My dandy-rigged yacht, the Spitfire, of twenty-six tons, lay in Boulogne harbour, hidden in the deep shadow of the wall against which she floated. It was a breathless night, dark despite the wide spread of cloudless sky that was brilliant with stars. It was hard upon the hour of midnight, and low down where we lay we heard but dimly such sounds of life as was still abroad in the Boulogne streets. Ahead of us loomed the shadow of a double-funnelled steamer—an inky dye of scarcely determinable proportions upon the black and silent waters of the harbour. The Capécure pier made a faint, phantom-like line of gloom as it ran seawards on our left, with here and there a lump of shadow denoting some collier fast to the skeleton timbers.
The stillness was impressive; from the sands came a dull and distant moan of surf; the dim strains of a concertina threaded the hush which seemed to dwell like something material upon the black, vague shape of a large brig almost directly abreast of us. We were waiting for the hour of midnight to strike and our ears were strained.
What noise is that? I exclaimed.
The dip of sweeps, sir, answered my captain, Aaron Caudel; "some smack a-coming along—ay, there she is," and he shadowily pointed to a dark, square heap betwixt the piers, softly approaching to the impulse of her long oars, the rhythmic grind of which in the thole-pins made a strange, wild ocean music of the far-off roar of the surf, and the sob of water alongside, and the delicate wash of the tide in the green piles and timbers of the two long, narrow, quaint old piers.
How is your pluck now, Caudel? said I in a low voice, sending a glance up at the dark edge of the harbour-wall above us, where stood the motionless figure of a douanier, with a button or two of his uniform faintly glimmering to the gleam of a lamp near him.
Right for the job, sir—right as your honour could desire it. There's but one consideration which ain't like a feeling of sartinty—and that I must say consarns the dawg.
Smother the dog! But you are right, Caudel. We must leave our boots in the ditch.
Ain't there plenty of grass, sir? said he.
I hope so; but a fathom of gravel will so crunch under those hoofs of yours that the very dead buried beneath might turn in their coffins—let alone a live dog wide awake from the end of his beastly cold snout to the tip of his tail. Does the ladder chafe you?
No, sir. Makes me feel a bit asthmatic-like, and if them duniers get a sight of me they'll reckon I've visited the Continent to make a show of myself, he exclaimed, with a low, deep-sea laugh, whilst he spread his hands upon his breast, around which, under cover of a large, loose, long pea-coat, he had coiled a length of rope-ladder with two iron hooks at one end of it, which made a hump under either shoulder-blade. There was no other way, however, of conveying the ladder ashore. In the hand it would instantly have challenged attention, and a bag would have been equally an object of curiosity to the two or three Custom-House phantoms flitting about in triangular-shaped trousers and shako-like headgear.
There goes midnight, sir! cried Caudel.
As I listened to the chimes a sudden fit of excitement set me trembling.
Are ye there, Job? called my captain.
Ay, sir, responded a voice from the bows of the yacht.
Jim?
Here, sir, answered a second voice out of the darkness forward.
Dick?
Here, sir.
Bobby?
Here, sir, responded the squeaky note of a boy.
Lay aft all you ship's company and don't make no noise, growled Caudel.
I looked up; the figure of the douanier had vanished. The three men and the boy came sneaking out of the yacht's head.
Now, what ye've got to do, said Caudel, "is to keep awake. You'll see all ready for hoisting and gitting away the hinstant Mr. Barclay and me arrives aboard. You onderstand that?"
It's good English, cap'n, said one of the sailors.
No skylarking, mind. You're a listening, Bobby?
Ay, sir.
You'll just go quietly to work and see all clear, and then tarn to and loaf about in the shadows. Now, Mr. Barclay, sir, if you're ready, I am.
Have you the little bull's-eye in your pocket? said I.
He felt and answered, "Yes."
Matches?
Two boxes.
Stop a minute, said I, and I descended into the cabin to read my darling's letter for the last time, that I might make sure of all details of our romantic plot, ere embarking on as hare-brained an adventure as was ever attempted by a lover and his sweetheart.
The cabin lamp burned brightly. I see the little interior now and myself standing upright under the skylight, which found me room for my stature, for I was six feet high. The night-shadow came black against the glass, and made a mirror of each pane. My heart was beating fast, and my hands trembled as I held my sweetheart's letter to the light. I had read it twenty times before—you might have known that by the creases in it and the frayed edges, as though, forsooth, it had been a love-letter fifty years old—but my nervous excitement obliged me to go through it once more for the last time, as I have said, to make sure.
The handwriting was girlish—how could it be otherwise, seeing that the sweet writer was not yet eighteen? The letter consisted of four sheets, and on one of them was very cleverly drawn, in pen and ink, a tall, long, narrow, old-fashioned château, with some shrubbery in front of it, a short length of wall, then a tall hedge with an arrow pointing at it, under which was written, "HERE IS THE HOLE." Under another arrow indicating a big, square door to the right of the house, where a second short length of wall was sketched in, were written the words, "HERE IS THE DOG." Other arrows—quite a flight of them, indeed, causing the sketch to resemble a weather-chart—pointed to windows, doors, a little balcony, and so forth, and against them were written, "MAM'SELLE'S ROOM," "THE GERMAN GOVERNESS'S ROOM," "FOUR GIRLS SLEEP HERE,"—with other hints of a like kind.
I carefully read the letter. Suppose the ladder which Caudel had wound around his broad breast should prove too short? No! the height from the balcony to the ground was exactly ten feet. She had measured it herself, and that there might be no error, had enclosed me the length of pack-thread with which—with a little weight at the end of it—she had plumbed the trifling distance. She hoped it would be a fine night. If there should be thunder I must not come. She would rather die than leave the house in a thunderstorm. Neither must I come if the sea was rough. She was acting very wrongly—why did she love me so?—why was I so impatient? Could I not wait until she was twenty-one? Then she would be of age and her own mistress: three years and a month or two would soon pass, and, meanwhile, our love for each other would be growing deeper and deeper—at least hers would. She could not answer for mine. She was content to have faith.
All this was very much underlined, and here and there was a little smudge as though she had dropped a tear.
But she had plucked up as she drew towards the close of her letter, and, mere child as she was, there was a quality of decision in her final sentence which satisfied me that she would not fail me when the moment came. I put the letter in my pocket and went on deck.
Where are you, Caudel?
Here, sir, cried a shadow in the starboard gangway.
Let us start, said I; "there is half-an-hour's walk before us, and though the agreed time is one, there is a great deal to be done when we arrive."
I've been a-thinking, Mr. Barclay, he exclaimed, "that the young lady'll never be able to get aboard this yacht by that there up and down ladder," meaning the perpendicular steps affixed to the harbour wall.
No! cried I, needlessly startled by an insignificant oversight on the very threshold of the project.
The boat, he continued, "had better be in waiting at them stairs, just past the smack, astarn of us there."
Give the necessary orders, said I.
He did so swiftly, bidding two of the men to be at the stairs by one o'clock, the others to have the port gangway unshipped that we might step aboard in a moment, along with sails loosed and gear all seen to, ready for a prompt start. We then ascended the ladder and gained the top of the quay.
A douanier stood at a little distance. As we rose over the edge of the wall he approached, and by the aid of the lamp burning strongly close at hand, he recognised us as persons who had been coming and going throughout the day. Caudel called out "Bong swore," and moved off that his bulky frame might not be visible. The man in a civil voice asked in French if we had any fire-arms on us.
No, no, I responded, "we are going to fetch a friend who has consented to take a little cruise with us. The tide is making, and we hope to be under way before two o'clock."
You English love the sea, said he, good-naturedly; "all hours of the day and night are the same to you. For my part, give me my bed at night."
Here is something to furnish you with a pleasant dream when you get to bed, said I, giving him a franc. "When are you off duty?"
I am here till four o'clock, he answered.
Good, said I, and carelessly strolled after the portly figure of my captain.
We said little until we had cleared the Rue de l'Ecu and were marching up the broad Grande Rue, with the church of St. Nicholas soaring in a dusky mass out of the market-place, and the few lights of the wide, main street rising in fitful twinklings to the shadow of the rampart walls. A mounted gendarme passed; the stroke of his horse's hoofs sounded hollow in the broad thoroughfare and accentuated the deserted appearance of the street. Here and there a light showed in a window; from a distance came a noise of chorusing: a number of fellows, no doubt, arm-in-arm, singing "Mourir pour la Patrie," to the inspiration of several glasses of sugar and water.
I sha'n't be sorry when we're there, said Caudel. "This here ladder makes my coat feel a terrible tight fit. I suppose it'll be the first job of the sort ye was ever engaged in, sir?"
The first, said I, "and the last too, believe me. It is nervous work. I would rather have to deal with an armed burglar than with an elopement. I wish the business was ended, and we were heading for Penzance."
And I don't suppose the young lady feels extray comfortable, either, he exclaimed. "Let me see: I've got to be right in my latitude and longitude, or we shall be finding ourselves ashore. It's for us to make the signal, ain't it, sir?"
Yes, said I, puffing, for the road was steep and we were walking rapidly; "first of all you'll have to prepare the ladder. You haven't forgotten the rungs, I hope?" referring to three brass pieces to keep the ropes extended, contrivances which had been made to my order, resembling stair rods with forks and an arrangement of screws by which they could be disconnected into pieces convenient for the pocket.
They're here, sir, he exclaimed, slapping his breast.
Well, we proceed thus: The bull's-eye must be cautiously lighted and darkened. We have then to steal noiselessly to abreast of the window on the left of the house and flash the lantern. This will be answered by the young lady striking a match at the window.
Won't the scraping of the lucifer be heard? inquired Caudel.
No, Miss Bellassys writes to me that no one sleeps within several corridors of that room.
Well, and then I think you said, sir, observed Caudel, "that the young lady'll slip out on to the balcony, and lower away a small length of line to which this here ladder," he said, giving his breast a thump, "is to be bent on, she hauling of it up?"
Quite right, said I; "you must help her to descend whilst I hold the ladder taut at the foot of it. No fear of the ropes breaking, I hope?"
Lord love 'ee, he said heartily, "it's brand new rattline-stuff, strong enough to hoist the mainmast out of a first-rate."
By this time we had gained the top of the Grande Rue. Before us stretched an open space dark with lines of trees; at long intervals the gleam of an oil lamp dotted that space of gloom; on our right lay the dusky mass of the rampart walls, the yawning gateway dully illuminated by the trembling flame of a lantern into a picture which carried the imagination back into heroic times, when elopements were exceedingly common, when gallant knights were to be met with galloping away with women of beauty and distinction clinging to them, when the midnight air was vocal with guitars, and nearly every other darkling lattice framed some sweet, pale, listening face.
Which'll be the road, sir? broke in Caudel's tempestuous voice.
I had explored the district that afternoon, had observed all that was necessary, and discovered that the safest, if not the shortest, way to the Rue de Maquétra where my sweetheart, Grace Bellassys, was at school, lay through the Haute Ville or Upper Town as the English called it. The streets were utterly deserted; not so much as a cat stirred. One motionless figure we passed, hard by the Cathedral—a policeman or gendarme—he might have been a statue; it was like pacing the streets of a town that had been sacked, in which nothing lived to deliver so much as a groan; and the fancy was not a little improved by our emergence into what resembled a tract of country through a gateway similar to that by which we had entered, over which there faintly glimmered out to the sheen of a near lamp the figure of Our Lady of Boulogne erect in some carving of a boat.
Foreigners is a queer lot, exclaimed Caudel. "I dunno as I should much relish living between them walls. How much farther off is it, sir?"
About ten minutes, said I.
A blooming walk, Mr. Barclay, sir, begging your pardon. Wouldn't it have been as well if you'd had ordered a fee-hacre to stand by ready to jump aboard of?
A fee what? said I.
What's the French for a cab, sir?
Oh, I see what you mean. No. It's all down-hill for the lady. A carriage makes a noise; then there is the cabman to be left behind to tell all that he knows.
Caudel grunted an assent, and we strode onwards in silence. It was an autumn night, but the air was very soft, and the largest of the luminaries shone with the mellow glory of a summer that was yet rich and beautiful in its decay. From afar, in the direction of the Calais Road, came the dim rumbling noise of a heavy vehicle, like the sound of a diligence in full trot; otherwise the dark and breezeless atmosphere was of an exquisite serenity—too placid indeed to please me; for though the yacht was to be easily towed out of Boulogne harbour, I had no fancy for finding myself becalmed close off the pier-heads when the dawn broke.
The Rue de Maquétra was—is, I may say; I presume it still exists—a long, narrow lane leading to a pretty valley. Something more than half-way up it, on the left-hand side, stands a tall convent wall, the shadow of which, dominated as the heights were by trees on such a motionless midnight as this, plunged the roadway into deepest gloom. The whole length of the lane, to the best of my remembrance, was illuminated by two, at the outside by three, lamps which revealed nothing but their own flames, and so bewildered instead of assisting the eye.
Directly opposite the convent wall stood the old château, darkened and thickened in front by a profusion of shrubbery, with a short length of wall, as I have already said, at both extremities of it. The grounds belonging to the house, as they rose with the hill, were divided from the lane by a thick hedge which terminated at a distance of some two hundred feet.
We came to a stand and listened, staring our hardest with all our eyes. The house was in blackness; the line of the roof ran in a clear sweep of ink against the stars, and not the faintest sound came from it or its grounds, save the delicate tinkling murmur of a fountain playing somewhere amongst the shrubbery in front.
Where'll be the dawg? exclaimed Caudel in a hoarse whisper.
Behind the wall there, I answered, "yonder, where the great square door is. Hark! Did not that sound like the rattle of a chain?"
We listened; then said I:
Let us make for the hole in the hedge. I have its bearings. It directly fronts the third angle of that convent wall.
We crept soundlessly past the house, treading the verdure that lay in dark streaks upon the glimmering ground of this little-frequented lane. The clock of the convent opposite struck half-past twelve.
One bell, sir, said Caudel; "it's about time we tarned to, and no mistake. Lord, how I'm a-perspiring! Yet it ben't so hot neither. Which side of the house do the lady descend from?"
From this side, I answered.
Well clear of the dawg anyhow, said he, "and that's a good job."
Here's the hole, I cried, with my voice shrill beyond recognition of my own hearing through the nervous excitement I laboured under.
The hole was a neglected gap in the hedge, a rent originally made probably by donkey-boys, several of whose cattle I had remarked that afternoon browsing along the ditch and bank-side. We squeezed through, and found ourselves in a sort of kitchen garden, as I might imagine from the aspect of the shadowy vegetation; it seemed to run clear to the very wall of the house on this side in dwarf bushes and low-ridged growths.
There'll be a path I hope, growled Caudel. "What am I atreading on? Cabbages? They crackle worse nor gravel, Mr. Barclay."
Clear yourself of the rope-ladder, and then I'll smother you in your big pea-coat whilst you light the lamp, said I. "Let us keep well in the shadow of the hedge. Who knows what eyes may be star-gazing yonder?"
