilst he adjusted
his cravat, and gazing at her with a highly literal countenance over
the points of his shirt collars.

She did not seem to hear him; her head had drooped, as though to a
sudden engrossing thought, and her gaze rested upon something which her
delicate fingers toyed with upon the table.

‘What very odd fancies you have, Louise,’ exclaimed Mrs. Radcliffe with
a peck of her face at the girl’s handsome profile.

‘Rather a good subject for a descriptive article, Johnson,’ exclaimed
Emmett aside with a drawl.

‘Or for a picture,’ answered Johnson; ‘better on canvas than on paper,
I think; don’t you, Mr. Saunders? Calm sea--a moon up in the air--a
wreck showing black against the white reflection under the planet--a
haughty young lady’--here he softened his voice--‘inclining her head to
the fore-hatch with her hand to her ear.--A first-class idea, Emmett.
Seize it, or it may occur to another man.’

Miss Temple was speaking again, but the rude imbecile jabber of the
journalist prevented me from hearing her; and bestowing a sea-blessing
on his head under my breath, I left the table and went on deck.

There was every promise of a dead calm anon. The sea looked like ice
in places with the bluish glint of the brine that softened the lines
and curves betwixt the crawlings of the air into a tender contrast for
the lustrous azure of the water where it was touched by the wind. It
was a high, hot, cloudless morning, the topmost canvas, white as milk,
looking dizzy up in the blue, as though it trembled in some sultry
belt of atmosphere there. I went to the rail to view the wreck, and
instantly made out on the other side of her the shining square of a
sail--some ship on the rim of the horizon that had crawled into sight
since six bells of the morning watch, and was now creeping down the
smooth plain of sea with her yards braced somewhat forward, making a
wind for herself out of what was scarce more than a catspaw to us, who
had the thin fanning nearly over the stern.

Prance came up from the breakfast table with a telescope in his hand
and stood by my side.

‘That ship down yonder grows,’ he exclaimed, pointing the glass and
speaking with his eye at it; ‘there’ll be more air stirring down there
than here; but little enough anywhere presently, though I tell you
what, Mr Dugdale, there’s drop enough in the mercury to inspire one
with hope.’

He brought the telescope to bear upon the hull, and was silent for
a few moments, whilst I waited impatiently for him to make an end,
wanting to look too.

‘I don’t think I can be mistaken,’ said he presently in a musing
voice: ‘look you, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘At what?’ said I, as I took the glass from him.

‘At the hull yonder.’

I put the telescope upon the rail and knelt to it. Points which were
invisible to the naked sight were clear enough now. The wreck was that
of a vessel of some two hundred and fifty tons. She sat very light or
high upon the water, and it was a part of the copper that rose to her
bends which had emitted the flash that caught my eye on the forecastle.
Her foremast was standing, and her foreyard lay crossed upon it. Her
bowsprit also forked out, but the jib-booms were gone. Lengths of her
bulwark were smashed level to the deck; but gaunt as her mastless
condition made her look, miserable as she showed in the mutilation of
her sides, the beautiful shape of the hull stole out upon the sight
through the deformities of her wrecked condition, as the fine shape of
a woman expresses itself in defiance of the beggar’s rags which may
clothe her.

‘By George, then, Mr. Prance--why, yes, to be sure! I see what you
mean,’ I cried all on a sudden--‘that must be our buccaneering friend
of the other day!’

‘Neither more nor less,’ said he; ‘an odd rencontre certainly,
considering what a big place the sea is. And yet I don’t know: such
a clipper will have sailed two feet to our one, though she exposed
no more than her foresail. She’ll have run as we did, and the light
airs and baffling weather which followed will easily account for this
meeting.’

‘She is not yet the handful of charred staves you thought her, Mr.
Prance,’ said I; ‘they managed to get the fire under anyway, though
they had to abandon the brig in the end. What is that fellow beyond
her? She has the look of a man-of-war: a ship, I believe: yes, I think
I can catch sight of the yards on the mizzen peeping past the sails on
the main.’

All her canvas had risen, but nothing of her hull, saving the black
film of her bulwark hovering upon the horizon with an icy gleam betwixt
it and the sea-line, as though there was no more of her than that. When
the others came on deck there was no little excitement amongst them on
learning that the hull was neither more nor less than the veritable
wreck of the brig whose presence had filled us with alarm and misery a
few days before. Glasses of all sorts were brought to bear upon her,
and by this time it was to be ascertained without doubt that she was
absolutely deserted; ‘unless,’ I heard Mr. Emmett say to Mr. Prance,
‘her people should be lying concealed within, hoping to coax us to
visit her by an appearance of being deserted, when, of course, they
would cut us off, and plunder our remains--I mean, those who would be
fools enough to board her out of curiosity.’

‘Likely as not,’ Mr. Prance answered with a sour smile. ‘I would advise
you not to attempt to inspect her.’

‘Not I,’ answered the painter; and the chief officer turned abruptly
from him to smother a laugh.

It was not long, however, before the delicate miracle of distant canvas
shining past the hull upon the calm blue like some spire of alabaster
was recognised as a man-of-war, not alone by the cut of her canvas and
by other peculiarities aloft readily determinable by the seafaring
eye, but by the chequered band upon her hull, that had mounted fair
to the firm crystal-like rim of the ocean, and by the line of white
hammock-cloths that crowned her tall defences. She was some small
corvette or ship-sloop, with her nationality to be sworn to even all
that way off.

‘An Englishman, do you think, Captain Keeling?’ asked Colonel Bannister.

‘Oh, God bless my heart, yes, sir,’ answered the skipper.

‘Now, _how_ do you know, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson.

‘By my instincts as a Briton, ma’am,’ he answered; ‘patriotism so
enlarges the nostril that a man can taste with his nose whenever
anything of his country’s about in the air.’

‘To think of it now!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hudson. ‘I’m sorry the robbers
have left that wreck. I should like the pirates to have been caught by
the man-of-war and hung up.’

The hour of noon had been ‘made,’ as it is called at sea, and it was
then a dead calm, with the clear chimes of eight bells ringing through
a wonderful stillness on high, so faint was the undulation in the
water, so soft the stir in the canvas to the gentle swaying of the
tall spars. The wreck of the brig lay about two miles distant off the
starboard beam, and by this hour the corvette, as she now proved to
be, with the crimson cross fluttering at her peak, had floated to
within a mile and a half or thereabouts on the other side of the hull;
and thus the three of us lay. The corvette, slewing her length out to
us to the twist of some subtle current upon the still surface, showed
a very handsome stately figure of a ship, at that distance at least.
Her sails had the fairy-like delicacy of silver tint you observe in
the moon when she hangs in an afternoon sky; they fitted the yardarms
to perfection, and I stood admiring for a long quarter of an hour at
a time the graceful lines of the bolt-ropes faintly curving to the
yardarm sheave-holes, each clew looking a little way past the corner of
the sail beneath it. A gilt figure-head of some royal device flashed
at her bows and shed a ruddy gleam upon the water under it. There was
the glistering of gilt about her quarter-galleries, and the sparkle of
glass there. But Mr. Prance said that he would swear she was an old
ship, her timbers as soft as cheese, and her chain-pumps nearly worn
out with plying, for all that she looked in the perspective of that
azure atmosphere as airy a beauty as ever gave the milk-white bosoms of
her canvas to the wind.

I went down on the quarter-deck to smoke a pipe, and whilst I lay
over the bulwark rail watching the man-of-war, my eye was taken by a
somewhat curious appearance in the line of the ocean away down in the
south-west quarter. It was a sensible depression in the edge of the
sea, as though you viewed it through defective window-glass. It was
an atmospheric effect, and an odd one. The circle went round with the
clearness of the side of a lens, save to that part, and there it looked
as though some gigantic knife had pared a piece clean out--with this
addition: that there was a curious sort of faintness as of mist where
the sky joined the sea in the hollow of this queer dip. I ran my eye
over the poop to see if others up there were noting this appearance,
but I did not observe that it had won attention. For my part, I should
have made nothing of it, accepting it as some trick of refraction, but
for it somehow entering into my head to remember how the second mate of
the ship I had made my first voyage in once told me of a sudden shift
of weather that had taken his craft aback and wrecked her to her tops,
and that it had been heralded, though there was no man to interpret the
sign, by just such another horizontal depression as that upon which my
eyes were now resting.

However, on dismounting from the bulwarks for a brief yarn with little
Saunders, the matter went out of my mind and I thought no more of it.

Whilst we were at lunch, Mr. Cocker came down the companion steps cap
in hand, and said something to the captain.

‘All right, sir,’ I heard old Keeling answer: ‘it will be a visit of
curiosity rather than of courtesy. How far is the boat?’

‘She’s only just left the wreck, sir.’

‘Very well, Mr. Cocker.’

The second mate remounted the steps.

‘The corvette,’ exclaimed old Keeling, addressing us generally, ‘has
sent a boat to the wreck, presumably to overhaul and report upon her.
The boat is now approaching us. I have little doubt that the corvette
is homeward bound, in which case, ladies and gentlemen, you might be
glad to send letters by her. There will be plenty of time. The calm, I
fear, threatens to last.’

There was instantly a hurry amongst the passengers, most of whom rushed
away from the table to write their letters.

I emptied my wine-glass and went on deck, and saw a man-of-war’s boat
approaching us; the bright ash oars rose and fell with exquisite
precision, and the white water spat from the stem of the little craft
as she was swept through it by the rowers, with a young fellow in
the uniform of a naval lieutenant of that day steering her. She came
flashing alongside; up rose the oars, the lively hearty in the bows
hooked on, and the officer, lightly springing on to the rope ladder
which had been dropped over the side for his convenience, gained the
deck with a twist of his thumb that was meant as a salutation to the
ship.

Old Keeling was now on the poop, and Mr. Cocker conducted the
lieutenant to him. I happened to be standing near, talking with
Colledge and Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Temple not yet having returned with
the letter which she had gone to her cabin to write. The skipper
received the naval officer with a gracious bow.

‘Our captain,’ exclaimed the young fellow, in a gentlemanly easy way,
‘instructed me to overhaul yonder wreck, and then come on to you to see
if we can be of any service;’ and I saw his eye rest with an expression
of delight upon Miss Hudson, who rose through the companion at that
instant and drew close to hear what passed.

‘Sir,’ cried old Keeling, with another bow, ‘I am obliged to your
captain, sir. It is, sir, very considerate of him to send. My
passengers are preparing letters, and we shall be very sensible of your
goodness in receiving and transmitting them.’

‘Pray, what ship is this, sir?’ exclaimed the lieutenant, glancing
about him with the curiosity of a stranger, and then taking another
thirsty peep at the golden young lady.

‘The _Countess Ida_, sir, of and from London for Bombay, so many days
out. And pray, what ship is that?’

‘His Majesty’s ship _Magicienne_.’

Colledge started. ‘Beg pardon,’ he exclaimed. ‘Isn’t Sir Edward Panton
her commander?’

‘He is,’ answered the lieutenant.

‘By George, my cousin!’ cried Colledge; ‘haven’t seen him these seven
years. How doocid odd, now, to fall in with him _here_!’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said the lieutenant, with a hint of respect in his manner
that might have been wanting in it before. ‘May I venture to ask your
name?’

‘Colledge.’

‘Ah! of course; a son of my Lord Sandown. This will be news for Sir
Edward.’ He sent a look at the corvette, as though measuring the
distance between the vessels.

‘Sir,’ here said old Keeling, ‘I believe that luncheon is still upon
the table. Let me conduct you below, sir. It will have been a mighty
hot ride for you out upon those unsheltered waters.’

The lieutenant bowed, and followed the skipper to the companion.
Colledge put his arm through mine and led me to the rail.

‘I say, Dugdale,’ he exclaimed. ‘I should like to see my cousin. It
would be rather a lark to visit his ship, wouldn’t it? Not too far off,
is she, d’ye think?’ he added, cocking his eye at the vessel.

‘Why, no; not on such a day as this.’

‘Will you come if I go?’

‘With the greatest pleasure.’

‘Oh, that’s downright jolly of you, by George. We’ll go in my cousin’s
boat, and he’ll send us back. I like the look of those men-of-war’s
men. It makes one feel safe even to see them rowing. Ah, there goes
something to drink for the poor fellows. Upon my word, old Keeling
buttons up a kind heart under that queer coat of his.’

‘I presume,’ said I, ‘that the lieutenant will make no difficulty in
consenting to carry us in his boat. I am ignorant of the rules which
govern his service. Suppose you step below, and arrange with him? If he
may not take us, Keeling will lend us a boat, I am sure.’

Down he went full of eagerness, his handsome face flushed with
excitement. Mrs. Radcliffe had joined two or three ladies, and stood
with them asking questions of Mr. Cocker about the corvette and the
wreck. On glancing through the skylight presently, I saw the lieutenant
picking a piece of cold fowl at the table, with a bottle of champagne
at his elbow. Old Keeling sat at his side, and opposite were Colledge
and Miss Temple. The four of them were chatting briskly. I took a peep
at the boat under the gangway. It was a treat to see the jolly English
faces of the fellows, and to hear the tongue of the old home spoken
over the side. A number of our seamen had perched themselves on the
bulwarks and were calling questions to the men-of-war’s-men whilst they
watched them draining the glasses which the steward had sent down to
them in a basket. From the answers the fellows made I gathered that the
_Magicienne_ was from Simon’s Bay, having been relieved on the coast,
where she had been stationed for I will not pretend to remember how
long. Small wonder that the bronzed, round-faced, bullet-headed, but
exceedingly gentlemanly lieutenant should have fixed a transported eye
on the sweet face and golden hair and the violet stars of Miss Hudson
after his unendurably long frizzling months of West African beauties.

In about twenty minutes he made his appearance upon deck, followed by
Keeling and Miss Temple and Colledge, who came sliding up to me to say
that it was all right: the lieutenant would convey us with pleasure and
bring us back: and what did I think? Miss Temple was to be of our party.

‘Humph!’ said I; ‘any other ladies?’

He made a grimace. ‘No,’ he responded in a whisper; ‘the lieutenant
suggested others; but I could twig in Miss Temple’s face that if others
went she would remain. You know there’s not a woman on board that she
cares about. I rather want,’ said he, returning to his former voice,
‘to introduce her to my cousin. He will be seeing my father when he
returns, and is pretty sure to talk,’ said he, giving me a wink.

‘Does Miss Temple know that you’ve invited me?’

‘She does, Trojan.’

‘And how did she receive the news?’

‘With rapture,’ he cried.

‘A fig for such raptures! but I’ll go, spite of her delight.’

By this time Miss Temple had made known her intentions to her aunt.
I became aware of this circumstance by the old lady uttering a loud
shriek.

‘It is entirely out of the question; I forbid you to go,’ she cried,
with a face of agony on her.

‘Nonsense!’ answered Miss Temple: she and her aunt and old Keeling and
the lieutenant were slowly coming towards the break of the poop, where
Colledge and I waited whilst this altercation proceeded; so everything
said was plainly to be heard by us. ‘It is as calm as a river,’
exclaimed the girl, sending one of her flashing looks at the sea.

‘You may be drowned; you may never return. I will not permit it. What
would your mother think?’ cried poor Mrs. Radcliffe vehemently, pecking
away with her face, and clapping her hands to emphasise her words.

‘Aunt, do not be ridiculous, I beg. I shall go. It will amuse me, and
I am already very weary of the voyage. Only consider: at this rate of
sailing we may be five or six months longer at sea. This is a little
harmless, safe distraction. Now, _don’t_ be foolish, auntie.’

The old lady appealed to Captain Keeling. He was looking somewhat
dubiously round the horizon when the lieutenant broke in; then Colledge
indulged in a flourish, and though I can’t trace the steps of it, nor
recollect the talk, somehow or other a little later on the three of us
were in the boat, a bag of letters on a thwart, the lieutenant picking
up the yoke-lines as he seated himself, the bow-oar thrusting off,
with a vision through the open rail of the poop of old Captain Keeling
stiffly sawing the air with his arms, in some effort, as I took it, to
console Mrs. Radcliffe, who flourished a handkerchief to her face as
though she wept.




CHAPTER XVII

THE ‘MAGICIENNE’


The corvette looked a mighty long distance away from the low elevation
of the boat’s gunwale--almost as far as the horizon, it seemed to my
eyes, though from the height of the deck of the Indiaman the sea-line
showed something above the bulwarks of the man-of-war. One hardly
noticed the movement in the sea on board the _Countess Ida_, so solemn
and steady was the swing of the great fabric, a movement stealing into
one’s thoughts like a habit, and leaving one unconscious of it; but
the heave was instantly to be felt in the boat, and I own that I could
not have believed there was so much swell until I felt the lift of the
noiseless polished fold and marked the soft blue volume of the water
brimming to the hot and blistered sides and green sheathing of the
Indiaman.

A huge lump of a ship she looked as we were swept away from her; her
masts soaring in three spires with the flash of a vane above the airy
gossamer of the loftiest cloths; groups of passengers watching us from
the violet-tinted shadow under the awning, heads of seamen at the rail,
or figures of them upon the forecastle near the huge cathead that
struck a shadow of its own into the water under it. The great bowsprit
went tapering to the delicacy of the flying-jib-boom end marshalling
the flight of white jibs; a stream of radiance floated in the water
under each large window. Inexpressible is the effect she produced taken
along with the dwindling of her to the impulse of our oars, with the
fining down into thinnest notes of the voices of the people, and with
the soft and still softening sounds of her canvas lightly swaying.

‘A grand old ship,’ exclaimed the lieutenant.

‘I had no idea she owned such a handsome stern,’ said Colledge;
‘quite a blaze of gilt, I do protest, Miss Temple. How gloriously old
Keeling’s cabin-window sparkles amid the gingerbread magnificence of
decoration.’

‘What is there in the art of painting to reproduce such a picture
as that?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, with her dark eyes glowing to the
mood of delight raised in her by the beautiful spectacle. ‘It is like
looking at an image in a soap-bubble. What brush could fling those
silver-bluish daintinesses of tint upon canvas, and make one see the
ship through this atmosphere filled with ocean-light?’

‘Ocean-light!’ exclaimed the lieutenant, viewing her with an air of
profound admiration; ‘that is the fit expression, madam. Light at sea
is different from light on shore.’

‘As how?’ cried Colledge.

‘Oh, my dear fellow, see what a reflecting eye the ocean has,’ said I;
‘it stares back in glory to the glory that looks down upon it. Mould
and clay can’t do that, you know.’

‘True,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Pray,’ said I, addressing him, ‘when you overhauled that hull yonder,
did you meet with anything to warrant our suspicion that she was a
rover?’

‘I found no papers,’ said he; ‘forward, she is burnt into a shell. All
her guns are gone--dropped overboard, I suppose, to keep her afloat.
She has a little round-house aft, and in it sits a man.’

‘A man?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘He sits in a musing posture,’ continued the lieutenant; ‘he frowns,
and seems vexed. He holds a feather pen in one hand, and supports his
head on the elbow of his left arm, but he doesn’t write: possibly
because there is no ink and the wind seems to have blown his paper
away.’

‘Is he dead?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘Quite,’ responded the lieutenant, with a smile of enjoyment of her
beauty.

‘God bless me!’ cried Colledge, staring at the hull under the sharp of
his hand.

‘Is she a picaroon, think you, sir?’ said I.

‘Impossible to say,’ he answered; ‘there are stands of small-arms in
her cabin below, and a sweep of ’tweendecks full of piratic bedding.
She will have been crowded with sailors, I should think, sir.’

The six men-of-war’s men were making the fine little cutter hum as
they bent to their oars, one hairy face showing past another, the eyes
of each man upon his blade, though now and again one or another would
steal a respectful peep at Miss Temple. What exquisite discipline their
demeanour suggested! One hardly needed to do more than glance at them
to sound to the very depths the whole philosophy of our naval story.
How should it be otherwise than as it is with a nation that could be
the mother of such children as those fellows?

The lieutenant was very talkative, and had a deal to say about the
West Coast of Africa and Cape Town; and he had a great many questions
to ask about home. Miss Temple constantly directed her eyes over the
side, as though affected and even startled by the proximity of the
mighty surface. And boundless the light blue heaving plain looked as it
went swimming to the far-off slope of sky that it seemed to wash--the
vaster, the more enormous for the breaks of toy-like craft upon it; for
the Indiaman and the corvette were standards to assist the mind into
some perception of the surrounding immensity, and never to me did the
heavens seem so high nor the curve of the ocean boundary so remote as I
found them from the low seat of the cutter, with the corvette growing
over the bow, and the Indiaman astern dwarfed to the dimensions of a
boy’s model of a ship.

It was a longer pull than I should have believed, and roastingly hot,
thanks to the flaming reflection that filled the heart of the sea, and
to the motionless atmosphere, which was scarcely to be stirred even
into the subtlest fanning of the cheek by our passage through it. Miss
Temple’s face in the shadow of her parasol resembled some incomparable
carving in marble, and but little of vitality was to be seen in it
outside of her rich, full, eloquent eyes, when she fell into some pause
of thought and looked away into the dim blue distance as though she
beheld a vision down in it. The corvette appeared deserted, with her
high bulwarks topped yet with a line of hammocks; but it was easy to
see that it was known on board the lieutenant was bringing a lady along
with others to visit the man-of-war, for there was already a proper
gangway ladder over the side, with a grating to step out on, though the
broad-beamed craft swayed more to the swell than the Indiaman, and so
dipped the platform that it needed a deal of manoeuvring to save Miss
Temple from wetting her feet.

Sir Edward Panton, a tall, exceedingly handsome man, with iron-grey
hair and a sun-reddened complexion, received us at the gangway. He
seemed scarcely able to believe his eyes when Colledge called out to
him. He welcomed Miss Temple with an air of lofty respectful dignity
that would have sat well upon some nobleman of magnificence welcoming
a royal visitor to his home. Chairs were brought from the cabin and
placed on the quarter-deck in the shelter of the awning, along with
a little table, upon which were put some excellent sherry, claret,
and seltzer-water, and a box of capital cigars. The look of this
ship, after the Indiaman’s encumbered decks broken by their poop and
topgallant forecastle, was a real treat to the seafaring eye. She
was flush fore and aft: every plank was as white as a peeled almond;
the black breeches of her artillery gave a noble, massive, imposing
character to her tall, immensely thick bulwarks; the ratlines showed
straight as thin bars of iron in the wide spread of shrouds and
topmast rigging; the running gear was flemish-coiled; the brass-work
sparkled like burnished gold; the snow-like cloths of the fore-course
gathered an amazing brightness from their mere contrast with the red
coat of a marine pacing the forecastle; the sailors, in white clothes,
straw-hats, and naked feet, sprang softly here and there to the light
chirrupings of a pipe, or went on with the various jobs they were about
on deck and in the rigging amid a silence that one might ask for in
vain among a crew of merchantmen. Far away down upon the starboard beam
was the Indiaman, blue in the airy distance, with a sort of winking of
shadows upon her square and lofty canvas, as the cloths swung in and
out, brightening and dimming.

Sir Edward was delighted to see his cousin, and it seemed as if there
was to be no end to their talk, so numberless were the questions
the commander put about home, his family, doings in London, matters
political, and so on, and so on. I had a chance, whilst Colledge was
spinning some long twister of private interest to Sir Edward, to
exchange a few words with Miss Temple, whose behaviour in the main
might have easily led me to believe that she was absolutely unconscious
of my presence; in fact, I shouldn’t have addressed her then but for
finding in the domestic and personal gossip of the two cousins an
obligation of either talking or walking away.

‘The _Countess Ida_ looks a long distance off, Miss Temple.’

‘Farther, I think, than this ship looks from her.’

‘That is owing to a change in the atmosphere. We shall be having some
weather by-and-by.’

‘Not before we return, I hope.’

‘The blue thickens yonder,’ I exclaimed, indicating that quarter of the
sea where I had noticed the depression of the horizon.

She gazed listlessly; her eyes then went roaming over the ship with a
sparkle in them of the pleasure the whiteness and the brightness and
the orderliness of all that she beheld gave her.

Presently Sir Edward exclaimed: ‘Miss Temple, you would like to inspect
this vessel, I am sure. I wish to show Stephen my wife’s portrait, and
I want you to see it. Mr. Dugdale, you will join us.’

Down we went into a very pleasant cabin, and the captain produced a
water-colour sketch of his lady.

‘A sweet face!’ exclaimed Miss Temple; whilst Sir Edward gazed at the
picture with eyes full of the yearning heart of a sailor long divorced
from his love.

‘Have you found your charmer yet, Stephen?’ said he. ‘Any girl won your
budding affections?’

The youth looked at me suddenly and turned of a deep red. I believe he
would have said no at once, and with a cocksure face, had I not been
there. Miss Temple’s gaze rested upon him.

‘Why, who is it, Stephen, eh?’ exclaimed Sir Edward with a merry laugh.
‘See how he blushes, Miss Temple! a sure sign that he has let go his
anchor, though he is riding to a long scope all the way out here. Who
is it, Steve?’

‘Oh, hang it, Ned, never mind; you bother a fellow so,’ answered
Colledge with a fine air of mingled irritation and confusion, and a
half-look at me that was just the same as saying, ‘What an ass I am
making of myself!’

‘Miss Temple,’ exclaimed Sir Edward, laughing heartily again, ‘he
may possibly have confided the lady’s name to you? Pray satisfy my
curiosity, that I may congratulate him before we part.’

‘I am as ignorant as you are,’ she replied, with an expression of cold
surprise in her face.

I marched to a porthole to look out, that I might conceal an
irrepressible grin.

‘I say, show us the ship, will ye, Ned?’ shouted Colledge; ‘there’s a
long pull before us, and we’re bound to India, you know.’

Captain Panton led the way out of the cabin, and went in advance with
Miss Temple, pointing here and explaining there, and full of his ship.
Colledge sidled up to me.

‘Dugdale,’ he exclaimed in a whisper, ‘do you believe that Miss Temple
will guess from my idiotic manner just now that I’m engaged to be
married?’

‘Oh yes; I saw her gaze sink right into you and then go clean through
you. It is best as it is, Colledge. You may breathe freely now.’

He smothered an execration, and continued gloomy and silent for some
time. There was not very much to be seen below. We were presently on
deck; and after another ten minutes’ chat, during which Colledge seemed
to regain his spirits, the boat was ordered alongside.

‘It shall be my secret as well as yours, Stephen, long before you are
home from your tiger-hunts!’ exclaimed Sir Edward at the gangway,
waggishly shaking his forefinger at his cousin.

We shook hands, entered the boat; the lieutenant took his seat, the
oars sparkled, and away we went with a flourish of our hats to the
commander, who stood for some time in the open gangway watching us.

‘There’s a trifle more swell than there was, I fancy,’ said I to the
lieutenant.

‘I think there is,’ he answered, looking over the sea as if he thought
of something else.

‘What a confounded quiz Ned is!’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘He’s rather too
fond of a laugh at other people’s expense. I think that sort of thing a
mistake myself.’

‘He is a very handsome gentleman,’ said I.

‘Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen him,’ said Colledge. ‘He’s a dear
good fellow, only---- I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip, Miss Temple?’

‘Thoroughly, thank you; it is a delightful change. How strange to think
of that toy yonder as being our home for some months to come! It is
like fancying one’s self as dwelling in a star, to see her floating out
there in the blue haze, as though she were poised in the atmosphere.’

She fastened her eyes on the Indiaman as she spoke. One saw in this
that she had a sailor’s observation for atmospheric effect. Star-like
the ship looked in the distance--a dash of misty light in the blue
haze, hovering, as it were, above the junction of sea and sky, where
the blending of the elements was so dim and hot that you couldn’t tell
where they met.

‘Isn’t it thickening up a trifle, somehow?’ said I to the lieutenant.
‘Look to the right of the wreck there--what is that appearance?’

‘What do you see?’ he exclaimed.

‘Why, to my fancy, it is as though there were a dust-storm miles away
yonder.’

He smiled, and answered: ‘Mere heat. One doesn’t need many months on
the West African coast to grow used to that sort of aspects. They
suggest nothing but quinine to me.’

‘What time is it?’ said Colledge.

We pulled out our watches: it was half-past four.

‘I am sorry we are returning to the Indiaman,’ said he. ‘I should like
to get away from her for a little while; then one would find something
of freshness in her when one returned. I am not thirsting to meet Mr.
Johnson and Mr. Emmett and Mr. Greenhew again. Are you, Miss Temple?’

She slightly smiled, and said, ‘I wish Bombay were as near to us as the
_Magicienne_ is to the Indiaman.’

‘I have an idea!’ cried Colledge, whose shining eyes, methought, seemed
to suggest the influence of the last large bumper of sherry he had
tossed down before leaving the corvette. ‘Let us kill another hour by
boarding the wreck.’

‘I shall be very pleased to put the boat alongside,’ said the
lieutenant. ‘What do you say, Miss Temple?’

She looked at the Indiaman, and then sent a swift glance at me, as
though she would read my face without having me know she had peeped at
it.

‘Will there be time before it falls dark?’ she answered. ‘I am in
no hurry to return; but I do not want to make my aunt miserable by
remaining out upon the water until after sunset.’

‘Oh, we have abundance of time,’ said the lieutenant.

‘It will give us so much to talk about,’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘I want
to see what sort of a ship it was that frightened us so abominably the
other day.’

‘What do you say, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple.

‘I am thinking of the lonely sentinel this gentleman was telling us
about as we came along,’ said I.

‘Oh, one peep! one peep at him, just one peep!’ cried Colledge:
‘_don’t_ let us go back to the Indiaman too soon. At this rate,’ he
added, turning up his slightly flushed face to the sky, ‘we may have
another six months of her.’

The lieutenant laughed, and, anxious to please him, as I supposed,
quietly pulled a yoke-line and swept the boat’s head fair for the
hull. His making nothing of the appearance I had called his attention
to was reassuring. I should have thought nothing of it either but for
the indent in the horizon that morning, and the recollection that grew
out of it, as I have told you. But then old Keeling had let us start
from his ship without a hint, and Sir Edward had uttered no caution,
though, to be sure, in those days the barometer was not the shaper
of marine speculations it has since become; and the silence of these
two skippers, and the smile and careless rejoinder of the lieutenant,
should have been amply satisfying. Nevertheless, there was no question
but that the light swell heaving out of the north-west was sensibly
gaining in volume and speed, and that it was the mere respiration of
the ocean I could by no means persuade myself, though it might signify
nothing.

Colledge grew somewhat frolicsome; indeed, I seemed to find an
artificiality in his spirits, as though he would clear Miss Temple’s
memory of Captain Panton’s _badinage_ by laughter and jokes. The
lieutenant fell in with his humour, said some comical things, and told
one or two lively anecdotes of the blacks of that part of the coast the
corvette was fresh from. The men-of-war’s men pulled steadily, and the
keen stem of the cutter sheared through the oil-smooth surface with a
noise as of the ripping of satin; but now and again she would swing
down into a hollow that put the low sides of the wreck out of sight,
whilst, as we approached, I noticed that the hull was leaning from side
to side in a swing which did not need to greatly increase to put the
lieutenant to his trumps to get Miss Temple aboard.

But by this time the girl was showing some vivacity, smiling at the
lieutenant’s jokes, laughing lightly in her clear, rich, trembling
tones at Colledge’s remarks. It seemed to me as if her previous
quietude had produced a resolution which she was now acting up to.
She was apparently eager to inspect the wreck, and said that such an
adventure would make a heroine of her at home when she came to tell the
story of it.

It was a long, dragging pull over that heaving, breathless sea, and
through that sweltering afternoon, with its sky of the complexion
of brass about the zenith. The three craft, as they lay, formed a
right-angled triangle, the apex, to call it so, being the derelict,
and the getting to her involved a longer stretching of the Jacks’
backs than, as I suspected, the lieutenant had calculated on. The
sweat poured from the men’s brows, and their faces were like purple
rags under their straw hats as they swung with the precision and the
monotony of the tick of a clock over the looms of their oars.

‘She’s rather unsteady, isn’t she?’ exclaimed Colledge as we
approached the hulk.

‘So much the better,’ said the lieutenant; ‘her bulwarks are gone, and
every dip inclines her bare deck as a platform for a jump.’

‘She may be sinking,’ cried Miss Temple.

‘Dry as a bone, madam, I assure you,’ said the officer. ‘I looked into
her hold, and there’s scarce more water than would serve to drown a
rat.’

‘I see her name in long white letters under her counter,’ I exclaimed.
‘Can you read it, Colledge?’

‘The _Aspirante_,’ said the lieutenant.

