This was an incident to give one a deal to think and talk about. Certainly little imaginable could be stranger than that we, being in chase of a fore-and-aft schooner yacht, should fall in with a vessel so resembling the object of our pursuit as to deceive the sight of men who professed to know the ‘Shark’ well. I should have been glad to ask the Dutchman about his craft, yet it was a matter of no moment whatever. The thing had happened, it was passing strange, and there was an end. Likely enough she was an English vessel purchased for some opulent trader in the island of Cura?oa, and on her way to that possession in charge of the porpoise who had honoured us with a visit. The incident signified only as a disappointment. All dinner time I had been fretting over it, for since sunrise I had been thinking of the vessel ahead as the ‘Shark’; counted, in a sort of unreasoning, mechanical, silent way, upon capturing Lady Monson out of her, which, of course, would mean a shift of helm for us, and home again.
Wilfrid bore the blow better than I had dared to expect. He made a good dinner, for which he had the excuse of having fasted since breakfast, and broke into a noisy roar of laughter out of the air of gloomy resentment with which he had arrived from his cabin on my describing the Dutchman, and repeating his questions and my answers. In short, his weak mind came to his rescue. With the schooner had vanished an inspiration of thought that had served his intellect as an anchor to ride by. His imagination was now fluent again, loose, draining here and there like water on the decks of a rolling ship; and though he spoke with vehement bitterness of his disappointment, and with indignation and rage even of Finn’s ignorance in pursuing a stranger throughout the day, he dwelt very briefly at a time on the subject. Indeed, his talk was just an aimless stride from one thing to another. If he recurred to the Dutch schooner, it was as if by mere chance; and, though the subject would blacken his mood, in a very short while he had passed on to other matters with a cleared face. Miss Laura afterwards said to me that the strain of the day had been too great for him, and that when the tension was relaxed the strings of the instrument of his mind dropped into slack fibres, out of which his reason could fiddle but very little[179] music. Well, I could have wished it thus for everybody’s sake. Better as it was than that he should have shrunk away scowling and hugging a dark mantle of madness to him, and exaggerated the abominably uncomfortable behaviour I had witnessed in him all day.
He arrived on deck after dinner to smoke a cigar, and whilst I sat with Miss Jennings—for it was a quiet night after the stormy blowing of the day, with a tropic tenderness of temperature in the sweet gushing of the southerly wind, the curl of moon gone, and the large stars trembling through the film of their own radiance like dew-drops in gossamer—I could hear my cousin chatting briskly near the wheel with Finn with intonations of voice that curiously proclaimed the variableness of his moods to the ear, sometimes speaking with heat, sometimes in a note of sullen expostulation, sometimes surprising the attention with a loud ha, ha! that came floating back again to the deck in echoes out of the silent canvas, whilst Finn’s deep sea-note rumbled a running commentary as the baronet talked.
‘What do you think of this chase now?’ said I to Miss Laura.
‘I wish it were over,’ she answered. ‘I want to see my sister rescued from the wretch she has run away with, Mr. Monson; but this sort of approaching her recovery is dreadful.’
‘It is worse than dreadful,’ said I; ‘it is tedious with the threat of a neat little tragical complication by-and-bye—any day indeed—if Wilfrid doesn’t stow that gun in his hold or heave it overboard. The Dutchman might very well have answered our shot had he mounted a piece or two or driven alongside and plied us, as they used to say, with small arms. Now one isn’t here for that sort of thing, Miss Jennings.’
‘No. Is there no way of losing the cannon?’
I laughed. ‘If Wilfrid will reserve his fire until he is sure of the “Shark” instead of blazing away at the first craft that resembles her, the weapon might yet prove something to usefully serve his turn; for I doubt if anything will hinder the Colonel from cracking on when he catches sight of us, short of iron messages from the forecastle there. But we shall not meet with the “Shark” this side the Cape, if there.’
‘I fear it will prove a long voyage,’ said she, with the sparkle of the starlight in her eyes.
‘You will be glad to return?’
‘Not without my sister.’
‘But shall you be willing, Miss Jennings, supposing us to arrive at Cape Town without falling in with the “Shark,” to persevere in this very singular and unpromising sea quest?’
‘I will remain with Wilfrid certainly,’ she answered quietly. ‘My duty is to help him in this search, and where he goes I shall go.’
‘But he will be acting cruelly to carry you on from the Cape[180] unless able to certainly tell where to find the fugitives, fixing the date too for that matter.’
‘I see you will leave us at the Cape, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed with an accent that could only come from the movement of the lips in a smile.
‘Not unless I prevail upon you to accompany me home,’ said I.
She shook her head lightly, but made no answer. Perhaps it was her silence that rendered me sensible of the unpremeditated significance of my speech. ‘Well,’ said I, lighting a second cigar, ‘whilst you feel it your duty to stick to my cousin I shall feel it mine to stick to you. Not likely I should leave you alone with him. No.’
At that instant the harsh, surly voice of old Jacob Crimp hailed the skipper, who still stood aft talking with Wilfrid. All was in darkness forward; it was hard upon two bells; the canvas rose as elusive to the eye in its wanness as a dim light in windy gloom far out at sea, and the shadow of it plunged a dye as opaque as blindness into the obscurity from the mainmast to the forecastle rail, where the stars were sliding up and down like a dance of fire-flies to the quiet lift and fall of the close-hauled yacht upon the invisible folds brimming to her port bow.