The hedge flung a useful dye upon the blackness of the night; and our figures against it, even though they should have been viewed close to, must have been indistinguishable. With a seaman's alacrity Caudel slipped off his immense coat, and in a few moments had unwound the length of ladder from his body. He wore a coloured flannel shirt—I had dreaded to find him figuring in white calico! He dropped the ladder to the ground, and the iron hooks clanked as they fell together. I hissed a sea blessing at him through my teeth.
Have you no wick in those tallow-candle fingers of yours? Hush! Stand motionless.
As I spoke the dog began to bark. That it was the dog belonging to the house I could not swear. The sound, nevertheless, proceeded from the direction of the yard in which my sweetheart had told me the dog was chained. The deep and melancholy note was like that of a bloodhound giving tongue. It was reverberated by the convent wall and seemed to penetrate to the farthest distance, awaking the very echoes of the sleeping river Liane, and it filled the breathless pause that had fallen upon us with a torment of inquietude and expectation. After a few minutes the creature ceased.
He'll be a whopper, sir. Big as a pony, sir, if his voice don't belie him, said Caudel, fetching a deep breath. "I was once bit by a dawg——" he was about to spin a yarn.
For heaven's sake! now bear a hand and get your bull's eye alight, I angrily whispered, at the same moment snatching up his coat and so holding it as to effectually screen his figure from the house.
Feeling over the coat he pulled out the little bull's-eye lamp and a box of matches, and catching with oceanic dexterity the flame of the lucifer in the hollow of his hands, he kindled the wick, and I immediately closed the lantern with its glass eclipsed. This done, I directed my eyes at the black smears of growths—for thus they showed—lying round about us, in search of a path; but apparently we were on the margin of some wide tract of vegetables, through which we should have to thrust to reach the stretch of sward that, according to the description in my pocket, lay immediately under the balcony from which my sweetheart was to descend.
Pick up that ladder—by the hooks—see they don't clank—crouch low; make a bush of yourself as I do, and come along, said I.
Foot by foot we groped our way towards the tall, thin shadow of the house through the cabbages—to give the vegetation a name—and presently arrived at the edge of the sward; and now we had to wait until the clock struck one. Fortunately there were some bushes here, but none that rose higher than our girth, and this obliged us to maintain a posture of stooping which in a short time began to tell upon Caudel's rheumatic knees, as I knew by his snuffling and uneasy movements, though the heart of oak suffered in silence.
This side of the house lay so black against the fine, clear, starry dusk of the sky that it was impossible to see the outlines of the windows in it. I could manage, however, to faintly trace the line of the balcony. My heart beat fast as I thought that even now my darling might be standing at the window peering through it, waiting for the signal flash. Caudel was thinking of her too.
The young lady, begging of your pardon, sir, must be a gal of uncommon spirit, Mr. Barclay.
She loves me, Caudel, and love is the most animating of spirits, my friend.
I dorn't doubt it, sir. What room will it be that she's to come out of?
The dining-room—a big, deserted apartment where the girls take their meals.
'Tain't her bedroom, then?
No. She is to steal dressed from her bedroom to the salle-à-manger—
The Sally what, sir?
No matter, no matter, I answered.
I pulled out my watch, but there was no power in the starlight to reveal the dial-plate. All continued still as the tomb, saving at fitful intervals a low note of silken rustling that stole upon the ear with some tender, dream-like gushing of night-air, as though the atmosphere had been stirred by the sweep of a large, near, invisible pinion.
This here posture ain't so agreeable as dancing, hoarsely grumbled Caudel, "could almost wish myself a dwarf. That there word beginning with a Sally—"
Not so loud, man; not so loud.
It's oncommon queer, he persisted, "to feel one's self in a country where one's language ain't spoke. The werry soil don't seem natural. As to the language itself, burst me if I can understand how a man masters it. I was once trying to teach an Irish sailor how to dance a quadrille. 'Now, Murphy,' says I to him, 'you onderstand you're my wiz-a-wee?' 'What's dat you call me?' he cried out. 'You're anoder and a damn scoundrel besoides!' Half the words in this here tongue sound like cussing of a man. And to think of a dining-room being called a Sally—"
The convent clock struck one.
Now, said I, "stand by."
I held up the lamp, and so turned the darkened part as to produce two flashes. A moment after a tiny flame showed and vanished above the balcony.
My brave darling! I exclaimed. "Have you the ladder in your hand?"
Ay, sir.
Mind these confounded hooks don't chink.
We stepped across the sward and stood under the balcony.
Grace, my darling, is that you? I called in a low voice.
Yes, Herbert. Oh, please be quick. I am fancying I hear footsteps. My heart is scarcely beating for fright.
But despite the tremble in her low, sweet voice my ear seemed to find strength of purpose enough in it to satisfy me that there would be no failure from want of courage on her part. I could just discern the outline of her figure as she leaned over the balcony, and see the white of her face vague as a fancy.
My darling, lower the line to pull the ladder up with—very softly, my pet—there are iron hooks which make a noise.
In a few moments she called: "I have lowered the line."
I felt about with my hand and grasped the end of it—a piece of twine, but strong enough to support the ladder. The deep, blood-hound-like baying of the dog recommenced, and at the same time I heard a sound of footsteps in the lane.
Hist! Not a stir—not a whisper, I breathed out.
It was the staggering step of a drunken man. He broke maudlingly into a song when immediately abreast of us, ceased his noise suddenly and halted. This was a little passage of agony, I can assure you! The dog continued to utter its sullen, deep-throated bark in single strokes like the beat of a bell. Presently there was a sound as of the scrambling and crunching of feet, followed with the noise of a lurching tread; the man fell to drunkenly singing to himself again and so passed away up the lane.
Caudel fastened the end of the twine to the ladder, and then grunted out: "All ready for hoisting."
Grace, my sweet, I whispered, "do you hear me?"
Distinctly, dearest; but I am so frightened!
Pull up this ladder softly and hook the irons on to the rim of the balcony.
Blast that dawg! growled Caudel, "dummed if I don't think he smells us."
The ladder went rising into the air.
It is hooked, Herbert.
All right, Caudel, swing off upon the end of it—test it, and then aloft with you for mercy's sake!
The three metal rungs held the ropes bravely stretched apart. The seaman sprang, and the ladder held as though it had been the shrouds of a man-of-war.
Now, Caudel, you are a seaman—you must do the rest, said I.
He had removed his boots, and, mounting with cat-like agility, gained the balcony; then taking my sweetheart in his arms he lifted her over the rail and lowered her with his powerful arms until her little feet were half-way down the ladder. She uttered one or two faint exclamations, but was happily too frightened to cry out.
Now, Mr. Barclay, hoarsely whispered Caudel, "you kitch hold of her, sir."
I grasped the ladder with one hand, and passed my arm round her waist; my stature made the feat an easy one; thus holding her to me I sprang back, then for an instant strained her to my heart with a whisper of joy, gratitude, and encouragement.
You are as brave as you are true and sweet, Grace.
Oh, Herbert! she panted, "I can think of nothing. I am very wicked and feel horribly frightened."
Mr. Barclay, softly called Caudel from the balcony, "what's to be done with this here ladder?"
Let it be, let it be, I answered. "Bear a hand, Caudel, and come down."
He was alongside of us in a trice, pulling on his boots. I held my darling's hand, and the three of us made for the hole in the hedge with all possible speed. But the cabbages were very much in the way of Grace's dress, and so urgent was the need to make haste that, I believe, in my fashion of helping her, I carried her one way or another more than half the distance across that wide tract of kitchen-garden stuff.
The dog continued to bark. I asked Grace if the brute belonged to the house, and she answered yes. There seemed little doubt, from the persistency of the creature's deep delivery, that it scented some sort of mischief going forward, despite its kennel standing some considerable distance away on the other side of the house. I glanced back as Caudel was squeezing through the hole—I had told him to go first to make sure that all was right with the aperture, and to receive and help my sweetheart across the ditch—I glanced back, I say, in this brief pause; but the building showed as an impenetrable shadow against the winking brilliance of the sky hovering over and past it rich with the radiance in places of meteoric dust; no light gleamed; the night-hush, deep as death, was upon the château.
In a few moments my captain and I had carefully handed Grace through the hole and got her safe in the lane, and off we started, keeping well in the deep gloom cast by the convent wall, walking swiftly, yet noiselessly, and scarcely fetching our breath till we were clear of the lane, with the broad, glimmering St. Omer Road running in a rise upon our left.
By the aid of the three or four lamps we had passed I managed very early to get a view of my sweetheart, and found that she had warmly robed herself in a fur-trimmed jacket, and that her hat was a sort of turban as though chosen from her wardrobe with a view to her passage through the hole in the hedge. I had her hand under my arm; and pressed and caressed it as we walked. Caudel taking the earth with sailorly strides bowled and rolled along at her right, keeping her between us. I spoke to her in hasty sentences, forever praising her for her courage and thanking her for her love, and trying to hearten her; for now that the first desperate step had been taken, now that the wild risks of escape were ended, the spirit that had supported her failed; she could scarcely answer me; at moments she would direct looks over her shoulder; the mere figure of a tree would cause her to tighten her hold of my arm, and press against me as though starting.
I feel so wicked—I feel that I ought to return—oh! how frightened I am;—how late it is!—what will mam'selle think?—How the girls will talk in the morning!
I could coax no more than this sort of exclamations from her.
As we passed through the gate in the rampart wall and entered the Haute Ville, my captain broke the silence he had kept since we quitted the lane.
How little do the folks who's sleeping in them houses know, Mr. Barclay, of what's a-passing under their noses. There ain't no sort of innocence like sleep.
He said this and yawned with a noise that resembled a shout.
This is Captain Caudel, Grace, said I, "the master of the Spitfire. His services to-night I shall never forget."
I am too frightened to thank you, Captain Caudel, she exclaimed. "I will thank you when I am calm. But shall I ever be calm? And ought I to thank you then?"
Have no fear, miss. This here oneasiness 'll soon pass. I know the yarn—his honour spun it to me. What's been done, and what's yet to do is right and proper, and if it worn't— his pause was more significant than had he proceeded.
Until we reached the harbour we did not encounter a living creature. I could never have imagined of the old town of Boulogne that its streets, late even as the hour was, would be so utterly deserted as we found them. I was satisfied with my judgment in not having ordered a carriage. The rattling of the wheels of a vehicle amid the vault-like stillness of those thoroughfares would have been heart-subduing to my mood of passionately nervous anxiety to get on board and away. I should have figured windows flung open and night-capped heads projected, and heard in imagination the clanking sabre of a gendarme trotting in our wake.
I did not breathe freely till the harbour lay before us. Caudel said as we crossed to where the flight of steps fell to the water's edge:
I believe there's a little air of wind amoving.
I feel it, I answered; "what's its quarter?"
Seems to be off the land, said he.
There is a man! cried Grace, arresting me by a drag at my arm.
A figure stood at the head of the steps, and I believed it one of our men until a few strides brought us near enough to witness the gleam of uniform buttons, showing by the pale light of a lamp at a short distance from him.
A douanier, said I. "Nothing to be afraid of, my pet."
But if he should stop us, Herbert? cried she, halting.
Sooner than that should happen, rumbled Caudel, "I'd chuck him overboard. But why should he stop us, miss? We ain't smugglers."
I would rather throw myself into the water than be taken back, exclaimed my sweetheart. I gently induced her to walk, whilst my captain advancing to the edge of the quay and looking down, sang out:
Below there! Are ye awake?
Ay, wide awake, was the answer, floating up in hearty English accents from the cold, dark surface on which the boat lay.
The douanier drew back a few steps; it was impossible to see his face, but his steadfast suspicious regard was to be imagined. I have no doubt he understood exactly what was happening. He asked us the name of our vessel. I answered in French. "The small yacht Spitfire lying astern of the Folkestone steamer." Nothing more passed and we descended the steps.
I felt Grace shiver as I handed her into the boat. The harbour water washed black and cold to the dark line of pier and wharf opposite; there was an edge of chill, too, in the distant sound of surf crawling upon the sand, and the wide spread of stars carried the fancy to the broad, black breast of ocean over which they were trembling. The oars dipped, striking a dim cloud of phosphor into the eddies they made; and a few strokes of the blades carried us to the side of the little Spitfire. I sprang on to the deck, and lifting my darling through the gangway, called to Caudel to make haste to get the boat in and start, for the breeze, that had before been little more than a fancy to me, I could now hear as it brushed the surface of the harbour wall, making the reflection of the large stars in the water alongside twinkle and widen out, and putting a perfume of fresh seaweed into the atmosphere, though the draught, such as it was, came from a malodorous quarter.
I led Grace to the little companion hatch, and together we entered the cabin. The lamp burnt brightly; the skylight lay open, and the interior was cool and sweet with several pots of flowers which I had sent aboard in the afternoon. It was a little box of a place, as you will suppose, of a dandy craft of twenty-six tons; but I had not spared my purse in decorating it, and I believe no prettier interior of the kind in a vessel of the size of the Spitfire was in those times afloat. There were two sleeping-rooms, one forward and one aft. The after cabin was little better than a hole, and this I occupied. The berth forward, on the other hand, was as roomy as the dimensions of the little ship would allow, and I had taken care that it lacked nothing to render it a pleasant, I may say an elegant, sea bedroom. It was to be Grace's until I got her ashore, and this I counted upon managing by the following Friday, that is to say in about four days from the date of this night about which I am writing.
She stood at the table looking about her, breathing fast, her eyes large with alarm, excitement, I know not what other sensations and emotions. I wish I knew how to praise her, how to describe her. "Sweet" is the best word to express her girlish beauty. Though she was three months short of eighteen years of age, she might readily have passed for twenty-one, so womanly was her figure, as though, indeed, she was of tropic breeding and had been reared under suns which quickly ripen a maiden's beauty. But to say more would be to say what? The liquid brown of her large and glowing eyes—the dark and delicate bronze of her rich abundant hair—the suggestion of a pout in the turn of her lip, that gave an incomparable air of archness to her expression when her countenance was in repose—to enumerate these things—to deliver a catalogue of her graces in the most felicitous language that love and the memory of love could dictate, is yet to leave all that I could wish to say unsaid.
At last, Grace! I exclaimed, lifting her hand to my lips. "How is it with you now, my pet?"
She seated herself, and hid her face in her hands upon the table, saying, "I don't know how I feel, Herbert. But I know how I ought to feel."
Wait a little. You will regain your courage. You will find nothing wrong in all this presently. It was bound to happen. There was not the least occasion for this business of rope ladders and midnight sailings. It is Lady Amelia who forces this elopement upon us.
What will she say? she breathed through her fingers, still keeping her face hidden to conceal the crimson that had flushed her on a sudden and that was showing to the rim of her collar.
Do you care? Do I care? We have forced her hand, and what can she do? If you were but twenty-one, Grace!—and yet I don't know. You would be three years older—three years of sweetness gone for ever! But the old lady will have to give her consent now, and the rest will be for my cousin Frank to manage. Pray look at me, my sweet one.