We now fell silent, with our eyes upon the hull, whilst the officer
manœuvred with the yoke-lines to run the cutter handsomely alongside. A
single chime from a bell came thrilling with a soft silver note through
the hushed air. Miss Temple started, and the officer grinned into
Colledge’s face, but nothing was said. She was a very clean wreck. Her
foremast stood stoutly supported by the shrouds; but the braces of the
foreyard were slack, and the swing of the spar, upon which the canvas
lay rolled in awkward heaps, roughly secured by lines, as though the
work of hands wild with hurry, somehow imparted a strange, forlorn,
most melancholy character to the nakedness of that solitary mast. She
showed no guns; her decks appeared to have been swept; the rise of her
in the water proved that her people must have jettisoned a deal of
whatever they were able to come at; her wheel was gone, and her rudder
slowly swayed to every heave. There were a few ropes’ ends over her
side, the hacked remains of standing-rigging; but the water brimmed
clear of wreckage to her channels.

‘Oars!’ cried the lieutenant. The bowman sprang erect; and in a few
moments we were floating alongside, soaring and falling against the
black run of her, with the deck gaping through the length of smashed
bulwark to the level of our heads when we stood up, each time she came
lazily rolling over to us. The clear chime of the bell rang out again.

‘What is it?’ cried Miss Temple.

‘The ship’s bell,’ said the lieutenant; ‘it has got jammed as it hangs,
and the tongue strikes the side when the heave is a little sharper than
usual.’

He followed this on with certain directions to the men. Two of them,
watching their chance, sprang on to the slope of the deck, and then
went hoisting up away from us as the hull swayed wearily to starboard.
‘Stand by now!’ bawled the lieutenant. ‘Miss Temple, let me assist you
on to this thwart.’ She leapt upon it with something of defiance in her
manner, and the officer, grasping her elbow, supported her. I thought
Colledge looked a little uneasy and pale. We waited; but an opportunity
was some time in coming.

‘Mr. Colledge,’ said the lieutenant, ‘be kind enough to take my place
and support the lady.’ He jumped lightly into the main-chains, and was
on deck in a jiffy. ‘Haul her in close, men. Now, Miss Temple. Catch
hold of my hand and of this sailor’s when I say so.’

Up swung the boat; the girl extended her hands, which were instantly
grasped. ‘Jump, madam!’ and she went in a graceful bound from the
thwart to the deck.

I watched till a heave brought me on a line with the chains into which
I jumped.

‘Now, Mr. Colledge!’ called out the lieutenant. He hung in the wind,
and I thought he would refuse to leave the boat; but Miss Temple with
her face slightly flushed stood watching as though waiting for him,
her noble figure swaying with a marvellous careless grace upon the
floating slopes of the planks; and this started him. He got on to a
thwart, where he was supported by a sailor till a chance offered for
his hands to be gripped, and then he was hauled on to the hull; but
he came perilously near to going overboard, for the sudden sinking
away of the cutter from under him paralysed his effort to jump, and he
swung against the side of the wreck in the grasp of the lieutenant and
a seaman, who dragged him up just in time to save his legs from being
ground by the soaring of the boat. The two sailors then jumped into the
cutter, which shoved off, and lay rising and falling upon the quarter
to the scope of her painter.




CHAPTER XVIII

ADRIFT


There was a small deck-house standing abaft the jagged ends of the
stump of the mainmast, a low-pitched, somewhat narrow, and rather long
structure, with a door facing the wheel, or where the wheel had stood,
and a couple of small windows on either hand, the glass of which was
entirely gone.

‘The lonely watchman of this wreck is still at home, doubtless waiting
to receive us,’ said the lieutenant, pointing to the little building.
‘Shall we pay him a visit?’

‘Oh yes; let us see everything that there may be to look at,’ answered
Colledge, who had not yet recovered his breath, but who was working
hard, I could see, to regain his late air of vivacity, though he was
pale, and shot several uneasy glances around him as he spoke.

‘I would rather not look,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it will make me dream.’

‘You will have nothing to talk about, then,’ said Colledge.

‘It is the most natural object in the world,’ exclaimed the lieutenant;
‘if he could be stuffed, preserving the posture he is in, and exhibited
in London, thousands would assemble to view him.’

I left them to persuade Miss Temple if they could, and walking aft,
opened the door, and peeped in. It was just a plain, immensely strong,
roughly furnished deck erection, with a small hatch close against the
entrance, conducting, as I supposed, to the cabin beneath. On either
side went a row of lockers; in the centre was a short narrow table,
supported by stanchions; and at this table sat the figure of a man. He
was in an attitude of writing; his right hand grasped a long feather
pen; his left elbow was on the table, and his cheek was supported by
his hand. He was dressed in white jean breeches, the ends of which were
stuffed into a pair of yellow leather half-boots. There was a large
belt round his waist, clasped by some ornament resembling a two-headed
eagle, of a shining metal, probably silver. His shirt was a pale red
flannel, over which was a jacket cut in the Spanish fashion; his hair
was long, and flowed in black ringlets upon his back. His hat was a
large sombrero, and I had to walk abreast of him to see his face. I was
prepared to witness a ghastly sight. Instead, I beheld a countenance
of singular beauty. It was as if the hand of death had moulded some
faultless human countenance out of white wax. The lids of the eyes
drooped, and the gaze seemed rooted upon the table, as though the man
lay rapt and motionless in some sweet and perfect dream. His small
moustache was like a touch of delicate pencilling. He looked to have
been a person of some three or four and twenty years of age.

As I stood surveying the figure, the interior was shadowed. Miss Temple
and the others stood in the doorway. The lieutenant and Colledge
entered; the girl would not approach.

‘Here, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘is the handsomest man I have ever seen.’

‘Can he be dead?’ exclaimed Colledge in a subdued voice of awe.

‘He’ll never be deader,’ said the lieutenant, peering curiously into
the face of the corpse. ‘_Handsome_, do you consider him, sir? Well,
we all have our tastes, to be sure. He looks like a woman masquerading.’

‘Who was he, I wonder?’ asked Miss Temple in a low tone, standing in a
half-shrinking attitude at the door.

‘Very hard to say,’ said I. ‘Too young for the captain, I should think.
Probably the mate.’

‘A pirate, anyway,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Hark!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘this ship is tolling his knell.’

The mellow chime floated past the ear. The effect was extraordinary, so
clear was the note as it rang through the soft sounds of the weltering
waters; so ghostly, wild, and unreal, too, the character it gathered
from the presence of that silent, stirless penman.

‘I say, we’ve seen enough of him, I think,’ exclaimed Colledge.

‘Shall we bury him?’ said I.

‘Oh no, sir,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; ‘this sheer hulk is his coffin.
Leave the dead to bury their dead. Now for a glimpse of the cabin.’

Miss Temple entered with some reluctance; the lieutenant handed her
through the hatch down the short ladder, and Colledge and I followed.
We found ourselves in a moderately-sized state-room of the width of the
little vessel, with bulkheads at either end, each containing a couple
of cabins. There was a small skylight overhead, all the glass of it
shattered, but light enough fell through to enable us to see easily.
Colledge had plucked up heart, and now bustled about somewhat manfully,
opening the cabin doors, starting as if he saw horrible sights,
cracking jokes as in the boat, and calling to Miss Temple to look here
and look there, and so on.

‘Hallo!’ cried the lieutenant, putting his head into one of the
cabins at the fore-end of the state-room; ‘I missed this room when I
overhauled her. What have we here? A pantry is it, or a larder?’

I looked over his shoulder, and by the faint light sifting through the
bull’s-eye in the deck, made out the contents of what was apparently
a storeroom. There were several shelves containing crockery, cheeses,
hams, and other articles of food. Under the lower shelf, heaped upon
the deck, were stowed several dozens of bottles in straw.

‘The corsairs,’ said the lieutenant, ‘will always be memorable for the
excellence of their tipple. What is this, now?’

He picked up a bottle, knocked off the head, and taking a little tin
drinking-vessel from a shelf, half filled it, then smelled, and tasted.

‘An exquisite Burgundy,’ he cried. ‘Try it, Mr. Dugdale.’

It was indeed a very choice sound wine. The lieutenant half filled a
pannikin for Colledge, who emptied it with a sigh of enjoyment. ‘What
would my father give for such stuff as this!’ said he.

The lieutenant found a wine-glass, which he carefully cleansed with
the liquor, and then filling it, he asked Miss Temple to drink to the
confusion of all pirates. She laughed, and declined.

‘Oh, you must sip it, if you please,’ cried Colledge, ‘if only to
heighten the romance of this adventure. Think of the additional colour
your story will get out of this incident of drinking perdition to the
corsairs in wine of their own!’

She was about to answer, when the hull rolled heavily. The lieutenant
slipped; the wine-glass fell to the deck, and was shivered; Colledge,
grasping me to steady himself, threw me off my balance, and the pair of
us went rolling to the bottles. The young fellow scrambled on to his
legs with a loud laugh.

‘I believe this vessel is tipsy,’ said he.

‘Do you mark the increase in the weight of the swell?’ I exclaimed as I
regained my legs.

The roll of the vessel the other way had been severe, and now she was
dipping her sides regularly with an oscillation extravagant enough to
render standing very inconvenient.

‘We must be off, I think,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Miss Temple hasn’t drunk confusion to the pirates,’ exclaimed Colledge
with the persistency of brains flushed with wine.

‘I would rather not do so,’ she answered, her fine face looking
curiously pale in that dull light, whilst she glanced restlessly
towards the state cabin. She pulled out a little watch. ‘It is
certainly time to return to the Indiaman,’ she added.

‘Oh, but don’t let us leave all this noble drink to go down to the
bottom of the sea,’ cried Colledge. ‘Is there nothing that we can pack
some of the bottles in? If we could only manage to get away with a
couple of dozen--twelve for ourselves and twelve for my cousin?’--and
with red face and bright eyes he went staggering with the heave of the
hull to the shelves and stood holding on, looking about him.

‘It might be managed, I think,’ said the lieutenant, who seemed all
anxiety to oblige him.

‘I wish to be gone,’ exclaimed Miss Temple with a strong hint of the
imperiousness that had been familiar to me in the Indiaman in the air
with which she looked at and addressed the lieutenant. ‘What is the
meaning of this increased rolling? I shall not be able to enter the
boat.’

‘No fear of that, madam,’ answered the lieutenant; ‘a dismasted
egg-shell like this will roll to the weakest heave. A trifle more swell
has certainly set in, but it is nothing.’

I was not so sure of that. What he was pleased to describe as
a trifling increase was to my mind, and very distinctly too,
a heightening and broadening of the undulations, of which the
significance was rendered strong by the suddenness of the thing. It
meant wind close at hand, I could swear.

‘I’ll go on deck and see how things are,’ said I.

‘Take me with you, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘You will suffer me to assist you?’ said the lieutenant.

‘Oh, I say, _don’t_ leave all this wine here,’ cried Colledge. ‘Mr.--I
mean Lieutenant--upon my word, I must apologise for not having asked
your name--can’t we manage to find some old basket’----

‘What is that down in the corner there, Mr. Colledge?’ said the
lieutenant, laughing.

‘Pray, take me on deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ exclaimed Miss Temple haughtily
and with temper, and she came to my side and passed her arm through
mine.

The swaying of the light hull without top-hamper to steady her so
hindered one’s movements by the staggering lurches it flung one into,
that it cost me no small effort to steer a fair course with Miss Temple
hanging to me, to the cabin steps. I helped her up the ladder, and felt
in her arm the shudder that swept through her as she sent a single
swift glance at the dead figure at the table.

The moment I emerged I cried out: ‘My God! see there! Why, if we are
not quick’---- And putting my head into the doorway again, I roared
down the hatch: ‘For heaven’s sake, come on deck, or we shall lose both
ships!’

Indeed, all away in the north-west was a white blankness of vapour
bearing right down upon the hull, with a long and heavy swell rolling
out of it, the heads of which as they came washing from under the base
of the thickness were dark with wind. The sky overhead was of a sort
of watery ashen colour, going down to the eastern sea-line in a weak,
dim blue, so obscure with the complexion of the approaching vaporous
mass that the corvette on the left hand and the Indiaman on the right
appeared as little more than pallid smudges, with a kind of looming
out of their dull, distorted proportions that made them show as though
they hung upon the very verge of the ocean. I told Miss Temple to hold
to the side of the deck-house to steady herself, and rushed to the
quarter. The cutter lay there to the scope of her painter, rising and
falling in a manner bewildering to see to one who knew that she had to
be entered from these perilously sloping decks. The moment my head was
seen, one of the sailors bawled out: ‘The Indiaman’s fired two guns,
sir.’

‘Why the deuce,’ I shouted in a passion, ‘didn’t one of you jump aboard
to report what was coming? Haul alongside, for God’s sake.’

At this moment the lieutenant appeared, followed by Colledge. He took
one look, and came in a bound to the sheer edge of the deck, where the
remains of the line of crushed bulwarks stood like fangs. ‘Lively now!’
he cried; ‘hand over hand with it.’

‘We shall be smothered out of sight in a few minutes,’ I exclaimed;
‘shall we be acting wisely in quitting this hull? We may lose both
ships in that weather there, and what will there be to do then?’

‘Don’t frighten the lady, sir,’ he answered, turning upon me with a
frown. ‘Miss Temple, there is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall get
you into the boat simply enough, and the vapour will speedily clear. I
know these waters.’

Colledge stood gazing round him, looking horribly frightened. The boat
was dragged alongside: one moment she was above the level of the naked
edge of the deck; the next she was sliding away out of sight into the
hollow, with the wreck rolling heavily off from her.

‘Now, Miss Temple,’ cried the lieutenant. ‘Help me to steady the lady,
Mr. Dugdale. Stand by, two of you men there, to receive her.’

Miss Temple set her lips, and her eyes were on fire with anger and
fear. ‘I shall not be able to enter that boat,’ said she.

‘Oh, madam, be persuaded,’ cried the lieutenant, speaking irritably
out of his clear perception of the danger of delay and of the peril of
passing her into the cutter. ‘Mr. Dugdale, take Miss Temple’s arm.’

She shrank back, with a firmer grip of the deck-house, against which
she had set her shoulder to steady herself. ‘You will kill me!’ she
cried.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the lieutenant wildly, ‘for God’s sake, jump
into the boat, that Miss Temple may see how easily it is to be done. I
must be the last to leave.’

‘Let Mr. Colledge jump first,’ said I. ‘I may probably be more useful
to you and the lady than he.’

‘Jump, Mr. Colledge!’ cried the lieutenant.

The young fellow went to the edge of the deck. ‘I shall break my neck,’
he shouted; ‘I shall fall into the sea; I shall be drowned.’

‘No, sir! no, sir!’ roared one of the seamen; ‘jump as the boat lifts;
we’ll catch you.’

‘_Now!_’ cried the lieutenant.

Colledge sprang; down sank the boat out of sight; then up she soared
again with Colledge safe in the embrace of one of the most powerful of
the sailors.

‘Here it comes!’ said I.

As the words left my lips, the wind, with a long fierce howl, swept
over the deck of the hull, and a moment later the fog was boiling
all about us. It was like a mighty burst of steam; and in a breath
the ocean vanished, and there was nothing to see but the wool-white
blankness and a space of thirty or forty feet of water beyond the
wreck. All on a sudden, the lieutenant, who had gone to the edge of
the deck, perhaps to see how it was with Colledge, or to bawl some
further directions to the seamen, staggered to a deep and swinging heel
of the hull and went overboard. It happened in a second. My instant
impression was that he had jumped for the boat; but I knew better when
I heard the men roaring out.

‘For heaven’s sake, Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘keep a firm hold, and do
not attempt to stir, or the angle of the decks will certainly rush you
over the side.’

So saying, I staggered to the quarter where there were some eight or
ten feet of bulwarks still standing, and looked over. The men had
let go the painter of their boat, and were shouting instructions to
one another as some of them flung their oars over into the rowlocks,
whilst others overhung the gunwale eagerly with pale faces and looks
of consternation and dread, searching the round volumes of the swell,
which the wind was now whipping into yeast, for any signs of their
officer.

‘Keep alongside!’ I bellowed; ‘he will rise near.’

But the fellows were distracted, unnerved, and there was nobody to give
them orders. The howling of the wind, the sudden leaping down upon them
of this blindness of white vapour, the violent upheavals and sinkings
of the cutter upon the run of the liquid hills, heavily increased the
distraction raised in them by their lieutenant’s disappearance. They
had three oars out, possessed, I suppose, by some mad fancy of merely
paddling whilst they stared round the water; and even whilst I watched
them, and whilst I yelled to them to get their six oars over, and to
pull for their lives to alongside the wreck, the boat, yielding to the
full weight of the blast and to the long irresistible heavings of the
swell, faded out of sight in the flying thickness; and ere I could
fully realise what had occurred, the narrow space of foam-freckled
pouring waters showed blank to where the flying vapour seemed to hang
like a wall of white smoke.

I continued to stare, occasionally bringing my eyes away from the spot
where the boat had vanished to the water alongside; but the lieutenant
had sunk. There could be no doubt that the poor fellow on rising from
his first dive had struck the bends of the hull as she rolled heavily
over to the trough where he had vanished, and so had been drowned,
struck down again into the depths, to rise no more. I could not realise
the truth. I felt as if I had fallen crazy, and was imagining dreadful
horrors. It was but a minute or two before that he had turned to me
with a frown--it was but a little while before that he was full of
jokes and laughter in the cabin--and now he lay a dead man, sinking and
yet sinking under our heaving and plunging keel, dead as the figure
yonder in that little cabin, of whom he had spoken jestingly so lately
that the words and tone of his voice were still in my ear!

‘Where is the boat, Mr. Dugdale?’

I turned slowly round and looked at the girl with an air of
stupefaction, then stared again into the blankness, and with shuddering
heart swept my eyes over the water alongside, brimming in humpbacked
rounds to the very line of the deck, and sweeping away into the near
thickness with a spitting and seething and flashing of foam off each
long slant to the fierce shrill smiting of the wind.

‘Has the boat left us, Mr. Dugdale?’

With a desperate effort I rallied myself, and watching for my chances
betwixt the wild slopings of the deck, I reached the deck-house, and
held on by the girl’s side.

‘The boat has been blown away. The men fell imbecile, I do believe,
when they saw their officer drop overboard. What madmen to let go the
painter, to manœuvre with three oars in a heavy cutter in the teeth of
such a wind as this, and on the top of that swell!’

‘Did they recover the lieutenant?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she shrieked, ‘do you tell me he is drowned?’

‘Yes--yes--he is drowned,’ I answered, scarce able to articulate for
the sudden fit of horror that came upon me again.

‘Drowned!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh no--not so suddenly! He may be struggling
close against the vessel now’--she moved as if to go to the side to
look. I grasped her arm.

‘Do not stir,’ I cried; ‘the slope of the deck will carry you
overboard. It is all open to the water abreast of us.’

‘Shocking! It is unendurable! Drowned so swiftly! And the boat--the
boat, Mr. Dugdale?’

The cruel distress in her voice, the anguish of mind expressed in her
parted lips, her heaving breast, her strained, brilliant, wide-open
staring looks about her, obliged me to recollect myself by forcing me
to understand my obligations as a man.

‘Miss Temple, this fog may prove but a passing thickness. There is a
clear sky over it, and when the vapour settles away, the sea will open
to its confines. The Indiaman knows we are here. We were watched, too,
from the corvette, no doubt, and she must regain her boat besides. The
cutter is a powerful little fabric, and there is nothing as yet in this
weather or in that sea to hurt her. It is a hard experience for you;
but it will prove a brief one only, I am sure. Let me assist you to a
seat in this deck-house. Your having to hold on here is fatiguing and
dangerous.’

‘I could not enter whilst that man is there,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, hark
to that bell!’ she cried hysterically; ‘it is tolling for _us_ now!’

‘You must be sheltered,’ I exclaimed; ‘and that body must come out of
it. Will you sit on the deck? You will be safer so.’

She sank down; and to still further secure her, I went sliding and
clawing like a monkey to the quarter, where, with my knife, I severed
an end of rope--a piece of gear belayed to a pin--with which I
returned to her side. I passed the line round her waist, and firmly
attached the ends to one of several iron uprights which supported the
structure; and begging her to compose her mind, and not to doubt of our
deliverance within the next two or three hours, I entered the little
building.

It was a loathsome job; but the girl must be sheltered, and it was not
to be borne that she should have such a companion as that corpse, when
there was the great graveyard of the sea within an easy drag to receive
the body. Yet I must own to coming to a stand with a long look at the
silent figure before I could muster up stomach enough to lay hands upon
him. Indeed, as I now fixed my eyes on the body, I wondered whether
he could be really dead, so startlingly lifelike was his posture, so
pensive his air, so vital the aspect of him to the minutest feature,
down to the pen betwixt his fingers, and the reposeful position of his
small wax-white hand upon the table. How could I tell but that he might
be in some sort of trance, and that my heaving him overboard would be
the same as murdering him? However, after a spell of staring, I shook
off these alarms and conjectures, and grasping him by the arm, got him
upon the deck; and presently I had him abreast of that part of the
brig’s side where the bulwarks were gone; and trembling as violently as
though I were about to drown a living being, I waited for a roll of the
hull, then gave the body a heave, and away it went, striking the swell
in a diving attitude, and floating off and down into it, as if it swam.

This done, I crept back to Miss Temple and squatted beside her.




CHAPTER XIX

NIGHT


The wind blew hard, and the vapour swept past in a horizontal pouring,
masses of it coming on a sudden in a blinding thickness till you could
not see half the wreck’s length; then the silver-tinted volumes would
brighten for a breath or two, and show the steel-coloured sea heaving
its freckled and foamless folds into the vaporous faintness a few
hundred feet off; then the mist would boil down and over us once more
until it was like being in a room filled with steam.

‘The cabin is empty,’ said I--the girl being on the port side, I had
taken care to drag the body to starboard--‘there are seats, and you
will be sheltered there. This is damping stuff.’

‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I am as safe here. I hate the thought of
having anything to screen the sea from me. I want to look--at any
moment the Indiaman or the man-of-war may come close to us.’

‘Be it so,’ said I. ‘Heavens, how rapidly has all this happened! One of
the cutter’s men shouted to me that the Indiaman had fired two guns.
Why did they not report this to us? Did they believe the swell would
not let them get aboard? They saw--of course they saw--this fog bearing
down; why did not the madmen let us know of it?’

‘What will my aunt think?’

‘Why, she will be in a terrible fright. But it will not last. We shall
be picked up presently. I would rather be here than in the cutter. If
they are wise, they will ride to their oars; if they row or allow the
wind and seas to drive them, they are bound to lose both ships, the
night being at hand; and then God help them!’

‘Oh, it was an evil moment,’ she cried, ‘when we sighted the corvette!’

‘It was an evil moment,’ I exclaimed bitterly and wrathfully, ‘when
Mr. Colledge, who had undoubtedly taken too much wine on board the
_Magicienne_, suggested that we should kill an hour on this hull.
Where,’ I cried passionately, ‘could the unhappy lieutenant’s wits
have been? He laughed at me for indicating the appearance I witnessed
in the north-west. Was there nothing in the weight of this swell to
convince him that there must be mischief not far off?’

‘What will my aunt think?’ she repeated, as though she scarcely heeded
my words, whilst she brought her hands, brilliant with rings, together
and stared into the thickness with her eyes on fire with fear and
amazement and the score of wild emotions which filled her.

Though I held my peace on the subject, the wind, that was blowing with
the spite of an ugly squall, was exciting an alarm in me that rose
above all other considerations of our situation. The hatches lay open
and there was nothing to be seen of their covers about the decks. If
this weather continued, a high sea must presently follow, in which case
there could be nothing to save the wreck from filling and foundering.
The lieutenant had assured us that she was dry; but it was certain that
she had been badly wrenched by the lightning stroke that had dismasted
and apparently set her on fire forward, and by the furious gale that
had chased her afterwards; and though she may have been tight when
the lieutenant overhauled her, this constant working in the strong
swell might at any instant cause her to start a butt or open a seam,
and then what should I be able to do? Both pumps were smashed level
to the deck; there was no boat; there was nothing discoverable fore
and aft which I could launch and secure my companion and myself to. It
was with inexpressible anxiety, therefore, that I would send my gaze
from time to time to windward, in the hope of observing a thinning in
the thickness there, or any the faintest imaginable sign to elate me
with the belief that the worst of the fog was on us, that we were now
feeling the worst of the wind, and that the ocean would be clearing
soon.

The time passed. I looked at my watch after we had been sitting a
little, and found it six o’clock. The sun would be setting in something
more than an hour, and a bitter black night was bound to follow if the
vapour had not cleared when daylight ended. There was now a smart sea
running, but the swell had flattened something, I thought. The hull was
horribly frisky, leaning at desperate angles from side to side, and
often recovering herself with a jerk that must have flung us to the
deck had we not been seated. But she was extraordinarily light, and
floated very tall, and though there would sometimes come a blow of salt
water against the bow that flashed across the deck in a mass of foam
and green crystals, yet she soared so nimbly to the height of every
surge that she took in amazingly little water. Indeed, it was not long
before I felt myself infinitely comforted by her behaviour, convinced
that it would have to breeze up with much more spite than the wind now
had to put us in jeopardy from a filling hold.

Shortly before the hour of sundown, I induced Miss Temple to occupy
the deck-house. She entered with a great deal of reluctance, and
seated herself in a corner that was the furthest away from where the
body had been. It had not been very easy to converse outside. The
ceaseless roaring and washing noises of the water, with the alarming
thumps and leapings of froth at the bow, and the sounds of the rushing
wind sweeping in gusty cries over the mutilated rails of the hull as
she was hove up full into it, and then sinking into a sort of humming
moaning as the wreck drove down the liquid acclivity into the swift
comparative stillness of the trough: all this was distracting and
terrifying, and speech had been difficult. But the interior of the
deck-house was a shelter to the ear and voice. I seated myself opposite
the girl, giving her as wide, respectful a berth as the narrow cabin
permitted. The shadow of the evening lay already sullen in the white
mist that seemed to boil upon the wind, though at that hour it was not
so thick but that the gaze might be able to penetrate a distance of
a quarter of a mile. Miss Temple was deadly pale. Even her lips had
lost their delicate rosy tint, and sat blanched in their compression.
Her eyes looked preternaturally large, and there was an expression of
passionate desperation in them, as one might figure of some proud,
high-spirited creature driven at bay, and rounding upon the pursuer
with a gaze charged with despair and wrath and the misery of some
heart-breaking resolution.

‘I believe I shall go mad,’ she said, ‘if this fog does not cease. I
feel as though I were now insane, and that what we are suffering is the
imagination of madness.’

‘It is a frightful time of suspense,’ I answered; ‘we must have
patience: there is no other medicine for this sort of affliction.’

‘I could stab myself,’ she cried, ‘for being in this position. There is
the Indiaman close at hand; I see her saloon cheerful with lamplight,
the tables glittering, the passengers seated, talking and laughing,
without a thought of us by this time.’ I shook my head. She continued:
‘I think of the security, the comfort of that ship, which I never once
reflected on when in her. And now contrast this!’

She rolled her wonderful eyes over the narrow compartment in a
shuddering way that was eloquent with abhorrence.

‘Why am I here? It is my own fault. I could stab myself for my folly.’

It made one think of some beautiful wild creature newly caged to watch
her.

‘It is bad enough,’ said I; ‘but it might be much worse. Think of
yourself in that open boat--on this high sea, and amidst this blinding
vapour: no water, no food, the blackness of the night coming down, and
a thousand leagues of ocean all around you.’

‘Is not the cutter safer than this horrible wreck?’ she cried. ‘If the
morning exposes the ships to the people in her, they can row; but what
can we do?’

‘If the morning exposes the ships,’ said I, ‘they’ll see us, and very
joyfully attempt to fetch us--that is to sail to us.’

She turned to look through a window the glass of which was gone, and
through which the wind was shrilling as though it blew into a cylinder.
It was fast darkening. In these latitudes twilight is brief, and in
such weather as this there would be none. It was little more now than
sombre blank greyness outside, with a sight of the steel-coloured
swell, over whose humps the seas were rushing in foam, shouldering and
vanishing into the thickness. But there was no increase in the wind,
and the run of the surge did not gain in weight.

I watched the girl while she looked through the window. It is not in
language to convey the tragic irony that was put into our situation by
her sparkling holiday attire. Her dress was of some white material, of
a silken or lustrous nature, that most perfectly fitted the beauties of
her person. Her hat was some rich combination of richly plumed straw.
She had removed her gloves on descending into the cabin of the hull
when we boarded her, and many rings of splendour and value flashed on
her fingers in a very armour of jewels and gold. There were gems in her
ears, and a heavy chain of gold round her neck, terminating in a whole
cluster of trinkets at her girdle, in which was sheathed a watch of the
size of her thumb-nail. Think of this glittering figure, this stately,
most perfect shape of womanhood in the gloom of the strong, rude
interior of the deck-house, with its few rough details of fittings in
the shape of a table and lockers, nothing to see through the window but
the rough deck spreading naked to its splinters of bulwark, with the
angry foam of waters beyond, and a near sky of fast blackening vapour!

‘What are we to do?’ she exclaimed, resuming her former attitude and
fixing her large desperate eyes upon me.

‘We must wait,’ said I.

‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Dugdale; tell me what you think?’

‘Well, first of all, we must be prepared to spend the night on this
wreck’---- She flashed her hands to her face and held them there, and I
waited for her to look at me again. ‘This weather,’ I proceeded, ‘is
not likely to last very long. The dawn will probably exhibit a clear
sky. If the ships are not in sight’--she drew in her breath with an
hysterical ‘Oh’--‘they will still have the bearings of the wreck, and
search for us. Were there but a single vessel to hunt after the hull,
we might still feel perfectly safe; but there are two, and one of them
is an English man-of-war.’

‘But will Sir Edward Panton know that we are here?’

‘No doubt. He or others will have seen the cutter deviate for the wreck
instead of pulling for the Indiaman.’

‘But they may think we are in the boat; and if she is not recovered,
they will search for her, and not trouble themselves about the wreck.’

‘We must be hopeful, and we must be patient,’ said I.

It was now rapidly growing dark. The white waters showed ghastly over
the edge of the bare deck to each convulsive jerking roll of the hull,
and my companion’s white face was little more than a glimmer in the
gloom of the corner in which she sat. The thought of the long black
hours which lay before us was intolerable. I looked about me for a
lamp, but there was nothing of the kind, nor hook nor bracket to prove
that a lamp or lantern was ever used in this small abode. I told Miss
Temple that I would go below and search for something wherewith to make
a light.

‘Will you be long?’ she asked.

‘I’ll make haste,’ said I.

‘Yes, if you please, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed.

I had in my pocket the old-fashioned arrangement of tinder-box and
sulphur matches, being, indeed, too confirmed a smoker to stir very far
without that convenience. The mere descent of the steps was a horrible
labour, owing to the extravagant leaps and rolls of the mere shell of
wreck, and my progress was scarcely more than inch by inch, forced to
hold on as I was with the tenacity of the grip of a parrot’s beak. The
straining noises in the cabin might have easily led me to suppose that
the hull was going to pieces. Every blow of the sea trembled through
her down here as though the fabric forward were breaking up, and I
recollect swinging by a stanchion for some minute or two, overwhelmed
with the consternation excited in me by the sounds, and by a sudden
recollection of the lieutenant’s words that the brig in her forecastle
had been burnt out. But I had promised Miss Temple to be speedy; and
the thought of her sitting lonely above in terror and despair brought
my mind back to its bearings.

It was almost pitch-dark, but remembering the situation of the pantry
in which the lieutenant had cracked the bottle of wine, I dropped on my
hands and knees, not daring to trust my feet, and crawled towards it.
When I guessed by groping that I was near the door, I kindled a match
and entered the pantry; and after consuming about half-a-dozen matches,
I met with a tin box that was full of long wax candles, which looked to
me very much like a sample of booty, as it was scarcely to be supposed
that a vessel of the class of the _Aspirante_ would lay in stores of
that quality. I hunted for a candlestick, and found a small empty
pickle bottle, which would very well answer the purpose of holding the
candle. This I squeezed under my waistcoat, and filled my coat-pockets
with a couple of bottles of wine, a handful of ship’s biscuit, and a
little tin drinking-vessel; and then putting the box of candles under
my arm, I fell again upon my hands and knees, crawled to the cabin
ladder, and joined the deck-house so wearied by the posture I had been
forced to adopt and by the convulsive motions of the deck, which had
put an aching as of rheumatism into every bone, that I was forced to
sit and remain quiet for some minutes.

The wind swept in through the denuded windows; but the structure, as
I have before said, was long in proportion to its width, and at the
fore-end the atmosphere was quiet enough for a candle to burn in. I
secured the empty pickle bottle to a stanchion with my handkerchief,
and placed the lighted candle in it; and the square of the bottle
held the flame at a sufficient distance from the stanchion to provide
against all risk of fire. The light seemed to raise some little heart
in Miss Temple.