‘Capt’n,’ sung out Crimp’s melodious voice—plaintive as the notes of a knife upon a revolving grindstone—from the heart of the murkiness somewhere near the galley.
‘Hallo!’ answered Finn.
‘Can I speak a word with ye?’
‘Who is it wants me?’
‘The mate.’
‘Tell him to come aft,’ Wilfrid bawled out. ‘If there’s anything wrong I must know it. Step aft, Crimp, step aft, d’ye hear?’ he cried.
Old Jacob’s stunted figure came out of the darkness and walked along to where Finn stood.
‘What is the matter, I wonder?’ said Miss Laura.
I cocked my ear, for there is something in a hail of this sort at sea on a dark night to put an alertness into one’s instincts and nerves. Besides, there was no sounder snorer on board than old Jacob, and his merely coming up on deck during his watch below, though he should have stood mute as a ghost, was something to raise a little uneasy sense of expectation. His voice rumbled, but I could not hear what he said. Wilfrid shouted ‘What d’ye say?’ with an expression of astonishment and incredulity. Finn laughed in a sneering way, whilst old Jacob again rumbled out with some sentence. Then my cousin bawled out, ‘Charles, Charles, come here, will you?’
‘What the deuce is the matter now?’ said I, and Miss Laura followed me as I went over to the group.
‘Here’s a nice pickle we’re in, Charles,’ cried Wilfrid. ‘What think you? Crimp swears the yacht’s haunted.’
‘So she be,’ said Crimp.
‘Pity your mother didn’t sell vinegar, Jacob, that you might have stayed at home to bottle it off,’ exclaimed Finn. ‘Haunted! That may do for the marines, but you won’t get the sailors to believe it.’
‘That’s jist what they do then,’ remarked Crimp. ‘All the watch below have heard it, and can’t sleep in consequence.’
‘Heard what?’ I asked.
‘The woice,’ answered Jacob, ‘the same as you and me heard t’other night.’
‘Have you heard a voice, Charles?’ exclaimed Wilfrid, suddenly fetching a deep breath.
‘A mere fancy,’ said I.
‘Ye didn’t like it anyhow,’ said Crimp gruffly, as though speaking aside.
‘For God’s sake, tell me about this voice, Charles,’ cried Wilfrid, agitated all on a sudden and restless as a dog-vane, with the twitching of his figure and the shifting of his weight from one leg to another.
I related the incident, making light of it, and tried to persuade him that the mere circumstance of my having said nothing about it proved that I regarded it as a deceit of the hearing.
‘Did you know of this, Laura?’ said Wilfrid.
‘As a joke only,’ she answered.
‘A joke,’ cried he, breathing deep again. ‘The voice sounded off the sea, hey? and two of you heard it? What did it say?’ and I could see him by the starlight looking towards the starboard quarter in the direction whence the syllables had floated to us. ‘What did it say?’ he repeated.
‘Why, that this here yacht was cussed,’ rattled out Jacob defiantly, ‘and dum me if I don’t think she be now that the blooming corpse belonging to the wreck is a-jawing and a-threatening of all hands down in the forepeak.’
‘What is this man talking about?’ I exclaimed, believing that he must either be drunk or cracked.
‘He’s come aft to tell us, Mr. Monson,’ answered Finn, ‘that he and others of the watch below have been disturbed by a woice in the hold saying that there’s a ghost aboard, and that the only way to get rid of him is to sail straight away home and end this woyage which, saving the lady’s presence, it calls blarsted nonsense.’
I observed old Jacob’s head vigorously nodding.
‘You’ve heard the voice, too, Charles?’ said Wilfrid, flitting in short, agitated strides to and fro beside us.
‘Mr. Monson heard it twice,’ growled Jacob, ‘off the wreck as well as off the quarter.’
‘Speak when you’re spoken to,’ cried Finn. ‘Why, spit me, Mr. Monson, if it ain’t old Jacob’s grandmother as has signed on instead of Crimp himself.’
‘Look here,’ said Crimp, ‘let them what disbelieves step forrards and listen themselves.’
‘Charles, inquire into this matter with Finn, will you?’ exclaimed Wilfrid. ‘I—I—’ he stopped and passed his hand through Miss Jennings’ arm, immediately afterwards saying with a short, nervous laugh, ‘the sound of a supernatural voice would cost me a night’s rest.’
‘Come along, Finn,’ said I. ‘Come along, Crimp. If there be a ghost, as our friend here says, he must promptly be laid by the heels and despatched to the Red Sea.’
‘What did ’ee want to go and tell Sir Wilfrid about that woice you and Mr. Monson heard t’other night?’ grumbled Finn, as we moved forwards into the darkness towards the forehatch.
‘Cause it’s true,’ answered Crimp in his sullenest manner. ‘’Sides, it’s time to end this here galliwanting ramble, seems to me, if we’re going to be talked to and cursed by sperrits.’