I can't. I am ashamed. It is a most desperate act. What will mam'selle say—and your sailors? she murmured from behind her hands.
My sailors! Grace, shall I take you back whilst there is yet time?
She flashed a look at me over her finger tips.
Certainly not! she exclaimed with emphasis, then hid her face again.
I seated myself by her side, but it took me five minutes to get her to look at me, and another five minutes to coax a smile from her. In this while the men were busy about the decks. I heard Caudel's growling lungs of leather delivering orders in a half-stifled hurricane note, but I did not know that we were under way until I put my head through the companion hatch, and saw the dusky fabrics of the piers on either side stealing almost insensibly past us. Now that the wide expanse of sky had opened over the land, I could witness a dimness, as of the shadowing of clouds, in the quarter of the sky against which stood the unfinished block of the cathedral. This caused me to reckon upon the wind freshening presently. As it now blew it was a very light air indeed, scarce with weight enough to steady the light cloths of the yacht. There was an unwieldy lump of a French smack slowly grinding her way up the harbour close in against the pier on the port side, and astern of us were the triangular lights of a paddle-wheeled steamer, bound to London, timed for the tide that was now high, and filling the quietude of the night with the noise of the swift beats of revolving wheels.
Mind that steamer! I called out to Caudel, who was at the helm.
She passed us close, noisily shearing through it, with the white water at her stem throbbing like clouds of steam to the paddles, whence the race aft spread far into the gloom astern in a wide wake of yeast; a body of fire broke from her tall chimney and illuminated the long, thick line of smoke like the play of lightning upon the face of a thunder-cloud; her saloon was aglow, and the illuminated portholes went winking past upon the vision as though there lay a coil of flame along the length of the ebony black sides. She swept past and was away, leaving behind her a swell upon which the Spitfire tumbled about so violently that I came very near to being thrown out of the hatch in which I was standing. The commotion presently ceased, and by this time we were abreast of the longer of the two pier-heads, clear of the harbour, but I waited still a moment or so to take another view of the night and to send a glance round. Undoubtedly the stars shining low down over the old town of Boulogne had dimmed greatly within the hour, though they still flashed with brilliance in the direction of the English coast. The surf rolling upon the sand on either side the piers broke with a hollow note that even to my inexperienced ears seemed prophetic of wind.
What is the weather to be, Caudel? I called to him.
We're going to get a breeze from the south'ard, sir, he answered; "nothing to harm, I dessay, if it don't draw westerly."
What is your plan of sailing?
Can't do better, I think, sir, than stand over for the English coast, and so run down, keeping the ports conveniently aboard.
Do you mark the noise of the surf?
Ay, sir, that's along of this here ground swell.
I had hardly till this moment noticed the movement to which he referred. The swell was long and light, setting in flowing rounds of shadow dead on to the Boulogne shore, too rhythmically gentle to take the attention.
I re-entered the cabin, and found my sweetheart with her elbows on the table and her cheeks resting in her hands. The blush had scarcely faded from her face when I had quitted her; now she was as white as a lily.
Why do you leave me alone, Herbert? she asked, turning her dark, liquid eyes upon me without shifting the posture of her head.
My dearest, I wish to see our little ship clear of Boulogne harbour. We shall be getting a pleasant breeze presently, and it cannot blow too soon to please us. A brisk fair wind should land us at our destination in three days, and then—and then— said I, sitting down and bringing her to me.
She laid her cheek on my shoulder but said nothing.
Now, I exclaimed, "you are of course faint and wretched for the want of refreshments. What can I get you?" and I was about to give her a list of the wines and eatables I had laid in, but she languidly shook her head, as it rested on my shoulder, and faintly bade me not to speak of refreshments.
I should like to lie down, she said.
You are tired—worn out, I exclaimed, not yet seeing how it was with her; "yonder is your cabin. I believe you will find all you want in it. Unhappily we have no maid aboard to help you. But you will be able to manage, Grace—it is but for a day or two; and if you are not perfectly happy and comfortable, why, we will make for the nearest English port and finish the rest of the journey by rail. But our little yacht—"
I must lie down, she interrupted; "this dreadful motion!—get me a pillow and a rug; I will lie on this sofa."
I could have heaped a hundred injurious names upon my head for not at once observing that the darling was suffering. I sprang from her side, hastily procured a pillow and rug, removed her hat, plunged afresh into her cabin for some Eau de Cologne and went to work to bathe her brow and to minister to her in other ways. To be afflicted with nausea in the most romantic passage of one's life! I had never thought of inquiring whether or not she was a "good sailor," as it is called, being much too sentimental, much, too much in love to be visited by misgivings or conjectures in a direction so horribly prosaic as this.
I thought to comfort her by saying that if her sufferings continued we would head direct for Dover or some adjacent harbour. But, somehow, my scheme of elopement having comprised a yachting trip, the programme of it had grown into a habit of thought with me. For weeks I had been looking forward to the trip with the impassioned eagerness of a lover, delighting my mind with the fancy of having my sweetheart all to myself in a sense that no excursion on shore could possibly parallel. On shore there would be the rude conditions of the railway, the cab, the hotel, and all the vulgarity of dispatch when in motion. But the yacht gave my heart's trick of idealising a chance. The quiet surface of sea—I was too much in love to think of a gale of wind; the glories of the sunset; the new moon; the hushed night; we two on deck; our impassioned whispers set to music by the brook-like murmurings of waters alongside; the silken fannings of phantom-like pinions of canvas; the subdued voices of the men forward... Yes! It was of these things I had thought; these were the engaging, the delightful fancies that had filled my brain.
Nor, in this candid narrative which, I trust, will carry its own apology for our audacious behaviour as it progresses, must I omit to give the chief reason for my choice of a yacht as a means of eloping with Grace. She was under twenty-one; her aunt, Lady Amelia Roscoe, was her guardian, and no clergyman would marry the girl to me without her aunt's consent. That consent must be wrested from the old lady, and the business of wresting manifestly implies a violent measure; and what then, as I somewhat boyishly concluded, could follow our lonely association at sea for three or four days, or perhaps a week, but her ladyship's sanction?
A man, in describing his own passion, and in depicturing himself making love, cannot but present a foolish figure. Unhappily, this story solely concerns my elopement with Grace Bellassys and what came of it, and, therefore, it is in the strictest sense a tale of love: a description of which sentiment, however, as it worked in me and my dearest girl, I will endeavour to trouble you as little as possible with.
It was some time after three o'clock in the morning when Grace fell asleep. The heave of the vessel had entirely conquered emotion. She had had no smiles for me; the handkerchief she held to her mouth had kept her lips sealed; but her eyes were never more beautiful than now with their languishing expression of suffering, and I could not remove my gaze from her face, so exceedingly sweet did she look as she lay with the rich bronze of her hair glittering, as though gold-dusted, to the lamplight, and her brow showing with an ivory gleam through the tresses which shadowed it in charming disorder.
She fell asleep at last, breathing quietly, and I cannot tell how it comforted me to find her able to sleep, for now I might hope it would not take many hours of rest to qualify her as a sailor. In all this time that I had been below refreshing her brow and attending to her, and watching her as a picture of which my sight could never weary, the breeze had freshened and the yacht was heeling to it, and taking the wrinkled sides of the swell—that grew heavier as we widened the offing—with the sheering, hissing sweep that one notices in a steam launch. Grace lay on a lee-locker, and as the weather rolls of the little Spitfire were small there was no fear of my sweetheart slipping off the couch. She rested very comfortably, and slept as soundly as though in her own bed in times before she had known me, before I had crossed her path to set her heart beating, to trouble her slumbers, to give a new impulse to her life and to colour, with hues of shadows and brightnesses what had been little more than the drab of virgin monotony.
These poetical thoughts occurred to me as I stood gazing at her awhile to make sure that she slept; then finding the need of refreshment, I softly mixed myself a glass of soda and brandy, and lighting a pipe in the companion-way, that the fumes of the tobacco might not taint the cabin atmosphere, I stepped on to the deck.
And now I must tell you here that my little dandy yacht, the Spitfire, was so brave, staunch, and stout a craft that, though I am no lover of the sea in its angry moods, and especially have no relish for such experiences as one is said to encounter, for instance, off Cape Horn, yet such was my confidence in her seaworthiness, I should have been quite willing to sail round the world in her, had the necessity for so tedious an adventure have arisen. She had been built as a smack, but was found too fast for trawling, and the owner offered her as a bargain. I purchased and re-equipped her, little dreaming that she was one day to win me a wife. I improved her cabin accommodation, handsomely furnished her within, caused her to be sheathed with yellow metal to the bends, and to be handsomely embellished with gilt at the stern and quarters, according to the gingerbread taste of twenty or thirty years ago. She had a fine, bold spring or rise of deck forward, with abundance of beam, which warranted her for stability; but her submerged lines were extraordinarily fine, and I cannot recollect the name of a pleasure craft afloat at that time which I should not have been willing to challenge, whether for a fifty or a thousand mile race. She was rigged as a dandy, a term that no reader, I hope, will want me to explain.
I stood, cigar in mouth, looking up at her canvas and round upon the dark scene of ocean, whilst, the lid of the skylight being a little way open, I was almost within arm's reach of my darling, whose lightest call would reach my ear, or least movement take my eye. The stars were dim away over the port quarter, and I could distinguish the outlines of clouds hanging in dusky, vaporous bodies over the black mass of the coast dotted with lights where Boulogne lay, with the Cape Gris Nez lantern windily flashing on high from its shoulder of land that blended in a dye of ink with the gloom of the horizon. There were little runs of froth in the ripples of the water, with now and again a phosphoric glancing that instinctively sent the eye to the dimness in the western circle as though it were sheet lightning there which was being reflected. Broad abeam was a large, gloomy collier "reaching" in for Boulogne harbour: she showed a gaunt, ribbed, and heeling figure, with her yards almost fore and aft, and not a hint of life aboard her in the form of light or noise.
I felt sleepless—never so broad awake, despite this business now in hand that had robbed me for days past of hour after hour of slumber, so that I may safely say I had scarcely enjoyed six hours of solid sleep in as many days. Caudel still grasped the tiller, and forward was one of the men restlessly but noiselessly pacing the little forecastle. The bleak hiss of the froth at the yacht's forefoot threw a shrewd bleakness into the light pouring of the off-shore wind, and I buttoned up my coat as I turned to Caudel, though excitement worked much too hotly in my soul to suffer me to feel conscious of the cold.
This breeze will do, Caudel, if it holds, said I, approaching him by a stride or two that my voice should not disturb Grace.
Ay, sir, it is as pretty a little air as could be asked for.
What light is that away out yonder?
The Varne, your honour.
And where are you carrying the little ship to? said I, looking at the illuminated disc of compass card that swung in the short, brass binnacle under his nose.
Ye see the course, Mr. Barclay—west by nothe. That 'll fetch Beachy Head for us, afterwards a small shift of the hellum 'll put the Channel under our bows, keeping the British ports as we go along handy, so that if your honour don't like the look of the bayrometer, why there's always a harbour within a easy sail.
I was quite willing that Caudel should heave the English land into sight. He had been bred in coasters, and knew his way about by the mere swell of the mud, as the sailors say; whereas, put him in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but his sextant to depend upon, and I do not know that I should have felt very sure of him.
He coughed, and seemed to mumble to himself as he ground upon the piece of tobacco in his cheek, then said, "And how's the young lady adoing, sir?"
The motion of the vessel rendered her somewhat uneasy, but she is now sleeping.
I took a peep as I said this, to be certain, and saw her resting stirless, and in the posture I had left her in. No skylight ever framed a prettier picture of a sleeping girl. Her hair looked like beaten gold in the illusive lamplight; and to my eye, coming from the darkness of the sea and the great height of star-laden gloom, the sleeping form in the tender radiance of the interior was for the moment as startling as a vision, as something of unreal loveliness. I returned to Caudel.
Sorry to hear she don't feel well, sir, he exclaimed; "but this here sea-sickness I'm told, soon passes."
I want her to be well, said I. "I wish her to enjoy the run down Channel. We must not go ashore if we can help it; or one special object I have in my mind will be defeated."
Shall I keep the yacht well out, then, sir? No need to draw in, if so be—
No, no, sight the coast, Caudel, and give us a view of the scenery. And now, whilst I have the chance, let me thank you heartily for the service you have done me to-night. I should have been helpless without you; and what other man of my crew—what other man of any sort, indeed, could I have depended upon?
Oh, dorn't mention it, Mr. Barclay, sir; I beg and entreat that you worn't mention it, sir, he replied, as though affected by my condescension. "You're a gentleman, sir, begging your pardon, and that means a man of honour, and when you told me how things stood, why, putting all dooty on one side, if so be as there can be such a thing as dooty in jobs which aren't shipshape and proper, why, I says, of course, I was willing to be of use. Not that I myself have much confidence in these here elopements, saving your presence. I've got a grown-up darter myself in sarvice, and if when she gets married she dorn't make a straight course for the meeting-house, why, then, I shall have to talk to her as she's never yet been talked to. But in this job"—he swung off from the tiller to expectorate over the rail—"what the young lady's been and gone and done is what I should say to my darter or any other young woman, the sarcumstances being the same, 'go thou and dew likewise.'"
You see, Caudel, there was no hope of getting her ladyship's consent.
No, sir.
Then, again, consider the cruelty of sending the young lady to a Roman Catholic school for no fairer or kinder reasons than to remove her out of my way, and to compel her, if possible, by ceaseless teasing and exhortation, and God best knows what other devices, to change her faith.
I onderstand, sir, and I'm of opinion it was quite time that their little game was stopped.
Lady Amelia Roscoe is a Roman Catholic, and very bigoted. Ever since she first took charge of Miss Bellassys she has been trying to convert her, and by methods, I assure you, by no means uniformly kind.
So you was asaying, sir.
It pleased me to be thus candid with this sailor. Possibly there was in me a little disturbing sense of the need of justifying myself, though I believe the most acidulated moralist could not have glanced through the skylight without feeling that I heartily deserved forgiveness.
But supposing, Mr. Barclay, sir, continued Caudel, "that you'd ha' changed your religion and become a Papist; would her ladyship still ha' gone on objecting to ye?"
Supposing! Yes, Caudel, she would have gone on objecting even then. There are family feelings, family traditions, mixed up in her dislike of me. You shall have the yarn before we go ashore. It is right that you should know the whole truth. Until I make that young lady below my wife, she is as much under your care as under mine. That was agreed on between us, and that you know.
That I do know, and shall remember as much for her sake as for yourn and for mine, answered the honest fellow, with a note of deep feeling in his voice. "There's only one consideration, Mr. Barclay, that worrits me. I onderstood you to say, sir, that your honour has a cousin who's a clergyman that's willing to marry ye right away out of hand."
We must get the consent of the aunt first.
There it is! cried he, smiting the head of the tiller with his clenched fist, "suppose she dorn't consent?"
We have taken this step, said I softly, always afraid of disturbing my sweetheart, "to force her to consent. D'ye think she can refuse, man, after she hears of this elopement—this midnight rope-ladder business—and the days we hope to spend together on this little Spitfire?"