‘You are brave,’ she exclaimed, with a glance at the black square of
the hatch, ‘to descend into that dreadful dungeon. There may be dead
bodies there.’

‘I am not afraid of dead bodies,’ said I. ‘I wish there were nothing
more harmful in this world than dead men. Here are two bottles of wine
and some biscuit. You will be the better for a little refreshment.’

I knocked off the head of a bottle and handed her a draught. She
looked at the rough drinking-vessel for a little, and then said with a
painful smile: ‘A desperate change, Mr. Dugdale, from the table of the
Indiaman! Will this wine hurt me?’

‘I will drink first, to reassure you, if you please,’ said I.

‘No,’ she exclaimed; ‘I must not be too cowardly;’ and she drank.

I took a good drain myself, and found it the same noble wine that the
poor lieutenant had tasted.

‘Try one of these biscuits, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘they are but coarse
eating for you, I fear; they are the bread that poor Jack is fed on.’

She took one and nibbled at it.

‘Ha!’ said I, ‘this is an ocean experience indeed. This is being
shipwrecked. You will have a deal more to talk about when you get home
than Colledge could have dreamt of in proposing this excursion for that
purpose. Can you bite that biscuit?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

‘It is rather flinty,’ said I, munching. ‘There should be something
more relishable than this to be come at below. I will make another
hunt.’

‘No, if you please,’ she cried vehemently; ‘do not leave me, Mr.
Dugdale.’

‘Ay, but food apart, since we must needs remain here through the night,
I must endeavour to find something soft for you to lie upon. You cannot
rest upon that hard locker.’

‘Oh, I do not want to rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think I could
sleep? I shall sit as I am, and pray for the light to come and for a
sight of the ships.’

I made no answer, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say I was
sorry for her sake that it was I, and not Colledge, whom she was adrift
with. It was an impulse coming through some sudden hot recollection of
her treatment of me on board the _Countess Ida_; but I bit my lip, and
was grateful for my silence a moment after, when I saw her fine eyes
swimming with tears.

‘Pray have hope,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am sure after a bit you will find
plenty of courage in your heart to confront this little passage, hard
as it is. I will do what I can. I would you had a better sailor than I
by your side; but what can be done by me shall be done, and the worst
is a long way off yet, I am certain.’

She put her hands upon the table and hid her face in them. I lifted the
lid of the locker I was using as a seat, to stow away the bottles in a
safe place; for, talk as I might, it was only God could know whether it
might not end in a single drop of the liquor becoming more precious to
us than twenty times the value of the cargo of the Indiaman. There were
some wearing apparel, a few small coils of ratline-stuff, and other
odds and ends in the locker, but nothing noticeable. I then clawed my
way to the deck-house door to take a look round. It was black as fog
and darkness could make it. Close alongside, the foam glanced dimly,
with now and again a flash of phosphoric light in some dark coil down
whose slope the hull was sliding; but there was nothing else to see.
The wind still blew fresh, but there was no recognisable increase in
it since the hour of its first coming down upon the wreck. It made a
most dismal and melancholy noise of howling in the sky, as it swept
through the dark obscurity, splitting upon the foremast and the shrouds
which supported the spar, in a low-toned long-drawn shriek, which
had something of the sound of a human note as it pierced through the
hissing and seething round about, and through the strange, low, dull
thunder made by the shouldering of liquid folds coming together as they
ran, and by the hurl of the surge as it rounded and dissolved into foam.

There could be very little doubt that the drift of a light empty shell
of a wreck with a yard and mast and shrouds forward for the wind to
catch hold of would be considerable in such weather as this. Helped
by the beat of the seas, she might easily blow dead to leeward, in
the trough as she was, at the rate of some three to four miles in the
hour, so that daybreak would find her forty or fifty miles distant
from the spot where we had boarded her. However, I comforted myself
with the reflection that the commanders of the two ships would have
a clear perception of such a drift as I calculated, and allow for
it in the search they would surely make for the hull. I had but one
fear: that the cutter had been seen leaving the wreck, for there was
an interval at least of a minute or two between her dropping astern
and manœuvring with her three oars and her envelopment by the fog. If,
then, she had been sighted, the inference would inevitably be that Miss
Temple, Colledge, and myself were in her; and so the hunt would be for
the cutter, without reference to the hull, with every prospect of the
search carrying the ships miles below the verge of our horizon.

Meanwhile, as I stood in that doorway looking into the blackness over
the sides, I bent my ear anxiously forward; but though there were
constant shocks of the sea smiting the bow, I never caught the noise
of water falling in weight enough upon the deck to alarm me. The leap
of the surge seemed to be always forward of the fore-shrouds, and the
ducking and tossing of the fabric was so nimble, and the pouring of
the blast so steadfast, that nearly all the water that sprang to the
blow of the bow was carried overboard by the wind. This was about as
comforting an assurance as could come to me; for I tell you it was
enough to turn one’s heart into lead to look into that starless wall of
blackness close against the ship, to see nothing but the pallid glimmer
of froth, to hearken to the noises in the air, to feel the sickening
and dizzy heavings of the sea, and then realise that this hull had been
struck by lightning, that the forepart of her was burnt into a thin
case of charred timbers, and that all three hatches in her, together
with the skylight, lay open and yawning like the mouths of wells to the
first rush of sea that should tumble over the side.

I will not feign to remember how that night passed. The tall wax candle
burnt bravely and lasted long; but the guttering of it to the circlings
of the air in the extremity of the cabin obliged me to light another
before the night was spent. It a little encouraged Miss Temple to be
able to see. God knows how it might have been with her had we been
obliged to sit in that blackness. Once the candle was blown out, and
when I had succeeded in lighting it afresh, after a few minutes of
groping and hunting and manœuvring with my tinder-box, I looked at the
girl, and knew by the horror that shone in her eyes, and the marble
hardness in the aspect of her parted lips, as though her mouth were
some carved expression of fear, how heart-subduing had that short spell
of blackness proved. From time to time she would ask for a little wine,
which she sipped as though thirsty, but she swallowed a few drops only,
as if she feared that the wine, by heating her, would increase her
thirst; yet when I spoke of going below to seek for some fresh water,
she begged me not to leave her.

‘It is the memory of the body that sat at this table which makes
loneliness insupportable to me, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed. ‘I seemed
to see the dreadful object when the candle went out. I thought I had
more spirit. I am but a very weak woman, after all.’

‘I do not think so,’ said I; ‘you are bearing this frightful trial
very nobly. How would it be with some girls I know? They would be
swooning away; they would be exhausting themselves in cries; they would
be tearing themselves to pieces in hysterics. And how is it with me?
Sometimes I am frightened to death, but not with fears of darkness or
of the dead. I am certain we shall be rescued; this hull is making
excellent weather of it; there is food and drink below, yet I am filled
with consternation and grief. Why should it be otherwise? We are
creatures of nerves, and this is an experience to test the courage of a
saint.’

Well, we would exchange a few sentences after this pattern, and then
fall silent for a whole hour at a time. She never closed her eyes
throughout the night. Whenever I glanced at her, I met her gaze
brilliant with emotion. The change was so sudden that I found it
impossible to fully realise it. When I thought of Miss Temple aboard
the _Countess Ida_, her haughtiness, her character of almost insolent
reserve, how she had hardly found it in her to address me with an
accent of courtesy, her ungracious treatment of me after the service
I had done her in rescuing her from a perilous situation: I say when
I recalled all this and a deal more, and then viewed her as she sat
opposite, crouching in a corner, supporting herself by grasping the
table with her heavily ringed fingers, the high-born delicate beauty of
her lineaments showing like some cameo in ivory, and reflected that she
and I were absolutely alone, that it might come to her owing her life
to me, or that we might be doomed to miserably perish together--this
girl, this unapproachable young lady, at whom I had been wont to stare
furtively with fascinated eyes on board the Indiaman for long spells
at a stretch--I could not bring my mind to credit the reality of our
situation.




CHAPTER XX

I SEARCH THE WRECK


All night long it blew a strong wind, but shortly before daybreak it
fined down on a sudden into a light air out of the south-west, leaving
a troubled rolling sea behind it. It was still very thick all round
the horizon, so that from the door of the deck-house my gaze scarcely
penetrated a distance of two miles. It was no longer fog, however,
but cloud, sullen, low-lying, here and there shaping out; a familiar
tropical dawn in the parallels, though it made one think too of the
smothers you fall in with on the edge of the Gulf Stream.

I stepped on deck to wait for the light to break, and Miss Temple
came to the door to look also. The hull still rolled violently, but
without the dangerous friskiness of the jumps, recoils, and staggering
recoveries of the night when there was a sharp sea running as well as a
long heaving swell. My heart was in my gaze as the dim faintness came
sifting into the darkness of the east. In a few minutes it was a grey
morn, the sea an ugly lead, and the horizon all round of the aspect
of a drizzling November day in the English Channel. We both swept the
water with our sight, again and again looking, straining our vision
into the dim distances; but to no purpose.

‘Do you see anything?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘No,’ I answered, ‘there is nothing in sight.’

‘Oh, my heart will break!’ she cried.

‘We must wait awhile,’ said I: ‘this sort of weather has a trick of
clearing rapidly, and it may be all bright sky and wide shining surface
of ocean long before noon; then we shall see the ships, and they will
see us. But this is a low level. Something may heave into view from
the height of that mast. I shall not be long gone. Be careful to hold
on firmly, Miss Temple; nay, oblige me by sitting in the deck-house.
Should you relax your grasp, a sudden roll may carry you overboard.’

In silence, and with a face of despair, she took her seat on a locker,
and very warily I made my way forwards. We had taken but a brief view
of the hull when we boarded her, and the appearance of her towards the
bows was new to me. There were twenty signs of her having been swept
again and again by the seas. No doubt, her hatches had been uncovered,
that her people might rummage her before going away in her boats; and
the covers, for all I could tell, might have been rolled overboard by
some of her violent workings. Yet it was certain that she must have
been swept when her hatches were covered, or the lieutenant would not
have found her with a dry hold. But I had been long enough at sea to
know that it is the improbable conjecture that oftenest fits the fact
of a marine disaster.

I took a view of the foremast, to make sure that all was sound with
it, and then sprang into the shrouds and gained the top. Some few feet
of the splintered topmast still stood, and under the platform at which
I had arrived the foreyard swang drearily to its overhauled braces
hanging in bights. There was no more to see here than from the deck.
The thick atmosphere receded nothing to this elevation, and would have
been as impenetrable had I climbed a thousand feet. It was like being
in the heart of an amphitheatre of sulky shadows. The water rolled
foamless, and there was little more air to be felt than was made by
the sickeningly monotonous swing of the solitary spar from whose
summit I explored the ocean limits in all directions, frowning to the
heart-breaking intensity of my stare. By heaven, then, thought I, we
_are_ alone! and if we are to be picked up by either of the ships, it
will not be to-day nor maybe to-morrow!

I glanced down at the deck of the hull, and observed that the sides of
the fore-hatch were black with extinguished fire. The head-rail was
gone to port, and from the eyes of her to the deck-house aft the fabric
had a fearfully wrecked look, with its mutilated bulwark stanchions,
its yawning hatchways, its dislocated capstan, and other details of
a like kind, all helping to a horrible wildness of appearance to one
who viewed, as I did, from an eminence, the crazy, fire-blackened,
dismasted old basket, that wallowed as though every head of swell that
rolled at her must overwhelm and drown her hollow interior.

I again sent my eyes in another passionate search, then descended. As I
sprang from the shrouds on to the deck, my eye was taken by the brig’s
bell, that dangled from a frame close against the foremast. Dreading
lest some increase in the swell should start it off into ringing
in some dismal hour of gloom and heighten Miss Temple’s misery and
terror, I unhooked the tongue of it, and threw it down, and rejoined my
companion, whose white face put the piteous question of her heart to me
in silence.

‘No,’ said I, swaying in front of her as I held on to the door; ‘there
is nothing to be seen.’

‘Oh it is hard! it is hard!’ she cried. ‘If one could only recall a few
hours--be able to go back to yesterday! I do not fear death: but to die
thus--to drown in that dreadful sea--no one to be able to tell how I
perished.’ She sobbed, but with dry eyes.

There was no reasoning with such a fit of despair as this, nor was it
possible for me to say anything out of which she might extract a grain
of comfort, seeing that I could but speak conjecturally, and with no
other perception than was to be shaped by the faint light of my own
hopes. My heart was deeply moved by her misery. Her beauty showed wan,
and was inexpressibly appealing with its air of misery. The effects
of the long and fearful vigils of the night that was gone were cruelly
visible in her. There was a violet shadow under her eyes, her lips were
pale, her lids drooped, her hair hung in some little disorder about her
brow and ears; her very dress seemed significant of shipwreck, mocking
the eye with what the grim usage of the sea had already transformed
into mere ironical finery. Yet there was too much of the nature she had
familiarised me to on board the Indiaman still expressed in the natural
haughty set of her lips, even charged as they were with the anguish
that worked in her, to win me to any attempt of tender reassurance. I
watched her dumbly, though my soul was melted into pity. Presently she
looked at me.

‘I suppose there is nothing to be done, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Indeed, then,’ said I, ‘there is a deal to be done. First of all, you
must cheer up your heart, which you will find easy if you can credit me
when I tell you that this hull is perfectly buoyant; that though the
weather is thick and gloomy, the sun, as he gains power, is certain
to open out the ocean to us; that there are two ships close at hand
searching for us; that there are provisions enough below to enable
us to support life for days and perhaps weeks; and that, even if the
Indiaman or the corvette fail to fall in with us, we are sure to be
sighted by one of the numerous vessels which are daily traversing this
great ocean highway. What, then, are we to do but compose our minds,
exert our patience, keep a bright lookout, be provided with means for
signalling our distress, and meanwhile not to suffer our unfortunate
condition to starve us? And that reminds me to overhaul the pantry for
something better than biscuit to break our fast with.’

A softness I should have thought impossible to the spirited fires of
her eyes when all was well with her entered her gaze for a moment as
it rested upon me, and a faint smile flickered upon and vanished off
her lips; but she did not speak, and I dropped through the hatch to
ascertain if the pantry could yield us something more nourishing than
ship’s bread.

The sullenness of the day without lay in gloom below. I was forced to
return for a candle, with which I entered the little cabin that I had
visited on the previous day; but when I came to make a search I could
find nothing more to eat than cheese, biscuit, and marmalade. There
was a number of raw hams, but the galley was gone, and there was no
means to cook them. There were two casks of flour, a sack of some kind
of dried beans, and a small barrel of moist sugar. These matters had
probably been overlooked when the crew hurriedly removed themselves
from the brig. No doubt, at the time of jettisoning such commodities
as the hold might have stored, they had broken out as much food and
water as they could take with them. There was more than a bottle of
wine in the deck-house; down here, stowed away in straw and secured
by a batten, were some three or four scores of full bottles, all, I
supposed, holding the same generous liquor contained in the first
of them we had tasted. But there was no fresh water. I sought with
diligence, but to no purpose. Possibly the people might have left some
casks of it in the hold; but that was a search I would not at present
undertake.

I took some cheese and marmalade and another handful of biscuits,
along with a knife and a couple of tin dishes. As I passed through
the cabin, the light of the candle I held glanced upon a stand of
small-arms fixed just abaft the short flight of the hatch-ladder.
There were some thirty to forty muskets of an old-fashioned make, even
for those days, and on either hand of them, swinging in tiers or rows
from nails or hooks in the bulkhead, were a quantity of cutlasses,
half-pikes, tomahawks, and other items of the grim machinery of murder.
I placed the food upon the deck-house table.

‘A shabby repast, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘but we may easily support life
on such fare until we are rescued.’

She ate some biscuit and marmalade, and drank a little wine; but she
incessantly sent her gaze through the windows or the open door, and
sighed frequently in tremulous respirations, and sometimes there
would enter a singular look of bewilderment into the expression of
her eyes, as though her mind at such moments failed her, and did but
imperfectly understand our situation. I would then fear that the horror
which possessed her might end in breaking down her spirits, and even
dement her, indeed. Already her eyes were languid with grief and want
of rest, and such strength and life as they still possessed seemed
weakened yet by the shadowing of the long fringes. I endeavoured to win
her away from her thoughts by talking to her.

I possessed a pocket-book, which supplied me with pencil and paper,
and I drew a diagram of the two ships’ and the wreck’s position, as I
was best able to conceive it, and made arrows to figure the direction
of the wind, and marked distances in figures, and enlarged freely and
heartily upon our prospects, pointing with my pencil to the paper
whilst I talked. This interested her. She came round to the locker on
which I sat, and placed herself beside me, and leaned her face near
to mine, supporting her head by her elbow whilst she gazed with eyes
riveted to the paper, listening thirstily. I had never had her so close
to me before saving that day when we swung together on to the hencoop,
but then it was a constrained situation, and she had let me suspect
that it was very distasteful to her. It was far otherwise now. She was
near me of her own will; I felt her warm breath on my cheek; the subtle
fragrance of her presence was in the air I respired. I talked eagerly
to conceal the emotions she excited, and I felt the blood hot in my
face when I had made an end with my diagram, and drew a little away to
restore the book to my pocket.

She now seemed able and willing to converse, but she did not offer to
leave my side.

‘Suppose the ships are unable to find us, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Some other vessel is certain to fall in with us.’

‘But she may be bound to a part of the world very remote from India or
England.’

‘True,’ said I; ‘but as she jogs along she may encounter a vessel
proceeding to England, into which we shall be easily able to tranship
ourselves.’

‘How tedious! We may have to wander for months about the ocean!’

‘It is always step by step, Miss Temple, in this life. Let us begin at
the beginning, and quit this wreck, at any rate.’

‘All my luggage is in the Indiaman. How I am to manage I cannot
conceive,’ said she, running her eyes over her dress, and lifting her
hand to her hat.

‘Pray let no such consideration as dress trouble you. The experience
will gain in romance from our necessities, and we shall be able to read
“Robinson Crusoe” with new enjoyment.’

She faintly smiled, with just a hint of peevishness in the curl of her
lip.

‘If this be romance, Mr. Dugdale, may my days henceforth, if God be
merciful enough to preserve us, be steeped in the dullest prose.’

‘I wonder where Colledge and the cutter’s crew are?’ said I.

‘I do not think,’ she exclaimed, ‘if Mr. Colledge were in your place he
would show your spirit.’

‘He was a great favourite of yours, Miss Temple.’

‘Not great. I rather liked him. I knew some of his connections. He was
an amiable person. I did not know that he was engaged to be married.’

I was astonished that she should have said this, but I was eager to
encourage her to talk, and in our state of misery it would signify but
little what topic we lighted upon.

‘Did he inform you he was engaged?’ said I.

‘No. I perceived it in his looks when his cousin asked him the
question. Did he ever tell you who the young lady was?’ she added
listlessly, and though she spoke of the thing it was easy to see that
she was without interest in it.

I could not tell a lie, and silence would have been injurious to my
wishes for her. Besides, she had guessed the truth by no help from
me, and then, again, our situation rendered the subject exquisitely
trifling and insignificant.

‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘we were cabin fellows, and intimate. He showed me
the girl’s portrait--a plump, pretty little woman. Her name is Fanny
Crawley, daughter of one of the numberless Sir Johns or Sir Thomases of
this age.’

She was looking through the cabin door at the sea, and scarcely seemed
to hear or to heed me. Am I strictly honourable in this? thought I.
Pshaw! it was no moment to consider the rights and wrongs of such a
thing. Her discovery had freed me from all obligation of secrecy, and
what I had supplied she would have easily been able to ascertain for
herself on her return home, if, indeed, home was ever to be viewed
again by either of us.

‘What horrible weather!’ she exclaimed, bringing her eyes to my face;
‘there is no wind, and the sea rolls like liquid lead. When you were at
sea, were you ever in a situation of danger such as this?’

‘This is an uneasy time,’ said I; ‘but do not call it a situation of
danger yet. I am going shortly to overhaul the wreck. I must keep her
afloat until we are taken off her.’

‘How long were you at sea, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Two years.’

‘Is your father a sailor?’

‘No; my father is dead. He was captain in the 38th Regiment of Foot,
and was killed at Burmah.’

There was a kind of dawning of interest in her eyes, an expression I
had not noticed when she talked of Colledge and his engagement.

‘My father was in the army, too,’ said she; ‘but he saw very little
service. Is your mother living?’

‘She is.’

She sighed bitterly, and hid her face whilst she exclaimed:

‘Oh, my poor mother! my poor mother! How little she knows! And she was
so reluctant to let me leave her.’ She sighed again deeply, and let her
hands fall, and then sank into silence.

I quitted the deck-house to take another look round. Just then rain
began to fall, and the sea became shrouded with the discharge. So
oil smooth now was the swell that each drop as it fell pitted the
lead-coloured rounds with a black point, and the water alongside looked
to be spotted with ink. As I had met with no fresh water in the little
room that I call the pantry, and as there might be none in the hold, or
none that with my single pair of hands I should be able to come at, I
resolved to take advantage of the wet that was pouring down, and dived
into the cabin to search for any vessel that would catch and hold it.
The flour and sugar casks in the pantry would not do. I peered into the
other berths, but could see nothing to answer the purpose. It was of
the first consequence, however, to us that we should possess a store
of drinking water to mix with our wine, for we were in the tropics;
the atmosphere was heavy with heat, even under a shrouded heaven; it
was easy to figure what the temperature would rise to when the sun
should shine forth; and the mere fancy of days of stagnation and of
vertical suns, of this hull roasting; under the central broiling eye,
of the breathless sea, stretching in feverish breathings into the
dim, blue distance, unbroken by any tip of sail, and no fresh water
to drink, was horribly oppressive, and rendered me half crazy to find
some contrivance to catch the rain, which might at any moment cease.
The thought of the lockers in the deck-house occurred to me. I mounted
the ladder and searched them, and to my unspeakable joy, found in the
locker upon which Miss Temple had been seated during the night, four
canvas buckets, apparently brand new, as I might judge, from the cloth
and from the rope handles. The rain fell heavily, and the water gushed
in streams from the roof of the deck-house at many points of it. In a
very short time the buckets were filled, but they were of a permeable
substance, and it was necessary to decant them as soon as possible.
There was no difficulty in doing this, for there were several empty
bottles in the shelves below along with a couple of large jars, some
tin pannikins, and so forth. These I brought up, washed them in the
rain, and then filled them, and in this manner contrived to store away
a good number of gallons, not to mention the contents of the buckets,
which I left hanging outside to fill up afresh, meaning to use them
first, and taking my chance of loss through the water soaking through
them.

All this, that is to be described in a few lines of writing, signified
a lengthy occupation, that broke well into the day. Miss Temple watched
my labours with interest, and begged to be of service; but she could be
of little use to me, nor would I suffer her to expose herself to the
wet.

‘Will not this rain fill the hull,’ she exclaimed, ‘and sink her?’

‘It would need to keep on raining for a long while to do that,’ said
I, laughing. ‘I am going below to inspect the forepart of her, and to
ascertain, if possible, what her hold contains. Will you accompany me?
The hull rolls steadily; you will not find walking inconvenient, and it
is very necessary that you should occupy your mind.’

‘I should like to do so,’ she answered; ‘but ought not one of us to
stay here in case the sea should clear and show us the ships?’

‘Alas!’ said I, ‘there is no wind, and the ships probably lie as
motionless as we. This weather will not speedily clear, I believe.
We shall not be long below, and any sort of exertion is better than
sitting here in loneliness and musing upon the inevitable, and adding
the misery of thought to the distress of our situation.’

‘Yes, you are right,’ she exclaimed, rising. ‘You give me some heart,
Mr. Dugdale, yet I do not know why. There is nothing that you can say
to encourage me to hope.’

To this I made no reply, but took her hand, and assisted her to descend
the ladder. She came to a stand at the foot of it, as though terrified
by the gloom.

‘It is dreadful,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘to think that only
a few short hours ago the poor lieutenant whose heart was beating
high with thoughts of returning home, should have been laughing and
joking--here! I can hear his voice still; I can hear Mr. Colledge’s
laughter. Hark! What noises are those?’

‘Rats!’ I exclaimed.

The squeaking was shrill and fierce and close to. I lighted a candle,
she meanwhile coming to my side, her elbow rubbing mine, as though she
would have my hand within an instant’s reach of her own. The squeaking
continued. It sounded as though there were some score of rats worrying
something, or fighting among themselves.

‘Hold this candle for a moment,’ said I, and I advanced to the bulkhead
and grasped a cutlass, and then peeped into the little passage that
divided the after cabins. The rats were somewhere along it, but it was
too dark to see; so laying the cutlass aside, I took down a musket
and sent the heavy weapon javelin-fashion sheer into the thick of the
hideous noise. A huge rat as big as a kitten rushed over my feet; Miss
Temple uttered a shriek, and let fall the candle.

‘Do not be alarmed!’ I shouted; ‘the beasts know their way below;’ and
seeing the pallid outline of the candle upon the deck I picked it up
and relighted it.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, in a voice that trembled with disgust and
fear, ‘what am I to do? I dare not be here, and I dare not be above,
alone. What is more shocking and terrifying than a rat?’

I told her that rats were much more afraid of us than we could possibly
be of them; but, commiserating her alarm, I offered to escort her to
the deck-house.

‘But you will not leave me there,’ she exclaimed.

‘It is very necessary,’ said I, ‘that I should examine the state of the
hull.’

‘Then I will stay with you,’ said she. ‘I cannot endure to be alone.’

She gathered up her dress, holding the folds of it with one hand,
whilst she passed the other through my arm. I could feel her shuddering
as she clung to me. Her eyes were large with fright and aversion, and
they sparkled to the candle-flame as she rolled them over the deck.
At the extremity of the passage that separated the foremost berths
from the pantry stood what I believed a bulkhead; but on bringing the
candle to it I discovered that it was a door of very heavy scantling
that slided in grooves with a stout iron handle for pulling it by. It
travelled very easily, as something that had been repeatedly used.
The moment it was open there was plenty of daylight, for the open
square of the main hatch yawned close by overhead, of dimensions
considerable enough to illuminate every part of this interior. I stood
viewing with wonder a scene of extraordinary confusion. There were
no hammocks, but all about the decks, in higgledly-piggledly heaps
and clusters, were mats of some sort of West Indian reeds, rugs and
blankets, bolster-shaped bags, a few sea-chests, most of them capsized,
with their lids open, and a surprising intermixture of hook-pots,
tin-dishes, sea-boots, oilskins, empty broken cases, staves of casks,
tackles, and a raffle of gear and other things of which my mind does
not preserve the recollection. Several large rats, on my swinging the
door along its grooves, darted from out of the various heaps and shot
with incredible velocity down through the large hatch that conducted
into the hold, and that lay on a line with the hatch above.

‘By all that’s---- Well, well! here’s been excitement, surely,’ said
I. ‘Was ever panical terror more incomparably suggested? But this brig
was full of men, and there was manifestly a tremendous scramble at the
last. Would not anyone think that there had been a fierce fight down
here?’

‘Do you think there are any dead bodies under those things?’ exclaimed
Miss Temple in a hollow whisper.

‘See!’ cried I; ‘lest there should be more rats about, suppose I
contrive some advantage for you over the beasts;’ and so saying I
dragged one of the largest of the sea-chests to the bulkhead and helped
her to get upon it.

This seemed to make her easier. Filled as my mind was with conflicting
emotions excited by the extraordinary scene of hurry and disorder
which I surveyed, I could yet find leisure to glance at and deeply
admire her fine, commanding figure, as she stood with inimitable,
unconscious grace, swaying upon the chest to the regular rolling of the
hull. It was a picture of a sort to live as long as the memory lasted.
There she stood, draped in the elegancies of her white apparel, her
full, dark eyes large and vital again in the shadow of her rich hat,
under which her face showed colourless and faultless in lineament as
some incomparable achievement of the sculptor’s art: her beauty and
dignity heightened in a manner not to be expressed or explained by
the character of the scene round about--the uncovered square of hatch
through which the rain was falling, the wild disorder of the deck, the
rude beams and coarse sides of the interior.

I approached the edge of the hatchway and looked down. Little more was
to be seen than ballast, on the top of which lay a couple of dismounted
guns, apparently twelve-pounders. A short distance forward in the gloom
were the outlines of some casks and cases. The hull was dry, as the
lieutenant had said. Water there undoubtedly must have been, washing to
and fro under the ballast and down in the run, but too inconsiderable
in quantity to give me the least uneasiness. One glance below sufficed
to assure me that the fabric of the wreck was tight.

I considered a little whether it might not be possible to so protect
the yawning hatches as to provide against any violent inroads of water
should this dirty shadow of weather that overhung the wreck in wet end
in wind; but there were no tarpaulins to be seen, no spare planks or
anything of a like kind which could be converted into a cover, nothing
but mats and rugs, which were not to be put to any sort of use in the
direction I had in my mind.

I left Miss Temple standing on the chest, darting alarmed glances at
the huddled heaps which littered the decks, and walked forward to a
doorway in a stout partition that bulkheaded off a short space of
forecastle from these ’tweendecks. There was an open forescuttle here
that made plenty of light. This was the interior that had been burnt
out, as the lieutenant had told me, to the condition of a charred
shell. The deck and sides were as black as a hat, and the place showed
as if it had been constructed of charcoal. A strong smell as of fire
still lingered. Whatever had been here in the shape of sea-furniture
was burnt, or removed by the people. I picked up a small handspike,
and entering the cindery apartment, beat here and there against the
semi-calcined planks, almost expecting to find the handspike shoot
through; but black as the timber looked it yielded a hearty echo to my
thumps, and I returned to Miss Temple satisfied that the hull was still
very staunch, and, but for her uncovered hatches, as seaworthy as ever
she had been at any time since her launch.

Whilst turning over some of the mats and wearing apparel on the deck
with my foot I spied a large cube of something yellow, and, picking it
up and examining it, I was very happy to discover that it was tobacco.
I made more of this than had I found a purse of a hundred guineas, for,
though I had my pipe in my pocket, I was without anything to smoke, and
I cannot express how hungrily during the night I had yearned for the
exceeding solace of a few whiffs, and with what melancholy I had viewed
the prospect of having to wait until we were rescued before I should
obtain a cigar or a pipe of tobacco.

‘What have you there, Mr. Dugdale?’ cried Miss Temple.

‘A little matter that, coming on top of the discovery that this hull
is as good as a cork under our feet, helps very greatly towards
reestablishing my peace of mind--a lump of very beautiful tobacco,’ and
I smelt it fondly again.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, I thought it was a dead rat,’ she exclaimed. ‘What
are all those mats?’

‘The privateersmen used them to sleep on, I expect. The quantity of
them tells us how heavily manned this old waggon went.’

‘There is no wind, Mr. Dugdale. The rain falls in perfectly straight
lines. Let us return to the deck-house.’

I took her hand and helped her to dismount. She gathered her dress
about her as before, and passed with trepidation through the darksome
cabin, holding tightly by my arm, and then, with a wearied despairful
air, seated herself upon a locker and leaned her chin in her hand,
biting her under lip whilst she gazed vacantly through the little
window at the sullen raining gloom of the sky.




CHAPTER XXI

WE SIGHT A SAIL


I should but tease you by attempting to narrate the passage of the
hours from this point. All day long it rained; no air stirred, and
the leaden sea flattened into sulky heavings wide apart, on which the
hull rolled quietly. Possessing but the clothes in which I stood, I
fetched an oilskin from the ’tweendecks to save me from a wet skin, and
thus attired made several journeys into the foretop, where I lingered,
straining my gaze all around into the shrouded horizon till my eyeballs
seemed to crack to the stretching of my vision. Sometimes, when in
the deck-house, I would start to my feet on fancying I heard a sound
of oars, but it was never more than some sobbing wash of swell, or
some stir of the rudder swayed on its pintles by the movement of the
fabric. There was plenty of stuff below with which to produce smoke,
but no preparation for such a signal could be made whilst it rained,
nor could any purpose be served by having the materials ready until the
weather cleared, and wind blew, and something hove into sight.

Miss Temple’s miserable dejection grieved me bitterly. The horror
of our situation seemed to increase upon her, and say what I might
I never succeeded in coaxing the least air of spirit into her face.
It was distressing beyond language to see this haughty, beautiful,
high-born woman, accustomed to every refinement and elegance that was
to be purchased or contrived, reduced to such a pass as this: languidly
putting her lips to the rough pannikin in which I would hand her a
draught of wine and water; scarcely able to bite the flinty biscuit
which, with marmalade and cheese, formed our repasts; sitting for weary
long spells at a time motionless in a corner of the rough structure,
her eyelids heavy, her gaze fixed and listless, her lips parted, with
all their old haughty expression of imperious resolution gone from
them, her fingers locked upon her lap, her breast now and again rising
and falling with hysteric swiftness to some wrenching emotion which
yet found her face marble-like, and her eyes without their familiar
impassioned glow.