Finn made no answer. We arrived at the forehatch and descended. The ‘Bride’s’ forecastle was a large one for a vessel of her size. On either hand abaft was a small cabin partially bulk-headed off from the sailors’ sleeping-room, respectively occupied by Jacob Crimp and Cutbill. Whether the mate ate with the captain, whose berth was just forward of the one that had been occupied by Muffin, with access by means of a sliding door to a small living room through which he could pass into the forecastle, I cannot say. It was a rough scene to light upon, after the elegance, glitter, and rich dyes of the fittings of our quarters aft, but the more picturesque for that quality as I found it now, at least on viewing the homely and coarse interior by the light of a small oil lamp of the shape of a block-tin coffee-pot with a greasy sort of flame coming out of the spout, and burning darkly into a corkscrew of smoke that wound hot and ill-flavoured to the upper deck. There were bunks for the seamen and two or three hammocks slung right forward; suits of oilskins hung by nails against the stanchions, and swung to the motion of the vessel like the bodies of suicides swayed by the wind. The deck was encumbered by sea-chests cleated or otherwise secured. Here and there glimmering through the twilight in a bunk I took notice of a little framed picture, a pipe rack, with other odds and ends, trifling home memorials, and the artless conveniences with which poor Jack equips himself. There were seamen lying in their beds, a vision of leathery noses forking up out of a hedge of whisker, with bright wide-awake eyes that made one think of glow-worms in a bird’s nest; other equally hairy-faced figures in drawers and with naked feet, huge bare arms dark with moss and prickings in ink, sat with their legs over the edge of their bunks. It was with difficulty that I controlled my gravity when on casting a hurried glance round the forecastle on entering it my gaze lighted on the visage of Muffin, whose yellowness in the dull lamplight showed with the spectral hue of ashes. His bunk was well forward; his bare legs hung from the edge like a couple of broomsticks:[183] his hands were clasped; his head slightly on one side; his posture one of alarm, amid which, however, there still lurked a native quality of valet-like sleekness with a suggestion of respectful apology for feeling nervous. Sweet as the ‘Bride’ was, no doubt, as a pleasure vessel compared with other craft of those times, the odour of this interior, improved as it was by the flaring snuff of the lamp, not to mention a decidedly warm night, was by no means of the most delicious. Added to this was the lift and fall of the yacht’s bows which one felt here so strongly, that, coming fresh from the tender heavings of the after-deck, you would have imagined a lively head sea had sprung up on a sudden. That Muffin should have stood it astonished me. Sleeping as he did, right in the ‘eyes,’ he got the very full of the motion. Besides, such an atmosphere as this must needs prove the severer as a hardship after the luminous and flower-sweetened air of the cabin. Finn took a leisurely survey of the occupants of the bunks.
‘Well, lads!’ said he, ‘what’s the meaning of this here talk about a woice? Mr. Crimp’s just come aft to tell me there’s somewhat a-speaking under foot here.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ remarked Cutbill, who stood bolt upright like a sentry in the entrance to his little berth. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Monson, sir, but it’s nigh hand the same sort o’ speech as hailed us from the wreck.’
‘’Tis the same!’ said a deep voice from one of the bunks.
‘Rats!’ quoth Finn contemptuously.
‘Never yet met with the rat as could damn a man’s eyes in English,’ grunted Crimp.
‘Nor in any other lingo, Mr. Crimp,’ said a singular-looking seaman, whose face I had before taken notice of as resembling the skin of an over-ripe lemon. He lay on the small of his back blinking at us, and his countenance in that light, that was rendered confusing by the sliding of shadows to the swing of the yacht, made one think of a melon half buried in a blanket.
‘Well, but see here, my lads,’ exclaimed Finn in a voice of expostulation, ‘what did this here woice say? That’s what I want to know. What did it say, men?’
‘I told ’ee,’ growled Crimp.
But old Jacob’s interpretation did not tally with that of the others. The sailors were generally agreed that the voice had exclaimed in effect that the yacht was cursed, and that their business was to make haste and sail her home; but some had apparently heard more than others, whilst a few again manifestly embellished, with a notion, perhaps, of making the most of it; but there could be no question whatever that human syllables, very plainly articulated, had sounded from out of the hold; all hands were agreed as to that, and proof conclusive as to the sincerity of the men might have been found in the looks of them, one and all.
‘Silence, now!’ cried Finn; ‘let’s listen.’
We all strained our ears. Nothing broke the silence but the[184] sulky wash of the sea outside, seething dully, the half-stifled respirations of the sailors, who found it difficult to control their hurricane lungs, and the familiar creaking noises breaking out in various parts of the fabric to her swayings. Impressed as I was by the agreement amongst the men—and I had come besides to this forecastle with the memory very fresh in me of the mysterious voices I had before heard—I could scarcely hold my face as I stood listening, with my eye glancing from one hairy countenance to another. The variety of the Jacks’ postures, the knowing cock of a head here and there, the unwinking stare, the strained hearkening attitude, the illustration of superstitious emotions by expressions which were rendered grotesque by the swing of the lamp, the half-suffocated looks of some of the fellows who were trying to draw their breaths softly, formed a picture to appeal irresistibly to one’s sense of the ridiculous.
Three minutes passed, it might have been hours, so long the time seemed.
‘Seems it’s done jawing, whatever it is,’ said Finn.
We listened again.
‘Tell ’ee it’s rats, lads,’ said Finn.
‘As the cuss was meant for this ’ere craft,’ exclaimed the deep voice that had before spoken, ‘perhaps if her owner was to come below, the sperrit, if so be it’s that, ’ud tarn to and talk out again.’
‘Tell ’ee, it’s rats!’ cried Finn scornfully.
‘Rats!’ exclaimed Crimp, with great irritation, ‘if that’s all why don’t Sir Wilfrid lay forrard and listen for hisself?’