Still, Mr. Barclay, supposing she do, sir? You'll forgive me for saying of it; but supposing she do, sir?
No good in supposing, Caudel, said I, suppressing a little movement of irritation; "no good in obstructing one's path by suppositions stuck up like so many fences to stop one from advancing. Our first business is to get to Penzance."
By his motions, and the uneasy shifting of his posture, he discovered himself ill at ease, but his respectfulness would not allow him to persevere with his inquiries.
Caudel, said I, "you may ask me any questions you please. The more you show yourself really anxious on behalf of Miss Bellassys, the more shall I honour you. Don't fear. I shall never interpret your concern for her into a doubt of me. If Lady Amelia absolutely refuses her sanction, what then remains but to place Miss Bellassys with my sister and wait till she comes of age?"
So speaking, and now considering that I had said enough, I threw the end of my cigar overboard and went below.
It was daylight shortly before six, but the grey of the dawn brightened into sunrise before Grace awoke. Throughout the hours she had slept without a stir. From time to time I had dozed, chin on breast, opposite to where she lay. The wind had freshened, and the yacht was lying well down to it, swarming along, taking buoyantly the little sea that had risen, and filling the breeze, that was musical with the harmonies of the taut rigging, with the swift noise of spinning and seething water. The square of heavens showing in the skylight overhead wore a hard, marble, windy look, but the pearl-coloured streaks of vapour floated high and motionless, and I was yachtsman enough to gather from what I saw that there was nothing more in all this than a fresh Channel morning, and a sweep of southerly wind that was driving the Spitfire along her course some eight or nine miles in the hour.
As the misty pink flash of the upper limb of the rising sun struck the skylight, and made a very prison of the little cabin, with its mirrors and silver lamp, and glass and brass ornamentation, Grace opened her eyes. She opened them straight upon me, and, whilst I might have counted ten, she continued to stare as though she were in a trance; then the blood flooded her pale cheeks, her eyes grew brilliant with astonishment, and she sat erect, bringing her hands to her temples as though she struggled to recollect her wits. However, it was not long before she rallied, though for some few moments her face remained empty of intelligence.
Why, Grace, my darling, I cried, "do not you know where you are?"
Yes, now I do, she answered, "but I thought I had gone mad when I first awoke and looked around me."
You have slept soundly, but then you are a child, said I.
Whereabouts are we, Herbert?
I cannot tell for sure, I answered, "out of sight of land anyway. But where you are, Grace, you ought to know. Now, don't sigh. We are not here to be miserable."
A few caresses, and then her timid glances began to show like the old looks in her. I asked her if the movement of the yacht rendered her uneasy, and after a pause, during which she considered with a grave face, she answered no: she felt better, she must try to stand—and so saying she stood up on the swaying deck, and, smiling with her fine eyes fastened upon my face, poised her figure in a floating way full of a grace far above dancing, to my fancy. Her gaze went to a mirror, and I easily interpreted her thoughts, though, for my part, I found her beauty improved by her roughened hair.
There is your cabin, said I; "the door is behind those curtains. Take a peep, and tell me if it pleases you?"
There were flowers in it to sweeten the atmosphere, and every imaginable convenience that it was possible for a male imagination to hit upon in its efforts in a direction of this sort. She praised the little berth, and closed the door with a smile at me that made me conjecture I should not hear much more from her about our imprudence, the impropriety of our conduct, what mam'selle would think, and what the school girls would say.
Though she was but a child, as I would tell her, I too was but a boy for the matter of that, and her smile and the look she had given me, and her praise of the little berth I had fitted up for her made me feel so boyishly joyous that, like a boy as I was, though above six feet tall, I fell a whistling out of my high spirits, and then kissed the feather in her hat, and her gloves, which lay upon the table, afterwards springing, in a couple of bounds, on deck, where I stood roaring out for Bobby Allett.
A seaman named Job Crew was at the helm. Two others named Jim Foster and Dick Files were washing down the decks. I asked Crew where Caudel was, and he told me he had gone below to shave. I bawled again for Bobby Allett, and after a moment or two he rose through the forecastle hatch. He was a youth of about fifteen, who had been shipped by Caudel to serve as steward or cabin boy and to make himself generally useful besides. As he approached, I eyed him with some misgiving, though I had found nothing to object to in him before; but the presence of my sweetheart in the cabin had, I suppose, tempered my taste to a quality of lover-like fastidiousness, and this boy, Bobby, to my mind, looked very dirty.
Do you mean to wait upon me in those clothes? said I.
They're the best I have, master, he answered, staring at me with a pair of round eyes out of a dingy skin, that was certainly not clarified by the number of freckles and pimples which decorated it.
You can look smarter than that if you like, said I to him. "I want breakfast right away off. And let Foster drop his bucket and go to work to boil and cook. But tell Captain Caudel also that before you lay aft you must clean yourself, polish your face, brush your hair and shoes, and if you haven't got a clean shirt you must borrow one."
The boy went forward.
Pity, said I, thinking aloud rather than talking, as I stepped to the binnacle to mark the yacht's course, "that Caudel should have shipped such a dingy-skinned chap as that fellow for cabin use."
It's all along of his own doing, sir, said Job Crew.
How? You mean he won't wash himself?
No, sir; it's along of smoking.
Smoking? I exclaimed.
Yes, sir. I know his father—he's a waterman. His father told me that that there boy Bobby saved up, and then laid out all he'd got upon a meerschaum pipe for to colour it. He kep' all on a smoking, day arter day, and night arter night. But his father says to me, it was no go, sir; 'stead of his colouring the pipe, the pipe coloured him, and is weins have run nothen but tobacco juice ever since.
I burst into a laugh, and went to the rail to take a look round. We might have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so boundless did the spreading waters look; not a blob or film of coast on any hand of us broke the flawless sweep of the green circle of Channel waters. There was a steady breeze off the port beam, and the yacht, with every cloth which she carried on her, was driving through it as though she were in tow of a steamboat. The scene was full of life. On one bow was an English smack, as gaudy in the misty brilliance of the sunshine as an acquatic parrot, with her red mainsail and brown mizzen, and white foresail topping, aslant, the gloomy black hull from whose sides would break from time to time a sullen, white flash, like a leap of fire from a cannon's mouth, as the swing of the sea swerved the black, wet timbers to the morning lustre. On the other bow was a little barque with a milk-white hull, the French tri-colour trembling at her gaff-end, and her canvas looking like shot silk, with the play of the shadows in the bright and polished concavities. Past her a big French lugger was hobbling clumsily over the short seas, and farther off still, a tall, black steamboat, brig-rigged, her portholes glittering as though the whole length of her was studded with brilliants, was clumsily thrusting through it. Against the hard, blue marble of the sky the horizon stood firm, making one think of the rim of a green lens, broken in places by a leaning sail—a shadowy pear-like shaft. The Channel throbbed in glory under the sun; the full spirit of the sea was in the morning; and the wide and spreading surface of waters gave as keen an oceanic significance to the inspiration of the moment, as though the eye that centred the scene gazed from the heart of a South Pacific solitude.
I stood leaning over the bulwarks humming an air. Never had my heart beaten with so exquisite a sense of gladness and of happiness, as now possessed it. I was disturbed in a reverie of love, in which was mingled the life and beauty of the scene I surveyed, by the arrival of Caudel. He was varnished with soap, and blue with recent shaving, but there was no trace of the sleepless hours I had forced him to pass in the little sea-blue eyes which glittered under his somewhat ragged, thatched brow. He was a man of about fifty years of age; his dark hair was here and there of an iron-grey, and a roll of short-cut whiskers met in a bit of a beard upon the bone in his throat. He carried a true salt-water air in his somewhat bowed legs, in his slow motions, and in his trick of letting his arms hang up and down as though they were pump-handles. His theory of dress was, that what kept out the cold also kept out the heat, and so he never varied his attire, which was composed of a thick double-breasted waistcoat, a long pilot-cloth coat, a Scotch cap, very roomy pilot-cloth trousers, a worsted cravat, and fishermen's stockings.
I exchanged a few words with him about the boy Bobby, inquired the situation of the yacht, and after some talk of this kind, during which I gathered that he was taking advantage of the breeze, and shaping a somewhat more westerly course than he had first proposed, so that he did not expect to make the English coast much before three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I went below to refresh myself after the laborious undertaking of the night.
On quitting my berth I found the boy Bobby laying the cloth for breakfast, and Grace seated on a locker watching him. Her face was pale, but its expression was without uneasiness. She had put on her hat, and on seeing me exclaimed:
Herbert, dear, take me on deck. The fresh air may revive me, and she looked at the boy and the cloth he was laying with a pout full of meaning.
I at once took her by the hand and conducted her through the hatch. She passed her arm through mine to balance herself, and then sent her eyes bright with nervousness and astonishment round the sea, breathing swiftly.
Where is the land? she asked.
Behind the ocean, my love. But we shall be having a view of the right side of these waters presently.
What a little boat! she exclaimed, running her gaze over the yacht. "Is it not dangerous to be in so small a vessel out of sight of land?"
Bless your dear heart, no. Think of the early navigators! Of course mam'selle taught you all about the early navigators?
When shall we reach Penzance?
Supposing the wind to blow fair and briskly, in three or four days.
Three or four days! she exclaimed, and glancing down at herself, she added, "Of course you know, Herbert, that I have only the dress I am wearing?"
It will last you till we get ashore, said I, laughing; "and then you shall buy everything you want, which, of course, will be more than you want."
I shall send, said she, "to Mam'selle Championet for my boxes."
Certainly—when we are married.
All your presents, particularly the darling little watch, are in those boxes, Herbert.
Everything shall be recovered to the uttermost ha'porth, my pet.
I observed Caudel, who stood a little forward of the companion, gazing at her with an expression of shyness and admiration. I told her that he was the captain of the yacht; that he was the man I had introduced to her last night, and begged her to speak to him. She coloured a rose red, but bade him good-morning nevertheless, accompanying the words with an inclination of her form, the graceful and easy dignity of which somehow made me think of the movement of a bough heavily foliaged, set curtseying by the summer wind.
I hope, Miss, said Caudel, pulling off his Scotch cap, "as how I see you well this morning, freed of that there nausey as Mr. Barclay was a telling me you suffered from?"
I trust to get used to the sea quickly—the motion of the yacht is not what I like, she answered, with her face averted from him, taking a peep at me to observe if I saw that she felt ashamed and would not confront him.
He perceived this too, and knuckling his forehead said, "It's but a little of the sea ye shall have, miss, if so be it lies in my power to keep this here Spitfire awalking," and so speaking he moved off, singing out some idle order as he did so by way of excusing his abrupt departure.
I wish we were quite alone, Herbert, said my sweetheart, drawing me to the yacht's rail.
So do I, my own, but not here—not in the middle of the sea.
I did not think of bringing a veil—your men stare so.
And so do I, said I, letting my gaze sink fair into her eyes, which she had upturned to mine. "You wouldn't have me rebuke the poor, harmless, sailor men for doing what I am every instant guilty of—admiring you, I mean, to the very topmost height of my capacity in that way—but here comes Master Bobby Allett with the breakfast."
Herbert, I could not eat for worlds.
Are you so much in love as all that?
She shook her head, and looked at the flowing lines of green water which melted into snow, as they came curving, with glass-clear backs, to the ruddy streak of the yacht's sheathing. However, the desire to keep her at sea until we could land ourselves close to the spot where we were to be married made me too anxious to conquer the uneasiness which the motion of the vessel excited to humour her. I coaxed and implored, and eventually got her below, and by dint of talking and engaging her attention, and making her forget herself, so to speak, I managed to betray her into breaking her fast with a cup of tea and a fragment of cold chicken. This was an accomplishment of which I had some reason to feel proud; but then, to be sure, I was in the secret, knowing this; that sea nausea is entirely an affair of the nerves; that no sufferer is ill in his sleep, no matter how high the sea may be running, or how unendurable to his waking senses the sky-high capers and abysmal plunges of the craft may be, and that the correct treatment for sea-sickness is—not to think of it. In short, I made my sweetheart forget to feel uneasy. She talked, she sipped her tea, she ate, and then she looked better, and indeed owned that she felt so.
For my part I breakfasted with the avidity of a shipwrecked man. Ashore it might have been otherwise, but the sea breeze is a noble neutraliser of whatever is undesirable in the obligations which attend an excess of sentiment and emotion.
The cabin made as pretty a little marine piece as ever the light of the early sun flashed into. There were flowers of fragrance and of rich colours; the small table sparkled with its hospitable furniture; the polished bulkheads rippled with light, and the diamond-like glance of the lustrous, dancing sea seemed to be swept by the blue air gushing athwart the sky-light into the mirrors, which enriched this little boudoir of a cabin. But it was the presence of Grace which informed this picture with those qualities of sweetness, elegance, refinement, perfume, which I now found in it, but had not before noticed. How proudly my young heart rose to the sight of her! to the thought of her as my own, one and indivisible, no longer the distant hope, which for weary months past her aunt had made her to me, but my near sweetheart—my present darling—her hand within reach of my grasp.
We sat together in earnest conversation. It was not for me to pretend that I could witness no imprudence in our elopement. Indeed, I took care to let her know that I regretted the step we had been forced into taking as fully as she did. My love was an influence upon her, and whatever I said I felt might weigh with her childish heart. But I repeated what I had again and again written to her—that there had been no other alternative than this elopement.
You wished me to wait, I said, "until you were twenty-one, when you would be your own mistress. But to wait for more than three years! What was to happen in that time? They might have converted you—"
No, she cried.
And have wrought a complete change in your nature, I went on. "How many girls are there who could resist the sort of pressure they were subjecting you to one way and another?"
They could not have changed my heart, Herbert.
How can we tell? Under their influence in another year you might have come to congratulate yourself upon your escape from me.
Do you think so? Then you should have granted me another year, because marriage, she added, with a look in her eyes that was like a wistful smile, "is a very serious thing, and if you believe that I should be rejoicing in a year hence over my escape from you, as you call it, then you must believe that I have no business to be here."
This was a cool piece of logic that was hardly to my taste.
Tell me, said I, fondling her hand, "how you managed last night?"
I do not like to think of it, she answered. "I was obliged to undress, for it is mam'selle's rule to look into all the bedrooms the last thing after locking the house up. It was then ten o'clock. I waited until I heard the convent clock strike twelve, by which time I supposed everybody would be sound asleep. Then I lighted a candle and dressed myself, but I had to use my hands as softly as a spider spins its web, and my heart seemed to beat so loud that I was afraid the girls in the next room would hear it. I put a box of matches in my pocket, and crept along the corridors to the big salle-à-manger. The door of my bedroom creaked when I opened it, and I felt as if I must sink to the ground with fright. The salle-à-manger is a great, gloomy room even in day-time; it was dreadfully dark, horribly black, Herbert, and the sight of the stars shining through the window over the balcony made me feel so lonely that I could have cried. There was a mouse scratching in the room somewhere, and I got upon a chair, scarcely caring whether I made a noise or not, so frightened was I, for I hate mice. Indeed, if that mouse had not kept quiet after a while, I believe I should not be here now. I could not endure being alone in a great, dark room at that fearful hour of the night with a mouse running about near me. Oh, Herbert, how glad I was when I saw your lantern flash."