I recollect wondering once, whilst watching her silently, whether
there would prove anything in this experience to change her character.
Should the Indiaman recover us, there might be a full fourteen or even
sixteen weeks of association before us yet. Once safely aboard the
_Countess Ida_, would she let this experience slip out of her mind
as an influence, and repeat in her manner towards myself the cold
indifference, the haughty neglect, the distant supercilious usage
which I had found so objectionable, that I was coming very near to
as cordially hating her character as I deeply admired the beauties
and perfections of her face and person. Was she not a sort of woman
to accept an obligation and to look, if it suited her to do so, very
coldly afterwards upon the person who had obliged her? Ridiculous as
the emotion was at such a time, when, for all I knew, in a few hours
the pair of us might be floating a brace of corpses, fathoms deep in
that leaden ocean over the side, yet I must confess to a small stir
of exultation to the thought that supposing us to be rescued, let her
behave as she pleased, she never could escape the memory of having
been alone with me in this horrible hull, nor avert the discovery of
this circumstance by her relatives and friends. It was a consideration,
indeed, to bring her mightily closer to me than ever she had dreamt of,
and to my mind it was as complete a turning of the tables as the most
romantic fancy could have invented--that she who could scarce address
me on board the Indiaman for pride, and for dislike too, for all I
could tell, should now be in the intimate and lonely association of
shipwreck with me, clinging to me, entreating me not to leave her side;
dependent upon such spirit and energy as I possessed for the food and
drink that was to support us, and again and again talking to me with
a freedom which she would have exhibited to no living creature in the
Indiaman, her aunt excepted.

When that second night came down black as thunder, raining hard, the
ocean breathless, I entreated her to rest.

‘You must sleep, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘I will keep watch.’

She shook her head.

‘Nay,’ I continued, ‘you will rest comfortably upon this locker. You
need but a pillow. There is nothing in the cabins to be thought of for
that purpose; but I believe I can contrive a soft bolster for you out
of my coat.’

‘You are very kind, but I shall not be able to sleep.’

I continued to entreat her, and I saw she was affected by my
earnestness.

‘Since it will please you if I lie down, Mr. Dugdale, I will do so,’
said she.

I whipped off my coat and rolled it up, and she removed her hat with
a manner that made me see she abhorred even this trifling disturbance
of her apparel, as though it signified a sort of settling down to the
unspeakable life of the wreck. The fabric swayed so tenderly that the
bottle containing the candle stood without risk of capsizal upon the
table, and the small but steady flame shone clearly upon her. How
delicate were her features by that light; how rich and beautiful the
exceeding abundance of the dark coils of her hair, the richer and the
more beautiful for the neglect in it, for the shadowing of her white
brow by the disordered tresses, for the drooping of it about her ears,
with the sparkle of diamonds there! Presently she was resting.

I removed the candle to the stanchion, and secured the bottle where
the light would be off her eyes, and sat me down near the doorway as
far from her as the narrow breadth of the structure would permit,
where I filled a pipe and smoked, expelling the fumes into the air,
and listening with a heavy heart to the faint sounds breaking from the
interior of the hull to the washing moan at long intervals of some
passing heave of swell, and to the squeaking of the rats in the cabin
below--a most dismal and shocking sound, I do protest, to hearken to
amidst the hush and blackness of that ocean night, scarce vexed by more
than the pattering of the rain.

From time to time Miss Temple would address me; then she fell silent,
and by-and-by looking towards her, and observing her to lie motionless,
I softly crept to abreast of her, keeping the table between, and found
her sleeping.

It was then something after ten by my watch, and she slept for five
hours without a stir, though now and again she spoke in her sleep. I
know not why I should have remained awake unless it was to keep my
weather-eye lifting for the rats. There was nothing to watch for or to
hope for in such weather as that. Once, when the beasts below were
very noisy--for, as you will suppose, in that solemn stillness their
squeakings rose with a singularly sharp edge to the ear--I bethought
me of the pantry, and could not remember whether I had shut the door.
For all I could yet tell, the stores we had to depend upon were in
that little cabin, and if the rats found their way to the food, we
might speedily starve. I lighted a second candle, that, should the girl
suddenly awake, she might not find herself in the dark, and stepped
below, and found the door closed. I opened it, and minutely surveyed
the interior, and observing all to be well, shut the door and came
away; but never can I forget the uncontrollable chills and shudders
which seized me on passing through that cabin! I do not doubt my mind
had been a little weakened. The remains of the mainmast pierced the
deck, and stood like a pillar; it stirred to the movement of the candle
in my hand, and I stopped with a violent start to gaze at it while
the perspiration broke from my forehead. Vague indeterminable shapes
seemed to flit past and about the stand of arms. The dull noises in the
hold took to my alarmed ear the notes of human groans. Several rats
scurried in flying forms of blackness towards the after cabins: they
seemed to start up through the deck at my feet!

When I resumed my seat on the locker, I was trembling from head to
foot, and my heart beat with feverish rapidity. A draught of wine
rallied me, and I tried to find something ridiculous in my fears. But
all the same my dejection was as that of a man under sentence of death,
and again and again I would put up a prayer to God for our speedy
deliverance, whilst I sat hearkening to the noises below, to the steady
pattering of the rain, to the occasional melancholy sob of water, and
to the broken, unintelligible muttering of the sleeping girl.

At some hour between three and four my companion awoke. She sat up with
a cry of wonder, and by the candle-light I observed her staring around,
with looks of astonishment and horror such as might appear in the face
of a person who starts from some pleasant dream into the realities of a
dreadful situation. I waited until she should have recollected herself,
to use the fine expressive word of the old writers.

‘I have been dreaming of home,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘of safety,
of comfort, of everything that I am now wanting. What time is it, Mr.
Dugdale?’

I put my watch close to my face and told her the hour.

‘How black the night continues!’ she said--‘how silent, too!’ she
added, after hearkening awhile. ‘It has ceased to rain, and there is
not a breath of air.’

‘It has not rained for these two hours past,’ said I. ‘I am impatient
for the day to break. The horizon should be tolerably clear, if there
be no rain; yet what can daybreak possibly disclose to us on top of
such a night of stagnation as this has been?’

‘Have you slept?’

‘No.’

‘Then you will take some rest now. It is my turn to watch.’

‘The dawn will be breaking in a couple of hours,’ said I; ‘I will
wait till it comes to take a look. Should nothing be in sight, I will
endeavour to rest. You will not suffer in the daylight from the feeling
of loneliness that would make you wretched now if I slept.’

‘Whilst you are here, although sleeping, Mr. Dugdale, I should not feel
lonely. Your voice assures me that you need sleep. I have been resting
five hours. How patient you are!’

She took up my jacket, reformed it pillow-fashion, placed it on the
locker where her own head had lain, and moved to make room for me,
seating herself where my feet would about come.

‘Pray lie down, Mr. Dugdale. I shall be closer to you here than you
have been to me, and I can awaken you in an instant if there should be
occasion to do so.’

I complied, rather to please her than to humour my own wishes; for
though my eyelids had the heaviness of lead, there was a thrilling and
hurrying of nervous sensation in me which were as good as a threat that
I should not sleep. And so it proved, for after I had held my head
pillowed for some half hour, I was still broad awake; and then growing
impatient of my posture, I sat erect.

‘No use, Miss Temple, I cannot sleep; and since that is so, pray resume
this hard couch and finish out your slumbers.’

But this she would not do, protesting that she was fully rested. I was
too desirous of her company to weary her with entreaties, and until the
day broke we sat at that narrow table with the light close enough to
enable us to see each other clearly. I remember saying to her:

‘Since this is an experience you were fated to pass through--I suppose
we must all believe in the pre-ordination of our lives--my sincere
regret is that you should not have been imprisoned in this hull with
somebody more agreeable to yourself than I.’

‘Why do you say that?’ she exclaimed, giving me a look that carried me
back. ‘In this state of misery a compliment would be shocking.’

‘I seek no compliment,’ said I. ‘I am merely expressing a regret.’

‘You regret that you are here?’ she exclaimed. ‘So do I, for then I
should not be here. But since it is my lot to be here, I am satisfied
with my companion; I would not exchange him for any other person on
board the _Countess Ida_.’

I bowed.

‘Should we be rescued,’ she continued, keeping her dark gaze full upon
me as she spoke (and something of their beauty and brilliancy of light
had returned to her eyes with her rest), ‘I shall be deeply in your
debt. My mother will thank you, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘I have done nothing, Miss Temple. It is you who are now complimentary,
and I fear ironical.’

She slightly shook her head and sighed, then remained silent for a
minute or two, and said: ‘How small and contemptible my spirit shows
itself when I am tested! Do you recollect when this wretched brig was
lying near us, how I took a parasol from my aunt and levelled it at
this vessel and talked of wishing to see a sea fight and of shooting a
man? How brave I was when there was nothing particularly to be afraid
of, and how cowardly I have shown myself here.’

‘I should have scarcely believed,’ said I, ‘that you were sensible of
my presence at the time you speak of.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Indeed,’ I continued, ‘I should have scarcely believed that you were
sensible that I was on board the ship.’

‘Mr. Dugdale, if my manner did not please you, this is no time to
reproach me with it.’ Her eyes sparkled and her lip curled peevishly.

‘Hark!’ I exclaimed; ‘I hear a rippling noise as of approaching
wind.’ I passed round the table, gained the door, and looked out. The
atmosphere was still motionless, but the sounds of rippling drew near,
and presently I felt a pleasant little air blowing over the stern of
the hull, accompanied with the tinkling and lipping noises of water
set in motion trembling to the brig’s side. But it was still pitch
dark, and search the sky where I would, I could observe no break of
faintness, no leanest vision of star, no vaguest outline of cloud in
the impenetrable obscurity.

I returned to the table, this time seating myself opposite to Miss
Temple. It was easily seen in her face that she was sensible I did this
consciously. Indeed, the gaze she rested upon me was a look of inquiry
as though she would discover whether this holding aloof on my part was
due to respect or to dislike. Then, as though she suddenly sickened to
such idle considerations, she exclaimed with an eager awakening of her
in her whole manner, ‘Does this breeze come from the direction where
the ships are, or where you may suppose them to be, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘For the life of me I could not tell you,’ I responded; ‘there are no
quarters of the compass for human senses on such a night as this, in
a hull that may be headed on all sorts of courses by the set of the
swell; but the dawn will be here anon, and if this draught hold, we
shall be able to find out whence it proceeds.’

It was still blowing the same light breeze when day broke, and I then
knew that the wind sat about north-west. Miss Temple and I stepped on
to the deck, where we stood in an agony of impatience awaiting the full
revelation of the sea. One saw why it should have been so pitch dark
throughout the night; the sky was overcast from horizon to horizon by a
sheet of sallowish leaden-hued vapour. Yet the atmosphere had cleared
so as to enable the sight to penetrate to the verge of the normal
sea-line, where the ocean stood in a firm rim of the darkness of indigo
in the east against the grey of the morning that was spreading out
behind it. I took a long and steady view of the circle; my companion’s
eyes were riveted upon me as I did so; she had rather trust my sight
than hers, and her gaze glowed with an inexpressible eagerness to
witness in my face an expression that should inform her I beheld a sail.

‘It is the same inhuman abominable blankness as that of yesterday,’
said I, fetching a deep breath of rage and grief; then shocked by the
air of horror and despair in Miss Temple, I added: ‘Yet this gives us
a view of but little more than seven miles. Here is an air, surely, to
whip something along. The ships of this ocean cannot all have rotted
in yesterday’s pestilential calm. Oh for such another telescope as Mr.
Prance’s!’ and so saying I trudged forwards, and in a few minutes was
sweeping the horizon from the elevation of the foretop.

I ran my eyes slowly and piercingly along the sea-line, starting from
the part into which the vessel’s mutilated bowsprit pointed, and when
my vision was over the starboard quarter, I beheld trembling upon
the utmost verge of the livid waters stretching to the shrouded sky
a minute fragment of white--a tip as of a seagull’s pinion, but of a
certainty a sail! I lingered to make sure. Miss Temple watched me from
abaft the deck-house. My glance went to her for an instant, and I saw
her bring her hands together and lift them, as though she witnessed in
my posture that I descried something. My heart hammered violently in my
ears, and my breathing was short and laboured.

‘What do you see?’ Miss Temple cried at last, her rich voice, tremulous
with excitement and expectation, floating up like the notes of a flute.

‘A sail!’ I exclaimed, calling with an effort. ‘Patience! I must stay
here to make sure of the direction she is taking,’ and I stood for a
minute pointing while she strained her sight; but there was nothing for
her to see down there.

The breeze had weight enough to determine the matter with some
despatch, and I knew that if the sail were heading away from us, it
must speedily vanish, so mere a speck was it that showed. Instead,
though I will not say that it _grew_ whilst I stood staring, it hung
with a fixedness to satisfy me that the vessel was steering a course
that must bring us into the sphere of her horizon; and not having the
least doubt of this, I dropped over the short futtock shrouds of the
wreck and sprang on to the deck.

‘It is a ship, Mr. Dugdale!’ cried Miss Temple with something of an
hysteric accent of inquiry in her voice.

‘Assuredly,’ I answered.

‘Will she see us, do you think?’

‘Ay, if she does not shift her helm. But we will _compel_ her to see
us.’

The girl suddenly grasped my hand in both hers, bowed her head over
it, and I felt a tear. I was so affected that I stood looking, unable
to speak. It was a sort of submission in its way. I cannot convey my
thoughts of it. She was without her hat; I see her now as she bent
over my hand; I feel the ice-cold pressure of her fingers, and recall
the tears glittering through the beauty of her downcast lashes as they
rose. She slowly lifted her large wet eyes to my face.

‘What an experience this has been!’ she whispered; ‘how shall I be able
to persuade people that I underwent it and lived?’

She still unconsciously held my hand. I put my lips to her fingers, and
she released me.

‘It must always be one of the very happiest memories of my life to me,’
said I. ‘I shall never make you believe in the joy your deliverance
will fill me with.’

‘Oh yes, yes!’ she cried passionately; then sending a look over the
quarter, she added: ‘Are we not losing time? Is there not something we
can do to summon her to us? Will it be long before she appears?’

‘No; we are not losing time,’ I answered. ‘I shall have plenty of
leisure to make a smoke, and that is what we must presently do. If she
be the Indiaman or the corvette, all that is visible of her from yonder
foretop is her royals. Her topgallant sails, her topsails, and her
courses will have to climb before her hull shows. Her speed to this air
will not exceed four knots. She is probably twenty miles distant yet,
and we must allow her, unless the breeze freshens, a good three hours
to give us a full sight of herself on that horizon out there. So let us
first get something to eat, Miss Temple, and then I will go to work.’

But our excitement was too strong to suffer us to make more than
a phantom of a meal. A little biscuit soaked in wine formed my
companion’s breakfast, but her spirits had returned to her; the
remembered brilliancy was in her eyes again; a faint, most delicate
flush was on her cheek; with unconscious fingers she caressed her
hair as though, influenced by a womanly instinct of which she was
insensible, she adjusted her tresses in preparation of our reception by
the people of the ship. She was sure it was the _Countess Ida_. There
was real gaiety in the laugh with which she said that she knew Mrs.
Radcliffe’s character, that she could well imagine how her aunt had
tormented Captain Keeling, how ceaselessly the old lady would importune
the captain to make haste and recover her niece.

‘Oh, what a meeting it will be!’ she cried.

‘The sail may prove the corvette, though,’ said I.

‘But she will rescue us, Mr. Dugdale, and hunt after the Indiaman, and
Sir Edward will put us on board of her.’

I left her to enter the ’tweendecks, where I collected a number of
mats, blankets, staves of casks, and other material, which would burn
and produce a thick smoke; and presently, with the assistance of Miss
Temple, had a great heap of these things stacked on deck betwixt the
foremast and the mainhatch. It was a hard job to get the stuff to
kindle, for the mats were damp and the staves not to be set on fire
by a sulphur match. But on overhauling the lockers in the deck-house
I found a tin can half full of oil and a small parcel of rags; and by
means of these I set my bonfire alight. The planks of the deck were
thick and wet, and securely calked, and the burning stuff was well
clear of the hatch; there was no fear then, as I believed, of the fire
penetrating the deck. It made a prodigious smoke. The mass of damp
blankets and rags smouldered into a dark thick column, which mounted
high ere it arched over to the wind. It was a signal to be sighted as
far away as the ship was, and I stood watching it with transported eyes
as it soared in belching folds gyrating into and blackening out upon
the breeze till it showed like a steamer’s smoke or a ship on fire.

I waited a little, and then got into the fore-shrouds to mark the sail
afresh, and beheld the gleam of her canvas when I was still two or
three ratlines below the futtock shrouds: good assurance, indeed, of
her rising, and nimbly too, and heading square for us. I strained my
gaze at her from the height of the top, but she was far too remote to
be distinguishable; nothing more, indeed, than a little ivory shaft
against the sulky sallow of the sky.

It now occurred to me that I might accentuate the signal of the smoke
by letting fall the foresail, for here was a space of canvas that would
not only catch the eye, but suggest the hull as a still inhabited wreck
that was on fire. I called to Miss Temple. She looked up eagerly.

‘Do you see those ropes leading to the deck from the arms of this
yard?’ said I, pointing.

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to haul them taut, Miss Temple--gather in the slack to
prevent the yard from swinging, as I mean to get upon it.’

She understood me perfectly. Her jewelled fingers flashed upon the rope
as she threw the brace off the belaying pin, and I gazed down with a
smile of deep admiration at her noble figure whilst she swayed at the
line tightening and then belaying it again.

‘You should have been a sailor’s daughter,’ I cried; ‘there is the
true skill of the ancient mariner in your trick of holding on with one
hand and making fast with the other. Will you please now tighten the
brace on the right-hand side.’

She did so, and I got upon the yard and, ‘laying out’ upon it, as it
is called, severed with my knife the ropes with which the canvas was
frapped to the spar, and down fell the sail with a large rent right
amidships of it, though that signified nothing in a square of white
that was to serve as a signal only. I descended to the deck.

‘Why have you loosed that sail?’ inquired Miss Temple. I explained.
‘But will not the wreck now blow away from that ship?’

‘No,’ said I; ‘she will fall off and come to. But the yard must be
trimmed to achieve that.’

So saying I let go the weather-brace and swung the yard fore and aft
as far as I could bring it, then overhauled the clew-garnets, that all
there was of the sail might show. The hull slewed to the pressure, then
hung quiet; meanwhile I continued to feed the blaze, heaping on rugs
and blankets and so firing up that at times the smoke hung as thick to
leeward as a thundercloud.




CHAPTER XXII

THE ‘LADY BLANCHE’


So light was the breeze, that it was drawing on to ten o’clock in the
morning before the approaching vessel lay plain on the sea. Long before
this I had made her out to be a square-rigged craft, and sometimes I
would imagine that she was the corvette, and sometimes that she was
the _Countess Ida_. It had been a time of breathless expectation, of
crushing suspense. Again and again had I mounted the rigging to make
sure that she had not shifted her course, and was edging away from
us. Again and again had I run my eyes round the sea with a passionate
prayer in my heart that the wind might hold; for if it shifted, we
stood to lose the ship; and if it fell, the calm might last all day,
with the prospect of another black night before us and a deserted ocean
at daybreak.

But now, drawing on to this hour of ten, the hull of the vessel had
risen to its bends, and though I might be certain of nothing else,
it was absolutely sure that the stranger was neither the _Magicienne_
nor the _Countess Ida_. She had puzzled me greatly for a considerable
time; for even when her fore-course had fairly lifted she yet seemed to
be rising more canvas. But by this hour I could distinguish. She was a
small vessel, painted white--whether barque or ship I could not then
tell. She had studdingsails out and skysails set, and showed as an airy
delicate square of pearl; and indeed I might have believed that she was
the Indiaman for that reason, until her snow-white body came stealing
out to the stare I fixed upon her, and then I looked at Miss Temple.

Her sight for seafaring details was not mine. She was trembling as she
said: ‘Which ship is she, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Neither,’ I answered.

‘Neither!’ she cried.

‘Do not you observe that yonder craft has a white hull, and that she is
a small ship? But what does it matter? She is bound to see us. She will
rescue us; and, let the future be what it may, our one consuming need
now is to quit this hull.’

She had so reckoned upon the stranger proving either the corvette or
the Indiaman, that, had the approaching craft been no more than a
mirage, had the fabric melted upon the air as we watched it, she could
not have looked more blank, more wildly and hopelessly disappointed.

‘Neither!’ she repeated, breathing with difficulty. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,
what are we to do?’

‘Why, get on board of her, in the name of God,’ I cried--‘giving Him
thanks when we are there.’

‘But she may--she will be’--she paused, unable to articulate: then with
an effort: ‘She may be going to another part of the world.’

‘It matters not,’ I answered, observing with rapture that the vessel
was heading more directly for us; ‘she will put us aboard something
homeward bound. Will not that be better than stopping here, Miss
Temple?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ she cried; ‘but if we waited a little, the Indiaman
might find us.’

‘Heaven forbid! we have waited long enough.’

So speaking, I rushed forward, picked up the handspike with which I
had beaten upon the forecastle wall, secured a blanket to it, and,
dancing aft, fell to flourishing it with all my might. Very slowly
the vessel came floating down upon us with a light swaying of her
trucks from side to side, and a tender twinkling of the folds of her
lower canvas, which there was not weight enough in the wind to hold
distended. Her hull was exceedingly graceful, and of a milky whiteness;
and, as she leaned from us on some wide fold of the breathing waters,
she exposed a hand’s-breadth of burnished copper, which put a wonderful
quality of beauty and delicacy into the whole fabric, as though she
were a little model in frosted silver.

‘Before she takes us on board, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple,
‘will not you mount the rigging to see if there is another ship in
sight that may prove the Indiaman?’

‘But even if the Indiaman were in sight,’ said I, ‘we should seize this
the first of our opportunities to escape from this floating tomb. For
heaven’s sake, let us get aboard that fellow!’

As I spoke, I seized the handspike again and frantically flourished it.
All this while there was a column of smoke ascending steadily from my
fire of rugs and mats and darkening the sea over the starboard bow. I
was now able to make out that the coming craft was a barque. My eyes
were glued to her; my heart thumped furiously; the wildest alternations
of joy and dread seized me. Suppose she should prove some foreigner in
charge of a man indifferent to human life, some cold-blooded miscreant
who had shifted his helm merely to satisfy his curiosity, and who, on
perceiving that the smoke was no more than a signal, and that the wreck
floated high, should slide quietly on and leave us to our fate? Such
things had been; such things were again and again happening. As she
drew with a snail-like motion abreast without touching a brace, without
any signs of movement about her deck, my eyes turned dim; I feared I
was about to swoon.

‘Will she not stop?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, in a voice of terror.

Lifting the handspike with its fluttering blanket high above my head,
I waved it furiously for some moments, then flinging it down upon the
deck, applied my hands to the sides of my mouth, and, in a voice of
such energy that it came near to cracking every vein in my head, I
yelled: ‘Barque ahoy! For God’s sake, send a boat and take us off.’

As the words left my throat, the vessel’s helm was put down; the clew
of the mainsail mounted, and her topsail yard slowly revolved, bringing
every cloth upon the main aback, and in a few minutes the graceful
little craft was lying without way within speaking distance of us.

In the violence of my transport, I grasped Miss Temple’s hand and again
and again pressed my lips to it, congratulating her and myself so, for
I had no words. The figures of the people were clearly visible: a row
of heads forward, the fellow at the wheel on a short raised deck, and
two men dressed in white clothes with large straw hats at the mizzen
rigging. One of them leisurely clambered on to the rail, and, holding
by one hand to a backstay, sang out:

‘Wreck ahoy! How many are there of you?’

‘Two of us only,’ I shouted back; ‘this lady and myself.’

‘Any contagious sickness?’

‘No, no,’ I bawled, amazed by the question. ‘Pray, send a boat.’

He continued to stand, as though viewing us meditatively; then, ‘Wreck
ahoy!’

‘Hallo!’ I cried, scarcely able to send my voice owing to the
consternation excited in me by the man’s behaviour.

‘Are you a sailor?’ he roared.

‘Oh, say yes, say yes!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘he may be in want of men.’

‘Ay, ay,’ I cried; ‘I’m a sailor.’

‘What sort of sailor?’

‘I belonged to an Indiaman.’

‘Afore the mast?’

‘No, no! send a boat--I’ll tell you all about it.’

He descended from the rail and apparently addressed the man that stood
near, who walked to the companion-hatch and returned with a telescope;
the other took it from him, then knelt down to rest the glass on the
rail, and surveyed us through the lenses for at least a couple of
minutes, after which he rose, returned the glass to his companion, and
flourished his hand at us. I watched, utterly unable to guess what was
next to happen. My fears foreboded the departure of the barque, and
the impatience in me worked like madness in my blood. But mercifully
we were not to be kept long in this intolerable state of suspense.
A few minutes after the man, whom I supposed to be the captain, had
motioned to us with his arm, a number of sailors came to the davits at
the foremost extremity of the raised after-deck, where swung a small
white boat of a whaling pattern. Four of them entered her, and she
sank slowly to the water’s edge, where she was promptly freed from her
tackles, and three oars thrown over. The fellow in the stern sheets
was the man who had handed the glass to the other. The oarsmen pulled
swiftly, and in a very short time the little craft was alongside.

‘Only two of ye, is it?’ said the fellow who grasped the tiller, a
short, square, sun-blackened, coarse-looking sailor.

‘Only two,’ I cried.

‘Any luggage?’

‘No,’ I answered.

‘Nothen portable aboard worth carrying off, is there?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, cursing him in my heart for the delay these
questions involved; ‘there are several hams, bottles of fine wine,
cheeses, and the like below.’

‘Odds niggers! we’ll have ’em then,’ he exclaimed; and in an instant he
was in the wreck’s chains, wriggling over the side and calling to one
of his fellows to follow him. They hung in the wind a moment, staring
their hardest at Miss Temple and myself; then said the short square man
in white: ‘Where be the goods, master?’

I pointed to the hatch in the deck-house, and directed them to what I
called the pantry. But nothing could have induced me to leave the deck.
As they disappeared I stepped to the side where the bulwarks were gone.

‘Bring the boat close under, my lads,’ I exclaimed to the two fellows
in her, ‘and stand by to receive the lady.’

The hull was rolling gently, with just enough of depression to render
a jump into the little fabric as it rose very easy and safe. ‘Now,
Miss Temple,’ I cried. She sprang without an instant’s hesitation, was
caught by one of the sailors, and in a jiffy the pair of us were snug
in the stern sheets side by side.

The two men could not take their eyes off us. They surveyed us with
countenances of profound astonishment, running their gaze over Miss
Temple as though she were some creature of another world: as well they
might, indeed, seeing the contrast between the groaning, mutilated,
smoking hull and this girl leaping from her deck in the choice and
elegant attire of the highest fashion, as the two poor devils would
imagine--for what eye would _they_ have for the disorder of her
apparel?--and her hands, breast, and ears sparkling with jewels of
value and splendour.

‘Are ye English, sir?’ said one of them, a middle-aged man, of an
honest cast of countenance, with minute eyes deep sunk in his head, and
a pair of greyish whiskers uniting at his throat.

‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ I answered.

‘The lady too, sir?’

‘Yes, man, yes. What ship are you?’

‘The _Lady Blanche_,’ he answered.

‘Where bound?’

‘To Mauritius, from the river Thames.’

I glanced at Miss Temple; but either she had not heeded the fellow’s
answer or her mind failed to collect its meaning.

‘Been long aboard here, sir?’ said the man, indicating the hull by a
sideways motion of his head.

‘Two nights,’ I answered. ‘There should be a corvette and an Indiaman
close at hand hereabouts. Have you met with either ship?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Sighted no sail at all?’

‘Nothen like un,’ exclaimed the other sailor. ‘Th’ ocean’s gone and
growed into a Hafrican desert.’

The square man in white, followed by his attendant seaman, arrived at
the side, bearing between them a blanket loaded with the produce of
the pantry, to judge by the clinking of bottle glass and the orbicular
bulgings of cheeses and rounds of hams.

‘Catch this here bundle now,’ sung out the square man, who, later on, I
ascertained was the barque’s carpenter, acting also as the second mate.
‘Handsomely over the bricks. It’s wine, bullies.’

The blanket and its contents were received, and deposited in the bottom
of the boat. The men entered her, and we shoved off.

‘Did you make up that there fire, sir?’ inquired the square man,
bringing his eyes in a stare of astonishment from Miss Temple to
myself.

‘Yes; nobody else. This lady and I are alone.’

‘Then you’ve set the bloomin’ hull on fire,’ said he.

I started, and sent a look at the column of smoke, at which I had never
once glanced whilst lying alongside, so distracted was my attention by
the multiplicity of emotions which surged in me. There was no need to
gaze long to gather that more was going, to the making of the coils of
smoke which were now rising in soot than the nearly consumed remains of
the mats and rugs which I had stacked and fed.

‘The fire’s burnt clean through the deck,’ said the square man, ‘and
there are some casks in flames just forrads of the main hatch. What
might they have contained, d’ye know?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, trembling like a half-frozen kitten as I
watched the smoke, and thought of what must have come to us, if yonder
barque’s approach had been delayed!

‘I suppose there’ll be gunpowder aboard?’ continued the square man.
‘Pull, lads! If a bust-up happens, it’ll find us too near at this.’

The men bent their backs, and the sharp-ended little boat went smoking
through the quiet rippling waters. Nothing more was said. The square
man, whose rugged, weather-blackened face preserved an inimitable air
of amazement, eyed us askant, particularly running his gaze over Miss
Temple’s attire, and letting it rest upon her rings. The toil of the
seamen kept them silent. For my part, I was too overcome to utter a
word. The passion of delight excited by our deliverance--that is to
say, as signified by our rescue by the barque--was paralysed by the
horror with which I viewed the growing denseness of the smoke rising
from the hull. She was on fire! Great heaven, what would have been
our fate--without a boat, without the materials for the construction
of a raft--with no more than a few staves of casks to hold by! Such a
sea-brigand as the wreck had been in her day was sure to have a liberal
store of gunpowder stowed somewhere below: in all probability, in a
magazine in the hold under her cabin. What, then, would there have been
for us to do? We must either have sought death by leaping overboard,
or awaited the horrible annihilation of an explosion!

Miss Temple’s eyes were large and her lips pale and her face bloodless,
as though she were in a swoon. She was seeing how it was, and how it
must have been with us, and she seemed smitten to the motionlessness
of a statue by the perception as she sat by my side staring at the
receding hull.

We swept to the little gangway ladder that had been dropped over the
rail, and with some difficulty I assisted the girl over the side,
swinging by the man-rope with one hand and supporting her waist with
the other. The man who had hailed us stood at the gangway. I instantly
went up to him with my hand outstretched.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you are the captain, no doubt. I thank you for this
deliverance, for this preservation of our lives, for this rescue from
what _now_ must have proved a horrible doom of fire.’

He took my hand and held it without answering, whilst he continued to
stare at me with an intentness that in a very few moments astonished
and embarrassed me.

‘What is your name, sir?’ he presently said.

‘Laurence Dugdale,’ I answered.

‘Mate of an Indiaman, I think you said, sir?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I was for two years at sea in an Indiaman as
midshipman.’

He let fall my hand, and his face changed whilst he recoiled a step,
meanwhile running his eyes from top to toe of me.

‘A midshipman?’ he exclaimed, with an accent of contempt. ‘Why, a
midshipman ain’t a _sailor_! How long ago is it since you was a
midshipman?’

‘Six years,’ I answered, completely bewildered by questioning of this
sort at such a moment.

‘Six years!’ he cried, whilst his face grew longer still. ‘Why, then, I
don’t suppose you’ll even _know_ what a quadrant means?’

‘Certainly I know all about it,’ I answered, with a half-glance at Miss
Temple, who stood beside me listening to these questions in a torment
of surprise and suspense.

‘Are ye acquainted with navigation, then?’ inquired the captain.

‘Sufficiently well, I believe, to enable me to carry a ship to any
part of the world,’ I rejoined, controlling my rising temper, though I
was sensible that there was blood in my cheeks and that my eyes were
expressing my mood.

‘Why, then, that’s all right!’ he cried, brightening up. ‘You tell me
you could find your way about with a sextant?’

‘Yes, sir, I have told you so.’