‘Won’t he come?’ said one of the men.
‘Come! no,’ rattled out Crimp, ‘and why? ’Cause he knows it’s the truth.’
‘Well,’ exclaimed Cutbill, ‘speaking with all proper respect, seems to me that what’s meat for the dawg ought to be meat for the man in the likes of such a humble-come-tumble out of the maintop into the main-hold sort o’ job as this.’
There was now some grumbling. Crimp had enabled the men to guess that Wilfrid was afraid to enter the forecastle, and sundry sarcasms, with a mutinous touch in them, passed from bunk to bunk.
‘Avast!’ roared Finn; ‘listen if he’ll speak now.’
But no sound resembling a human syllable entered the stillness.
‘It’s rats, I tell ’ee,’ shouted the skipper, making to go on deck. ‘Come along, Mr. Monson. Blamed now if I believe that Jacob is the only grandmother as has signed articles for this here woyage.’
But as I followed him the exclamations I caught determined me on advising Wilfrid to come forward. He had left Miss Jennings standing alone at the rail, and was walking swiftly here and there with an irritability of gesture that was a sure symptom in him[185] of a troubled and active imagination. On catching sight of me as I emerged out of the blind shadow on the forward part of the yacht, he cried out eagerly, ‘Well, what have you heard? Is it a voice, Charles?’
‘There is nothing to hear,’ I answered. ‘Finn disrespectfully calls it rats.’
‘What else, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, ‘the squeaking of rats ain’t unlike a sort o’ language. Put the noise they make along with the straining of bulkheads and the like of such sounds and let the boiling be listened to by a parcel of ignorant sailors, and I allow ye’ll get what might be tarmed a supernatural woice.’
Wilfrid burst into one of his great laughs, but immediately after said in a grave and hollow tone, ‘But you, Charles, have before heard something preternatural in the shape of a hail off yonder quarter, and from the dead man you found on the wreck.’
‘Fancy, mere fancy,’ I said. ‘Gracious mercy! am I making this voyage to carry home with me a belief in ghosts? But I wish you’d go into the forecastle with Finn, Wilfrid, and listen for yourself. Make your mind easy: there’s nothing to be heard. A visit from you will pacify the men. They hold that you admit the truth of what they allege by declining to satisfy yourself by listening. Their temper is not of the sweetest. They should be soothed, I think, when it is to be so easily done.’
He hung in the wind and said in a hesitating way, ‘What do you think, Finn?’
‘Well, Sir Wilfrid, since, as Mr. Monson says, there’s nothen to hear and nothen therefore to cause ye any agitation, I dorn’t doubt that a wisit from you would please the sailors and calm down their minds. I’m bound to say they’re oneasy—yes, I’m bound to say that.’
‘Come, then,’ cried my cousin, and he strided impetuously into the darkness, followed by the skipper.
I gave Miss Laura my arm and we started on a little walk. The awning was furled and the dew everywhere sparkled like hoar frost. The quiet night wind sighed in the rigging, and the yacht, a point or two off her course, and every sheet flat aft, softly broke through the black quiet waters with dull puffs of phosphor at times sneaking by like the eyes of secret shapes risen close to the surface to survey us. The sheen of the binnacle light touched a portion of the figure of the fellow at the wheel, and threw him and a segment of the circle whose spokes he held, out upon the clear, fine, spangled dusk in phantasmal yellow outlines, dim as the impression left on the retina by an object when the eyelid is closed upon it.
My fair companion and I talked of the incidents of the day. One thing was following another rapidly, I said. ’Twas like a magic-lantern show; scarcely had one picture faded out when something fresh was brightening in its room.
‘What manner of sound could it be,’ she asked, ‘that the sailors have interpreted into cursings and dreadful warnings?’
‘It was no fancy on my part anyway,’ said I, ‘let me put what face I will on it to Wilfrid. If what the men profess to hear be half as distinct as what I heard, there must be some kind of sorcery at work, I’ll swear.’
I led her to the starboard quarter, where I had stood with Crimp, and repeated the story. The darkness gave my recital of the incident the complexion it wanted; a tremor passed through her hand into my arm. It was enough to make a very nightmare of the gloom, warm as it was with the dew-laden southerly breathing, and delicate too with the small fine light trembled into it by the stars, to think of a hail sounding out of it from a phantasm as shapeless as any dye of gloom upon the canvas of the night. Ten minutes passed; I then discerned the figures of Wilfrid and Finn coming aft. My cousin’s deep breathing was audible when he was still at a distance.
‘Well, what news?’ I called cheerily.
Wilfrid drew close and exclaimed, ‘It is true. I have heard it.’
‘Ha!’ said I, turning upon Finn.
‘By all that is blue, then, Mr. Monson, sir,’ exclaimed the worthy fellow, ‘there is somewhat a-talking below.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Miss Jennings, showing herself all on a sudden thoroughly frightened.
‘What I heard,’ said Wilfrid in his most raven note, ‘was this, “The yacht is cursed. Sail her home! Sail her home!”’
‘’Twas as plain, Mr. Monson, as his honour’s own voice,’ said Finn, in a profoundly despondent way.
‘D’ye think, Finn,’ said I, ‘that it is a trick played off upon the crew by some skylarking son of a gun forward?’