My brave little heart! cried I, snatching up her hand and kissing it. "But the worst part is over. There are no ladders, no great black rooms now before us, no mice even."
She slightly coloured without smiling, and I noticed an anxious expression in the young eyes she held steadfastly bent upon the table.
What thought is troubling you, Grace?
Herbert, I fear you will not love me the better for consenting to run away with you.
Is that your only fear?
She shook her head, and said, whilst she continued to keep her eyes downcast: "Suppose Aunt Amelia refuses to sanction our marriage?"
She will not—she dare not! I cried vehemently; "imprudent as we may seem, we are politic in this, Grace—that our adventure must force your aunt into sending us her sanction." She looked at me, but her face remained grave. "Caudel," said I, "who is as much your guardian as I am, put the same question to me. But there is no earthly good in supposing. It is monstrous to suppose that your aunt will object. She hates me, I know, but her aversion—the aversion of that old woman of the world with her family pride and notions of propriety—is not going to suffer her to forbid our marriage after this. Yet, grant that her ladyship—my blessings upon her false front!—should go on saying no; are we not prepared?"
But if it has to come to my living with your sister, Herbert—
It will come to nothing of the sort, I whipped out.
Would it not have been better for me, she continued, "to have remained under Aunt Amelia's care until I came of age?"
Aunt Amelia, said I, "in that sense means your Boulogne school-mistress, and in much less than three years you would have been pestered into changing your faith."
You think I have no strength of mind. You may be right, she added, looking at me and then around her and sighing.
But remember, my darling, what you have written to me. What was the name now of mam'selle's confessor?
Père Jerome.
Well, on your own showing, wasn't this Father Jerome ceaseless in his importunities?
Yes. Mam'selle was repeatedly leaving me alone with him under one excuse or another. He sent me books—I was taken to mass—only yesterday morning mam'selle lost her temper with me, and quite made me understand that her orders from Aunt Amelia were to convert me, coûte que coûte—
Then, cried I, interrupting her once more, hot with the irritation that had again and again visited me when I read her letters where she complained of the behaviour of mam'selle and this Father Jerome; "is there any mortal of our faith, I care not what may be his or her theories of human propriety, who could pronounce against us for acting as we have? My contention is, your aunt is not a proper guardian for you. If it were your father or your mother—both Protestants, whose spirits, looking down upon you, we are bound to believe, would wish you to live and die Protestant to the heart as they were! But Lady Amelia Roscoe!—the most wretched mixture that can be imagined, of bigotry and worldliness, her head stuffed full of priests and dress, of beads and balls—"
I broke off to kiss away a tear, and a little later she was smiling with her hand in mine, as I led her up on deck.
The mistiness had gone out of the sunlight, the pearly, vaporous curls—faint of hue as the new moon beheld in the day—which had given a look of marble to the sky, had melted out or been settled by the breeze over to the English coast, and now the heavens were a pale blue, piebald with bodies of white vapour streaming up out of the south and touching the green and creaming stretch of waters with shadows of violet. There was more warmth in the sun than I should have looked for at that time of the year, and I speedily made Grace comfortable in a chair, a little distance from the tiller—in other words, out of earshot of the helmsman; I snugged her in rugs, and Caudel further sheltered her by what he called a hurricane house—a square of canvas "seized" above the line of the bulwark rail.
She gazed about her out of the wraps which rose to her ears with eyes full of childlike interest and wonder, not unmixed with fear, I saw her eagerly watching the action of the yacht as the little fabric leaned to a sea with a long, sideways, floating plunge that brought the yeast of the broken waters bubbling and hissing to the very line of her lee forecastle bulwark; then she would clasp my hand as though startled when the dandy craft brought the weight of her white canvas to windward on the heave of the underrunning sea with a sound as of drums and bugles heard afar echoing down out of the glistening concavities and ringing out of the taut rigging upon which the blue and brilliant morning breeze was splitting.
She had not been sitting long before I saw that she was beginning to like it. There was no nausea now; her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks; and her red lips lay parted as though in pure enjoyment of the glad rush of the salt breeze athwart her teeth of pearl.
We had a deal to say to each other as you may suppose, and so much of the nonsense that lovers will utter went to our talk that I should be sorry to record what was said. Caudel, conning the little ship, hung about removed from us, but I would often catch his sea-blue eye furtively directed at Grace as though he could not look at her often enough. The boy Bobby came and went betwixt the forecastle hatch and the companion; the fellow at the helm swung upon the tiller with an occasional peep at the broad wake racing, fanshaped, from under the counter into the troubled toss and windy distance, as though he wished to make sure that he was steering straight; the other two of my crew were at work forward on jobs to which, not being a sailor, I should be unable to give a name.
Thus passed the morning. There was no tedium. If ever there came a halt in our chat there were twenty things over the side to look at, to fill the pause with colour and beauty. It might be a tall, slate-coloured, steam tank, hideous with gaunt leaning funnel and famished pole-masts, and black fans of propeller beating at the stern-post like the vanes of a drowning windmill amid a hill of froth, yet poetised in spite of herself into a pretty detail of the surrounding life through the mere impulse and spirit of the bright seas through which she was starkly driving. Or it was a full-rigged ship, homeward bound, with yearning canvas and ocean-worn sides, figures on her poop crossing from rail to rail to look at what was passing, and seamen on her forecastle busy with the ship's ground tackle.
It was shortly after twelve that the delicate shadow of the high land of Beachy Head showed over the yacht's bow. By one o'clock it had grown defined and firm, with the glimmering streak of its white ramparts of chalk stealing out of the blue haze.
There's Old England, Grace! said I. "How one's heart goes out to the sight of the merest shadow of one's own soil! The Spitfire has seen the land; has she not quickened her pace?"
I ought to wish it was the Cornwall coast, she answered; "but I am enjoying this now," she added smiling.
How close do you intend to run in? I called to Caudel.
He rolled up to us and answered:
No call, I think, sir, to haul in much closer. The land trends in down Brighton and Worthing way, and there'll be nothen to see till we're off St. Catherine's Point.
Well, you know our destination, Caudel. Carry the yacht to it in your own fashion. But mind you get there, said I, looking at Grace.
I was made happy by finding my sweetheart with some appetite for dinner at one o'clock. She no longer sighed; no regrets escaped her; her early alarm had disappeared; the novelty of the situation was wearing off; she was now realising again what I knew she had realised before—to judge by her letters—though the excitement and terrors of the elopement had broken in upon and temporarily disordered her perception; she was now fully realising, I mean, that there was nothing for it but this step to free her from a species of immurement charged with menace to her faith and to her love; and this being her mood, her affection for me found room to show itself; so that now I never could meet her eyes without seeing how wholly I had her dear heart, and how happy she was in this recurrence of brightening out of her love from the gloom and consternation that attended the start of our headlong wild adventure.
I flattered myself that we were to be fortunate in our weather; certainly all that afternoon was as fair and beautiful in its marine atmosphere of autumn as living creature could desire. The blues and greens of the prospect of heaven and sea were enriched by the looming, towering terraces of Beachy Head, hanging large and looking near upon our starboard quarter, though I believe Caudel had not sailed very deep within the sphere in which the high-perched lantern is visible before shifting his helm for a straight down Channel course. A lugger with red canvas, the hue of which was deepened yet by the delicate crimsoning of the sun that was now sloping into the Atlantic, gliding betwixt us and the heap of land in the north, brought out the white chalk of the heights into a snow-white brilliance that almost startled the eye at first sight of it.
I should imagine that a huge iceberg shows like that, said I to Grace.
I wish I had my paint-box here, she answered, her eyes glistening as she looked.
Grace, said I, "I have an idea. We will spend our honeymoon in the Spitfire. We will lay in a stock of paint-boxes, easels and lead pencils, sail round the coast, heave our little ship to off every point of beauty, and take our fill of English shore scenery."
Do you mean to wait till next summer? she asked, glancing at me shyly through her lashes, though with a hint of coquetry too in the spirit of her look.
I laughed out, seeing her meaning, for to be sure a coastal cruise in a twenty-six ton dandy would hardly fit the winter months of Great Britain, and by the time we should be prepared to enter upon our honeymoon, this autumn that was now dying would, I fear, be entirely dead.
Then, it shall be Paris, Brussels, and Rome according to your own programme, said I.
She coloured, and said something about there being plenty of time to talk about such a matter as that, and went to the rail and leaned over it, watching the distant noble mass of land in a reverie upon which I would not intrude, so sweet did she look with her profile showing with ivory-like delicacy against the green and blue of the east where the tints were hardening to the gathering of the evening shadow there, whilst her rich hair blown by the breeze seemed to tremble into fire to the now almost level pouring of the red splendour in the west.
When the sun had fairly set I took her below, for the wind seemed to come on a sudden with the damp of night in it, and a bite as shrewd in its abruptness as frost. I had made no other provision in the shape of amusement for our sea trip of three, four, or five days as it might happen, than a small parcel of novels, scarcely doubting that all the diversion we should need must lie in each other's company. And to be sure we managed to kill the time very agreeably without the help of fiction, though we both owned, when the little cabin clock pointed to half-past nine, and she looking up at it, and yawning behind her white fingers, exclaimed, that she felt tired and would go to bed; I say, we both owned that the day had seemed a desperately long one—to be sure, with us it had begun very early—and I could not help adding that on the whole a honeymoon spent aboard a yacht the size of the Spitfire would soon grow a very slow business in spite of crayons and paint-boxes.
As we lingered hand in hand, she exclaimed, "What will mam'selle have been saying all to-day?"
The excitement, said I, "has been tremendous. Mam'selle fainted to begin with. Father Jerome was sent for, and I can see him with my mind's eye taking the ground as he makes for the château with the strides of a pantomime policeman chasing the clown. What titterings, what exclamations, what Mon Dieux! and quelle horreurs! among the girls! How many of them would like to be you? When they find that rope-ladder dangling—the burglarious bull's-eye lamp at the foot of it—"
How could we have done it? she interrupted, looking at me with a pale face and a working lip.
When she had withdrawn I put on a pea-coat, and filling a pipe, stepped on deck. The dusk was clear, but of a darker shade than that of the preceding night; there was not more wind than had been blowing throughout the day; but the sky was full of large swollen-clouds rolling in shadows of giant wings athwart the stars, and the gloom of them was in the atmosphere. Here and there showed a ship's light, some faint gleam of red or green windily coming and going out upon the weltering obscurity, but away to starboard the horizon ran black, without a single break of shore light that I could see. The yacht was swarming through it under all canvas, humming as she went. Her pace, if it lasted, would, I knew, speedily terminate this sea-going passage of our elopement, and I looked over the stern very well pleased to witness the white sweep of the wake melting at a little distance into a mere elusive faintness.
Caudel stood near the helm,
This will do, I think, said I.
Ay, sir, he answered; "she's finding her heels now. See that there brig out yonder?" and his arm pointed out against the stars over the horizon to a dim green light on the right of our wake astern. "She was ahead of us half an hour ago, and I allow she was walking too—warn't she, Job?"
Warping, more like, answered the man in a grunting voice.
You go and smoother yourself! cried Caudel; "why, damme a heagle can't fly if you're to be believed."
When are we to be off St. Catherine's Point at this pace, Caudel? said I.
At this pace, sir—why, betwixt seven and eight o'clock to-morrow morning.
What a deuce of a length this English Channel runs to! cried I impatiently. "Why, it will be little better than beginning our voyage even when the Isle of Wight is abreast."
Yes, sir, there's a deal o' water going to the making of this here Channel—a blooming sight too much of it when it comes on a winter's night a-blowing and a-snowing, the hatmosphere thick as muck, answered Caudel.
There'll be a bright look-out kept to-night, I hope, said I. "Not the value of all the cargoes afloat at this present instant, Caudel, the wide world over, equals the worth of my treasure aboard the Spitfire."
Here Job Crew took a step to leeward to spit.
Trust me to see that a bright look-out's kept, Mr. Barclay. There'll be no tarning in with me this night. Don't let no fear of anything going wrong disturb your mind, sir.
I lingered to finish my pipe. The fresh wind flashed into the face damp with the night and the spray-cold breath of the sea, and the planks of the deck showed dark with the moisture to the dim starlight. There was some weight in the heads of seas as they came rolling to our beam, and the little vessel was now soaring and falling briskly upon the heave of the folds whose volume, of course, gained as the Channel broadened.
Well, said I, with a bit of a shiver, and hugging myself in my pea-coat, "I'm cold and tired, and going to bed, so good-night, and God keep you wide awake," and down I went, and ten minutes later was snugged away in my coffin of a bunk sound asleep, and snoring at the top of my pipes, I don't doubt.
Next morning when I went on deck after nine hours of solid slumber, I at once directed my eyes over the rail in search of the Isle of Wight, but there was nothing to be seen but a grey drizzle, a weeping wall of slate-coloured haze that formed a sky of its own and drooped to within a mile or so of the yacht. The sea was an ugly sallowish green, and you saw the billows come tumbling in froth from under the vaporous margin of the horizon as though each surge was formed there, and there was nothing but blackness and space beyond. The yacht's canvas was discoloured with saturation; drops of water were blowing from her rigging; there was a sobbing of a gutter-like sort in her lee scuppers, and the figures of the men glistening in oilskins completed the melancholy appearance of the little Spitfire. Caudel was below, but the man named Dick Files was at the helm, an intelligent young fellow without any portion of Job Crew's surliness, and he answered the questions I put.
We had made capital way throughout the night he told me, and if the weather were clear, St. Catherine's Point would show abreast of us.
There's no doubt about Caudel knowing where he is? said I, with a glance at the blind grey atmosphere that sometimes swept in little puffs of cloudy damp through the rigging, like fragments of vapour torn out of some compacted body.
Oh, no, sir, Mr. Caudel knows where he is, answered the man. "We picked up and passed a small cutter out of Portsmouth about three-quarters of an hour ago, sir, and he told us where we were."
Has this sail been kept on the yacht all night? said I, looking up at the wide spread of mainsail and gaff topsail.
All night, sir. The run's averaged eight knots. Night hand equal to steam, sir.
Well, you will all need to keep a bright look-out in this sort of thickness. How far off can you see?
The man stared, and blinked, and mused, and then said he allowed about a mile and a quarter.
Room enough, said I. "But mind your big mail boats out of Southampton! There are German skippers amongst them who would drive through the devil himself sooner than lose five minutes."
The promise of a long, wet, blank day was not very cheering. In fact, this change in the weather was as damping to my spirits as it literally was to everything else, and as I entered the companion way for shelter, I felt as though half of a mind to order the yacht to be headed for some adjacent port. But a little thinking brought back my resolution to its old bearings. It is a hard thing to avow, but I knew that my very strongest chance of gaining Lady Amelia's consent lay in this sea trip. Then again, there might come a break at any moment, with a fine day of warm sunshine and clear sky to follow. I re-entered the cabin, and on looking at the barometer observed a slight depression in the mercury, but it was without significance to my mind.