‘By heaven! then,’ he roared, ‘I’m glad to see ye! Welcome aboard the
_Lady Blanche_, sir. And you, mem, I am sure.’ Here he pulled off his
immense straw hat and gave Miss Temple an unspeakably grotesque bow.
‘What have you got there?’ he bawled to the square man.

‘A blanket full of wines and cheeses and ’ams,’ answered the man, who
was helping to manœuvre the bundle inboards over the side.

‘All right, all right!’ shouted the captain. ‘Now put ’em down, do, and
get your boat hooked on and hoisted, d’ye hear? and get your topsail
yard swung. Why, who’s been and set that wreck on fire?’

‘The flare’s burnt through her deck,’ cried the square man in a surly
tone, ‘and I allow she’ll be ablowing up in a few minutes.’

But she was too far distant to suffer this conjecture to alarm the
captain.

‘Let her blow up,’ said he; ‘there’s room enough for her,’ and then
giving Miss Temple another convulsive bow, he invited us to step into
the cabin.

This was a little state-room under the short after-deck, and, with
its bulkheaded berths abaft, a miniature likeness in its way of the
_Countess Ida’s_ saloon. It was a cosy little place, with a square
table amidships, a bench on either hand of it screwed to the deck, a
flat skylight overhead, a couple of old-fashioned lamps, a small stove
near to the trunk of the mizzenmast, a rack full of tumblers, and so
forth.

‘Sit ye down, mem,’ said the captain, pointing to a bench. ‘Sir, be
seated. I heard Mr. Lush just now talk of wines, and cheeses, and hams;
but what d’ye say to a cut of boiled beef and a bottle of London stout?
Drifting about in a wreck ain’t wholesome for the soul, I believe; but
I never heard that it affected the appetite.’

‘You are very good,’ I exclaimed; ‘our food for the last three days has
been no more than ship’s bread and marmalade--poor fare for the lady,
fresh from the comforts and luxuries of an Indiaman’s cuddy.’

He went to the cabin door and bawled; and a young fellow, whom I
afterwards found out was his servant, came running aft. He gave him
certain directions, then returned to the table, where he sat for a
long two minutes first staring at me and then at Miss Temple without
a wink of his eyes. I observed that my companion shrunk from this
extraordinary silent scrutiny. I had never witnessed in any other human
head such eyes as that fellow had. They were a deformity by their size,
being about twice too big for the width and length of his face, of a
deep ink-black, resembling discs of ebony gummed upon china. There was
no glow, no mind in them, that I could distinguish, scarcely anything
of vitality outside their preternatural capacity of staring, that
was yet immeasurably heightened by the steadiness of the lids, which
I never once beheld blinking. His face was long and yellow, closely
shorn, and of an indigo blue down the cheeks, upon the chin, and upon
the upper lip. He had a very long aquiline nose with large nostrils,
which constantly dilated, as though he snuffed up rather than breathed
the air. His eyebrows were extraordinarily thick, and met in a peculiar
tuft in the indent of the skull above the nose; whilst his hair, black
as his eyes, and smooth and gleaming as the back of a raven, lay combed
over his ears down upon his back. He was dressed in a suit of white
drill, the flowing extremities of his trousers rounding to his feet
in the shape of the mouth of a bell, from which protruded a pair of
long square-toed shoes of yellow leather. I should instantly have put
him down as a Yankee but for his accent, that was cockney beyond the
endurance of a polite ear.

I broke into his intolerable scrutiny by asking him from what port
his ship hailed; but he continued to stare at me in silence for some
considerable time after I had made this inquiry. He then started,
flourished a great red cotton pocket-handkerchief to his brow, and
exclaimed: ‘Sir, you spoke?’

I repeated the question.

‘The _Lady Blanche_ is owned at Hull,’ said he; ‘but we’re from the
Thames for Mauritius. And what’s your story? How came you and this
beautiful lady aboard that hull? You’re gentlefolks, I allow. I see
breeding in your hands, mem,’ fixing his unwinking eyes upon her
rings. ‘You talk of an Indeeman. Let’s have it all afore the boiled
beef comes along.’

So saying, he hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, brought his back
against the table, and forking his long shanks out, sat in a posture of
attention, keeping his amazing eyes bent on my face whilst I spoke. It
did not take me very long to give him the tale. He listened without so
much as a syllable escaping from him, and when I had made an end, he
continued to craze at me in silence.

‘By what name shall I address you?’ said Miss Temple.

He started, as before, and answered: ‘John Braine; Captain John Braine,
mem; or call it Captain Braine: John’s only in the road. That’s my
name, mem.’

She forced a smile, and said: ‘Captain Braine, the _Countess Ida_
cannot be far distant, and I have most earnestly to entreat you to
seek her. I am sure she is to be found after a very short hunt. I have
a dear relative on board of her, who will fret her heart away if she
believes I am lost. All my luggage, too, is in that ship. My mother,
Lady Temple, will most cheerfully pay any sum that may be asked for
such trouble and loss of time as your search for the Indiaman might
occasion.’

I thought he meant to stare at her without answering; but after a short
pause he exclaimed: ‘The Indeeman’s bound to Bombay, ain’t she? Well,
we’re a-navigating the same road she’s taking. It is three days since
you lost her; where’ll she be now, then? That can only be known to
the angels, which look down from a taller height than there’s e’er a
truck afloat that’ll come nigh. Now, mem, I might shift my hellum and
dodge about for a whole fortnight and do no good. It would be the same
as making up our minds to lose her. But by keeping all on as we are,
there’ll ne’er be an hour that won’t hold inside of it a chance of our
rising her on one bow or t’other. See what I mean, mem? You’re aboard
of a barque with legs, as Jack says. Your Indeeman’s had a three days’
start; and if so be as she is to be picked up, I’ll engage to have ye
aboard of her within a week. But to dodge about in search of her--the
Lord love’ee, mem! The sea’s too big for any sort of chiveying.’

‘I am completely of Captain Braine’s opinion,’ said I, addressing
Miss Temple, whose face was full of distress and dismay. ‘It would be
unreasonable to expect this gentleman to delay his voyage by a search
that, in all human probability, must prove unprofitable. A hunt would
involve the loss of our one chance of falling in with her this side the
Cape.’

She clasped her hands and hung her head, but made no reply. The
captain’s servant entered at that moment with a tray of food, which
he placed upon the table; and the skipper bidding us fall to and make
ourselves at home in a voice as suggestive of the croak of a raven as
was his hair of the plumage of that bird, stalked on to the deck, where
the sailors--who by this time had hoisted the boat and trimmed the
barque’s yards--were coiling down the gear and returning to the various
jobs they had been upon before they had hove the ship to.




CHAPTER XXIII

CAPTAIN BRAINE


After three days of sailors’ biscuit and strong cheese and marmalade
of the flavour of foot sugar, the lump of cold salt beef that the
captain’s man set before me ate to my palate with a relish that I
had never before found in the choicest and most exquisitely cooked
meat; and a real treat, too, to my shipwrecked sensibilities, was the
inspiration of home and civilisation in the tumbler of foaming London
stout. Miss Temple seemed too harassed, too broken down in mind, to
partake of food; but by dint of coaxing and entreating I got her to
taste a mouthful, and then put her lips to a glass of stout; and
presently she appeared to find her appetite by eating, as the French
say, and ended with such a repast as I could have wished to see her
make.

When the man put the tray down, he went out, and the girl and I
were alone during the meal. Now that I had recovered from the first
heart-subduing shock of the discovery that the hull was on fire, and
could realise that, even supposing she had not been set on fire, we
had still been delivered from what in all probability must have proved
a long, lingering, soul-killing time of expectation, dying out into
hopelessness and into a period of famine, thirst, and death: I say now
that I could realise our rescue from these horrors, my spirits mounted,
my joy was an intoxication, I could have cried and laughed at the same
time, like one in hysteria. I longed to jump from my chair and dance
about the cabin that I might vent the oppression of my transports
by movement. I was but a young man, and life was dear to me, and we
had been in dire peril, and were safe. What a paradise was this cosy
little cabin after that ghost-haunted, narrow crib of a deck-house!
How soothing beyond all words to the nerves was the light floating
rolling of the graceful little snow-white barque, under control of her
helm, and vitalised in every plank by the impulse of her airy soaring
canvas, compared with the jerky, feverish, staggering, tumblefication
of the wreck, with its deadly deck leaning at desperate angles to the
fang-like remnants of the crushed bulwarks, and its uncovered hatches
yawning to the heavens, as though in a dumb mouthing of entreaty for
extinction!

‘Oh! Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘I cannot bring my mind to believe in our
good fortune! This time yesterday! how hopeless we were! And now we are
safe! I thank God, I most humbly thank God, for His mercy! Your lot
would soon have become a frightful one aboard that wreck.’

‘Yet what would I give,’ she exclaimed, ‘if this ship were the
_Countess Ida_! What is to become of us? For how long are we to wander
about in a state of destitution, Mr. Dugdale--mere beggars, without
apparel, without conveniences, dependent for our very meals upon the
bounty of strangers?’ and she brought her eyes, with the old flash in
them, from the table to my face, at which she gazed with an expression
of temper and mortification.

‘You would not be a woman,’ said I, ‘if you did not think of your
dress. But, pray, consider this: that your baggage is now recoverable;
whereas, but for this _Lady Blanche_----’

‘Oh! but it would have been so happy a thing, that might so easily have
happened too, had this vessel been the Indiaman.’

‘Cannot you summon a little patience to your aid?’ said I. ‘Our
strange-eyed captain spoke with judgment when he suggested the
probability of your exchanging his ship for the _Countess Ida_ within a
week.’

‘Well, I will be patient, if I can,’ said she, looking down with an air
of trouble and distress in the pout of her lip; ‘but is it not about
time that the adventure ended?’

‘Suppose it may be only now beginning?’

She gave me a side-glance and exclaimed somewhat haughtily: ‘I really
believe, Mr. Dugdale, you enjoy this sort of experiences; and if I
were a man---- But it _must_ end!’ she added with an air as though she
was about to weep. ‘It is unendurable to think of being carried about
the world in this fashion. I shall insist--well, I shall bribe Captain
Braine to question every ship he passes as to her destination, and the
first vessel we encounter that is going home I shall go on board of.’

‘Alone?’ said I.

‘No,’ she answered, half closing her eyes and looking a little away
from me; ‘you would not suffer me to travel alone? Besides, do not you
want to get home too?’

‘I would rather find my way to Bombay,’ said I. ‘My baggage as well as
yours is aboard the _Countess Ida_, and I should like to get it, though
not at the cost of too much trouble. I am bound to India on a visit,
and am not expected home for a good many months. Now, I don’t see why
both of us shouldn’t keep our appointments by sticking in this barque,
and sailing in her to the Mauritius, whence we ought to be able,
without difficulty, to ship ourselves for Bombay. The _Lady Blanche_
has the hull of a clipper, and it will be strange if the pair of us are
not ashore at Bombay some weeks before the _Countess Ida_ sails.’

She listened with impatience, and when I had ended, said: ‘If the
chance offers, I shall certainly go home. I shall take the first ship
that passes, though it should cost a thousand pounds to bribe Captain
Braine and the commander of the vessel that receives me. How is it
possible for me to continue thus?’ and here she looked at her dress.
‘And where is Mauritius? Is it not nearly as far off as Bombay? Whereas
England is not so very remote from this part of the ocean.’

‘Well, Miss Temple, I am your humble servant,’ said I. ‘Head as you
will, I shall most dutifully follow you.’

‘I beg that you will not be satirical.’

‘God forbid!’ said I, averting my eyes; for I was sensible that they
were expressing more than I had any desire she should observe. ‘I wish
to see you safe, and meanwhile happy. If we pick up a ship homeward
bound, we can commission Captain Braine to request Keeling, if he
encounters him, to transfer our baggage to the first craft he speaks
going to England. Your aunt’s maid will know all about your luggage.’

She watched me, as though doubtful whether I was joking or not; but I
was cut short by the entrance of Captain Braine.

‘I hope you have done pretty well?’ he exclaimed, after gazing at us
for a short time without speaking; ‘it is poor fare, mem, for the likes
of you. But the ship’ll afford nothing fresh till we kill a pig. What
did you say your name was, sir?’

‘Dugdale,’ said I.

‘Ha!’ he cried, whilst he viewed me steadfastly, ‘to be sure. Dugdale.
That was it. Well, Mr. Dugdale, there might be an edifying sight for
you and the lady to behold from the deck.’

‘What?’ swiftly exclaimed Miss Temple with a start.

‘The hull, mem, we took you from,’ he replied in his hollow somewhat
deep voice, ‘is rapidly growing into a big blaze.’

Her face changed to a mood of disappointment. I believe she thought
that the captain had come to announce the Indiaman in sight: I was
about to speak:

‘Captain Braine,’ she said, approaching him by a dramatic stride, and
exclaiming proudly, as though she would subdue him by her mere manner
to acquiescence in her wishes, ‘I am without wearing apparel, saving
the attire in which you now view me, and it is absolutely necessary I
should return home as speedily as possible. My mother will fear that I
have perished, and I must be the bearer of my own news, or the report
of my being lost may cause her death, so exceedingly delicate is her
health. She is rich, and will reward you in any sum you may think
proper to demand for enabling me to return to England quickly.’

An indescribable smile as she said these words crept over the man’s
face and vanished. I was strongly impressed by the expression of it,
and observed him closely.

‘Therefore, Captain Braine,’ she proceeded, ‘I have to entreat you to
promise me that you will signal to the ships you may pass, and put me
on board the first one, no matter what sort of vessel she be, that is
sailing directly to England.’

He silently surveyed her, and then directed his eyes at me.

‘You’ll be wanting to get home too, sir, I suppose?’ said he.

‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘Miss Temple is under my care, and I must see her
safe.’

He turned to her again, and stood staring; then said: ‘That’ll be all
right, mem; we’re bound to be falling in with something coming along
presently; and if England’s her destination and she’ll receive ye, the
boat that brought you from the hull shall take you to her, weather
permitting. That’ll do, I think?’

She bowed, looking as pleased as agitation and anxiety would allow her.

‘Come now and take a look at the hull,’ continued Captain Braine; ‘and
then’----

‘You quite understand, I hope,’ she interrupted, ‘that any sum’----

He broke in with an odd flourish of his hand. ‘No need to mention
that matter, mem,’ he exclaimed;--‘we are Christian men in that part
of the country where I come from, and there’s never no talk of pay
amongst us for doing what the Lord directs--succouring distressed
fellow-creatures.’

With which he spun upon his heels and walked out of the cabin, leaving
us to follow him.

I had no eyes nor thoughts for anything else than the hull the moment
I saw her. I remember recoiling as to a blow, and panting for a few
breaths with my hand to my side. She had slipped to something more
than two miles away down on the starboard quarter, and although only a
portion of her was as yet on fire, she was showing as a body of flame
brilliant and forked, soaring and drooping against the leaden-hued
background of sky. Shudder after shudder went like ice through me as my
sight swept the mighty girdle of the deep, coming back to the little
body of flame that most horribly to every trembling instinct in me
accentuated the lonely immensity of the surface on which it glowed.

‘Think--if we were on her now!’ I muttered to Miss Temple. She hid her
face.

‘Was there any valleyables aboard her, Mr. Dugdale, d’ye know?’ said
the captain.

‘I cannot tell you,’ I answered in a voice subdued by emotion; ‘I did
not search the sleeping-berths. There was little enough in her hold.’

‘Ye should have crept away down in the run,’ said he; ‘that’s where the
chaps which peopled her would stow their booty if they had any. If I’d
known she’d been a privateersman---- How came ye to set her on fire?’

‘My signal burnt through her deck, so I was informed by that gentleman
there,’ I replied, indicating the square man, who stood a little way
from us.

‘Was that so, Mr. Lush?’ cried the captain.

‘Was what so?’ asked Mr. Lush. The captain explained. ‘Well, I dunno,’
answered the other; ‘there was fire in the hold when I looked down, and
it seemed to me as if flakes of it was falling through the deck. But
what does it signify? Wood ain’t cast-iron, and if ye makes a flare
upon a timber deck, why, then what I says is, stand by!’

‘Oh look, Mr. Dugdale!’ shrieked Miss Temple at that moment, tossing
her arms in horror, and standing with her hands-upraised, as though in
a posture of calling down a curse upon the distant thing.

My eye was on the wreck, as hers had been, and I saw it all. There was
a huge crimson flash, as though some volcanic head had belched in fire;
daylight as it was, the stretch of clouds above and beyond the wreck
glared out in a dull rusty red to the amazing stream of flame; a volume
of smoke white as steam, shaped like a balloon, and floating solid to
the sight, slowly rose like some phenomenal emanation from the secret
depths of the ocean. There followed the sullen, deep-throated blast of
the explosion. Captain Braine snatched a telescope from the skylight
and levelled it, and after peering a little, thrust the glass into my
hand.

‘See if you can find out where she’s gone to,’ said he with a singular
grin, in which his eyes did not participate.

I looked: the water delicately brushed by the light wind flowed in
nakedness under the shadow of the slowly soaring and enlarging cloud of
white smoke. Not the minutest point of black, not the merest atom of
fragment of wreck, was visible. I put down the glass with a quivering
hand, and going to the rail, looked into the sea to conceal my moist
eyes, too overcome to speak.

‘A good job you weren’t in that hull, mem,’ said the captain to Miss
Temple; ‘it would be sky high with any one that had been there by
this time: a devil of a mount, as Jack says. But you’re aboard a tidy
little ship now. If so be that you are at all of a nautical judge,
mem, cast your eyes aloft and tell me if there’s e’er an Indeeman or
a man-of-war, too, if ye will, with spars stayed as my masts is, with
such a fit of canvas, with such a knowing cocked-ear like look as the
run of them yardarms has, with such mastheads tapering away like the
holy spire of a meetinghouse, and that beautiful little skysail atop to
sarve as a cloud for any tired angel that may be flying along to rest
upon! Ha!’

He drew so deep a breath as he concluded that I turned to look at him.
He stood gazing up at the canvas on the main as though in an ecstasy;
his hands were crossed upon his breast after the manner of coy virgins
in paintings; his right knee was crooked and projected; I could not
have imagined so curious a figure off the stage. Indeed, I supposed he
was acting now to divert Miss Temple. I glanced at the tough, sullen,
storm darkened face of old Lush, to gather his opinion on the behaviour
of this captain; but his expression was of wood, and there was no other
meaning in it that I could distinguish save what was put there by the
action of his jaws as he gnawed upon a junk of tobacco, carrying his
sight from seawards to aloft and back again as regularly as the swing
of the spars.

Miss Temple drew to my side with a manner of uneasiness about her. She
whispered, while she seemed to be speaking of the wreck, motioning with
her hand in the direction of the smoke that was slowly drawing on to
our beam in a great staring, still-compacted mass, white as fog against
the leaden heaven: ‘I believe he is not in his right mind.’

‘No matter,’ I swiftly replied; ‘his ship is sound. Captain,’ I
exclaimed, ‘I hope you will have a spare cabin for this lady. For my
part, you may sling me a hammock anywhere, or a rug and a plank will
make me all the bed I want.’

‘Oh, there’s accommodation for ye both below,’ he answered; ‘there’s
the mate’s berth unoccupied. The lady can have that. And next door to
it there’s a cabin with a bunk in it. I’ll have it cleared out for you.
Come down and see for yourselves.’

He led the way into the little cuddy, as I may term it, and conducted
us to a hatch close against the two sleeping berths right aft.
He descended a short flight of steps, and we found ourselves in
’tweendecks in which I should not have been able to stand erect with
a tall hat on. It was gloomy down here. I could distinguish with
difficulty a number of cases of light goods stowed from the deck to
the beams, and completely blocking up all the forward portion of
this part of the vessel. There were two cabins in the extremity
corresponding with the cabins above, with such another small hatch
as we had descended through lying close against them, but covered:
the entrance as I took it to ‘the run’ or ‘lazarette.’ Captain Braine
opened the cabin door on the port side, and we peered into a small but
clean and airy berth lighted by a large scuttle. I noticed a couple of
sea-chests, a suit of oilskins hanging under a little shelf full of
books, a locker, a mattress, and a bundle of blankets in the bunk, a
large chart of the English Channel nailed against the side, and other
matters of a like sort.

‘You’ll be able to make yourself pretty comfortable here, mem,’ said
Captain Braine.

‘Are there any rats?’ asked Miss Temple, rolling her eyes nervously
over the deck.

‘Bless you, no!’ answered the captain. ‘At the very worst, a cockroach
here and there, mem.’

‘But this cabin is occupied,’ said I.

‘It was, young gentleman, it was,’ he exclaimed, in a hollow raven
voice, that wonderfully corresponded with his countenance, and
particularly somehow or other with his hair--‘it was my chief-mate’s
cabin. But he’s dead, sir.’ He gazed at me steadfastly, and added,
‘Dead and gone, sir.’

Miss Temple slightly started, and with a hurried glance at the bunk,
asked how long the man had been dead.

‘Three weeks,’ responded Captain Braine, preserving his sepulchral
tone, as though he supposed it was the correct voice in which to
deliver melancholy information.

‘May I see the next cabin?’ said Miss Temple.

‘Certainly’ he answered; and going out, he opened the door.

This room was the same size as the berth which adjoined it; but it was
crowded with a collection of sailmakers’ and boatswains’ stores, bolts
of canvas, new buckets, scrubbing brushes, and so on. There was a bunk
under the scuttle full of odds and ends.

‘I would rather occupy this berth than the other,’ said Miss Temple.

‘You’re not afraid of ghosts, mem?’ exclaimed the captain, fixing his
immense dead black eyes upon her.

‘I presume this room can be cleared out, and I prefer it to the other,’
she answered haughtily.

I broke in, somewhat alarmed by these airs: ‘Oh, by all means, Miss
Temple. Choose the cabin you best like. Captain Braine is all kindness
in furnishing us with such excellent accommodation. This stuff can be
put into my berth, if you please, captain. I shall merely need room
enough to get into my bunk.’

‘I’ll make that all right,’ he answered somewhat sulkily. ‘How about
bedding? The lady’s a trifle particular, I fear. She wouldn’t be
satisfied to roll herself up in a dead man’s blanket, I guess.’

‘Leave me to manage,’ said I, forcing a note of cheerfulness into
my voice, though I was greatly vexed by Miss Temple’s want of tact.
‘There’s more bedding than either of us will require in less than a
bolt of your canvas. We are fresh from an experience that would make a
paradise of your forepeak, captain. And so,’ said I, plunging from the
subject, in the hope of carrying off the ill-humour that showed in his
face, ‘you are without a chief-mate?’

‘I’ll tell you about that by-and-by,’ said he. ‘This here crib, then,
is to be the lady’s? Now, what have I got that you’ll be wanting, mem?
There’s a bit of a looking-glass next door. He used to shave himself
in it. You won’t mind that, perhaps? His image ain’t impressed on the
plate. It’ll show ye true as you are, for all that he shaved himself in
it.’

Miss Temple smiled, and said that she would be glad to have the glass.

‘There’ll be his hairbrush,’ continued Captain Braine, ‘though _that_
might prove objectionable,’ he added doubtfully, talking with his eyes
fixed unwinkingly upon her. ‘And yet I don’t know; if it was put to
soak in a bucket of salt-water, it ought to come out sweet enough.
There’s likewise a comb,’ he proceeded, taking his chin betwixt his
thumb and forefinger and stroking it: ‘there’s nothing to hurt in a
comb, and it’s at your sarvice, mem. If poor old Chicken were here,
he’d be very willing, I’m sure; but he’s gone--gone dead.’

He looked at Miss Temple again. I watched him with attention. He seemed
to sink into a fit of musing; then, waking up out of it in a sudden
way, he cried: ‘You’ve got no luggage at all, have ye, mem?’

‘No,’ responded Miss Temple with gravity.

‘I’m sorry,’ said he, ‘that I didn’t bring Mrs. Braine along with
me this voyage. She wanted to come, poor thing, observing me to be
but very ordinary during most of the time I was ashore--very ordinary
indeed,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘If she was here we could
manage.’

‘Pray, give yourself no concern on that head, captain,’ said I; ‘we
shall be falling in with the Indiaman presently; and supposing the
worst to come to the worst--what time do you give yourself for the run
from here to the Mauritius?’

‘I’m not agoing to say--I’m not agoing to say!’ he cried with an accent
of excitement that astonished me; ‘what’s the good of talking when you
don’t know? Wouldn’t it be a sin to go and make promises to people
in your condition and disappoint ’em? I can just tell ye this: that
Baltimore itself never turned out a keel able to clip through it as
this here _Lady Blanche_ can when the chance is given her. And now,’ he
exclaimed, changing his voice, ‘suppose we clear out of this, and go up
into the daylight and fresh air;’ and without pausing for an answer he
trudged off.

I handed Miss Temple up the ladder, and we gained the little cabin,
or living-room as it might be termed. The young fellow who acted as
steward or servant was busy at the glass-rack. The captain called
to him, and peremptorily and most intelligently gave him certain
instructions with respect to the clearing out and preparing of the
berths below for our reception. He told him where he would find a
spare mattress--‘Quite new, never yet slept on,’ he said, contorting
his figure into a bow to Miss Temple--he had a couple of shawls and a
homely old rug which had made several voyages, and these were to be put
into her bunk; the man was to see that the lady lacked no convenience
which the barque could afford. ‘The late Mr. Chicken’s mattress was
to be given to me along with his bedding, if so be that I was willing
to use the same.’ Other instructions, all expressive of foresight and
hospitable consideration, he gave to the fellow, who then went forward
to obtain help to clear out the cabins.

‘We are deeply indebted to you, captain,’ said I, ‘for this very
generous behaviour’----

‘Not a word, sir, if you please,’ he interrupted. ‘I have a soul as
well as another, and I know my duty. Lady, a hint: you have some fine
jewelry upon you; take my advice and put it in your pocket.’

She was alarmed by this, and looked at me.

I smiled, and said, ‘The captain of a ship is Lord Paramount; his
orders must be obeyed, Miss Temple.’

Without another word she began to pull off her rings, the skipper
steadfastly watching her.

‘Will you take charge of them for me, Mr. Dugdale?’ said she.

I placed them in my pocket. She then took off a very beautiful diamond
locket from her throat, and this I also carefully stowed away.

‘I will remove my earrings presently,’ she exclaimed with a slight
flush in her cheek and a sparkle as of ire in her gaze, though her lips
still indicated an emotion of dismay.

‘My advice to you is--at once, mem,’ said the captain.

‘We must believe that Captain Braine is fully sensible of the meaning
of his requests,’ said I, answering the glance she shot at me.

She removed the earrings and gave them to me. The captain stood running
his eyes over her figure; then, with a melodramatic gesture, pointed
to her watch. This, too, with the handsome chain belonging to it, I
pocketed. He now addressed himself to contemplating me.

‘You don’t need to show any watch-chain,’ said he, speaking with
his head drooping towards his left shoulder; ‘there’s no good in
that signet ring either. As to the breast-pin’--he half-closed one
eye--‘well, perhaps that’s a thing that won’t hurt where it is.’

He waited until I had taken off my ring and dropped my chain into my
waistcoat pocket, and then, looking first of all aft and then forward,
then up at the little skylight, whilst he seemed to hold his breath
as though intently listening, he approached us, as we stood together,
by a stride, and said in a low deep voice, tremulous with intensity
of utterance: ‘My men are not to be trusted. Hush! If they imagined I
suspected them, they would cut my throat and heave me overboard.’

Miss Temple took my arm.

‘Let me understand you?’ said I, wrestling with my amazement. ‘In what
sense are they untrustworthy?’

He stared eagerly and nervously about him again, and then, extending
the fingers of his left hand, he touched one of them after another, as
though counting, whilst he said: ‘First, I have reason to believe that
Lush, the carpenter, who acts as my second mate, committed a murder
four years ago.’

‘Good God!’ I ejaculated.

‘Hold!’ he cried. ‘Next, there ain’t no shadow of a doubt that two at
least of my able seamen are escaped convicts. Next, there is a man
forward who was concerned in a mutiny that ended in the ringleaders
being hung. Next’--he paused, and then exclaimed: ‘but no need to go on
alarming the lady.’

‘But were you not acquainted with these men’s characters at the time of
their signing articles?’ said I.

‘No, young man--no,’ he answered with a most melancholy shake of the
head; ‘it’s all come out since, and a deal more atop of it. But hush!
Discretion is the better part of valour, as Jack says. There’s no call
to be afraid. They know the man I am, and what’s better, they know I
know _them_. Ye’re quite safe, mem; only, don’t be a-tempting sailors
of their sort by a sight of the valleyables you’ve been a-carrying
about with you. And now, perhaps you’ll excuse me whilst I goes and
looks after the ship.’

He gave us another extraordinary bow--I never met with any
posture-maker who approached this man in the capacity of distorting his
person--and walked out of the cabin.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE CREW OF THE BARQUE


Miss Temple released my arm and sank upon a bench.

‘Can you doubt now that he is mad?’ she exclaimed.

‘Somewhat eccentric, certainly, but perhaps not mad, though. He is
treating us very kindly. How intelligently he instructed his man in
regard to our cabins!’

‘He may be kind; but I believe we should have been safer on the hull
than here.’

‘Oh no, no, no!’

‘But I say yes,’ she exclaimed in her most imperious air, and gazing
at me with hot and glowing eyes. ‘It is quite true the wreck was
burnt; but if this vessel had not come into sight, you would not have
signalled, and then the hull would not have been set on fire. It is
maddening to think that perhaps within the next three or four hours the
Indiaman or the corvette may sail over the very spot where the wreck
blew up.’

‘I heartily hope that one or the other will do so,’ said I; ‘for if she
be so close to us as all that, we’re bound to fall in with her.’

She looked at her hands, turning her fingers back and front, as though
they were some novel and unexpected sight to her.

‘I wonder, Mr. Dugdale,’ said she, ‘you can doubt that the man is
insane. Remember the extraordinary questions he put to you when we
first arrived. I believe, had you told him you were ignorant of
navigation, he would have sent us back to the wreck. And then how
he stares! There is something shocking in the fixed regard of his
dreadfully inanimate black eyes. What a very extraordinary face, too!
I cannot believe that he is a sailor. He has the appearance of a monk
just released from some term of fearful penance and mortification.’

‘On the other hand he has received us very kindly. He would not
suffer you to speak of paying him. He promptly set us down to such
entertainment as his vessel furnishes. He may be mad half-way round the
compass, but all the rest of the points are sound,’

‘I am astonished,’ she cried with a manner of petulant vivacity, ‘to
hear you say that we are safer in this ship than had we remained in the
hull. There we were alone; but who are the people with whom we must
be locked up in this vessel until we sight the Indiaman or some sail
that will receive us? A murderer--convicts--mutineers--a crew of men in
whose sight a jewel must not be exhibited lest they should be tempted.
Tempted to what?’ She violently shuddered. ‘How can you speak of this
ship as safer than the wreck?’

‘Because I happen to feel quite certain that she is; but I will not say
so, for it vexes you to hear me.’

‘Oh this ridiculous, this horribly ridiculous degrading situation
fills me with anger. To think of being reduced to a perfect state of
squalor--having to conceal one’s jewelry for fear of--of--something
awful, I am sure; and you dare not, though you _could_ name it, Mr.
Dugdale.’ I smiled, and her warmth increased. ‘That I should have
been ever tempted,’ she proceeded, ‘to undertake the odious voyage
to Bombay, for _this_! To be without a change of dress, to be obliged
to sleep in a little dark horrid cabin, and meanwhile not to have the
least notion when it is all to end!’

Well, thought I, as I looked at her eyes shining with spirit and
temper, and marked the faint hectic of her ill-humour in her cheeks,
the expression of mingled pride and fretfulness in her lips, the
wrathful rising and falling of her breast, here, to be sure, is a new
version of the play of Katharine and Petruchio; only, though she be
Kate to the life, it is not I, but old daddy Neptune who is to break
her spirit, and unshrew her into somebody’s very humble servant.
But is there any magic, I thought, even in ocean’s rough, brutal,
unconscionable usage to render docile such a woman as this? Nay, would
any man wish it otherwise with her than as it is when he gazes at her
eyes and figure, beholds the dignity and haughtiness of her carriage,
the assumption of maiden sovereignty visible in every move of her arm,
in every curl of her lip, in every motion of her form!

‘What are you thinking of?’ she asked: ‘you are plunged in thought. I
hope you are struggling to do justice to my perception of the truth.’