His head wagged against the stars. ‘I wish I could believe it, sir. The woice was under foot. There’s nobody belonging to the ship there. There’s no man a-missing. ’Sides, ’tain’t a human woice. Never could ha’ believed it.’ He pulled out his pocket-handkerchief and polished his brow.
‘Well,’ I exclaimed, ‘so long as the thing, whatever it be, keeps forward—the deuce of it is, I’ve heard such sounds myself twice. It can’t be fancy, then. Yet, confound it all, Wilf, there can be nothing supernatural about it either. What is it? Shall I explore the yacht forward? Give me a lantern, and I’ll overhaul her to my own satisfaction anyway.’
‘You may set us on fire,’ said Wilfrid; ‘let the matter rest for to-night. To-morrow, Finn, you can rummage the yacht.’ He started violently: ‘What can it be, though? Are we veritably haunted by the ghost of the Portuguese?’ He tried to laugh, but the dryness of the utterance seemed to half choke him.
‘Well, let us wait for daylight, as you say,’ cried I.
‘I am going below for some seltzer and brandy,’ said Wilfrid. ‘Finn, you may tell the steward to give the men a glass of grog[187] apiece. What can it be?’ he muttered, and his long figure then flitted to the companion, through which he vanished.
It was evident the thing had not yet had time to work in him. He was more astonished than terrified, but I guessed that superstition would soon be active in him, and that there was a bad night before him of feverish imaginings and restless wandering. I could not have guessed how frightened Miss Jennings was until I conducted her below, shortly after Wilfrid had left the deck, where I was able to observe her scared white face, the bewildered expression in her eyes, and a dryness of her cherry under-lip, that kept her biting upon it. Her maid shared her berth, and I was mighty thankful to feel that the sweet creature had a companion. Indeed, had she been alone, one might have wagered she would not have gone to bed that night. My cousin drank freely, but for all that a gloom of spirits settled upon him as slowly and surely as a fog thickens out the atmosphere and darkens down upon the view. He talked with heat and excitement of the strange voice at the first going off, but after a little he grew morose, absent-minded, with symptoms of temper that made me extremely weary, and I fetched a breath with a positive sigh of relief when he abruptly rose, bade us brusquely good-night, and went, in long, melodramatic strides, to his cabin.
I did my best to inspirit Miss Jennings, but I was not very successful. It may be that I was more half-hearted in my manner of going to work than I was conscious of. It never could come to my telling her more than that we might be quite sure, if we could only solve the mystery of the sounds which had frightened all hands forward, and aft, too, for the matter of that, we should be heartily ashamed of our fears in the face of the abject commonplace of the disclosure. She shook her head.
‘It might be as you say,’ she said; ‘but if this strange voice continues to be heard, indeed should it not speak again and yet remain unriddled, what shall we think? I am frightened, I own it. I do not believe in spirits, Mr. Monson, in haunting shadows, and other inventions of old nurses; but I cannot forget that you have heard such a voice as this twice—you who are so—so——’
‘Stupid,’ said I.
‘Matter of fact, Mr. Monson.’
But talking about the thing was not going to help her nerves. She went to bed at ten o’clock, and feeling too sleepy for a yarn with Finn I withdrew to my cabin. I found myself a bit restless, however, when I came to put my head upon the pillow, and would catch myself listening, and sometimes I fancied I could hear a faint sound as of a person talking in a low voice. Then it was I would curse myself for a fool and turn angrily in my bed. Yet for all that, I would fall a-listening again. It was quiet weather still, as it had been since sundown. In the blackness of my cabin I could see a bright star sliding up and down the ebony of the glass of the scuttle, with a pause at intervals, when it would beam steadfastly[188] and intelligently upon me as though it were a human eye. Now and again the water went away from the side in a stifled sob. I could have prayed for such another squall as I have described to burst upon us for the life that would come to the spirit out of the lightning flash, the roar of thunder, the shriek of wind, the fierce blow of the black surge, and the tempestuous hiss of its dissolving spume. I cudgelled my wits for a solution of the voice, but to no purpose. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man lay hidden below. For what sailor of the crew but would not be quickly missed? And then again I had but to consider, to understand what I had not thought of on deck, I mean that even if a pair of hurricane lungs were secreted in the hold it was scarce conceivable that their utmost volume of sound could penetrate through the thick, well-caulked planking of the forecastle deck.
At last I fell asleep.
It was seven o’clock when I awoke. I at once rose, bathed, and went on deck, thinking, as I passed through the cabin and observed the brilliant effect of the sunshine streaming through porthole and skylight in rippling silver upon the shining bulkheads, the radiant lamps, the mirrors, rich carpet and elegant draperies of the cabin, what a very insignificant figure a night-fear cuts by daylight. The wind was north-east, a merry shining morning with a wide blue heaven full of liquid lustre softened by many small white clouds blowing into the south-west, and rich as prisms with the rainbow lights that kindled in their skirts as they sailed past the sun. The firm line of the ocean went round the sky tenantless. The yacht was making good way, running smoothly over the crisping and crackling waters under an airy spread of studdingsail which trembled a light into the water far beyond her side. Finn was on deck standing aft with his back upon the companion. I walked leisurely over to him with vitality in the very last recesses of my being stirred by the exquisite sweetness and freshness of the long, pure sunlit gushing of the wind.