Somewhere about this time Grace came out of her berth. She brought an atmosphere of flower-like fragrance with her, but the motions of the yacht obliged her to sit quickly, and she gazed at me with laughter in her eyes from the locker, graceful in her posture as a reposing dancer. Her face lengthened, however, when I told her about the weather, that in short there was nothing visible from the deck but a muddy, jumbled atmosphere of vapour and drizzle.
I counted upon seeing the Isle of Wight, cried she; "there has been no land so far except those far-off high cliffs yesterday afternoon."
No matter, my sweet. Let us take as long as possible in breakfasting. Then you shall read Tennyson to me—yes, I have a volume of that poet, and we shall find some of the verses in wonderful harmony with our mood. She gave me a smiling glance, though her lip pouted as though she would say, "Don't make too sure of my mood, my fine young fellow." "By the time we have done with Tennyson," I continued, "the weather may have cleared. If not, then we must take as long as possible in dining."
Isn't it dangerous to be at sea in such weather as this? she asked.
No, said I.
But the sailors can't see.
I feared the drift of her language and exclaimed, "It would be dangerous to attempt to make the land, for we might blunder upon a rock and go to pieces, Grace; and then farewell, a long farewell to the passions, emotions, the impulses, the sensations which have brought us together here," and I kissed her hand.
But it would be pleasant to lie in a pretty harbour—to rest as it were, she exclaimed.
Our business is to get married, my darling, I rejoined; "and we must hasten as swiftly as the wind will allow us to the parish where the ceremony is to be performed, for my cousin can't publish the banns until we are on the spot, and whilst he is publishing the banns we must be treating with her ladyship, and, as the diplomatists would say, negotiating a successful issue."
She sighed, and looked grave, and hung her head. In truth, she took a gloomy view of the future, was secretly convinced her aunt would not consent, was satisfied that she would have to reside with my sister until she had come of age, and my lightest touching upon the subject dispirited her. And, indeed, though I had talked big to Caudel, and to my darling also, of my sister taking charge of her, I was not at all sure—I ought undoubtedly to have asked the question of a lawyer—that Lady Amelia Roscoe could not, as her guardian, claim her, and convey her to school afresh, and do, in short, what she pleased with the child until she was twenty-one years old. But all the same I felt cocksure in my heart that it would never come to this. Our yachting trip I regarded as a provision against all difficulties.
My mind was busy with these thoughts as I sat by her side looking at her; but she loved me not less than I loved her, and so I never found it hard to coax a smile into her sweet face and to brighten her eyes.
I should only weary you by reciting the passage of the hours. After breakfast I took Grace on deck for a turn, but she was glad to get below again. All day long it continued dark weather, without a sight of anything, save at intervals the shadowy figure of a coaster aslant in the thickness, and once the loom of a huge ocean passenger boat, sweeping at twelve or fourteen knots through the grey veil of vapour that narrowed the horizon to within a mile of us. The wind, however, remained a steady, fresh breeze, and throughout the day there was never a rope handled nor a stitch of canvas reduced. The Spitfire swung steadfastly through it, in true sea-bruising style, sturdily flinging the sea off her flaring bow, and whitening the water with the plunges of her churning keel till the tail of her wake seemed to stretch to the near sea line.
I will not feign, however, that I was perfectly comfortable in my mind. Anything at sea but thick weather! I never pretended to be more than a summer-holiday sailor, and such anxiety, as I should have felt had I been alone, was now mightily accentuated, as you will suppose, by having the darling of my heart in my little ship with me. I had a long talk with Caudel that afternoon, and despite my eager desire to remain at sea, I believe I would have been glad had he advised that the Spitfire should be steered for the nearest harbour. But his counsel was all the other way.
Lord love ye, Mr. Barclay, sir, he exclaimed, "what's agoing wrong that we should tarn to and set it right? Here's a breeze of wind that's adoing all that could be asked for. I dorn't say it ain't thick, but there's nothen in it to take notice of. Of course, you've only got to say the word, sir, and I'll put the hellum up; but even for that there job it would be proper to make sartin first of all where we are. There's no want of harbours under our lee from Portland Bill to Bolt Head, but I can't trust to my dead reckoning, seeing what's involved," said he, casting a damp eye at the skylight; "and my motto is, there's nothen like seeing when you're on such a coast as this here. Having come all this way it 'ud be a pity to stop now."
So long as you're satisfied! I exclaimed; and no doubt he was, though I believe he was influenced by vanity too. Our putting into a harbour might affect him as a reflection upon his skill. He would also suppose that, if we entered a harbour, we should travel by rail to our destination, which would be as though he were told we could not trust him farther. After the service he had done me it was not to be supposed I could causelessly give the worthy fellow offence.
You steer by the compass, I suppose? said I.
By nothen else, sir, he answered in a voice of wonder.
Well, I might have known that, said I, laughing at my own stupid question that yet had sense in it too. "I should have asked you if the compass is to be trusted?"
Ay, sir. He's a first-class compass. There's nothen to make him go wrong. Yet it's astonishing what a little thing will put a compass out. I've heered of a vessel that was pretty nigh run ashore all along of the helmsman—not because he couldn't steer; a better hand never stood at a wheel; but because he'd been physicking of himself with iron and steel, and had taken so much of the blooming stuff that the compass was wrong all the time he was at the helm.
A very good story, said I.
I'm sure you'll forgive me, sir, he proceeded, "for asking if your young lady wears any steel bones about her—contrivances for hoisting her dress up astarn—crinolines—bustles—you know what I mean, Mr. Barclay?"
I cannot tell, said I.
I've heered speak of the master of a vessel, he went on (being a very talkative man when he got into the "yarning" mood), "whose calculations was always falling to pieces at sea. Two and two never seemed to make four with him; ontil he found out that one of his lady passengers every morning brought a stool and sat close agin the binnacle; she wore steel hoops to swell her dress out with, and the local attraction was such, your honour, that the compass was sometimes four or five points out."
I told him that if the compass went wrong it would not be Miss Bellassys' fault; and having had enough of the deck, I rejoined my sweetheart, and, in the cabin, with talking, reading, she singing—very sweetly she sang—we killed the hours till bed-time.
This was our third night at sea, and I was now beginning to think that instead of three or four days we should occupy a week, and perhaps longer, in making Mount's Bay; in which conjecture I was confirmed when, finding myself awake at three o'clock in the morning, I pulled on my clothes and went on deck to take a look round, and found the wind a light off-shore air, the stars shining, and the Spitfire, with her canvas falling in and out with sounds like the discharge of small arms, rolling stagnantly upon a smooth-backed run of swell lifting out of the north-east, but with a slant in the heave of it that made one guess the impulse which set it running was fair north.
I was up again at seven o'clock, with a resolution to let the weather shape my decision as to sticking to the vessel or going ashore, and was not a little pleased to find the yacht making good way with a brilliant breeze gushing steady off her starboard bow. The heavens looked high with fine weather clouds, prismatic mare-tails for the most part, here and there a snow-white, swelling shoulder of vapour hovering over the edge of the sea.
Caudel told me we were drawing well on to Portland, but that the wind had headed him, and he was off his course, so that, unless he put the yacht about, we should not obtain a sight of the land.
No matter, said I, "let us make the most of this slant."
That's what I'm for doing, sir. My principle is, always make a free wind, no matter what be the air that's ablowing. Some men's for ratching with the luff of their fore and aft canvas rounding in aweather, so cleverly do they try to split the eye of the breeze. I'm for sailing myself, and he cast a glance up at the rapful canvas, following it on with a look at Jacob Crew, who was suddenly gnawing upon his quid at the tiller, as though to keep him in mind by the expression of his eye of injunctions previously delivered.
The greater part of this day Grace and I spent on deck, but nothing whatever happened good enough to keep my tale waiting whilst I tell you about it. Strong as the off-shore breeze was, there was but little sea, nothing to stop the yacht, and she ran through it like a sledge over a snow plain, piling the froth to her stem-head and reeling off a fair nine knots as Caudel would cry out to me with an exultant countenance of leather every time the log was hove. He talked of being abreast of the Start by three o'clock in the morning.
Then, said I to my sweetheart, "if that be so, Grace, there will be but a short cruise to follow."
At this she looked grave, and fastened her eye with a wistful expression upon the sea over the bows as though Mount's Bay lay there, and as though the quaint old town of Penzance, with its long esplanade and rich flanking of green and well-tilled heights, would be presently showing.
I read her thoughts and said, "I have never met Mrs. Howe, but Frank's letters about her to me were as enthusiastic as mine were about you to him. He calls her sweetly pretty. So she may be. I know she is a lady; her connections are good; I am also convinced by Frank's description that she is amiable; consequently, I am certain she will make you happy and comfortable until—" and here I squeezed her hand..
It is a desperate step, Herbert, she sighed.
Upon which I changed the subject.
There was a noble flaring sunset that evening. The crimson of it was deep and thunderous; the wild splendour was rendered portentous by an appearance as of bars of cloud stretched horizontally across, as though they railed in the flames of a continent on fire. All day long the wind had been heading us a little off our course, which by magnetic compass was about W.S.W., and this magnificence of sunset at which Grace and I continued to stare with eyes of admiration and wonder, neither of us having ever seen the like of the red and burning glory that overhung the sea, stood well up on the starboard bow. The Channel waters ran to it in a dark and frothing green till they were smitten by the light, when they throbbed in blood for a space, then flowed in dark green afresh, hardening into a firm, cold, darkly green horizon.
A small screw steamer, with her funnel sloping almost over her stern, and her greasy poles of masts resembling fibres of gold in the sunset, was bruising her way up Channel with a frequent cock of her bow or stern which made one wonder where the sea was that tossed her so. There was nothing else in sight, and by the time she vanished the last rusty tinge of red had perished in the west, and the loneliness of the sea came like a sensible quality of cold into the darkening twilight.
How desolate the ocean looks on a sudden! said Grace.
I thought so too as I glanced at the ashen heads of the melting billows and up aloft at the sky, where I took notice of an odd appearance of vapour, a sort of dusky smearing, as it were—a clay-like kind of cloud, as though rudely laid on by a trowel—I cannot better express the uncommon character of the heavens that evening. Here and there a star looked sparely and bleakly down, and in the west there was a paring of moon, some day or two old, shining and crystalline enough to make the dull gleam of the stars odd as an atmospheric effect.
But the breeze blew steady; there was nothing to disturb the mind in the indications of the barometer; hour after hour the little ship was swarming through it handsomely, and we were now drawing on much too close to Mount's Bay (albeit this evening we were not yet abreast of the Start) to pause because of a thunder-coloured, smoking sunset, and because of a hard look of sky that might yield to the stars before midnight and discover a wide and cloudless plain of luminaries.
How long shall you keep on this tack? I asked Caudel.
All night, sir, if the wind don't head us yet. It won't put us far off our port even at this.
Shall you sight the Start light?
No, sir. Our stretching away all day'll have put it out of our spear of view. The Lizard light'll be all I want, and this time twenty-four hours I hope to be well on to it.
I went below, and Grace and I killed the time as heretofore in talking and reading. We found the evening too short indeed, so much had we to say to each other. Wonderful is the quality and the amount of talk which lovers are able to get through and feel satisfied with! You hear of silent love, of lovers staring on one another with glowing eyes, their lips incapable of the emotions and sensations which crowd their quick hearts and fill their throats with sighs. This may be very well too; but, for my part, I have generally observed that lovers have a very great deal to talk about. Remark an engaged couple; sooner than be silent they will whisper if there be company present; and when alone, or when they think themselves alone, their tongues—particularly the girl's—are never still. Grace and I were of a talking age—two-and-twenty, and one not yet eighteen; our minds had no knowledge of life, no experience, nothing in them to keep them steady; they were set in motion by the lightest, the most trivial breath of thought, and idly danced in us in the manner of some gossamer-light, topmost leaf to the faintest movement of the summer air.
She withdrew to her berth at ten o'clock that night with a radiant face and laughing eyes, for inane as the evening must have shown to others, to us it had been one of perfect felicity; not a single sigh had escaped her, and twice had I mentioned the name of Mrs. Howe without witnessing any change of countenance in her.
I went on deck to take a last look round, and found all well; no change in the weather, the breeze a brisk and steady pouring out of the north, and Caudel pacing the deck well satisfied with our progress. I returned below without any feeling of uneasiness, and sat at the cabin table for some ten minutes or so to smoke out a cigar, and to refresh myself with a glass of seltzer and brandy. A sort of dream-like feeling came upon me as I sat. I found it hard to realise that my sweetheart was close to me, separated only by a curtained door from the cabin I was musing in. What was to follow this adventure? Was it possible that Lady Amelia Roscoe would oppose any obstacle to our union after even this association of three or four days as it might be? I gazed at the mirrors I had equipped the cabin with—picked up a handkerchief my sweetheart had left behind her and kissed it—stared at the little silver shining lamp that swung over my head—pulled a flower and smelt it in a vacant sort of way of which, nevertheless, I was perfectly sensible.... Is there anything wrong with my nerves to-night? thought I.
I extinguished my cigar and went to bed. It was then about a quarter to eleven, and till past one I lay awake, weary, yet unable to sleep. I lay listening to the frothing and seething of the water thrashing along the bends, broken into at regular intervals by the low thunder of the surge, burying my cabin porthole and rising to the line of the rail as the yacht's stern sank with a long slanting heel-over of the whole fabric. I fell asleep at last, and as I afterwards gathered, slept till somewhat after three o'clock in the morning. I was awakened by suddenly and violently rolling out of my bunk. The fall was a heavy one; I was a big fellow, and struck the plank of the deck hard, and though I was instantly awakened by the shock of the capsisal, I lay for some moments in a condition of stupefaction, sensible of nothing but that I had tumbled out of my bunk.
The little berth was in pitch darkness, and I lay, as I have said, motionless and almost dazed, till my ear caught a sound of shrieking ringing through a wild but subdued note of storm on deck, mingled with loud and fearful shouts, as of men bawling for life or death, with a trembling in every plank and fastening of the little fabric as though she were tearing herself to pieces. I got on to my legs, but the angle of the deck was so prodigious that I leaned helpless against the bulkhead, to the base of which I had rolled, though unconsciously. The shrieks were continued; I recognised Grace's voice, and the sound put a sort of frenzy into me, insomuch that, scarcely knowing how I managed, I had in an instant, opened the door of my little berth, and was standing, grabbing hold of the cabin table, shouting to let her know that I was awake and up, and that I heard her.