I started, and then laughed out. ‘I will not tell you what I was
thinking of,’ said I; ‘but I will express what was in my mind whilst
you were speaking just now. You dwell with horror upon the captain’s
account of his crew. Well, I heartily wish for both our sakes that
they were an honest straight-headed body of men. But then every
ship’s forecastle is a menagerie. There is ruffianism, and there is
respectability. Quite likely that the carpenter Lush may have killed
a man; but one must hear the story before deciding to call him a
murderer. So of the convicts; so of the mutineers. In many ships at sea
there is unspeakable provocation, and crimes are committed of which
the blood rests upon the head of anyone sooner than those who are held
guilty and punished by the law. I am not to be greatly frightened by
Captain Braine’s talk of his crew, particularly since in a few days we
may either be on board the Indiaman or homeward-bound in another ship.
Let us now go on deck. I wish to take a view of the sailors, and see
what sort of a craft this is, for as yet I have seen but little of her.’

I could not help remarking that she kept very close to me as we
made our way out of the cuddy, and that the glances she directed
forwards where some seamen were at work were full of apprehension.
The short poop of the _Lady Blanche_ was gained by a central ladder
falling fair in the face of the little doorway of the cuddy front
with its two small windows and row of buckets. A low, handsomely
carved wooden rail was fixed athwart the break of this raised deck,
and I stood with Miss Temple at a point of it that provided me with a
clear view fore and aft. The captain sat on a grating abaft the wheel
reading. Mr. Lush was near the mizzen rigging, gazing seawards with
a stubborn wooden expression of face. After the spacious decks and
wide topgallant-forecastle of the Indiaman, this little _Lady Blanche_
looked a mere toy. But though a ship shows least admirably from her
own deck, I found a deal to please and even delight me in the first
comprehensive look I threw around. She was as clean as a yacht; the
insides of her bulwarks were painted a delicate green, and they were as
spotless as though the brush were just off them; on either side were
two little brass guns, mounted on carriages, and they shone as freshly
as though the sunlight were upon them; the running gear was everywhere
neatly coiled away. The small caboose, with its smoking chimney, abaft
the foremast; the length of windlass close in under the overlap of the
short space of forecastle; the white longboat; the white scuttle-butt
abreast of it; the little winch abaft the mainmast; the brass-lined
circle of the wheel in the grasp of the sober, good-tempered-looking
old fellow who had made one of the boat’s crew; the two shapely
clinker-built quarter-boats hanging at the davits abreast of the mizzen
mast--these and much more seemed details of a miniature delicacy and
finish, that entered with surprising effect into the fabric’s general
character of toy-like grace and elegance. On high, the white canvas
soared in symmetrical spaces; but after the towering spires of the
Indiaman, the main-yard of this little barque seemed within reach
of the hand, and the tiny skysail that crowned the summit of the
airy, snow-white, faintly-swelling cloths, no bigger than a lady’s
pocket-handkerchief.

‘This is really a beautiful little ship, Miss Temple,’ said I.

‘I might be able to admire her from the deck of the _Countess Ida_,’
she answered; ‘but there must be happiness to enable me to find beauty,
and I am not happy here.’

I searched the sea-line, but it was as bare and flawless as the rim of
a brand-new guinea. The dull shadow of the morning still overspread
the heavens; it was the same leaden sky, with here and there a little
break of faintness, revealing some edge of apparently motionless
cloud, and the ocean lay sallow beneath it, darker than it was for
the pencilling of the ripples which wrinkled the wide expanse as they
rode the long, light heave of the swell. There were some sailors at
work in the waist on jobs, of which I forget the nature; I examined
them attentively--they were within easy eyeshot; but though there
was no lack of prejudice in my observation, I protest I could find
nothing rascally in their appearance. They were all of them of the
then familiar type of merchant seaman, as like to members of the crew
of the Indiaman as one pea is to another; faces burnt by the sun and
decorated with the usual assemblage of warts and moles, all of them
of an unmistakably English cut--I am speaking of the five of them
then visible--dressed in the rough apparel of the ocean, rude shirts
revealing the bare hairy breast, duck breeches with stains of oil and
tar in them which there was no virtue in the scrubbing-brush and the
lee-scuppers to remedy. Miss Temple, standing at my side, gazed at them.

‘They have quite the look of cut-throats, I think,’ said she.

‘Well, now, to my fancy,’ said I, ‘they seem as honest a set of lively
hearties as one could wish to sail with.’

‘You merely say that to encourage me,’ she exclaimed with a pout of
vexation. ‘Observe that man with the black beard--the one that is
nearest to us. Could you figure a completer likeness of a pirate? I do
not like his way of glancing at us out of the corner of his eyes. An
honest sailor would stare boldly.’

I laughed, and then put on a face of apology.

‘You will be smiling at these fears in a few days, I hope,’ I exclaimed.

‘Yes; but it is the meanwhile we have to think of,’ she answered. ‘Look
at that man there’--meaning Mr. Lush; ‘pray, tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that
he has a very handsome, manly, good-tempered face.’

‘No; I confess I don’t like his appearance,’ I answered, stealing
a peep at the sulky-looking old dog, who continued to stare at the
horizon with the immovability of a figure-head; ‘yet inside of that
hide there may be stowed away a very worthy member of society. A
crab-apple is not a fruit to delight the eye; but I believe it is
wholesome eating, though a trifle austere.’

At that moment the captain looked up from his book, and after taking a
prolonged view of us, came in a slow walk to where we were standing,
holding the volume in his hand.

‘You have a charming little ship here, captain,’ said I; ‘I am
exceedingly pleased with her.’

‘Yes, sir; she’s a handy craft. She will do her work,’ he answered,
sending his unwinking eyes with their sort of slow dead look along the
deck.

‘Which of those men down there are the convicts and mutineers?’ began
Miss Temple.

He whipped round upon her with a vehemence of manner that seemed a
veritable fury of temper to the first seeing and hearing of it.

‘For God Almighty’s sake, not a word! D’ye want to see me a murdered
man?’ He twisted round on to me: ‘Sir, you are to know nothing if you
please. This lady is to know nothing. I asked ye both in the cabin
to be secret. God’s death! if that man yonder had overheard her!’ He
stopped short, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at Lush.

Miss Temple was deadly pale. She had the same cowed air I had observed
in her during our first few hours aboard the wreck.

‘I am very sorry--’ she muttered.

‘For the love of God, mem!’ he exclaimed in a whisper, putting his
finger to his lips.

It was time to change the subject. I asked him how long he had occupied
in his passage from the Thames to this point, spoke of the light
trade-wind and baffling airs we had encountered, told him once again of
the privateering brig, asked him what he thought would be the chance
of the corvette’s cutter in such weather as she went adrift in, and
in this way coaxed him out of his temper until I had got him to some
posture of affability once more. I do not recollect the number of days
he named as contained in his passage from London, but I can remember
that it was a very swift run, proving daily totals which must have
come very near to steam at times.

‘Such a nimble keel as this should make you very easy, Miss Temple,’
said I; ‘why, here is a craft to sail round and round the _Countess
Ida_. Even though we shouldn’t pick her up, it is fifty to one that of
all her passengers we two shall be the first to arrive in India.’

She fastened her eyes upon the deck with a countenance of incredulity
and despair.

‘I suppose your port will be St. Louis, sir?’ said I.

He stared at me for some moments without speaking, and then slowly
inclined his head in a single nod.

‘I was never in that island,’ I continued; ‘but I presume we shall not
be at a loss for a vessel to carry us to some part of India whence we
may easily make our way to Bombay.’

His lack-lustre gaze seemed to grow deader as, after a pause, he
exclaimed: ‘There’ll be some French skipper to make terms with, I don’t
doubt, for a passage north.’

‘You talk, Mr. Dugdale,’ said Miss Temple, ‘as though you were well
assured that we should not fall in with the Indiaman.’

‘I am desirous of creating plenty of chances for ourselves,’ said I;
then gathering that this might not be a topic profitable to pursue
in the presence of so singular a listener as Captain Braine, I again
branched off. ‘How many,’ said I carelessly, ‘go to a crew with you,
captain?’

He answered leisurely: ‘Thirteen as we now are, all told. There was
fourteen afore Mr. Chicken died.’

‘Well, even at that,’ said I, ‘a single watch should be able to reef
down for you. I suppose’--here I sunk my voice--‘that Mr. Lush yonder
is now your chief mate?’

‘No,’ he replied, speaking stealthily; ‘I’m my own chief mate. He’s
the ship’s carpenter, and stands watch as second officer. But what are
ye to do,’ he proceeded, preserving his stealthy delivery, ‘with a man
whose education don’t let him go no further than making a mark for his
name?’

‘Then, I take it, there is nobody aboard capable of navigating the
vessel but yourself?’

‘We’ll talk about that presently,’ said he with a singular look, and
pointing with his finger to the deck.

I observed that Miss Temple narrowly watched him.

‘Was Mr. Chicken a pretty good navigator?’ said I.

He appeared to forget himself in thought, then with a slow emerging
air, so to speak, and a steadfast, quite embarrassing stare, he
responded: ‘Chicken was acquainted with the use of the sextant. He
likewise understood the meaning of Greenwich time. He couldn’t take a
star; but his reckonings was always close when he got them out of the
sun. He’d been bred a collierman, and it took him some time to recover
the loss of coasts and lee shores and lights. But he was a good sailor,
and a religious man; and his death was a blow, sir.’

‘Almost a pity that it wasn’t Mr. Lush who was beckoned overboard,’
said I. (The carpenter had now trudged aft, and was looking into the
compass out of hearing.)

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Captain Braine, heaving a deep sigh and shaking his
head: ‘Lush’s loss would have been my gain. One Chicken was worth all
the Lushes that were ever afloat.--But hush, mem, if _you_ please.’

‘I shall certainly say nothing more about your crew,’ exclaimed Miss
Temple quickly and a little haughtily, while she slightly recoiled from
the face he turned upon her.

‘Have you any books aboard, Captain Braine?’ said I, glancing at the
volume he held in his hand. ‘Any sort of amusement in the shape of
chess or cards to help Miss Temple and myself to kill an hour or two
from time to time?’

‘There are some vollums in Chicken’s cabin that belonged to him,’
answered Captain Braine. ‘I’ve read two or three of them. His cargo
that way was usually edifying. There’s Baxter’s “Shove:” a good yarn;
there’s the “Pilgrim’s Progress;” and there’s the “Whole Dooty o’
Man”--a bit leewardly; I couldn’t fetch to windward in it myself.
For my part, one book’s enough for me; and excepting some vollums on
navigation, it is the only work I goes to sea with.’

‘The Bible!’ I exclaimed, taking it from him. I was astonished and
pleased. There seemed little for one to apprehend in the character of
a man who could dedicate his leisure to the study of that Book, and I
was sensible of an emotion of respect for the strange-looking, staring
figure as I returned the little volume to him.

He dropped it into a side-pocket, and then most abruptly walked to the
rail, took a long look at the weather and a long look aloft, trudged
over to Mr. Lush, with whom he exchanged a sentence or two, and
immediately afterwards disappeared down the companion.

For some time after this Miss Temple and I paced the deck together.
There was much to talk about, and my companion found a deal to say
about Captain Braine, whilst, as we walked, I would catch her taking
furtive peeps at Mr. Lush, who, it was easy to see, had inspired her
with aversion and fear, though the man had not offered to address a
word to us, nor had he once looked our way, thirstily inquisitive as
his stare had been whilst in the boat. I could not help contrasting her
behaviour now with what I recollected of it aboard the _Countess Ida_.
She had put her hand into my arm, and the intimacy of our association
in this way might well have suggested an affianced pair. She talked
eagerly and with all the passion of the many emotions which rose in
her with her references, to our situation, to her aunt, to the chance
of our sighting the Indiaman, and the like; and I don’t doubt that the
men who watched us from the forepart of the vessel put us down either
as husband and wife or a betrothed couple.

And all this in three days! Three days ago she could hardly bring
herself to speak or even to look at me; and now fortune had contrived
that she should have no other companion, that she should be locked up
with me alone in a dismasted hull, and then be brought, always with me
at her side, into a vessel where, as she believed, there was much more
to fill us with alarm than in the worst of the conditions which entered
into our existence aboard the wreck! Again and again she would ask,
with her dark and glowing eyes bent with an expression of despair upon
my face, when it was to end and how it was to end; and these questions
my heart would echo as I gazed at the cold and alarmed beauty of her
face, but with a very different meaning from what she attached to the
inquiries.

At last she grew weary of walking, and I took her below and sat with
her awhile on a cushioned locker. It was now drawing on to four
o’clock in the afternoon; the breeze quiet, the sky in shadow, the
sea very smooth save for the soft undulation of the swell, which
pleasantly and soothingly cradled the little fabric as she slipped
through it, of a milky white from water-line to truck, to the impulse
of her wide overhanging pinions. After a bit, I observed a heaviness
in the lids of my companion, and urged her to lie down and take some
rest. She consented; and I lingered at her side until sleep overcame
her, and then I stood for awhile surveying with deep admiration the
calm sweetness of her face, into which had stolen the tenderness of
the unconscious woman, softening down the haughty arching of eyebrow,
unbending the imperious set of the mouth. It was as though her spirit
clad in her own beauty was revealed to me disrobed of all the trappings
of the waking humours. I could have knelt by her side, and in that
posture have watched her for an hour. Can it be, thought I, as I crept
softly to the cuddy door, that I am in love with her?

I leisurely filled my pipe from the hunk of tobacco I had met with in
the wreck, taking, whilst I did so, as I stood on the quarter-deck,
a good steady look at such of the sailors as were about, though I
contrived an idly curious manner, and directed my eyes as often at the
barque’s furniture as at the seamen. After I had been on the poop a few
minutes, Mr. Lush left it to go forward; and with my pipe betwixt my
teeth, I lounged over to the binnacle to see how the ship headed. The
man who grasped the spokes was the honest-faced fellow I had before
noticed at the wheel; he, I mean, of the minute eyes and whiskers
joined at his throat, who had addressed me in the boat whilst we lay
alongside the hull. I noticed that he seemed to stir a little uneasily
as I approached, as though nervously meditating a speech, and I had
scarcely glanced into the compass bowl when he exclaimed: ‘I beg your
pardon, sir.’

I looked at him.

‘The noose,’ said he, ‘came forrads afore I lay aft for this here trick
that the ship you came out of and lost sight of was the _Countess Ida_.’

‘That is so,’ I exclaimed.

‘Might I make so bold,’ he continued, slightly moving the wheel, and
bringing his specks of eyes into a squint over my head as he sent a
glance at the tiny skysail pulling under the main-truck, ‘as to inquire
if so be that the bo’sun of that ship was a man named Smallridge?’

‘Yes, Smallridge; that was the boatswain’s name,’ I replied, warming up
to the mere reference to that hearty sailor.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘I heerd that he was agoing bo’sun in that ship, and I
was pretty nigh signing for her myself, only that her date of sailing
didn’t give me quite long enough ashore. And how _is_ Mr. Smallridge,
sir?’

‘Very well indeed,’ said I.

‘I’ve got a perticler respect for Mr. Smallridge,’ he continued; ‘he
kep’ company with my sister for some time, and would ha’ married her,
but she tailed on to a sojer whilst he was away, prefarring the lobster
to the shellback, sir. Well, I’m glad to larn that he’s hearty, I’m
sure. If so be as we should fall in with the _Countess Ida_, and put
you aboard without my seeing of Mr. Smallridge, I’d take it werry kind,
sir, if you’d give him Joe Wetherly’s respects.’

‘I certainly will,’ said I with alacrity; ‘but I fear there is little
chance of our meeting with the Indiaman.’

‘Well, there’s no telling,’ he exclaimed; ‘but she’ll have to be right
in this here barque’s road, supposing her to be ahead; and if we should
pass her in the dark, why, then, good-night! for she’s like grease in
the water is this here _Lady Blanche_.’

‘Smallridge and I were very good friends. He’d been a sailor in the
ship I was afterwards midshipman in.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ cried he. ‘And so _you_ was at sea, sir?’

I was about to reply, designing to lead him on into answering certain
questions I had in my mind concerning the captain and crew of the
barque, when Mr. Lush came up the poop ladder; so, knowing the
etiquette, I hauled off, but with the full intention of sounding Mr.
Joe Weatherly at large when an opportunity should offer.




CHAPTER XXV

I KEEP A LOOKOUT


I slipped half-way down the little companion ladder to take a peep at
Miss Temple, and on observing her to be resting quietly, I returned,
and after lighting my pipe anew, stepped over to Mr. Lush, who was
employed in cutting off a piece of tobacco from a black cake to serve
him as a quid.

‘It is not often hereabouts,’ said I, by way of starting a
conversation, ‘that one has a sky like that all day long overhanging
one’s mastheads.’

‘No,’ said he; ‘but it’s better than the roasting sun;’ and he opened
his lame mouth to receive the cube of tobacco into the hollow of his
cheek, whilst he eyed the sky askant, as though in recognition of it as
a subject of talk.

‘Did you fall in with the smother that ended in the lady and I being
stranded aboard the wreck?’ I inquired.

‘No; there’s been ne’er a smother with us.’

‘The death of Mr. Chicken,’ said I, ‘must have been a blow, seeing that
the barque carried but a couple of mates.’

‘How many mates do a ship of this size want?’ said he, without looking
at me and slowly masticating.

‘Well, she has only one now, anyway,’ said I.

‘No; she ain’t got even one,’ he exclaimed, with the manner of an
ill-tempered man who only listens for the sake of contradiction and
argument.

‘Are not _you_ second mate?’ I asked.

‘Not I,’ he replied with a gruff laugh. ‘They calls me second mate,
and I keeps watch and watch with the capt’n as if I _was_ second mate;
but what I’m signed for is carpenter, and carpenter I be, and there’s
nothen more to be made out of me than that, and I don’t care who the
bloomin’ blazes hears me say it.’

He drew to the rail by a step and expectorated violently over it. I
was too anxious for information about this little ship and her crew
to suffer my curiosity to be hindered by the man’s rough, coarse,
ill-natured speech and demeanour.

‘I was wondering where you took your meals,’ said I. ‘I now understand.
You live forward?’ He gave me a surly nod. ‘But not in the forecastle?’

‘Where else? Ain’t the fok’sle good enough for me?’

‘But does not association of that sort weaken your control over the
men?’

‘_I’ve_ got no control, and don’t want none. The men’ll run if I sing
out. And what more’s to be expected of sailors?’

‘It seems queer, though,’ said I, ‘since you undertake the work of a
second mate, that you shouldn’t live aft. It must have been lonely
eating for the skipper after Mr. Chicken died?’

‘I did live aft afore Mr. Chicken died,’ he exclaimed, biting his
tobacco with temper, whilst his weather-stained face gathered a new
shade of duskiness to the mounting of the blood into his head; ‘and
then when the capt’n and me comes to be alone, he tarns to and finds
out that I ain’t choice enough to sit down with--says I ain’t got the
art of perlite eatin’, calls me a hog to my face, and tells me that my
snout’s for the mess kid and not for knives and forks and crockery.
Him!’ He turned his face to the rail and spat again, and looked at me
with an expression of anger, but checked himself with violence, and
pushed his hands into his breeches pockets with an irritable motion of
his whole frame.

I considered that enough had been said; and though I had gained but
little information, it was at least made clear to me that there was no
love lost between Captain Braine and Mr. Lush. But further conversation
would have been rendered impossible in any case, for just then a man
struck eight bells on the main-deck, and a minute or two later the
wheel was relieved, the captain arrived, and the carpenter went forward
in a round-backed sulky walk, his legs bowed, his muscular arms hanging
up and down without a swing, each bunch of his fingers curled like
fish-hooks.

I had talked enough, and was weary of standing and walking; so, when
I spied the skipper, I slipped off the poop and seated myself on a
bench abreast of my sleeping companion, where I remained for half an
hour, often gazing at her, my mind very busy with a hundred thoughts,
foremost amongst which was the shuddering recollection of our late
experiences and narrow escape, and deep thankfulness to God for His
merciful preservation of us. The entrance of the captain’s servant--a
young fellow named Wilkins, to be hereafter so called: a memorable
figure in this startlingly eventful passage of my life which I am
endeavouring to relate: a veal-faced, red-headed, shambling fellow of
some two-and-twenty years, with white eyebrows and lashes, and a dim
blue eye--the entrance, I say, of this man with a tray of tea-things
aroused Miss Temple, who, after a brief bewildered stare at me, smiled,
and sat upright.

‘There is always something new now,’ she exclaimed, ‘to look at when I
open my eyes after sleeping. Yesterday it was the wreck; to-day it is
this ship. What will it be to-morrow? Is there anything in sight, Mr.
Dugdale?’

‘There was nothing when I left the deck half an hour ago,’ said I.

She had awakened with a slight flush of sleep in her face that greatly
enriched her eyes; but the delicate glow quickly faded; she was
speedily colourless as alabaster. She smoothed her hair and put on her
hat, that she had removed when she lay down.

‘It is strange,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘I should not seem able
to endure feeling that I am not in a condition to instantly leave this
vessel. It was so with me in the wreck. Even without my hat, I feel
unready; and then, again, there is the sense of not being exactly as I
was when I left the _Countess Ida_.’

The captain called through the skylight: ‘Wilkins, bring me some tea
and a biscuit up here.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’

‘Pray,’ said I, ‘when and where does the captain dine?’

‘I took his dinner to his cabin,’ responded the young fellow; ‘he
mostly eats there. But now you’re here, I allow he’ll be a-jining of
you.’

‘This is no meal for you, Miss Temple,’ said I, with a glance at the
old teapot and the small plate of biscuits which furnished out the
repast. ‘No milk--brown sugar--no butter, of course!’ Wilkins grinned
whilst he poured out some tea into a cup. ‘You’ve had nothing to eat
since we first came aboard.’

‘I want nothing,’ she answered.

‘Well, then, _I_ do,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine is quite right.
Shipwreck doesn’t impair the appetite.’

‘There’ll be supper at seven, sir,’ said Wilkins.

‘And what do you call supper?’ I inquired.

‘Why,’ answered the fellow, ‘there’ll be the beef ye had this morning,
piccalillis, bottled stout, biscuit after this here pattern, and cold
currant dumplings.’

He then went up the companion steps with some biscuit and tea for the
captain. I laughed out.

‘Not so good as the Indiaman’s dinner-table, Miss Temple, but better
than the hull’s entertainment. We must wait till supper’s served.
Meanwhile, I’ll blunt my appetite on a biscuit. Will you give me a cup
of tea?’

It was genuine forecastle liquor, such as might have been boiled in a
copper, of the hue of ink, and full of fragments of stalk. However,
the mere looking at it was something to do, and we sat toying with our
cups, making-pretend, as it were, to be drinking tea and talking.

‘I wonder,’ I exclaimed in the course of our conversation, ‘whether
the cutter was picked up by one of the ships? If she lost both of them,
will she have lived in the weather that followed? Anyway, the corvette
is certain to make a long hunt for her, with the hope also of falling
in with the Indiaman, for Sir Edward will think it possible that
Keeling has his men aboard, and will want to make sure. I fear this
business of the cutter may have led to such manœuvring on the part of
the two ships as must render our falling-in with one or the other of
them very unlikely.’

‘Oh, why do you say that?’ she cried.

‘It is but a surmise,’ said I; ‘anyhow, I heartily hope the cutter
_has_ been picked up, if only for Colledge’s sake. The sudden loss of
the lieutenant will have dreadfully scared him.’

‘I earnestly wish that Mr. Colledge may have been saved,’ said she with
a faint glitter of temper in her gaze; ‘but I could wish ten times more
earnestly that he had never been born, or that he had sailed in any
other ship than the _Countess Ida_; for then I should not be here.’

‘Your aunt endeavoured to dissuade you.’

‘She did; and I am rightly served for not obeying her.’

‘You are very high-spirited, Miss Temple; it is your nature, and you
cannot help yourself. You are a young lady to insist upon having your
own way, and you always get it.’

‘Mr. Dugdale, you are too young to lecture me.’

‘How old do you think I am?’ said I.

‘Oh, about six-and-twenty,’ she answered with a slight incurious run of
her eyes over me that recalled her manner in the Indiaman.

‘Well, if I am,’ said I, ‘it is a good solid age to achieve. There
is room for enough experiences in six-and-twenty years to enable a
young man to utter several very truthful observations to high-spirited
young ladies who insist upon having their way, and then quarrel with
everybody because their way is not exactly the road they wish to tread.’

She slightly knitted her fair brows and looked at me fixedly.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ said she, ‘you would not have dared to talk to me like
this on board the _Countess Ida_.’

‘I was afraid of you there.’

‘You _respected_ me there, you mean, and now--because’---- She came to
a stop, with a little quivering at the extremities of her mouth.

‘I am no longer afraid of you, or, rather, I no longer respect you
because you happen to be in this particular situation, which needs no
explanation whatever: that is, I suppose, what you wish to say. But
you misjudge me indeed. I was afraid of you on board the Indiaman,
but I did not respect you; nay, my aversion was as cordial as could
be possibly imagined in a man who thought you then, as he thinks you
still, the handsomest woman he has ever seen in his life, or could
ever have dreamt of. But that aversion is passing,’ I continued,
watching with delight her marvellous gaze of astonishment and the warm
flush that had overspread her face. ‘I am discovering that much of
what excited my dislike and regret aboard the Indiaman is artificial,
an insincerity in you. This afternoon, whilst you slept, I sat near
you for half an hour, gazing at you. All expression of haughtiness
had faded from your mouth: your countenance wore an air of exquisite
placidity, of gentle kindness, of tender good nature. In short, Miss
Temple, I saw you as you are, as your good angel knows you to be, as
you have it in your power to appear.’ I sprang to my feet. ‘How shall
we kill the blessed hours that lie before us? Only think, it is barely
five o’clock.’

She gazed at me with an amazement that seemed to render her speechless;
her face was on fire, and her throat blushed to where the collar of her
dress circled it. ‘It will not do,’ I continued, ‘to attempt to murder
time by talking, or it will come to your killing me instead of the
hours. I’ll go and overhaul the late Mr. Chicken’s bedroom, or, rather,
his effects. There _may_ be something to interest. Even the mouldiest
backgammon board would be worth a million;’ and I made for the little
hatch that conducted to our sleeping berths, leaving her motionless at
the table.

Come, thought I, as I dropped into the ’tweendecks, a short spell of
loneliness will do you good, my haughty beauty, by making you realise
how it would be with you were you actually alone. This is the first of
the homely thrusts I have been preparing for you, and I will not spare
you less as I grow to love you more, taking my chance of your abhorring
me, though it may not come to _that_ either.

I peeped into the berth that had been prepared for her, and found all
the odds and ends which had encumbered it gone; there was a clean
mattress on the bunk, and on top of it an old but comely rug and a
couple of shawls; a small looking-glass dangled near the porthole. But
what an interior for this delicately nurtured, high and mighty young
lady of quality to lie in! No carpet, no chest of drawers, nothing
beyond the looking-glass and a tin dish for washing in; in short,
a mere marine cell, as like as might be to any little whitewashed
room with grated window ashore in which a policeman would lock up a
pick-pocket!

I entered my own berth. The boatswain’s and sailmaker’s stores were
not here, and I found a ‘clean hold,’ as a sailor might say. In fact,
all Chicken’s traps being about, caused the berth to present a much
more hospitable aspect than the adjacent one afforded. I examined the
books, but found most of them to consist of religious literature, as
the captain had said, and the rest of them works on the nautical life.
Though it was hard to reconcile a fancy of cards with the late Mr.
Chicken’s character as portrayed by the skipper, I yet looked into a
couple of chests in the hope of meeting with a pack; but neither cards
nor any species of object calculated to divert did I come across; and
growing weary of hunting, I returned to the cuddy.

I perceived or imagined an air of reproach in Miss Temple; but she had
mastered her temper and astonishment.

‘There is nothing belonging to the late Mr. Chicken to entertain us,’
said I.

‘It surely does not signify, Mr. Dugdale. Do you suppose that I have
the heart to play at cards or chess? Is not there more wind than there
was? I will ask you to take me on deck. Something may be in sight, and
it will not be dark for some time yet.’

I gave her my hand, and helped her up the little ladder. There was
more wind, as she had said; the skysails had been furled and a
studdingsail or two hauled down, and the little barque, with her
yards almost square, was sweeping swiftly over the smooth waters,
slightly heeling from side to side as she went. The foam in yeasty
bubbles and soft cream-hued clouds went spinning and writhing from
her bows into her wake, that ran like a path of coral sand over the
darkling waters, now complexioned into lividness by the gloomy plain
of vaporous sky. The crew were on the forecastle--it was well into
the first dog-watch--lounging, sitting, yarning, and smoking. Amidst
them I noticed Mr. Lush, leaning against the rail with a short sooty
pipe in his mouth, the bowl of which was inverted. He was in his
shirt sleeves, and he reclined with his arms folded upon his breast,
apparently listening, in that dogged posture, to one of the sailors,
who was reciting something with outstretched arm and a long forefinger,
with which he seemed to be figuring diagrams upon the air. Upon the
slope of the starboard cathead, coming into the deck, sat my friend Joe
Wetherly, with a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles on his nose; he pored
on a book with moving lips, from which he would expel at intervals
great clouds of smoke through a pipe betwixt his teeth. So small was
the barque, so seemingly close at hand the forecastle to the break of
the poop, that even such minute details as these were perfectly visible
to me.

Captain Braine stood near the wheel. He continuously stared at us,
but did not shift his attitude nor offer to address us. I swept the
sea-line, but to no purpose.

‘How sickeningly wearisome has that bare horizon grown to me!’
exclaimed Miss Temple, with a shuddering sigh; ‘it has just the sort
of monotony that would speedily drive me crazy. I am sure; not the
wearisomeness of four walls, nor the tiresomeness of a single eternal
glimpse of unchanging country to be had through a window; no! there is
a mockery in it which you do not find in the most insipid, colourless
scene on land. It is not, and still it always _is_, the same. It
recedes to your pursuit, yet it is unalterable, and how cruelly barren
is it of suggestions!’

‘Yet a sight of the Indiaman,’ said I, ‘should develop whatever of the
picturesque may be hidden in that tiresome girdle.’

‘Ah, yes!’ she answered; ‘but we are now running away from our chances.
How swiftly this boat sails! If the Indiaman is behind us, we shall see
no more of her.’

‘Do not let us depress each other with talk of this kind,’ said I; ‘let
me give you my arm, and we will stroll a little.’

We had been on deck about twenty minutes, when the captain, who had
continued to steadfastly gaze at us in a most extraordinary ruminating
way, crossed the deck.

‘Pray, sir,’ said he, ‘could I trust you to keep a lookout for me if I
went below for a short spell?’

‘I will do so with pleasure.’

‘D’ye know what orders to give, if anything requiring orders should
happen?’

‘Why,’ said I, smiling, ‘there are a good many orders going at sea, you
know, captain. Figure a situation, and I will see if I can recollect
the routine.’

He stared at me musingly with his dead black eyes, and then said:
‘Well, suppose the breeze freshens with a dark look to wind’ard, and
I’m below and asleep, and have left ye no instructions; what would you
do?’

‘Call you,’ said I.

‘And quite right, too,’ he cried, with a vehement nod of approval, and
a glance at Miss Temple, as if he would have her participate in his
satisfaction. ‘But put me out of the question, and allow that you’ve
got to act for yourself.’

‘Why, Captain Braine,’ I exclaimed, ‘though my time at sea was brief,
I am no longshoreman. Such a question as yours means merely the first
letter in the marine alphabet.’

‘I ain’t so sure of that,’ said he, with his fixed regard.

‘I admit,’ continued I, ‘that I have never been shipmate with a
fore-and-aft rigged mizzenmast; but if it’s merely a question of
shortening sail, why, what else under the moon is to be done than to
take in your studdingsails and clew up your royals and haul down your
flying jib, and then let go your foretopgallant halliards, and haul
down your light staysails’--and so I rambled on, winding up with, ‘I am
leaving your after-canvas untouched, because it is already in, you see;
whilst as to your jibs and staysails, I assume of course that they are
set.’

He lifted his hand. ‘Thank’ee,’ said he; ‘I shan’t be long;’ and down
he went.

‘You will surely believe _now_ that he is mad!’ said Miss Temple with
anxiety, but softly, for the fellow at the wheel stood near, and I had
seen a grin crumple up his features to the skipper’s question.

‘He may want me to serve him as a mate,’ said I, laughing.

‘You will do nothing of the kind, I hope,’ she exclaimed, as we fell to
pacing the deck afresh.

‘I will do anything that may help me to see you safe,’ said I.

‘But cannot you perceive, Mr. Dugdale, that if he believes you fit to
serve him as a mate, as you call it, he may prevent you from leaving
his ship by declining to communicate with passing vessels?’

‘That is true,’ said I.

‘I am certain,’ she cried, squeezing my arm in the energy of her
emotion, ‘that he has some design in his mind to make you serve
him. Why should he have teased you when we came, poor miserable
creatures! fresh from the wreck, with inquiries about your knowledge of
navigation? Oh, beware of him! He may not be quite mad, but he may be
as wicked as the worst of his men.’