‘Good morning, Captain Finn.’ He turned and touched his cap. ‘How long is this delicious weather going to last, I wonder? Nothing in sight, eh? Bless us, captain, when are we going to run the “Shark” into view?’
He looked at me with a curious expression which his smile, that was always in the middle of his face, rendered exceedingly odd, and said, ‘Did ye hear anything like a mysterious woice, sir, last night after you’d turned in?’
‘I was for fancying,’ I answered, ‘that the atmosphere crawled[189] with indistinguishable whispers. But I suppose without imagination there would be no lunatic asylums.’
He said, still preserving his odd look, ‘The sperrit’s discovered, sir.’
‘Gammon!’ I exclaimed.
‘Ay! we’ve got hold of the woice!’ he cried gleefully. ‘Did ye ever see a ghost, Mr. Monson, sir? Look! There’s the corpse as belonged to the wreck, and there’s the happarition as was a cursing of this yacht last night in the forepeak, and your honour may take it that there is the invisible shape whose hail from off yon quarter has given old Jacob the blues;’ and all the time that he spoke he was pointing to the fore-rigging just under the cross-trees.
I had before lightly glanced at a man up there, but had given him no heed whatever, as I supposed him to be a sailor at work. But now I looked again, shading my eyes.
‘Muffin!’ I cried with a gasp of astonishment. ‘Do you mean to say——?’ and I veritably staggered as the full truth and absurdity of the thing rushed upon me.
He hung in the rigging facing seawards, and there was turn upon turn of rope round his arms and legs; indeed, he was as snugly secured to the shrouds as if he had been a sample of chafing gear. The sailors had compassionately jammed his hat down on his head, and in the shadow of the brim of it his face looked of the sickly yellow hue of tallow. But he was too high to enable me to witness the expression he wore. He had nothing on but his shirt and a pair of grimy duck trousers rolled to above his knees.
‘What do you think of him as a sperrit, sir?’ cried Finn, with a loud hoarse laugh which caused the sailors at work forward to look up grinning at Muffin, who hung as motionless in the shrouds as if he lay in a faint there.
‘How long has he been seized aloft?’ said I, with something of a pang coming to me out of the sight of him, for there followed close on my first emotion of astonishment a sort of admiration for the outlandish genius of the creature that worked in me like a feeling of pity.
‘Since dawn,’ answered Finn. ‘The men put him where he is. I let ’em have their way. I was afeered they might have used him in an uglier fashion, sir. Jack don’t like to be made a fool of, your honour. Old Jacob, I’m told, felt bloodthirsty. Ye see, ye can’t take a view of them sailors, specially such a chap as Cutbill, and think of ’em as lambs.’
‘He must be an amazingly clever ventriloquist, though,’ said I. ‘Of course! All’s as clear as daylight now. He was leaning over the rail when Crimp and I were talking on that night we heard the voice. I caught sight of him in the cabin a minute after the cry had sounded. The dexterous rogue; he must have sneaked with amazing swiftness below. A consummate actor, indeed! How was he discovered?’
‘Why,’ answered Finn, with a slow shake of laughter, ‘there’s a chap named Harry Blake, as occupies the bunk just over him. Blake, like O’Connor, is an Irishman, with a skin as curdles to the thought of a ghost. He was more frightened than any other man forrards, and lay awake listening. Time passed: all the watch was snoring saving this here Blake. On a sudden he hears the woice. He sits up, all of a muck o’ sweat. Why, thinks he, it’s the mute as lies under me a-talking in his sleep! He drops on to the deck and looks at Muffin, who presently fell a-talking again in his sleep, using the hidentical words that Sir Wilfrid had heard, and the tone o’ woice was the same, sort o’ muffled and dim-like; but it wasn’t pitched fit to make a scare, seeing, of course, that the hartist was unconscious. On this Blake sings out, kicks up a reg’lar hullabaloo, tells the men that the woice was a trick of Muffin’s. Muffin being half-dazed and terrified by the sailors crowding round his berth, threatening of him, confesses and says that he did it with the notion of terrifying Sir Wilfrid into returning home, as his life had growed a burden. The men then called a council to settle what should be done with him, and it ended when daybreak come in their seizing him up aloft as ye see there, where they mean to keep him until I’ve consulted with Sir Wilfrid as to the sort of punishment the chap merits.’
‘What shall you propose, Captain Finn?’ said I, with a glance at the bound figure, whose motionlessness made him seem lifeless, and whose posture, therefore, was not a little appealing.
‘Sir,’ answered Finn, ‘I shall recommend his honour to leave it to the men.’
‘But they may hang him?’
‘No; I’ll see they stop short of that. But, Mr. Monson, sir, begging your pardon, I’m sure you’ll allow with me that Muffin’ll desarve all he’s likely to get. Speaking as master of this wessel, I say that if he hadn’t been found out in good time it might have gone blazing hard with all of us. The men were saucy enough last night, growling indeed as if it was next door to a mutiny being under way; and yet it was the first time of the woice speaking in the hold. Imagine it going on for several nights! It was bound to end in all hands giving up unless we shifted our helm for home, which Sir Wilfrid would never have consented to; so there ye’d have had a quandary as bad as if the sailors had been laid low with p’ison, or as if the “Bride” had tarned to and leaked at every butt end. Then think of his anointing his honour’s cabin with flaming letters; all to sarve his own measly wish to git out of an ondertaking that he don’t relish.... Mr. Monson, sir, he wants a lesson, something arter the whipping and pickling business o’ my father’s day, and sooner than that he should miss of his desarts by striving to get to windward of the soft side of his honour’s nature, I’m damned,’ said he, striking his open hand with his clenched fist, ‘if I wouldn’t up and tell Sir Wilfrid myself that it was that there Muffin as wrote the shining words about his honour’s baby.’