Now, the uproar of what I took to be a squall of hurricane power was to be easily heard. The bellowing of the wind was horrible, and it was made more terrifying to land-going ears by the incessant hoarse shouts of the fellows on deck; but bewildered as I was, agitated beyond expression, not knowing but that as I stood there, gripping the table and shouting my sweetheart's name, the yacht might be foundering under my feet, I had wits enough to observe that the vessel was slowly recovering a level keel, rising from the roof-like slant which had flung me from my bed to an inclination that rendered the use of one's legs possible. I likewise noticed that she neither plunged nor rolled with greater heaviness than I had observed in her before I lay down. The sensation of her motion was as though she was slowly rounding before the wind, and beginning to scud over a surface that had been almost flattened by a hurricane-burst into a dead level of snow. I could hear no noise of breaking seas nor of rushing water, nothing but a cauldron-like hissing, through which rolled the notes of the storm in echoes of great ordnance.
Fortunately, I had no need to clothe myself, since on lying down I had removed nothing but my coat, collar and shoes. I had a little silver match-box in my trouser's pocket, and swiftly struck a match and lighted the lamp and looked at Grace's door expecting to find her standing in it. It was closed, and she continued to scream. It was no time for ceremony; I opened the door, and called to know how it was with her.
Oh, Herbert, save me! she shrieked; "the yacht is sinking."
No, I cried, "she has been struck by a gale of wind. I will find out what is the matter. Are you hurt?"
The yacht is sinking! she repeated in a wild voice of terror.
Spite of the lamplight in the cabin, the curtain and the door combined eclipsed the sheen, and I could not see her.
Are you in bed, dearest?
Yes, she cried.
Are you hurt, my precious?
No, but my heart has stopped with fright. We shall be drowned. Oh, Herbert, the yacht is sinking!
Remain as you are, Grace. I shall return to you in a moment. Do not imagine that the yacht is sinking. I know by the buoyant feel of her movements that she is safe.
And thus hurriedly speaking I left her, satisfied that her shrieks had been produced by terror only; nor did I wish her to rise, lest the yacht should again suddenly heel to her first extravagantly dreadful angle, and throw her, and break a limb, or injure her more cruelly yet.
The companion hatch was closed. The feeling of being imprisoned raised such a feeling of consternation in me that I stood in the hatch as one paralysed, then terror set me pounding upon the cover with my fists, till you would have thought in a few moments I must have reduced it to splinters. After a little, during which I hammered with might and main, roaring out the name of Caudel, the cover was cautiously lifted to the height of a few inches, letting in a very yell of wind, such a shock and blast of it that I was forced, back off the ladder as though by a blow in the face, and in a breath the light went out.
It's all right, Mr. Barclay, cried the voice of Caudel, hoarse and yet shrill too with the life and death cries he had been delivering. "A gale of wind's busted down upon us. We've got the yacht afore it whilst we clear away the wreckage. There's no call to be alarmed, sir. On my word and honour as a man there's no call, sir. I beg you not to come on deck yet—ye'll only be in the way. Trust to me, sir—it's all right, I say," and the hatch was closed again.
Wreckage! The word sounded as miserably in my ear as though it had been the shout of "Heaven have mercy upon us!" What had been wrecked? What had happened? Was the yacht stove? Had we lost our mast? I had heard no crash, no noise of splintering, no resounding thump as of a fall. I listened, struck another match, and then lighted the lamp afresh. I might know now that the Spitfire was dead before the wind, seething almost soundlessly through the foam of the storm-swept surface. She was going along with a steadiness that was startling when one thought of and listened to the weather; for her plunges were so long and buoyant as to be scarcely noticeable, whilst sea and swell being directly in her wake, her rolling was of the lightest. This scudding likewise took something of the weight out of the blast howling after us; the echo as of thunder penetrating to the cabin was, comparatively speaking, dulled; but I was sailor enough to know that we should be having a heavy sea anon, and that if the yacht was crippled aloft or injured below, then the merciful powers only knew how it was going to end with us.
These thoughts were in my mind as I lighted the lamp. I now knocked on Grace's door, and told her to rise and dress herself, and join me in the cabin.
There is no danger, I shouted, "nothing but a passing capful of wind."
She made some answer which I could not catch, but I might be sure that the upright posture and buoyant motions of the scudding yacht had tranquillised her mind; moreover, all sounds would penetrate her berth in very muffled tones. Still, if she looked at her watch, she might wonder why she had to rise and dress at half-past three o'clock in the morning!
I sat alone for some ten minutes, during which the height and volume of the sea sensibly increased, though as the yacht continued flying dead before the wind, her plunges were still too long and gradual to be distressing. Occasionally a shout would sound on deck, but what the men were about I could not conceive.
The door of the forward berth was opened, and Grace entered the cabin. Her face was white as death; her large eyes, which seemed of a coal blackness in the lamplight, and by contrast with the hue of her cheeks, sparkled with alarm. She swept them round the cabin, as though she expected to behold one knows not what sort of horror, then came to my side and linked my arm tightly in hers.
Oh, Herbert, tell me the truth. What has happened?
Nothing serious, darling. Do you not feel that we are afloat and sailing bravely?
But just now? Did not the yacht turn over? Something was broken on deck, and the men began to shriek.
And so did you, Grace, said I, trying to smile.
But if we should be drowned? she cried, drawing closer to me, and fastening her sweet, terrified eyes upon my face.
I shook my head, still preserving my smile, though Heaven knows, had my countenance taken its expression from my mood, it must have shown as long as the yacht herself. I could see her straining her ears to listen, whilst her gaze—large, bright, her brows arched, her lips parted, her breast swiftly heaving—roamed over the cabin.
What is that noise of thunder, Herbert?
It is the wind, I answered.
Are not the waves getting up? Oh! feel this! she cried, as the yacht rose with velocity and something of violence to the under-running hurl of a chasing sea, of a power that was but too suggestive of what we were to expect.
The Spitfire is a stanch, noble little craft, said I, "built for North Sea weather. She is not to be daunted by anything that can happen hereabouts."
But what has happened? she cried, irritable with alarm.
I was about to utter the first reassuring sentence that occurred to my mind, when the companion was slid a little way back, and I just caught sight of a pair of legs ere the cabin lamp was extinguished by such another yell and blast of wind as had before nearly stretched me. Grace shrieked and threw her arms round my neck; the cover was closed, and the interior, instantly becalmed again.
Who's that? I roared.
Me, sir, sounded a voice out of the blackness where the companion steps stood; "Files, sir. The captain asked me to step below to report what's happened. He dursn't leave the deck himself."
I released myself from my darling's clinging embrace and lighted the lamp for the third time.
Files, wrapped in streaming oilskins, resembled an ebony figure over which a bucket of dripping has been emptied, as he stood at the foot of the steps with but a bit of his wet, grey-coloured face showing betwixt the ear-flaps and under the fore-thatch of his sou'wester.
Now for your report, Files, and bear a hand with it for mercy's sake.
Well, sir, it's just this; it had been breezing up, and we double-reefed the mainsail, Captain Caudel not liking the look of the weather, when a slap of wind carried pretty nigh half the mast over the side. We reckon—for we can't see—that it's gone some three or four feet below the cross-trees. The sail came down with a run, and there was a regular mess of it, sir, the wessel being buried. We've had to keep her afore it until we could cut the wreckage clear, and now we're agoing to heave her to, and I'm to tell ye with Capt'n Caudel's compliments not to take any notice of the capers she may cut when she heads the sea.
One moment. Is she sound in her hull?
Yes, sir.
Heaven be praised! And how is the wind?
About nor'-nor'-east, sir.
Then, of course, we've been running sou'-sou'-west, heading right into the open channel?
He said yes.
How does the weather look, Files?
Werry black and noisy, sir.
Tell Caudel to let me see him whenever he can leave the deck, said I, unwilling to detain him lest he should say something to add to the terror of Grace, whose eyes were riveted upon him as though he were some frightful ghost or hideous messenger of death.
I took down the lamp and screened it, whilst he opened the cover and crawled out.
No man could imagine that so heavy a sea was already running until Caudel hove the yacht to. The instant the helm was put down the dance began! As she rounded to a whole green sea struck her full abeam, and fell with a roar like a volcanic discharge upon her decks, staggering her to the heart—sending a throe of mortal agony through her, as one might have sworn. I felt that she was buried in the foam of that sea. As she gallantly rose, still valiantly rounding into the wind, as though the spirit of the British soil in which had grown the hardy timber out of which she was manufactured was never stronger in her than now, the water that filled her decks roared cascading over the rails.
Grace sat by my side, her arm locked in mine; she was motionless with fear; her eyes had the fixed look of the sleep-walker's, nor will I deny that my own terror was extreme; for imagining that I had heard a shriek, I believed that my men had been washed overboard, and that we two were locked up in a dismasted craft that was probably sinking—imprisoned, I say, by reason of the construction of the companion cover, which, when closed, was not to be opened from within.
I waited a few minutes with my lips set, wondering what was to happen next, holding Grace close to me, and harkening with feverish ears for the least sound of a human voice on deck. There was a second blow—this time on the yacht's bow—followed by a sensation as of every timber thrilling, and by a bolt-like thud of falling water, but this time well forward. Immediately afterwards I heard Caudel shouting close against the skylight, and I cannot express the emotion, in truth, I may call it the transport of joy, his voice raised in me. It was like being rescued from a dreadful death that an instant before seemed certain.
I continued to wait, holding my darling to me; her head lay upon my shoulder, and she rested as though in a swoon. The sight of her white face was inexpressibly shocking to me, who very well knew that there was nothing I could say to soften her terrors amid such a sea as the yacht was now tumbling upon. Indeed, the vessel's motions had become on a sudden violently heavy. I was never in such a sea before; that is to say, in so small a vessel, and the leaping of the craft from peak to base, and the dreadful careering of her as she soared, lying down on her beam ends to the next liquid summit were absolutely soul subduing.
It was idle, however, to think of going on deck. I durst not leave my darling alone lest she should swoon and be thrown down and injured, perhaps killed; whilst, for myself, the legs of a man needed a longer apprenticeship to the sea than ever I had served, or had the faintest desire to serve, to qualify him for such capering planks as these, and I was quite sure that if I wished to break my neck I had nothing more to do than to make an attempt to stand.
Well, some twenty minutes, or, perhaps, half an hour passed, during all which time I believed every moment to be our last, and I recollect cursing myself for being the instrument of introducing the darling of my heart into this abominable scene of storm in which, as I believed, we were both to perish. Why had I not gone ashore yesterday? Did not my instincts advise me to quit the sea and take the railway? Why had I brought my pet away from the security of the Rue de Maquétra? Why, in the name of all the virtues, was I so impatient that I could not wait till she was of age, when I could have married her comfortably and respectably, freed from all obligations of ladders, dark lanterns, tempests, and whatever was next to come? I could have beaten my head upon the table. Never did I better understand what I have always regarded as a stroke of fiction—I mean the disposition of a man in a passion to tear out his hair by the roots.
At the expiration, as I supposed, of twenty minutes, the hatch cover was opened, this time without any following screech and blast of wind, and Caudel descended. Had he been a beam of sunshine he could not have been more welcome to my eyes. He was clad from head to foot in oilskins, from which the wet ran as from an umbrella in a thunder-shower, and the skin and hue of his face resembled soaked leather.
Well, Mr. Barclay, sir, he exclaimed, "and how have you been getting on? It's been a bad job; but there's nothen to alarm ye, I'm sure." Then catching sight of Grace's face, he cried, "The young lady ain't been and hurt herself, I hope, sir?"
Her fear and this movement, I answered, "have proved too much for her. I wish you would pull off your oilskins and help me to convey her to the lee side there. The edge of this table seems to be cutting me in halves," the fact being that I was to windward with the whole weight of my sweetheart, who rested lifelessly against me to increase the pressure, so that at every leeward stoop of the craft my breast was caught by the edge of the table with a sensation as of a knife cutting through my shirt.
He instantly whipped off his streaming waterproofs, standing without the least inconvenience whilst the decks slanted under him like a see-saw, and in a very few moments he had safely placed Grace on the lee locker with her head on a pillow. I made shift to get round to her without hurting myself, then cried to Caudel to sit and tell me what had happened.
Well, it's just this, sir, he answered, "the mast has carried away some feet below the head of it. It went on a sudden in the squall in which the wind burst down upon us. Perhaps it was as well it happened, for she lay down to that there houtfly in a way so hobstinate that I did believe she'd never lift herself out of the water agin. But the sail came down when the mast broke, and I managed to get her afore it, though I don't mind owning to you now, sir, that what with the gear fouling the helm, and what with other matters which there ain't no call for me to talk about, 'twas as close a shave with us, sir, as ever happened at sea."
Grace moaned, opened her eyes and then shut them again, and moved her hand that I should take it. The companion cover lay a little way open, but though tons of water might be flying over the bow for aught I knew, not a drop glittered in the hatch. I could now, however, very clearly hear the roaring hum of the gale, and catch the note of boiling waters; but these sounds were not so distracting but that Caudel and I clearly heard each other's voice.
Is the yacht tight, do you think, Caudel? cried I.
I hope she is, sir.
Hope! My God, but you must know, Caudel.
Well, sir, she's adraining a little water into her—I'm bound to say it—but nothen that the pump won't keep under; and I believe that most of it finds its way into the well from up above.
I stared at him with a passion of anxiety and dismay, but his cheery blue eyes steadfastly returned my gaze as though he would make me know that he spoke the truth—that matters were not worse than he represented them.
Has the pump been worked? I inquired.
He lifted his hand as I asked the question, and I heard the beat of the pump throbbing through the dull roar of the wind as though a man had seized the brake of it in response to my inquiry.
This is a frightful situation to be in, said I, with a glance at Grace, who lay motionless, with her eyes shut, rendered almost insensible by the giddy and violent motion of the hull.
It'll all come right, sir, he exclaimed; "daybreak 'll be here soon—" he looked up at the clock, "then we shall be able to see what to do."
But what is to be done?
Plenty, sir. Tarn to first of all and secure the remains of the mast. There's height enough left. We must secure him, I says, then wait for this here breeze to blow himself out, and then make sail and get away home as fast as ever we can.
But is the vessel, wrecked aloft as she is, going to outlive such weather as this? I cried, talking in a half-dazed way out of the sort of swooning feeling which came and went in my head like a pulse with the wild, sky-high flights and the headlong falls of the little vessel.
I hope she will, I'm sure, sir. She was built for the seas of the Dogger, and ought to be able to stand the likes of this.
Does much water come aboard?
Now and agin there's a splash, but she's doing werry well, sir. Ye see we ain't a canoe, nor a wherry. A hundred years ago the Spitfire would have been reckoned a craft big enough to sail to Australia in.
Was anyone hurt by the sea as you rounded to?
Bobby was washed aft, sir, but he's all right agin.
I plied him with further questions, mainly concerning the prospects of the weather, our chances, the drift of the yacht, that I might know into what part of the Channel we were being blown, and how long it would occupy to storm us at this rate into the open Atlantic; and then asking him to watch by Grace for a few minutes, I dropped on my knees, and crawled to my cabin, where I somehow contrived to scramble into my boots, coat and cap. I then made for the companion steps, still on my knees, and clawed my way up the hatch till I was head and shoulders above it, and there I stood looking.