‘We must wait,’ said I, for her conjectures were quite reasonable
enough to prove disturbing. ‘But after all,’ I cried, brightening up
to the new idea that possessed me, ‘if we are to sail to the Mauritius
with him’----

‘No!’ she exclaimed; ‘that is not to be dreamt of.’

‘Yet listen, I entreat you. If it is our uncomfortable doom to remain
in this barque until she reaches her port, I do not know but that the
captain would be very honestly in the right in expecting me to work
my passage--that is to say, to help him by keeping a lookout, and by
serving him in other ways which may be possible to me.’

‘Do not dream of sailing to the Mauritius!’ she cried impetuously; ‘we
must either soon meet with the Indiaman or return home.’

I could not forbear a smile at her imperious _we_, as though whatever
she did I must do.

‘Ay, that is what we want,’ I exclaimed; ‘but then if we don’t fall in
with the Indiaman nor with a vessel homeward bound’----

‘Absurd! Dozens of ships are to be met with every day sailing home to
England from some part or other of the world. The idea of remaining
in this vessel is not to be entertained for an instant. It would be
intolerable enough for me even to make the comparatively short passage
home, destitute as I am of everything; but to leisurely proceed _all_
the way to the Mauritius---- Oh, be very careful, Mr. Dugdale. I beg
you not to know anything at all about navigation and the duties of a
sailor.’

‘I can’t do that,’ I answered; ‘I have loaded my gun and must stick to
it; but I promise you I will put no more shot in it.’

She eyed me with great impatience and warmth, as though provoked by my
answer: but she held her peace, and presently our conversation went to
other matters.

Shortly before six o’clock the sky cleared somewhat to windward. The
wide pall of leaden cloud lifted there, as though it were some huge
carpet a corner of which was being rolled up, and there looked to flow
a very lagoon of pure blue ether, moist and rich with the evening
shadow, into the space betwixt the rim of the sea and the edge of the
cloud. A clearer, more penetrating light broadened out; and going to
the companion hatch, I took the telescope that lay in brackets there
and carefully searched the horizon. But the sea washed bare to the sky
on all sides.

I did not observe that the men gathered together on the forecastle
seemed to notice the captain’s absence, though I expected they would
come to stare a bit when the fellow who stood at the wheel should go
forward and tell them that I had been acting as mate of the watch.
For my part this queer duty coming upon me made the whole experience
more wild and improbable to my imagination than had been any other
feature of it since we quitted the Indiaman. Never was there such a
forcing of adventures, as it were, upon a man. It was like dreaming
to reflect that a little time ago I was a passenger, an easy-going,
smoking, drinking, chess-playing young fellow, without a care, with
plenty of clothes and money enough in my cabin, and that now I was
a half-starved, shipwrecked wretch, without the value of a straw in
the shape of possessions, outside of what I stood up in and had in
my pockets, keeping a lookout as though, faith, I was some poor,
struggling, hungry second mate, newly enlarged from an odious term
of apprenticeship! like dreaming, I say, to think that a little time
ago the young lady by my side was a reserved, disdainful creature,
with scarcely a word betwixt her lips to throw at me, and that now
she could not speak of her future without making me a sharer in it,
that she could not see enough of me, nor have my arm too close for her
hand; whilst in point of destitution she, the most richly clad of the
Indiaman’s lady passengers, she, who had seemed to me to appear in a
new dress nearly every day, was out and away more beggared than I; for
so far as I was concerned there was always the barque’s slop chest to
come upon; or, failing that, there would be jackets and breeches and
‘housewives’ enough forward to serve my turn if the push grew severe;
whereas Miss Temple was as badly off as if she had been cast away upon
a desert island!




CHAPTER XXVI

I AM QUESTIONED


The captain did not again return on deck. At six o’clock Mr. Lush’s
white jacket was forked up to him through the forecastle hatch: he
slipped it on and came aft to relieve the watch; but though he looked
about a little for the skipper, I could not find in his wooden face
that he made anything of not perceiving him. By seven o’clock the sky
had cleared; the wide stretch of vapour which had all day long obscured
the sky had settled away down beyond the southern rim, and the soft
violet of the tropic evening heaven was made beautiful by spaces at
wide intervals of a delicate filigree-work of white cloud, dainty and
fine to the eye as frost on a meadow. The setting sun glowed in the
west like a golden target, rayless, palpitating, and a cone-shaped wake
of flame hung under him. There was a pleasant whipping of wind over the
sea, a merry air that whitened the heads of the ripples, and it blew
sweet and warm.

Lush had loosed the skysails again and sent the royal studdingsails
up, and the barque went nimbly floating through it in the resemblance
of some golden-tinctured fabric of silver hull and sails of cloth of
silver; indeed, from the point of view of the space of deck abaft the
wheel, she showed like some fairy creation in that atmosphere that was
brimful of scarlet light, and upon that sapphire plain whose tender
long-drawn undulations seemed to wave a faint golden hue through, the
blue of the brine, as though there were dyes of a westering sun-colour
rising from the heart of the deep, and then subsiding.

On looking through the skylight I perceived Wilkins placing supper
on the table. This was an unusual meal at sea, at least aboard of a
homely trader of the pattern of the _Lady Blanche_, and was a distinct
illustration in its way, to my recollections of seafaring life, of the
odd character of the man who commanded the barque. He came out of his
cabin as we seated ourselves, giving Miss Temple a grotesque bow before
taking his place.

‘Sorry, mem,’ said he, casting his slow eye over the table, ‘that
there’s nothing choicer in the way of victuals to offer you. I find
that the wine brought aboard from the wreck is a middling good quality
of liquor, and it is to be saved for you, mem. Wilkins, open a bottle,
and give it to the lady. Pity that shore-going folks who take interest
in the nautical calling don’t turn to and invent something better for
the likes of me than salt pork and beef and biscuit, and peas which
are only fit to load a blunderbuss with. There have been times when a
singular longing’s come upon me for a cut of prime sirloin and a floury
potato, as Jack says. But the sea-life’s a hard calling, look at it
from which end of the ship ye may. How did you get on in your watch on
deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ he added with a gaunt smile, in which I could not
distinguish the least complexion of mirth.

‘There was nothing to be done,’ said I, working away at a piece of salt
beef, for I was exceedingly hungry.

‘But ye’d have known what to do if there had been?’ said he.

Miss Temple’s glance admonished me to be wary.

‘Oh, I am no sailor,’ said I, ‘in the sense that you and Mr. Lush are
sailors.’

‘Not Mr. Lush!’ he cried, elevating his forefinger and staring hard
at me past it. ‘Mr. Lush, as you term him, is a hog on two legs. Let
him go on all fours, and there’s ne’er an old sow under a longboat
that wouldn’t take him to her heart as one of her long-lost children.
Such manners, mem!’ he continued, addressing Miss Temple, whilst with
upturned eyes and raised hands he counterfeited an air of disgust;
‘when he ate, you could hear the smack of his lips fore and aft. He’d
make nothing of laying hold of a bit of cold beef and gnawing upon it
as a dawg might, head first on one side and then on t’other; and you’d
find yourself listening to hear him growl, if you looked at him. And
then his language! I’ve been eating by myself pretty nigh since Chicken
died, but it’s entertainment for me to have company;’ and he bestowed
another bow upon each of us.

‘You will not find the manners of a nobleman in a plain ship’s
carpenter,’ said I, thankful to believe that he had forgotten the
subject of my sea-going qualifications. But I was mistaken. He gazed
at me with a steadfastness that was absolutely confusing, whilst he
seemed lost in deep thought, then said:

‘I’m not going to regard you, Mr. Dugdale, as a tip-top sailor, of
course. Ye’ve knocked off too long; but it’ll all come back very soon.’

‘Mr. Dugdale was at sea for only two years,’ said Miss Temple. ‘It
would be unreasonable to expect anyone to know much of a calling in
that time.’

‘Don’t you believe _that_, mem,’ he exclaimed. ‘After twelve months
of it, there was but little left for me to larn--proper, I mean, to
fit me to sarve as able seaman aboard anything afloat, from a hoy to a
line-of-battle ship. What don’t ye know now, Mr. Dugdale?’

He somewhat softened his voice as he said this, and a queer sort of
yearning expression entered his unwinking stare.

‘Oh, much, captain, much,’ I answered smiling, yet feeling somewhat
bothered betwixt these questions and Miss Temple’s glances.

‘You could put a ship about, I suppose.’

‘Well, I might do that,’ I replied; ‘but there would be a chance of my
getting her into irons, though.’

‘You’d be able to know when to shorten sail anyway, and what orders to
give. You told me ye could take a star?’

‘Did I?’ I exclaimed.

‘Certainly you did, sir,’ he cried.

‘I do not recollect,’ said Miss Temple.

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, with another of his mirthless grins, ‘the lady’s
afraid of your knowing too much, sir. I don’t mean no offence, but
there’s a forecastle saying that all the male monkeys ’ud talk if it
wasn’t for their sweethearts, who advise them to hold their jaw lest
they should be put upon.’

Miss Temple’s face changed into stone, after one withering glance at
the man, whose countenance remained distorted with a smile.

‘Some of Jack’s sayings are first class,’ he went on. ‘Yes, ye told me
you could take a star. Can you find the latitude by double altitudes?’

‘A few trials would recall the trick, I daresay,’ I answered.

‘And of course you know how to find the longitude by lunar
observations?’

‘Pray excuse me, Captain Braine,’ said I; ‘but what, may I inquire, is
your motive in asking these questions?’

He eyed me fixedly for some moments, and then silently nodded his head
three or four times. Miss Temple seemed to shrink slightly as she
watched him.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ said he very slowly, ‘on your giving me to understand
that you had sarved aboard an Indiaman, I was willing to receive you
and the lady aboard my ship. When you came aboard, you told me that you
understood navigation. Didn’t ye?’

I felt the blood in my cheek as I answered: ‘I have some recollection
of speaking to that effect.’

‘Then why d’ye want to go and try to make out _now_ that ye know
nothing about it?’

‘I am trying to do nothing of the kind,’ said I, assuming an air of
dignity and resentment, though I feared it was good for very little.
‘You have questioned me, sir, and now I ask _you_ a question. I have
a right to an answer, seeing how you expect that I should rapidly and
fluently reply to you.’

‘I’ll be talking to you afore long,’ he said, bestowing another
succession of dark mysterious nods upon me.

‘Captain Braine,’ cried Miss Temple, breaking with an air of
consternation out of the cold, contemptuous resentment that had made
marble of her face, ‘you have rescued us from a condition of dreadful
distress, and I have your promise that you will not lose an opportunity
to transfer us to the first ship you meet that is homeward bound,
providing we do not shortly fall in with the _Countess Ida_.’

‘I ha’n’t broke my promise yet, have I?’ he replied, rounding slowly
upon her and staring.

‘I can only repeat,’ she continued, preserving her expression of
dismay, ‘that any sum of money you may choose to ask’----

‘I know all about that, mem,’ he interrupted, but not offensively, and
with a gesture that was almost bland. He then leisurely turned to me.
‘You gave me to believe this morning, sir, that you was acquainted with
navigation?’

‘And what then?’ I exclaimed impatiently.

‘I hope that you didn’t deceive me,’ he said with a dark look.

‘You shall have the full truth when I know your motive in examining me
in this fashion,’ said I hotly, ‘and not before.’

But immediately after I had spoken I was sensible of my folly in losing
my temper. Talk as we might, vapour as we would, we were in this man’s
power: in the power of a man who was absolutely unintelligible as a
character whether sane or mad, and the girl’s and my own safety might
wholly depend upon our judgment and tact. He gazed at me with eyes
whose expression seemed to grow more and more malignant, though, God
knows, this might have been my fancy, since I was in the humour at the
moment to figure all things very blackly.

‘Understand me,’ I exclaimed, wholly changing my manner, and speaking
in a softened tone; ‘if I can be of service to you in any direction,
you have but to command me. I owe you my own and this lady’s life; and
though it is an obligation beyond my power of discharging in full, yet
it must be my duty and happiness to diminish it in any direction I am
equal to.’

‘We will before long talk together, sir,’ said he, and then fell
silent, nor did he again open his lips during the seven or eight
minutes in which we continued sitting together at that table.

I was exceedingly puzzled and troubled by what had passed. What did
this captain mean by his dark mysterious nods, by his saying that he
would talk to me presently, by his insistence in ascertaining the
extent of my nautical knowledge? It was possible, indeed, that being
the only navigator aboard his vessel, he might consider himself in
serious need of some one to take his place if he should fall sick. But
his behaviour was scarcely reconcilable with this plain clear want, and
it seemed certain that there was more going to his speech and manner
than the desire that I should fill the part of mate to him.

It was a fair, warm, delightful night, rich with stars, and soothing
with the dew-sweetened wind that blew with steady freshness over the
quarter, running the pale shape of the barque over the dark waters,
as though she were some wreath of mist that must presently dissolve.
Miss Temple and I, sometimes walking, sometimes sitting on the
skylight, held to the deck till a late hour. She abhorred the thought
of withdrawing to the cabin allotted to her; and short as my sleep
had been since the hour of my quitting the Indiaman’s side, I was as
little willing as she to quit the silence and coolness and beauty of
the open night for the confinement of a small hot berth.

The captain had charge of the deck from eight to twelve; but he only
once approached us to say that a lantern containing an end of candle
had been placed in each of our berths; ‘and I will ask you both,’ he
added, ‘to mind your fire, for we’re full up with dry light goods in
the steerage.’ He then returned to the side of the deck he had crossed
from, and did not again offer to approach us.

You will suppose that the girl and I could talk of nothing but the
captain’s intentions, the probable condition of his intellect, and the
like.

‘He may refuse to part with me,’ said I, ‘and yet be perfectly willing
to send you on board of the first homeward-bound ship we sight. What
then, Miss Temple?’

‘I could not travel alone. It is not endurable that such a man as
Captain Braine should compel you, against your wishes, to remain with
him! How could he do so? How could he compel you to take a star, as
he calls it, whatever that may mean; and to keep watch?’ She sighed
deeply. ‘Alas! my language is fast becoming that of the common sailor.
To think of me talking to you about taking a star and keeping watch!’

‘And why not? Jack’s is a noble tongue. Omit the oaths, and there is no
dialect more swelling and poetic than that of the sea.’

‘I detest it because it is forced upon me. An odious and dreadful
experience obliges me to think and speak in it. Otherwise, I might
rather like it. But tell me now, Mr. Dugdale, surely this captain could
not compel you to remain with him?’

This led to a deal of talk. I did my utmost to reassure her; I exhorted
her to bear in mind that whilst we were on board the barque, we were
literally at the mercy of the skipper, who, down to the present moment,
had certainly treated us with great humanity, though his behaviour
and conversation in the main were undeniably of a lunatic sort. I
bitterly condemned myself for losing my temper, and I entreated her
to be patient, to control all resentment that the man might excite by
purposed or involuntary insult, not to doubt that he would put her on
board a ship proceeding home, and to leave me to play a part of my own
that should keep us together.

‘For,’ said I, ‘since fate, cruel to you, but not to me, Miss Temple,
has placed you so far in my keeping, I must be jealous of all
interference down to the very termination of our adventure.’

‘I wish for no other companion,’ she exclaimed in a low voice; ‘my
mother will thank you, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘And, please God, your mother shall,’ said I, ‘trifling as may be my
claims upon her gratitude. But however my merits may turn out before we
again sight Old England, I shall be abundantly satisfied if I believe
that you think of me with more kindness than you did on board the
_Countess Ida_.’

‘Mr. Dugdale, I thought of no one on board the _Countess Ida_. But let
us avoid that subject--you have already been very plain-spoken.’

She ceased. I made no answer, and for some time we paced the deck in
silence, harking then back again to the old topic of the captain’s
intentions, the whereabouts of the Indiaman, and so on, and so on.
By-and-by I looked at my watch; the dial-plate showed clearly by the
starlight. It was eleven o’clock; and as I looked the ship’s bell
rang out six chimes, which came floating down again in echoes out of
the tremorless pallid concavities on high. Miss Temple was still most
reluctant to leave the deck.

‘I am thinking of Mr. Chicken,’ she exclaimed.

‘Chicken’s ghost, like a hen’s egg, is laid,’ said I. ‘Besides, what
remains of him will be all about my bunk.’

‘Oh for the Indiaman’s saloon,’ she cried, ‘for my dear aunt, for
old Captain Keeling! How welcome would be a sight of even the most
intolerable of the passengers, say Mr. Johnson; even that horrid little
creature with the eye-glass, Miss Hudson’s admirer.’

‘I fear I am tolerated for the same reason that would render Mr.
Johnson endurable to you.’

‘No!’ she answered quickly and warmly; ‘you are incessantly personal. I
do not like it.’

‘Suffer me to escort you to your cabin?’

She lingered yet, turning her face to the skies.

‘How rich are those stars! Such lovely jewels are never to be seen in
the English heavens. Mark how the meteors score the dark spaces between
the lights with scars and paths of diamond dust! Oh that some gigantic
shadowy finger would shape itself up there pointing downwards, to let
us know where the _Countess Ida_ is.’

She rose from the skylight with a long tremulous sigh, and passed her
hand through my arm that I might conduct her below. For an instant I
hung in the wind.

‘Why do you wait? I am now ready,’ said she.

‘I am debating within myself whether I should offer to stand watch
to-night--the captain might expect me to do so.’

‘I do believe you desire that I should think you as mad as he is,’ she
exclaimed, exerting pressure enough on my arm to start me towards the
poop-ladder; ‘you shall do nothing of the sort with my consent. If you
wish to resume your old vocation, Mr. Dugdale, pray wait until this
adventure is ended.’

‘Anyway, we must bid him good-night,’ said I; and with that I called
out to him. He answered: ‘Good-night, Mr. Dugdale; good-night to you,
mem. If there’s anything a-missing which the _Lady Blanche_ can supply
let me know, and you shall have it.’

‘You’re extremely good, and we’re very much obliged to you,’ said I.

‘Good-night, Captain Braine,’ called Miss Temple in her rich voice; and
down we went.

The cabin lamp showed a small light. Miss Temple waited here whilst I
went below for one of the two lanterns which the captain had told me
I should find in our berths. I was obliged to kindle a sulphur match,
and I remember cursing the tardy operation of obtaining a light whilst
I stood hammering away with flint and steel, injuring my knuckles, and
wishing the tinder-box at the deuce. I found the lanterns, and left one
alight in Miss Temple’s cabin, and carried my own, also alight, into
the cuddy. Miss Temple’s eyes sparkled to the glare as I approached
her, and her face might have been a spirit’s for its whiteness in that
faint illumination vexed with shadows as the lantern swayed to the
light rolling of the barque.

‘I wish I could sleep here,’ said she.

‘You will be equally comfortable below,’ said I; ‘and what is better,
quite private.’

‘Did you see any rats?’

‘None.’

She took my arm with a firm clasp, and hardly seemed willing to release
me at the hatch, though the aperture was too narrow to admit of our
descending together. When we had gained the lower deck, she again
seized my arm and stood staring and hearkening.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, ‘it is very lonely down here!’

‘Yes; but you are not alone. You must have courage. I would rather you
should be next me than overhead next the captain.’

Yet, as I spoke, my heart was full of pity for her. It was indeed
lonely, as she had said, with a sense of imprisonment besides, all that
way down, thinking of where we stood, I mean, with reference to the
poop. The stowed cases in the forepart seemed to stir as though to some
internal throes to the weak light that swung in my hand; the atmosphere
was charged with an unpleasant smell of cargo and the mingled fumes
of a ship’s hold; and there was something of the heat of an oven also
in the air that felt to rest with a sort of weight upon the head, due
perhaps to the fancy begotten by the nearness of the upper deck or
ceiling as you may term it. Small straining noises stole upon the ear
from round about in stealthy notes, as though they were giants below
moving warily. I say I was full of concern for the poor girl. Somehow
the misery of her condition had not before affected me as it now did.

‘It will not last long. It will be a thing of the past very shortly:
meanwhile, keep up your heart, and trust me as your protector whilst
God leaves me a hand to lift,’ I exclaimed with a tenderness of which
I was insensible until a little later on, when the tones of my voice
recurred to me in memory.

She looked at me as though she were about to speak, yet said nothing;
and releasing my arm, she stepped to her cabin door and peeped in.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ said I, keeping at a respectful distance.

She peered awhile, and then answered: ‘I think not. But that candle
will not last long, and I shall be in darkness. Or if I should
extinguish it, how am I to light it again?’

‘If you want a light,’ said I, ‘knock on the bulkhead. I shall hear
you, and will answer by knocking. But it already draws on for twelve
o’clock. The dawn will be breaking at five or thereabouts. I trust you
will sleep. You greatly need rest.’

I removed my cap to kiss her hand, and met her gaze, that was fixed
full of wistfulness upon me. ‘Good-night, Miss Temple,’ said I. She
entered her cabin looking as though her heart was too full for speech,
and closed the door.

I was now feeling exceedingly weary, yet, as I feared that she might
need me, or, in some nervous fit, knock if it were but to know that
I was awake, I filled my pipe, got into Mr. Chicken’s bunk, and sat
smoking. I cannot express the peculiar character of the stillness down
here. It was very extraordinarily accentuated by the sounds which at
intervals penetrated it: such as the muffled jar of the rudder working
upon its post, the dim wash of water, startlingly close at hand, along
with the faint seething noise of the barque’s wake hissing within arm’s
reach, as it seemed, and coming and going upon the hearing fitfully.
The suit of oilskins against the bulkhead swayed to the heave of the
fabric, and they resembled the body of a man who had hanged himself by
the nail from which they dangled. There was a pair of sea-boots up in
a corner with a dropsical bulging out about the foot of them in the
part where a man’s bunions would come, and they showed so very much as
if they had just been drawn off the legs of Mr. Chicken, that they grew
ghastly presently, and to relieve my imagination, I directed my eyes at
other objects.

I sat smoking and full of thought. My eyelids were as of lead, yet my
mind continued impertinently active. The horrors we had escaped from
lay like the shadow of a thundercloud upon my spirits; the oppression
was too violent to suffer the continuance of any emotion of exultation
over our deliverance. Dark and dismal fancies possessed me. I thought
of Captain Braine as a man whose reason was unsound, and who was
capable of playing me some devilish trick; I thought of the coarse
and surly carpenter, and of the charge of murder hinted against him
by the skipper. I thought of the convicts and of the mutineer in the
forecastle, and then my raven-like imagination going to Miss Temple,
I reflected that I was unarmed, that I had no weapon about me but a
knife, that must prove of very little use should it come to my having
to make a fight of it for hers and my own life. Surely, I mused,
old Chicken will not have come to sea without some instrument of
self-defence, be it blunderbuss, pistol, or cutlass.

I took an earnest view of the interior. There was a locker against the
bulkhead that divided Miss Temple’s cabin from mine; I had incuriously
opened and looked into it when searching for something to divert
ourselves with, being by the time I had come to that locker too tired
to continue overhauling the dead man’s effects. Besides this receptacle
there were two chests of clothes and other matters along with a bagful
of things, and a shelf over the bunk filled with odds and ends. There
was still about an hour of candle-light in the lantern. I raised the
lid of the locker, and found within a truly miscellaneous ‘raffle’ of
objects, as a sailor would term it: charts, slippers, sextant in case,
a number of tobacco pipes, bundles of papers, and I know not what
besides. At the bottom, in the left-hand corner, was a small canvas bag
very weighty for its size. I drew it out, and found about forty pounds
in gold inside it, with three Australian one-pound notes, dark with
thumbing and pocketing, and a five-pound note scarcely distinguishable
for dirt and creases. I replaced the bag; and coming to the other end
of the locker, working my way to it through a very rag-and-bottle shop
of queer gatherings, I met with the object that I was longing for: to
wit, a heavy, long, double-barrelled pistol, with a couple of nipples
and a ramrod, and a butt massive enough to bring an ox to earth with.
There were a parcel of bullets, and a small brown powder-flask full in
the piece of canvas in which the pistol was wrapped; but for some time
I could not find any caps. Without them, the pistol would not be of the
least use, and my satisfaction yielded to mortification as I continued
to probe into the locker without result. I was about to abandon the
quest in despair, when my fingers touched a circular metal box like to
those which used to contain paste for the polishing of boots; I fished
it up, and was mighty glad to find it filled with caps. Come, thought
I, if difficulties are to happen, I am better off now than I was half
an hour ago, anyhow.

All this time there had been no noise next door, and I could but hope
that Miss Temple was sleeping. I carefully put the pistol and its
little furniture into the foot of my bunk, and pulling off my coat
and waistcoat, and removing my shoes, I vaulted on to Mr; Chicken’s
mattress, blew out the candle in the lantern and stretched my length.
It was hard upon two o’clock, however, before I fell asleep. The
scuttle or porthole was abreast of the bunk, and the black disc of it
framed the low-lying stars of the horizon as they slided up and down
to the lift and fall of the hull. My thoughts went out to the great
dark ocean, and shivers chased me, hot as the cabin was, as I lay
reflecting upon the fire and explosion of the wreck, and upon how it
would have been with us if Captain Braine, having taken a view of the
hull, had proceeded and left us to our fate. The noises which violated
the singular stillness down in that part of the ship where we lay, and
which had rendered me somewhat uneasy at first, now proved lulling
as I lay hearkening to them, growing drowsier and drowsier. There
was a slumberous monotony in the creaking and jarring of the rudder,
something soothing in the dim hissing of the wake dying out, and then
seething afresh like the noise of champagne in a glass held to the
ear, as the frame of the barque slightly soared and sank in delicate
floating movements upon the under-run of the dark swell. Perhaps by
this time to-morrow we may be aboard a ship homeward-bound, I remember
thinking: and that was the last of my thoughts that night, for I
immediately afterwards sank into a sound sleep.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE BRIG’S LONGBOAT


I was awakened by a knocking at the door. The little cabin was bright
with sunshine, that was flashing off sea and sky upon the thick glass
of the scuttle. ‘Hallo!’ I cried, ‘who is that?’ The voice of the young
fellow Wilkins responded:

‘Capt’n Braine’s compliments, sir, and he’d be glad to know if there’s
anything you or the lady wants which it’s in his power to supply ye
with?’

I got out of the bunk and opened the door.

‘Captain Braine is very kind,’ said I to the veal-faced youth, who
stood staring at me with faint eyes under his white lashes and brows.
‘What time is it, Wilkins?’

‘Half-past eight, sir,’ he answered.

I knocked upon the bulkhead. ‘Are you awake, Miss Temple?’

‘Oh yes,’ she answered, her voice sounding weak through the partition.

‘Captain Braine wishes to know if you are in want of anything it is in
his power to let you have?’

‘There are many things I want,’ she exclaimed; ‘but they are not to
be had, I fear. I am afraid I shall have to use that comb. I can do
nothing with my hair, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘All right, Wilkins,’ said I; ‘we shall be on deck in a few minutes.’
He went away.

I found the comb that had belonged to Mr. Chicken on a shelf, and
knocked on Miss Temple’s door. She opened it, and an arm of snow, of
faultless shape, was projected to receive the comb. ‘Thank you,’ said
she, whipping the door to, and I entered my cabin, calling out that I
would wait for her there till she was ready.

Happily, in respect of toilet conveniences we were not wholly
destitute. The water in my can was indeed salt, but I contrived to get
some show of lather out of the fragment of marine soap which I found
inside of the tin dish that served me as a wash-basin. I was without
Miss Temple’s scrupulosity, and found old Chicken’s hairbrush good
enough to flourish. There was a little parcel of razors, too, on
the shelf where the comb had been, and with one of them I made shift
to scrape my cheeks into some sort of smoothness, wholly by dint of
feeling, for Miss Temple had Chicken’s glass, and there was nothing in
my cabin to reflect my countenance. By the time this little business
was ended, and I had carefully concealed the pistol and powder-flask,
Miss Temple was ready. She knocked on my door, and I stepped out.

I could see her but very imperfectly in the dim light of that steerage,
yet it seemed to me that there was more vivacity in her eyes, more life
in her carriage and air, than I had witnessed in her on the yesterday.
She told me that she had slept soundly, and that her mattress was as
comfortable as her bed aboard the _Countess Ida_.

‘I am heartily glad to hear that,’ said I. ‘You found the marine soap
tough, I fear?’

‘It cannot be good for the complexion, I should think,’ said she with a
slight smile.

‘How shocking,’ I exclaimed, as we moved to the hatch, ‘would such a
situation as yours be to a young lady who is dependent for her beauty
on cosmetics and powder! How would Miss Hudson manage if she were here,
I wonder?’

‘Is there anything in sight, do you know, Mr. Dugdale? That is a more
important subject to me than complexions.’

‘I did not ask; but we will find out.’

It was a brilliant morning, a wide blue, blinding flash of day, as it
seemed to my eyes after the gloom below. The sea was all on fire under
the sun, and the wind held it trembling gloriously. A hot and sparkling
breeze in the same old quarter gushed freshly into the wide expanded
wings of the _Lady Blanche_, whose swift pace over the smooth plain of
ocean seemed a sort of miracle of sailing to me when I contrasted it
with the rate of going of the _Countess Ida_. The flying-fish in scores
sparkled out from the barque’s white sides. The foam came along her
sheathing like a roll of cotton-wool to her wake. The ocean line ran
round in a firm edge with an opalescent clarification of the extreme
rim that gave the far-off confines a look of crystal.

But I had not stood longer than a minute gazing around me when I spied
a gleam of canvas about a point on our weather-bow. I saw it under the
curve of the fore-course that lay plain in sight under the lifted clew
of the mainsail.

‘A sail, Miss Temple.’

‘Where?’ she cried, with her manner full of fever on the instant. I
pointed. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, bringing her hands together, ‘if it
should be the Indiaman!’

But the captain was walking aft, and it was time to salute him.

‘Good morning, sir,’ I said as I approached him with Miss Temple at my
side. ‘We have paused a moment to admire this very beautiful morning. I
perceive a sail right ahead, captain.’

It was a part of his destiny, I suppose, that he should stare hard at
those who accosted him before answering. He carried his unwinking dead
black eye from my companion to me, and then stepped out of the shell of
his mood of meditation as a bird might be hatched.

‘Hope you slept pretty comfortably?’

‘Yes; I passed a good night; and I am happy to know that Miss Temple
rested well.’

‘Which way is that ship going?’ cried the girl, whose cheeks were
flushed with impatience.

‘She is not a ship, mem,’ he answered; ‘she is seemingly a big boat
that’s blowing along the same road as ourselves under a lug.’

The telescope lay on the skylight, and I pointed it. Sure enough, the
sail was no ship, as I had first imagined, though the white square
hovering upon the horizon exactly resembled the canvas of a large
craft slowly climbing up the sea. I could readily distinguish a boat,
apparently a ship’s longboat, running before the wind under a lugsail;
but she was as yet too distant to enable me to make out the figures of
people aboard, considerable as were the magnifying powers of the glass
I levelled at her.

‘Only a boat?’ cried Miss Temple, in accents of keen disappointment.

‘What will a craft of that sort be doing in the middle of this wide
sea?’ said I.

‘She may have gone adrift, as you did,’ answered Captain Braine.

‘Is it imaginable that she should be the corvette’s cutter?’ cried Miss
Temple, straining her fine eyes, impassioned with conflicting emotion,
at the object ahead.

‘Oh, no,’ said I. ‘First of all, the cutter had no sail; next, yonder
boat is three or four times bigger than she was; and then, even if she
had a sail, I question if she could have run all this distance in the
time from the spot she started from.’

I noticed whilst I spoke that Captain Braine watched me with a singular
expression, and that his face slightly changed as to an emotion of
relief when I had concluded my answer.

‘The lady,’ said he, ‘is speaking of the man-of-war cutter that rowed
ye aboard the wreck, and lost ye there?’

‘Yes,’ said I.

‘How many of a crew?’ he asked.

‘Six men and a lieutenant; but the officer was drowned.’

He took the telescope from me, and brought it to bear upon the little
sail over the bow, and kept it levelled for some moments. He then put
the glass down and said: ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘Not yet,’ I answered.

He called through the skylight to Wilkins, and told him to put some
biscuit and tea and cold meat upon the table. ‘I have made my meal,’
said he, contriving one of his extraordinary bows as he addressed Miss
Temple; ‘and so, I hope, mem, you’ll excuse my presence below. Eat
hearty, both of ye, I beg. There’s no call to stint yourselves, and I’m
sorry I can’t put anything more tempting afore ye, as Jack says.’

We at once descended, both of us being anxious to get the meal, such as
it might be, over.

‘Why is he repeatedly saying, “as Jack says?”’ asked Miss Temple.