‘Best not do that,’ said I. ‘We want no tragedies aboard us, Finn. However, you may count upon my not interfering; but for God’s sake let there be no brutality.’
‘That’ll be all right, sir,’ answered the skipper, with such a look, however, at the helpless and stirless figure in the rigging as satisfied me that his inclination, at present at all events, was not towards mercy.
It was not a sort of sight to make the deck a pleasant lounge till breakfast time. I was moved by some compassion for the unfortunate creature, mainly due, I believe, to a secret admiration for his remarkable skill and dramatic cunning; and understanding that the sooner Wilfrid was apprised of this business the sooner would Muffin be brought down out of the shrouds, I stepped below. The head steward came out of my cousin’s cabin as I approached the door.
‘Is Sir Wilfrid getting up?’ said I.
‘I’ve just taken him his hot water, sir. He isn’t out of bed yet. He’s very heavy; had a bad night, I’ve been told, sir——’
I passed on and knocked.
‘What is it?’ cried Wilfrid, in a drowsy, irritable voice.
I entered, and said, ‘Sorry to disturb you, Wilf, but there’s news that will interest you.’
He started up. ‘The “Shark”?’ he cried.
‘No,’ I answered, ‘they’ve found out who talked like a ghost last night; who it was that whispered off the ocean to Crimp and me that this yacht was cursed; and who it was that made the corpse on the wreck hail us.’
He sat bolt upright with eyes and nostrils large with excitement. ‘Who?’
‘Muffin,’ said I.
‘Muffin!’ he shouted; ‘what d’ye mean, Charles?’
‘Why, the fellow’s a ventriloquist, an incomparable artist, I should say, to deceive us all so atrociously well.’
He stared at me with a face of dumb astonishment. ‘What was his motive, think you?’ he asked presently.
‘He’s pining to get home,’ I replied; ‘he’s capable of any tricks to achieve that end. The men mean to punish him, and Finn is waiting to confer with you on the subject. They’ve had him lashed to the rigging aloft since daybreak.’
‘The scoundrel!’ he cried, springing on to the deck with a dark look of rage, yet with an indescribable note of relief as of a mind suddenly eased, softening the first harshness and temper of his voice. ‘I have to thank him for a frightful night. What a fool I am,’ he cried, vehemently striking his forehead, ‘to suffer myself to be terrified by things which I ought to know—which I ought to know,’ he repeated with passionate emphasis, ‘cannot be as they seem.’
‘Well, Wilf,’ said I, ‘you will find Finn on deck. He will tell you all about it, and you will leave the fellow’s punishment to the[192] men, or settle with Finn the sort of discipline the man deserves, as you shall think proper. I wash my hands of the affair, satisfied with Finn’s promise that there shall be no brutality.’ With which I left him and returned to my cabin, where I lay reading till the breakfast bell rang.
Miss Jennings was alone in the cabin. She stood with head inclined over some flowers which still bloomed in the mould in which they had been brought from England. The sunshine of her hair blended with the pinks and whites of the petals, and the gems on her hands trembled like dewdrops on the leaves of the plants as she lightly touched them with fingers half caressing, half adjusting. Her look of astonishment when I told her that the voice we had heard was a trick of Muffin’s was like a view of her beauty in a new light; amazement with a sparkle as of laughter behind it to throw out the expression, rounded her eyes and deepened their hue. Then the little creature clasped her hands with gratitude that the thing should have been discovered.
‘Muffin is quite a rascal,’ she said, ‘and so clever as to be a real danger.’ She could scarcely credit that he had skill enough to deceive the ear as he had.
Wilfrid was slow in coming; I could see him through the skylight walking with Finn, gesticulating much, with a frequent look in the direction where, as I might gather, Master Muffin still hung. He kept Miss Laura and me waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour, during which I explained how Muffin had been discovered, how Wilfrid had gone on deck to arrange a punishment for him, and the like. Presently my cousin arrived, and on catching sight of Miss Jennings, cried out in his most boyish manner, ‘Only think, my dear, that our superstitious alarms last night should be owing to a trick, but a deuced clever trick, of that illiterate, yellow-faced, tearful, half-cracked son of a greengrocer—Muffin. I never could have believed he had it in him. Eh, Charles? Mad, of course; I don’t say dangerously so, but warped, you know, or is it likely that he would practise so cruel and dangerous a deceit merely because he wants to get home? Why, d’ye know, Charles, Finn gravely swears that, had the rascal persisted successfully for two or three nights, the yacht would have been in an uproar of mutiny, perhaps seized, ay, actually seized, through the terror of the crew, and sailed home—ending all my hopes.’
‘How is he to be served?’
‘Finn proposes,’ he answered, ‘that the men should form a court—a judge and jury. Their decision will be brought aft for our approval. If the sentence be a reasonable one, the fellows will be allowed to execute it.’
Miss Jennings looked scared.
‘They won’t hurt him much,’ said I. ‘Finn has pledged his word to me. ’Tis the fright that will do him good. Is he out of the rigging, Wilf?’