I say looking, but there was nothing to see save the near, vast, cloud-like spaces of foam, hovering as it seemed high above the rail as some black head of surge broke off the bow, or descending the pouring side of a sea like bodies of mist sweeping with incredible velocity with the breath of the gale. Past these dim masses the water lay in blackness—a huge spread of throbbing obscurity. All overhead was mere rushing darkness. The wind was wet with spray, and forward there would show at intervals a dull shining of foam, flashing transversely across the labouring little craft.
It was blowing hard indeed, yet from the weight of the seas and the motions of the Spitfire, I could have supposed the gale severer than it was. I returned to the cabin, and Caudel, after putting on his oilskins and swallowing a glass of brandy and water—the materials of which were swaying furiously in a silver-plated swinging tray suspended over the table—went on deck, leaving the companion cover a little way open in case I desired to quit the cabin.
Until the dawn, and some time past it, I sat close beside Grace, holding her hand or bathing her brow. She never spoke, she seldom opened her eyes; indeed, she lay as though utterly prostrated, without power to articulate, or, perhaps, to think either. It was the effect of fear, however, rather than of nausea. At any rate, I remember hoping so, for I had heard of people dying of sea sickness, and if the weather that had stormed down upon us should last, it might end in killing her; whereas, the daylight, and, perhaps, some little break of blue sky would reanimate her if her sufferings were owing to terror only, and when she found the little craft buoyant and our lives in no danger, her spirits would rise and her strength return.
But what an elopement is this! thought I, as I gazed upon her sweet, white face and closed lids darkening the cheek with the shadowing of the fringes. One reads of fugitive lovers in peril from overset stage coaches, from detectives in waiting at railway stations, from explosions, earthquakes and collisions on land and ocean. But a gale of wind—a storm-dismantled dandy yacht of twenty-six tons furiously working in the thick of a wild Channel sea, where the surge swells large with the weight of the near Atlantic—here are conditions of a runaway match, the like of which are not to be found, I believe, outside of my own experience.
The blessed daylight came at last. I spied the weak wet grey of it in a corner of the skylight that had been left uncovered by the tarpaulin which was spread over the glass. I looked closely at Grace and found her asleep. I could not be sure at first, so motionless had she been lying, but when I put my ear close to her mouth, the regularity of her respiration convinced me that she was slumbering.
That she should be able to snatch even ten minutes of sleep cheered me. Yet my spirits were very heavy, every bone in me ached with a pain as of rheumatism; though I did not feel sick, my brain seemed to reel, and the sensation of giddiness was hardly less miserable and depressing than nausea itself. I stood up, and with great difficulty caught the brandy as it flew from side to side on the swinging tray, and took a dram, and then clawed my way as before to the companion steps, and opening the cover, got into the hatch and stood looking at the picture of my yacht and the sea.
There was no one at the helm; the tiller was lashed to leeward. The shock I received on observing no one aft, finding the helm abandoned, as it seemed to me, I shall never forget. The tiller was the first object I saw as I rose through the hatch, and my instant belief was that all my people had been swept overboard. On looking forward, however, I spied Caudel and the others of the men at work about the mast. I am no sailor and cannot tell you what they were doing, beyond saying that they were securing the mast by affixing tackles and so forth to it. But I had no eyes for them or their work; I could only gaze at my ruined yacht, which at every heave appeared to be pulling herself together, as it were, for the final plunge. A mass of cordage littered the deck; the head of the mast showed in splinters, whilst the spar itself looked withered, naked, blasted, as though struck by lightning. The decks were full of water, which was flashed above the rail, where it was instantly swept away by the gale in a smoke of crystals. The black gear wriggled and rose to the wash of the water over the planks like a huddle of eels. A large space of the bulwarks on the port side abreast of the mast was smashed level with the deck. The grey sky seemed to hover within musket shot of us, and it went down the sea in a slate-coloured weeping body of thickness to within a couple of hundred fathoms, and the dark green surges, as they came rolling in foam from out of the windward wall of blankness, looked enormous.
In sober truth a very great sea was running indeed; the oldest sailor then afloat must have thought so. The Channel was widening into the ocean, with depth enough for seas of oceanic volume, and it was still, as it had been for some hours, blowing a whole gale of wind. I had often read of what is called a storm at sea, but had never encountered one, and now I was viewing the real thing from the deck of a little vessel that was practically dismasted in the heart of a thickness that shrouded us from all observation, whilst every minute we were being settled farther and farther away from the English coast towards the great Atlantic by the hurling scend of the surges, and by the driving fury of the blast.
Caudel on seeing me came scrambling to the companion. The salt of the flying wet had dried in the hollows of his eyes and lay in a sort of white powder there, insomuch that he was scarcely recognisable. It was impossible to hear him amidst that roaring commotion, and I descended the ladder by a step or two to enable him to put his head into the hatch. He tried to look cheerful, but there was a curl in the set of his mouth that neutralised the efforts of his eye.
Ye see how it is, Mr. Barclay?
Nothing could be worse.
Dorn't say that, sir, dorn't say that. The yacht lives, and is making brave weather o't.
She cannot go on living.
She'll outlast this weather, sir, I'll lay.
What are you doing?
He entered into a nautical explanation, the terms of which I forget. It was of the first consequence, however, that the mast should be preserved, and this the men were attempting at the risk of their lives. As the mast stood there was nothing to support it, and if it went (he explained) the Spitfire would become a sheer hulk and then our situation would be desperate indeed; but if the men succeeded in preserving the mast, they could easily make sail upon the yacht when the weather moderated, "and the land ain't very fur off yet, sir," he added.
But we are widening our distance rapidly.
He shook his head somewhat dolefully, saying, "Yes, that was so."
I am thinking of the hull, Caudel. Surely this wild tossing must be straining the vessel frightfully. Does she continue to take in water?
I must not deceive you, sir, he answered; "she do. But a short spell at the pump sarves to chuck it all out again, and so there's no call for your honour to be oneasy."
He returned to the others, whilst I, heart-sickened by the intelligence that the Spitfire had sprung a leak—for that, I felt, must be the plain English of Caudel's assurance—continued standing a few moments longer in the hatch looking round. Ugly rings of vapour, patches and fragments of dirty yellow scud flew past, loose and low under the near grey wet stoop of the sky; they made the only break in that firmament of storm. The smother of the weather was thickened yet by the clouds of driving spray which rose like bursts of steam from the sides and heads of the seas, making one think of the fierce gusts and guns of the gale as of wolves tearing mouthfuls with sharp teeth from the flanks and backs of the rushing and roaring chase they pursued.
How the seamen maintained their footing I could not imagine. In order to climb the naked spar they had driven short nails at wide intervals up it; and one of them—Foster—as I watched, crawled up the mast with a big block on his back.
It seemed to me as though the men were working for life or death. The yacht rode buoyant to her lashed helm under a fragment of mizzen if I remember right, and very little water came aboard, though great fountains of spray would occasionally soar off the bow, and blow in a snowstorm fathoms away into the sea on the opposite side. But the motions of that naked height of splintered mast were like a batôn in the hands of an excited orchestra conductor, and though I believe I was not more wanting in nerves in my time than most others, my eyes reeled in my head at sight of the plucky fellow, doggedly rising nail by nail, till he had reached the point of elevation where the block was to be secured.
My anxieties, however, were below, on the locker where I had left my sweetheart sleeping, and I was about to descend, when my sight was taken by a shadow in the grey thickness to windward. It was a mere oozing of darkness, so to speak for a moment or two; then as though to the touch of the wand of an enchanter, it leapt upon the eye in the full and majestic proportions of a great, black-hulled ship, "flying light," as the term is. She came rushing down upon us under two lower topsails, and a reefed foresail, pitching to her hawse-pipes as she came, then lifting a broad surface of greenish sheathing out of the acre of yeast that the blow of her cutwater had set boiling. She rushed by close astern of us, and the thunder of the gale in her rigging and the hissing sounds of the seas as she burst into them rose high above the universal humming and seething of the storm. Two figures alone were visible; one in a sea helmet and oilskins at the wheel; a second in a long coat and fur cap, holding by a backstay. She vanished with the velocity with which she had emerged; but I could not have conjectured her nearness till I reflected how plainly I had seen the two men—all features of their clothing—their very faces, indeed!
Shall we be run down, sent helplessly to the bottom before this weather has done its work for us? thought I, and shuddering to the fancy of a blow from such a stem as that which had just swept past us, I descended the cabin steps. Grace was awake, sitting upright, but in a listless, lolling, helpless posture. I was thankful, however, to find her capable of the exertion even of sitting erect. I crept to her side, and held her to me to cherish and comfort her.
Oh, this weary, weary motion! she cried, pressing her hand upon her temples.
It cannot last much longer, my darling, I said; "the gale is fast blowing itself out, and then we shall have blue skies and smooth water again."
Can we not land, Herbert? she asked feebly in my ear, with her cheek upon my shoulder.
Would to Heaven that were possible within the next five minutes! I answered.
Whereabouts are we?
I cannot tell exactly; but when this weather breaks we shall find the English coast within easy reach.
Oh, do not let us wait until we get to Mount's Bay! she cried.
My pet, the nearest port will be our port now, depend upon it.
This sort of talk making me feel most wretchedly and miserably hopeless, I got away from the subject by asking her how she felt, and by reassuring her as to the buoyancy of the yacht, and I then coaxed her into taking a little weak brandy and water, which, as a tonic under the circumstances, was the best medicine I could have given her. I afterwards made her lie down again, and procured Eau de Cologne and another pillow, and such matters, but at a heavy cost to my bones; for had I been imprisoned in a cask, and sent in that posture on a tour down a mountain's side, I could not have been more abominably thumped and belaboured. It was one wild scramble and flounder from beginning to end, blows on the head, blows on the shins, complete capsisals that left me sitting and dazed; and when my business of attending upon her was at an end, I felt that this little passage of my elopement had qualified me for nothing so much as for a hospital.
The day passed; a day of ceaseless storm, and of such tossing as only a smacksman, who has fished in the North Sea in winter, could know anything about. The spells at the pump grew frequent as the hours progressed, and the wearisome beat of the plied break affected my imagination as though it were the tolling of our funeral bell. I hardly required Caudel to tell me the condition of the yacht when, sometime between eight and nine o'clock that night, he put his head into the hatch and motioned me to ascend.
It's my duty to tell ye, Mr. Barclay, he exclaimed, whispering hoarsely into my ear, in the comparative shelter of the companion cover, that Grace might not overhear him, "that the leak's againing upon us."
I had guessed as much; yet this confirmation of my conjecture affected me as violently as though I had had no previous suspicion of the state of the yacht. I was thunderstruck, I felt the blood forsake my cheeks, and for some moments I could not find my voice.
You do not mean to tell me, Caudel, that the yacht is actually sinking?
No, sir. But the pump'll have to be kept continually going if she's to remain afloat. I'm afeer'd when the mast went over the side that a blow from it started a butt, and the leak's growing worse and worse, consequence of the working of the craft.
Is it still thick?
As mud, sir.
Why not fire the gun at intervals? said I, referring to the little brass cannon that stood mounted upon the quarter-deck.
I'm afeered— he paused with a melancholy shake of his head. "Of course, Mr. Barclay," he went on, "if it's your wish, sir—but it'll do no more, I allow, than frighten the young lady. 'Tis but a peashooter, sir, and the gale's like thunder."
We are in your hands, Caudel, said I, with a feeling of despair ice-cold at my heart, as I reflected upon the size of our little craft, her crippled and sinking condition, our distance from land—as I felt the terrible might and powers of the seas which were tossing us—and as I thought of my sweetheart!
Mr. Barclay, he answered, "if the weather do but moderate, I shall have no fear. Our case ain't hopeless yet by a long way, sir. The water's to be kept under by continuous pumping, and there are hands enough and to spare for that job. We're not in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but in the mouth of the English Channel, with plenty of shipping knocking about. But the weather's got to moderate. Firing that there gun 'ud only terrify the young lady, and do no good. If a ship came along no boat could live in this sea. In this here blackness she couldn't kept us company, and our rockets wouldn't be visible half a mile off. No, sir, we've got to stick to the pump, and pray for daylight and fine weather," and, having no more to say to me, or a sudden emotion checking his utterance, he pulled his head out and disappeared in the obscurity.
Grace asked me what Caudel had been talking about, and I answered with the utmost composure I could master that he had come to tell me the yacht was making a noble fight of it and that there was nothing to cause us alarm. I had not the heart to respond otherwise, nor could the bare truth, as I understood it, have served any other end than to deprive her of her senses. Even now, I seemed to find an expression of wildness in her beautiful eyes, as though the tension of her nerves, along with the weary endless hours of delirious pitching and tossing, was beginning to tell upon her brain. I sought to comfort her, I caressed her, I strained her to my heart, whilst I exerted my whole soul to look cheerfully and to speak cheerfully, and, thank God! the influence of my true, deep love prevailed; she spoke tranquilly; the brilliant staring look of her eyes was softened; occasionally she would smile as she lay in my arms, whilst I rattled on, struggling, with a resolution that now seems preternatural when I look back, to distract her attention from our situation.
At one o'clock in the morning she fell asleep, and I knelt by her sleeping form, and prayed for mercy and protection.
It was much about this hour that Caudel's face again showed in the hatch. I crawled along the deck and up the steps to him, and he immediately said to me in a voice that trembled with agitation:
Mr. Barclay, good noose, sir. The gale's ataking off.
I clasped my hands, and could have hugged the dripping figure of the man to my breast.
Yes, sir, he continued, "the breeze is slackening. There's no mistake about it. The horizon's opening too."
Heaven be praised. And what of the leak, Caudel?
'Taint worse than it was, sir, though it's bad enough.
If the weather should moderate—
Well then, if the leak don't gain, we may manage to carry her home. That'll have to be found out, sir. But seeing the yacht's condition, I shall be for trans-shipping you and the lady to anything inwards bound, that may come along. Us men'll take the yacht to port, providing she'll let us. He paused, and then said: "There might be no harm now, perhaps, in firing off that there gun. If a smack 'ud show herself, she'd be willing to stand by for the sake of the salvage. We'll also send up a few rockets, sir. But how about the young lady, Mr. Barclay?"
Everything must be done, I replied, "that is likely to preserve our lives."
There was some gunpowder aboard, but where Caudel had stowed it I did not know. However, five minutes after he had left me, and whilst I was sitting by the side of my sweetheart, who still slept, the gun was discharged. It sent a small shock through the little fabric, as though she had gently touched ground, or run into some floating object, but the report, blending with the commotion of the seas and bell-like ringing, and wolfish howlings of the wind, penetrated the deck in a note so dull that Grace never stirred. Ten or twelve times was this little cannon discharged at intervals of five and ten minutes, and I could hear the occasional rush of a rocket, like a giant hissing in wrath, sounding through the stormy uproar.
Tragical noises to harken to, believe me! communicating a significance dark as death, to the now ceaseless pulsing of the pump, to the blows of the sea against the yacht's bow, and to every giddy rise and fall of the labouring little structure amid the hills and valleys of that savage Channel sea.