‘Ah!’ I exclaimed,‘and why does he stare so? Yet, on my word, he seems
an exceedingly good-natured fellow. I assure you we might have fallen
into worse hands. No man could make a homeward-bound ship to rise up
out of the sea or signal our whereabouts to the _Countess Ida_ when she
is leagues and leagues out of sight; but another captain might not have
shown half the friendly concern this poor eccentric creature exhibits
in our comfort.’

She agreed with me, but quickly dropped the subject as something
distasteful, and spoke of her disappointment, and of the strangeness of
meeting a small boat in the middle of such an ocean as we were sailing
through. By some trick above my comprehension, she had contrived to
smooth out her dress, insomuch that a deal of its castaway aspect had
left it. She had also manœuvred in some fashion with the feather in her
hat; and I told her, as she sat opposite me, that she looked as fresh
as though she had just left her cabin in the Indiaman.

‘Youth must always triumph,’ I said, ‘if it be but fairly treated.
Sleep has made your former self dominant again: but I will reserve all
my compliments until I am able to pull my hat off to you ashore and say
good-bye.’

She shot a glance at me under her long fringes, but held her peace.

The tea was so vile that I called to Wilkins, who stood on the
quarter-deck, to procure us some coffee if there were any aboard; and
in a few minutes he returned with a sailor’s hook-pot full of it from
the galley. This Miss Temple seemed able to sip without a face of
aversion. It vexed me to see her imperilling her delicate white teeth
with the hard fare that was sheer forecastle stuff, and bad at that;
but it was not for me to give orders, nor was I willing to protract our
sitting by inquiring if there was other food aboard. Besides, every
hour in such weather as this might provide us with the opportunity we
hungered for, to escape into some homeward-bound ship with a cabin
capable of affording endurable entertainment.

We rose from the table, and regained the deck. The moment my head
showed above the companion-way, the captain called to me hastily. There
was a look of disorder in his countenance that immediately excited my
wonder; there was the alacrity of fear in his manner; he could address
me now without a prolonged stare and his usual tardy emergence of mind.

‘Please, take this glass,’ said he, thrusting the telescope into my
hand; ‘and look at that there boat, and tell me what you think.’

The smooth, swift sliding of the _Lady Blanche_ over the level surface
of sea that was running in fire and foam lines to the brushing of
the merry breeze and the sparkling of the soaring sun, had closed us
rapidly with the boat ahead since Miss Temple and I left the deck.
The little fabric was now scarcely more than a mile on the bow, and
the captain’s glass, when I put it to my eye, brought her as close
to me as if she were no further off than our forecastle. She was a
large, carvel-built longboat; one of those round-bowed, broad-beamed
structures which in the olden days used to stand in chocks betwixt a
ship’s foremast and galley, with often another boat stored inside of
her, unless she was used to keep sheep or other live-stock in. She was
deep in the water, and as much of her hull as was visible was of a
dingy sallow white. She showed a broad square of dark old lug, before
which she was running with some show of nimbleness. She seemed to
be crowded with men, and even whilst I stood looking at her through
the glass, I counted no less than twenty-seven persons. They were
all looking our way, and though it was scarcely possible to define
individual faces amid such a yellow huddle of countenances, I could
yet manage to determine a prevailing piratic expression of the true
sort, suggested not so much by the vagueness of swarthy cheek and
shaggy brow as by the singularity of the fellows’ apparel--the flapping
sombrero, the red sash, the blue shirt, with other details--which but
very faintly corresponded indeed with one’s notion of the coarse homely
attire of the merchant sailor.

Captain Braine’s eyes were fixed upon me as I turned to him. ‘What do
you think of her, sir?’ said he.

‘I don’t like the look of those fellows at all,’ I answered. ‘I would
not mind making a bet that they are a portion of the crew of the
privateering brig from whose hull you rescued us yesterday morning.’

‘Just the idea that occurred to me,’ he cried. He levelled the glass
again. ‘A boatful of rascals, sir. Armed to the teeth, I daresay, and
on the lookout for some such a vessel as mine to seize and get away
back to their own waters in. And yet, it is awful, too, to think that
the creatures may be in want of water. What’s to be done? I can’t allow
them to board: and I’m not going to heave to, to give ’em a chance of
doing so.’

‘We’re overhauling them fast,’ said I. ‘Best plan perhaps, captain,
will be to hail them as we slide past and ascertain their wants, if we
can understand their lingo; and if they need water, there’s nothing
to be done but to send some adrift for them to pick up. But for God’s
sake, sir, don’t let them come aboard. They look as devilish a lot of
cut-throats as ever I saw; and besides the safety of our lives and of
the ship, we have this lady to consider.’

Captain Braine listened to me with his eyes fixed upon the boat.

‘She can’t hook on at this,’ said he, as if thinking aloud; ‘we should
tow her under water at such a pace. By heavens,’ he shouted, with a
wild look coming into his face, ‘if she attempts to sheer alongside,
I’ll give her the stem!’ and springing with the agility of a monkey
upon the rail, he grasped a backstay, and stood in a posture for
hailing the boat as we swept past.

Forward, the seamen had quitted the jobs they were upon, and were
staring open-mouthed from the forecastle rail. I picked up the glass
again to look at the crowd, and every face in the lens was now as
distinct as Miss Temple’s who stood beside me. An uglier, more
ferocious-looking set of men never stepped the deck of a picaroon.
I had not the least doubt whatever that they were a portion of the
crew of the brig. Indeed, I seemed to have some recollection of the
boat, for I remembered, whilst examining the brig from the poop of the
Indiaman, that I had been struck by the unusual size of her longboat,
and that the colour of her was the sallow pea-soup tint of the fabric
yonder. There were several chocolate-coloured faces amongst the little
crowd; here and there, a coal-black countenance with a frequent glitter
of earrings and gleam of greasy ringlets. Many of them eyed us over
the low gunwale under the sharp of their hands; one stood erect on
the thwart through which the mast was stepped, clasping the spar with
his arm, and apparently waiting to hail us. The steersman watched us
continuously, and now and again the boat’s head would slightly fall off
to a sneaking movement of the helm, as though to some notion of edging
down upon us without attracting our observation. But the barque’s keen
stem was ripping through the water as the jaws of a pair of shears
drive through a length of sailcloth. I had no fear of the boat hooking
on; she would have to manœuvre under our bows to do that, and it needed
but a little twirl of the spokes of our wheel to drive her into staves
and to send her people bobbing and drowning into our wake.

‘Boat ahoy!’ shouted the captain with such delivery of voice as I
should have thought impossible in so narrow shouldered a man.

‘Yash! yash!’ vociferated the fellow who clasped the mast, frantically
brandishing his arms. ‘Ve are sheepwreck--you veel take us--ve starve!’

The captain looked and hardly seemed to know what to say.

‘How long have you been adrift?’ he bawled.

The fellow, who wore a red nightcap, shook it till the tassel danced to
the violent gestures of his head. He evidently did not understand the
question. ‘Take us!’ he shrieked;--‘ve starve!’

The boat was now on the bow, within pistol-shot from the forecastle
rail.

‘Mind your helm, Captain Braine,’ I suddenly shouted, ‘or she’ll be
aboard you!’ for my young and, in those days, keen eyes had marked the
action of the fellow who steered the boat, and even as I bawled out,
the head of the little fabric swept round with a fellow in the bows
flourishing a boathook, to which was attached a length of line, and
others standing by ready to help him when he should have hooked on.

‘Steady as she goes!’ cried Captain Braine.

‘Oh Mr. Dugdale,’ shrieked Miss Temple, ‘they will get on board of us!’

The boat’s head drove sheering alongside into our bow just forward of
the fore-chain plates. I saw the fellow erect in her head fork out his
boathook to catch hold.

‘Let go!’ roared a voice forward. The figure of Joe Wetherly overhung
the rail, poising either an iron marline-spike or a belaying-pin, or
some short bar of metal; this I saw. Then he hurled it at the moment
that the boathook had caught a plate. The missile struck the man full
on the head; he fell like a statue in the bottom of the boat, and the
boat herself ground past us as the barque, to the impulse of her great
overhanging squares of studdingsail, swept onwards at some seven or
eight knots in the hour.

They were so crowded as to be in one another’s road. I saw a dozen
grimy paws extended to catch hold of the main-chain plates as the
boat came bruising and groaning and washing past; but the iron bars
were swept like smoke out of the wretches’ frantic grip. Never shall
I forget the picture the little fabric offered in the swift glimpse
I caught of her as she glided past. The crowd, in their desperate
efforts to catch hold of the sweeping projections in the barque’s side,
squirmed and surged and rose and fell like rags of meat stirred up
in a boiling stewpot. Their cries, their yells, their Spanish oaths,
the brandishings of their arms, the fury expressed in their malignant
faces, the sudden uprootal and crash of their one mast and sail by the
fouling of it with our mainbrace, all combine into a memory which is
not to be expressed in words. I caught sight of a number of breakers
in the bottom of the boat along with some bags, and was instinctively
assured that they were lacking in neither food nor water. As the boat
sped under the rail on which Captain Braine was standing, the fellow
who had been at her helm, a brawny mulatto in a wide straw-hat, loose
red shirt, and naked feet, suddenly whipped a pistol out of his breast,
took aim at the skipper, and fired; and then, in a breath or two, the
craft was astern, tumbling in the seething white of our wake, lessening
into a toy even as you looked, with half of her people getting the
wreck of mast and rail inboard, and the rest of them furiously
gesticulating at us.

Captain Braine stood on the rail watching them with an air of musing
that was incredibly odd in the face of the wild excitement of the
moment.

‘Are you hurt?’ I cried.

He turned slowly to survey me, then very leisurely dismounted from his
perch, meanwhile continuing to gaze at me.

‘No,’ said he, after an interval during which I ran my eyes over him
with anxiety, thinking to see blood or to behold him suddenly fall;
‘it’s all right. This is the fourth time I’ve been shot at in my
life; and be my end what it will, it is certain I am not to perish by
another man’s bullet. Rogues all, ha!’ he continued, directing his dead
black vision at the boat astern; ‘they would have carried the little
_Blanche_, and slit our throats. Just the sort of ship, sir, for the
likes of their trade: the heels of a racehorse and the sober look of
the honest marchantman. Slit our throats; all saving _yours_, mem, I
expect; but only to reserve ye for something worse than death to you,
if your noble looks don’t belie your taste.’

‘They never could have held on with that boathook,’ said I, struck more
by the man’s manner than his speech, strange as it was. ‘I suppose
they hoped to cling long enough to chuck a few of their beauties aboard
us. Well, Miss Temple, let us trust that we have now seen the very last
of that confounded privateer brig and the gallant, good-looking chaps
who stocked her.’

‘When is all this going to end?’ said she.

‘Every man of them,’ exclaimed the captain, ‘will have had a firearm in
his breast.’

‘No doubt,’ I answered; ‘the vessel must have been handsomely furnished
in that way to judge by what we found remaining in the cabin of the
wreck.’

‘Were they starving, d’ye think?’ he exclaimed with a sudden troubled
manner, as he looked at the speck in our wake.

‘I should say not,’ said I; ‘there were breakers in the bottom of the
boat, and parcels resembling bread bags aft.’

‘Thirst is a fearful thing at sea, sir,’ said he, slowly: ‘it’s worse
than hunger. Hunger, whilst it remains appetite, is agreeable; but
the first sensation of thirst is a torture. I have known ’em both--I
have known ’em both,’ he added, with a melancholy shake of his head
and a profound sigh; then bringing his unwinking stare to bear upon
me, he exclaimed: ‘Supposing that shot had taken effect, the _Lady
Blanche_ would now be without a master; and if you wasn’t on board,
she’d be without a navigator. Less than two sea-going heads to every
ship _won’t_ do. I felt that truth when Chicken went, and I’m feeling
of it every time I catch sight of that there man Lush.’ Miss Temple
and I exchanged glances. ‘Well,’ said he, with one of his mirthless
grins, ‘I don’t expect those privateersmen’ll trouble us any more;’ and
in his abrupt way he walked to the compass, and stood there looking
alternately from it to the canvas.




CHAPTER XXVIII

I QUESTION WETHERLY


It had now become so much one thing on top of another with us, and
everything happening in a moment, so to speak, too: first our being
left on the wreck all in a breath as it were: then our being picked up
by this barque without the dimmest prospect, as my instincts advised
me, of our falling in with the _Countess Ida_ this side of Bombay:
then our destitute condition aboard a craft whose skipper’s sanity I
was now honestly beginning to distrust, and whose people, if he did
not lie, were for the most part a gang of scoundrels: then this sudden
narrow shave of being boarded by above a score of miscreants whose
undoubted hope was to seize the _Lady Blanche_ and to use her in the
room of their own extinguished brig; I say it was so much one thing
on top of another--a catalogue of adventures scarcely conceivable in
these safe-going days of the ocean mailboat, though real enough and in
one way or another frequent enough in my time, I mean in the time of
this narrative--that I protest something of the dismay which possessed
Miss Temple visited me, though I struggled hard in the direction of
a composed face, as we talked over the incident of the morning, and
took a view of the singular staring figure who had charge of the
barque, and directed our eyes at the crew, all hands of whom hung
about forward, briskly yarning, as I might suppose, about the Spanish
longboat’s attempt (and with God knows what sympathy, I would think, as
I peered at the groups), or as we sent our eager gaze into the blue and
brilliant ocean distance in search of any little leaning flake of white
that might flatter us with promise of escape from our disagreeable
situation.

‘I have fully and immovably formed my opinion on two points,’ said
Miss Temple to me as we continued to pace the deck together for some
half hour after the boat had disappeared astern: ‘one is, that Captain
Braine is mad; and the other that he is firmly bent on making you serve
him as his mate.’

‘I own that I now believe he is madder than I first suspected,’ I
answered. ‘His manner and language to you just now were extraordinary.
But as to his employing me as mate--I think this: if the man is crazy,
he may easily go wrong in his navigation; if we sight nothing that will
carry us home, we must obviously stick to the barque, and her safety,
therefore, is ours; consequently, it is desirable, I think, that I
should know what her skipper is doing with her from day to day; and
this I can contrive by consenting to oblige him with taking sights.’

‘I see what you mean,’ she exclaimed thoughtfully. ‘I had not taken
that view; but it is a cruel one to entertain; it implies our remaining
on board until--until---- Oh, Mr. Dugdale! this sort of imprisonment
for the next two or three months is not to be borne.’

‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘you now understand that our very safety demands we
should know where that fellow is carrying his ship. If, then, he should
request me to shoot the sun as we call it, you will not be vexed by my
compliance?’

‘Who am I, Mr. Dugdale, that you should trouble yourself about my
opinion?’

‘You can make yourself felt,’ said I, smiling; ‘I should consider your
eyes matchless in their power to subdue. There is a little passage in
Shakespeare that very exquisitely fits my theory of you.’

‘I would rather not hear it,’ she answered, with a slight curl of her
lip and a faint tinge of rose in her cheeks. ‘You once applied to me a
sentence from Shakespeare that was very unflattering.’

‘What was it?’

‘You compared my complexion to the white death that one of
Shakespeare’s girls talks about.’

‘I remember. I am astonished that your aunt should have repeated to you
what she overheard by stealth.’

‘I do not understand,’ she exclaimed, firing up.

‘She was behind me when I made that quotation, and I was unconscious
of her presence. She should have respected my ignorance. I meant no
wrong,’ I went on, pretending to get into a passion. ‘Your complexion
is pale, and I sought to illustrate it to my little friend Saunders by
an expression of striking nobility and beautiful dignity. If ever I
have the fortune to find myself in your aunt’s company, I shall give
her my mind on this business. How am I to know but that her repeating
what she had heard me let fall excited in you the disgust I found in
your treatment of me?’

She cooled down as I grew hot.

‘The extravagance of your language shocks me,’ she exclaimed, but with
very little temper in her voice. ‘Disgust? You have no right to use
that word. You were always very courteous to me on board the _Countess
Ida_.’

‘Am I less so here?’ said I, still preserving an air of indignation.

‘Do not let us quarrel,’ she said gently, with such a look of sweetness
in her eyes as I should have thought their dark and glowing depths
incapable of.

‘If we quarrel, it will not be my fault,’ said I, disguising myself
with my voice, whilst I looked seawards that my face might not betray
me.

At that moment the captain called out my name: ‘Can I have a word with
you, sir?’ he cried along the short length of poop, standing as he was
at the wheel, whilst we were conversing at the fore-end of the raised
deck.

‘With pleasure,’ I answered.

‘I shall go into the cabin,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it is too hot here. You
will come and tell me what he wants.’

I waited until she had descended the ladder, and then strolled over
to the captain, determined to let him know by my careless air that
whatever I did for him he must regard as an obligation, or as an
expression of my gratitude; but that I was not to be commanded. I
believed I could witness an expression of embarrassment in his fixed
regard that I had not before noticed in him. He eyed me as though lost
in thought, and I waited.

‘Would you object,’ said he, ‘to ascertain our latitude at noon to-day?’

‘Not in the least.’

He seemed to grow a little brighter. ‘And I should feel obliged,’ he
continued, ‘if you’d work out the longitude.’

‘With pleasure,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘But I have no sextant.’

‘I have a couple,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will lend you one;’ and down he
went for it with a fluttered demeanour of eagerness.

I lingered till I supposed he had entered his cabin, then put my head
into the skylight and called softly to Miss Temple, who was seated
almost directly beneath for the air there: ‘He wishes me to take an
observation with him.’

‘What is that?’ she answered, also speaking softly and turning up her
face.

‘I am to shoot the sun--you know, Miss Temple.’

‘Oh, pray, contrive to make some error--commit some blunder to make him
suppose’---- She checked herself, and I heard the captain say that it
was very hot as he came to the companion steps.

In a few moments he arrived on deck, hugging a brace of sextant cases
to his heart. He told me to choose; I took the one nearest to me,
perceived that the instrument was almost new, and as it was now hard
upon the hour of noon, applied it to my eye, the captain standing
alongside of me ogling the sun likewise. I could see the men forward,
waiting for the skipper to make eight bells, staring their hardest at
the now unusual spectacle to them of two sextants at work. For my
part, I should have been shocked by the weakness of my memory if I had
not known what to do. During the two years I had spent at sea I was
thoroughly grounded in navigation--such as it was in those days; and as
I stood screwing the sun down to the horizon, the whole practice of the
art, so far as my education in it went, came back to me as freshly as
though I had been taking sights ever since.

We made eight bells. Mr. Lush came aft to relieve the deck, and I went
below with Captain Braine to work out the barque’s position.

I smiled at Miss Temple as I entered the cuddy; she watched me
eagerly, and the movement of her lips seemed to say, ‘Don’t be long.’
In fact, her face had that meaning; and I gave her a reassuring nod
ere turning to follow the captain into his berth. The apartment was
small and cheerful, plainly stocked with the customary details of a
humble skipper’s sea bedroom; a cot, a small table, a cushioned locker,
a few mathematical instruments, a little hanging shelf of strictly
nautical books, and so on. His chronometer was a good one, handsome for
those days, of a quality one would hardly expect to find in a little
trading-barque of the pattern of this _Lady Blanche_. There was a bag
of charts in a corner, and a small chart of the world lay half unrolled
upon the table, with a bit of the Atlantic Ocean visible exhibiting the
skipper’s ‘pricking’ or tracing of his course down to the preceding day.

‘Here’s ink and paper, sir,’ said he; ‘sit ye down, and let’s see if we
can tally.’

I was always a tolerably quick hand at figures, and had soon completed
my calculations, feeling as though I was at sea again in sober
professional earnest. The captain worked with extraordinary gravity;
his singular eyes overhung the paper without a wink, and his yellow
countenance, with his blue chops and chin, wore the melancholy of a
mute’s face, mixed with an indefinable quality of distress, as though
his mental efforts were putting him to physical pain. We agreed to a
second in our latitude, but differed in our longitude by something over
seven miles.

‘You’ll be in the right, sir--you’ll be in the right!’ he cried,
smiting the table with his fist. ‘It is clear you know the ropes, Mr.
Dugdale. I’ll abide by your reckonings. And now I want ye to do me a
further sarvice.’

‘What is that, captain?’ said I.

‘Well, ye may reckon, of course, that I can write,’ he answered; ‘but
I never was topweight with my pen, as Jack says, nor, for the matter
of that, was Chicken much of a hand. There was some words which he was
always making a foul hawse of. Now, what I want ye to do, Mr. Dugdale,
is to keep my log for me.’

‘All this,’ said I carelessly, yet watching him with attention, ‘is
practically making a chief officer of me.’ He did not answer. ‘Of
course, I don’t object,’ I continued, stimulated more perhaps by Miss
Temple’s than by my own views, ‘to oblige in any possible manner a
gentleman’----

‘I am no gentleman,’ said he, with a wave of the hand.

‘----to whom Miss Temple and myself owe our lives. But I may take it
that it is thoroughly understood the young lady and myself are to quit
your hospitable little ship at the first opportunity that may offer.’

He regarded me in silence for I should say at least a minute; I was
positively beginning to believe that he had fallen dumb. At last he
seemed to come to life. He nodded slowly three times and said very
deliberately: ‘Mr. Dugdale, you and me will be having a talk later on.’

‘But good God, captain,’ cried I, startled out of my assumed manner of
indifference or ease, ‘you will at least assure me that you’ll make no
difficulty of transhipping us when the chance to do so occurs?’

He was again silent, all the while staring at me; and presently, in a
deep voice, said, ‘Later on, sir;’ and with that stood up.

‘How much later on?’ I inquired.

He tapped his brow with his forefinger and answered: ‘It needs
reflection, and I must see my way clearly. So far it’s all right. I’m
much obliged to ye, I’m sure;’ and he went to the door and held it
open, closing it upon himself after I had stepped out.

At the instant I resolved to tell Miss Temple of what had passed; then
swiftly thought no! it will only frighten the poor girl, and she cannot
advise me; I must wait a little; and with a smiling face I seated
myself by her side. But secretly, I was a good deal worried. I chatted
lightly, told her that there was nothing whatever significant in the
captain’s request that I should check his calculations by independent
observations, and did my utmost, by a variety of cheerful small talk
referring wholly to our situation, to keep her heart up. Nevertheless,
secretly I was much bothered. The man had something on his mind of
a dark mysterious nature, it seemed to me; and I could not question
that it formed the motive of his interrogatories as to my seamanship,
and of his testing my qualities as a navigator by putting a sextant
into my hand. Whatever his secret might prove, was it likely to stand
between us and our quitting this barque for something homeward bound?
It was most intolerably certain that if Captain Braine chose to keep me
aboard, I must remain with him. For how should I be able to get away?
Suppose I took it upon myself to signal a vessel when he was below: the
hailing, the noise of backing the yards, the clamour of the necessary
manœuvring, would hardly fail to bring him on deck; and if he chose to
order the men to keep all fast with the boat, there could be no help
for it; he was captain, and the seamen would obey him.

These thoughts, however, I kept to myself. The day passed quietly.
Again and again Miss Temple and I would search the waters for any
sign of a ship; but I took notice that the barrenness of the ocean
did not produce the same air of profound misery and dejection which
I had witnessed in her yesterday. In fact, she had grown weary of
complaining; she was beginning to understand the idleness of it. From
time to time, though at long intervals, something fretful would escape
her, some reference to the wretched discomfort of being without change
of apparel; to the misfortune of having fallen in with a ship, whose
forecastle people, if her captain was to be believed, were for the most
part no better than the company of brigands whom we had scraped clear
of that morning. But it seemed to me that she was slowly schooling
herself to resignation, that she had formed a resolution to look with
some spirit into the face of our difficulties, a posture of mind I was
not a little thankful to behold in her, for, God knows, my own anxiety
was heavy enough, and I did not want to add to it the sympathetic
trouble her grief and despair caused me.

All day long the weather continued very glorious. The captain ordered
a short awning to be spread over the poop, and Miss Temple and I sat
in the shadow of it during the greater part of the afternoon. There
was nothing to read; there was no sort of amusement to enable us to
kill the time. Nevertheless, the hours drifted fleetly past in talk.
Miss Temple was more communicative than she had ever before been;
talked freely of her family, of her friends and acquaintances, of her
visits abroad, and the like. She told me that she was never weary
of riding, that her chief delight in life was to follow the hounds;
and indeed she chatted so fluently on one thing and another that she
appeared to forget our situation: a note almost of gaiety entered her
voice; her dark eyes sparkled, and the cold, marble-like beauty of her
face warmed to the memories which rose in her. I gathered from her
conversation that she was the only living child of her mother, and that
there was nothing between her and a very tolerable little fortune, as
I might infer from her description of the home Lady Temple had kept
up in her husband’s life, and that she still, though in a diminished
degree, supported for the sake of her daughter, though she herself lay
paralysed and helpless, looked after in Miss Temple’s absence by a
maiden sister.

I recollect wondering whilst I listened to her that so fine a woman as
she, and a fortune to boot, had not long ago married. Was she waiting
for some man with whom she could fall in love? or was it some large
dream of title and estate that hindered her? or was it that she was
without a heart? No, thought I; her heart will have had nothing to
do with it. Your heartless girls get married as fast as the rest of
them. And was she heartless? It was not easy to let one’s gaze plumb
the glowing liquid depths of her eyes, which seemed to my fancy to be
charged with the fires of sensibility and passion, and believe her
heartless.

There was something wild in the contrast betwixt the imaginations she
raised in me by her talk of her home and her pleasures with her own
beauty at hand to richly colour every fancy she inspired--betwixt
my imagination, I say, and the realities about us, as I would most
poignantly feel whenever I sent a glance at old Lush. He was a mule of
a man, and stood doggedly at a distance, never addressed nor offered,
indeed, to approach us, though sometimes I would catch him taking me
in from head to toe out of the corner of his surly eyes. Possibly, my
showing that I had a trick of navigation above his knowledge excited
his spleen; or maybe his hatred of the captain led him to dislike me
because of the apparent intimacy between the skipper and me. Anyway,
I would catch myself looking at him now with a feeling of misgiving
for which I could find no reason outside of the mere movement of my
instincts.

It was in the second dog-watch that evening; Miss Temple was resting in
the little cuddy, and I stepped on to the main-deck to smoke a pipe.
The topmost canvas of the barque delicately swayed under a cloudless
heaven that was darkly, deeply, beautifully blue with the shadow of
the coming night. A large star trembled above the ocean verge in the
east; but the glow of sunset still lingered in the west over a sea of
wonderful smoothness rippling in frosty lines to the breeze that gushed
from between the sunset and the north.

The carpenter had charge of the deck; the captain was in his cabin.
Whilst I lighted my pipe, I caught sight of the man Joe Wetherly seated
on the coaming of the fore-hatch past the little galley. He was puffing
at an inch of dusky clay with his arms folded upon his breast, and his
countenance composed into an air of sailorly meditation. This seemed
an opportunity for me to learn what he had to tell or might be willing
to impart about the inner life of the _Lady Blanche_, and I went along
the deck in an easy saunter, as though it was my notion to measure the
planks for an evening stroll. I started when abreast of him with a
manner of pleased surprise.

‘Oh! it is you, Wetherly? My old acquaintance Smallridge’s friend! No
sign of the Indiaman, though. I fear we have outrun her by leagues. And
always when you are on the lookout for a sail at sea, nothing heaves
into sight.’

He rose to my accost, and saluted me with a respectful sea-bow, that
is, by scraping his forehead with his knuckle with a little kick back
of his left leg.

‘That’s right enough, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been sailing myself in a
ship for six weeks in middling busy waters, too, with ne’er a sight of
anything--not so much as the tail of a gull.’

‘Pray sit,’ said I; ‘I’ll keep you company. This is the right spot for
a smoke and a yarn; quiet and cool and out of the road of the poop.’

He grinned, and we seated ourselves side by side. I talked to him
first about the _Countess Ida_, explained the circumstance of my being
in company with Miss Temple, told him who she was, and spoke of her
shipwrecked condition so far as her wardrobe went, and how eager she
was to return to England; but the old sailor made very little of her
being in want of a change of dress.

‘There is no need, sir,’ said he, ‘for the lady to distress her mind
with considerations of a shift o’ vestments. I allow she can use a
needle for herself; there’s needles and thread at her sarvice forrads;
and how much linnen do she want? Why one of the skipper’s table-cloths
’ud fit her out, I should say.’ He turned his figure-head of a face
upon me as he added: ‘’Tain’t the loss of clothes, sir, as should
occupy her thoughts, but the feeling that she’s been took off that
there wreck and is safe.’

I fully agreed with him, with some inward laughter, wondering what Miss
Temple would think if she had overheard his speech. One thing led to
another; at last I said:

‘Wetherly, I am going to ask you a plain question; it is one sailor
making inquiry of another, and you’ll accept me as a shipmate, I know.’
He nodded. ‘Is not your captain wanting?’ and I touched my head.

‘Well,’ he answered after a pause, ‘_I_ think so, and I’ve been
a-thinking so pretty nigh ever since I’ve been along with him.’

‘What caused his mate’s death?’

‘He died in a swound,’ he answered--‘fell dead alongside the wheel as
he was looking into the compass.’

‘Have the sailors noticed anything queer in their captain?’

‘They’re such a party of ignorant scow-bankers,’ said he, with a slow
look round, to make sure that the coast was clear, ‘that I don’t
believe they’re capable of noticing anything if it ain’t a pannikin of
rum shoved under their noses.’

‘I don’t mind whispering to you,’ said I, ‘that the captain hinted
to me they were not a very reputable body of men--talked vaguely of
mutineers and convicts, with one fellow amongst them,’ I went on,
bating my voice to a mere whisper, ‘who had committed a murder.’

He stared at me a moment, and then tilted his cap over his nose to
scratch the back of his head.

‘He’ll know more about ’em, then, than I do,’ he responded; ‘they’re
ignorant enough to do wrong without troubling themselves much to think
of the job when it was over. Mutineering I don’t doubt some of ’em
have practised. As to others of ’em being convicts, why who’s to tell?
Likely as not, says I. But when it comes to murder--a middling serious
charge, ain’t it, sir? Of course I dunno--who might the party be, sir?’

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, ‘it was a vague sort of talk, as I told you. But
if Miss Temple and I are to stick to this ship till we get to the
Mauritius, it would comfort her, and me, too, for the matter of that,
to learn that her crew are not the band of ruffians we have been led to
imagine them.’

‘Well, sir,’ he exclaimed thoughtfully--‘I’m sure you’ll forgive me,
but I don’t rightly recollect your name.’

‘Dugdale.’

‘Well, Mr. Dugdale, as you asks for my opinion, I’ll give it ye. Of
course, it’ll go no furder, as between man and man.’

‘Certainly not. I am myself trusting you up to the hilt, as what I have
said must assure you. You may speak in perfect confidence.’

He cast a cautious look round: ‘There’s but one man to be regularly
afeerd of, and that’s Mr. Lush. I believe he’d knife the capt’n right
off if so be as he could be sure we men wouldn’t round upon him. I
don’t mean to say he han’t got cause to hate the capt’n. He’s a working
man without knowledge of perlite customs, and I believe the capt’n’s
said more to him than he ought to have said; more than any gen’leman
would have dreamt of saying, and all because this here carpenter han’t
got the art o’ dining in a way to please the eye. But this here Mr.
Lush feels it too much: he’s allowed it to eat into his mind; and if so
be there should come a difficulty, the capt’n wouldn’t find a friend in
him, and so I tells ye, sir. I don’t want to say more n’s necessary and
proper to this here occasion of your questions; but though the crew’s
a desperate ignorant one, ne’er a man among ’em capable of writing or
spelling any more’n the carpenter hisself, there’s only _him_ to be
afeerd of, so far as I’m capable of disarning; though, of course, if he
should tarn to and try and work up their feelings, there’s naturally no
telling how the sailors ’ud show.’

‘They seem a pretty smart set of fellows,’ said I, finding but little
comfort to be got out of this long-winded delivery; ‘the ship is
beautifully clean, and everything looks to be going straight aboard of
you.’

‘Oh! every man can do his bit,’ he answered; ‘but if I was you, sir,
being in charge, as you are, of a beautiful young lady, for the likes
of which this here little barque, with nothen but men aboard and such
shabby food as goes aft, is no proper place--if I was you, I says, says
I, I’d get away as soon as ever I could.’

I mentally bestowed a few sea-blessings on the head of this marine
Job’s comforter, but contrived, nevertheless, to look as though I was
much obliged to him for his information and advice; and after we had
continued discoursing on a variety of nautical topics for some ten
minutes or a quarter of an hour longer, I proceeded aft, and spent the
rest of the evening in conversing with Miss Temple in the cabin or in
walking the deck with her.


END OF THE SECOND VOLUME


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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Shipmate Louise, Volume 2 (of 3), by 
William Clark Russell

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