‘Probably by this time,’ he answered. ‘I told Finn to get him[193] sent down and fed. The sun is hot up there, and the poor devil faced it.’
Whilst we breakfasted I had much to say about the fellow’s singular accomplishment as a ventriloquist; suggested that by-and-by he should be brought aft to entertain us, and expressed wonder that a man so gifted, qualified by nature, moreover, to dress up his singular and special faculty with the airs of as theatrical a countenance as ever I had heard of, should be satisfied with the mean offices of a valet. But my flow of speech was presently checked by a change of mood in Wilfrid. His face darkened; he pushed his plate from him, and let fly at Muffin in language which would not have been wanting in profanity probably had Miss Jennings been absent.
‘Do you remember those strange warnings that I received about my little one?’ he cried, turning a wild eye upon me. ‘After the gross deception of last night, who’s to tell me that I might not have been made a fool of in that too?’
I shot a hurried glance of meaning and warning at Miss Jennings, and said carelessly, ‘Depend upon it, we can never be the victims of more than our senses in this life.’
‘Why should the creature have left me to go forward?’ he shouted.
I touched my forehead with a smile. ‘When you engaged this fellow,’ said I, ‘you supposed his brain healthy anyway. Now, my dear Wilf, the motive of this voyage supplies plenty of occupation to the mind, and there is excitement enough to be got out of it without the obligation of a lunatic to wait upon you.’
He burst into a laugh, without however a hint of merriment in it, and then fell silent and most uncomfortably moody. Shortly afterwards he went on deck.
‘What’ll they do to Muffin, Mr. Monson, do you think?’ Miss Laura asked.
‘I cannot imagine,’ said I; ‘they may duck him from the yardarm, they may spreadeagle and refresh him with a few dozens; punish him they will. Finn is hot against him. He is quite right in suggesting that a few such experiences as that of last night might—indeed must—have ended in a perilous mutiny. Are you coming on deck?’
‘No.’
‘But it is a beautiful morning. The breeze is as sweet as milk, and the clouds as radiant as though the angels were blowing soap-bubbles.’
‘I do not care; I shall remain in the cabin. Do you think I could witness a man being ducked or whipped? I should faint.’
‘Well, I’ll go and view the spectacle, so as to be able to give you the story of it.’
She pouted, and cried, ‘Wretched Muffin! Why did Wilfrid bring him? Lend me one of Scott’s novels, Mr. Monson. I cannot get on with that story about the nobility.’
I was not a little surprised, on passing through the companion hatch, to find that the first act of the drama was about to begin. The whole of the ship’s company, with the exception of the man who was at the wheel, were assembled on the forecastle. Crimp and Finn stood together near the forerigging, looking on. One of the sailors, who I afterwards learned was Cutbill, had pinned a blanket over his shoulders to serve him as a robe, whilst on his head he wore a contrivance that might have been a pudding-bag, though what it really was I could not distinguish. He had covered his chin and cheeks with a quantity of oakum, and presented a very extraordinary appearance as he sat with a great air of dignity on the top of a small bread cask. Six sailors stood wing-like on either hand him, constituting the jury, as I supposed. Confronting Cutbill was Muffin between two brawny salts, each of whom held him by the arm. The valet made a most melancholy figure, and even at the distance of the quarterdeck I could see his naked yellow shanks, his breeches being turned above the knees, quivering and yielding, till I began to think that the two sailors held him, not as a prisoner, but to prevent him from tumbling down.
Wilfrid was swinging to and fro the quarter-deck with long flighty strides, taking an eager, probing, short-sighted stare at the crowd forward when he faced them, and then rounding to step aft with a grin on his face and his underlip working as though he talked.
‘I’m glad to see Cutbill making a fool of himself,’ said I. ‘Jack’s jinks are seldom dangerous when he introduces skylarking after the pattern of that fellow’s make-up. Shall we step forward and hear the trial, Wilf?’
‘No,’ said he, ‘it would be undignified. Every man to the end he belongs to aboard a ship. Finn is there to see all fair. Besides, Muffin might appeal to me or to you—and I mean that the sailors shall have their way with him, providing, of course, that they don’t carry things too far.’
‘Let’s sit, then,’ said I; ‘your seven-league boots are too much for me this hot morning.’
He called to the steward to bring him his pipe, and we posted ourselves on the grating abaft the wheel. It was a very gem of a picture just then. The canvas rose spreading on high in clouds of soft whiteness so silver-like to the burning of the sun that viewed from a little distance I don’t doubt they would have shone upon the eye with the sparkle of crystal or the richer gleam of a pearl-encrusted surface. The decks went forward pure as ivory, every shadow so sharp that it looked as though an artist had been at work upon the planks counterfeiting the rigging and every curve of stirless cloth and all delicate interlacery of ratline and gear running crosswise. The sea sloped in dark blue summer undulations, light as the rise and fall of the breast of a sleeping girl, into the liquid azure upon the starboard bow, where the steam-white clouds were gathered in a huddle like a great flock of sheep waiting for the rest[195] that were on their way there to join them. The crowd on the forecastle filled that part of the vessel with colour. It was the fuller of life for the coming and going of the shadows of the far-reaching studdingsails and the marble-like arch of the flowing squaresail on the many dyes of the tough, knotted, bearded groups of faces with heads of hair and wiry whiskers ranging from the blackness of the rook’s plumes to a pale straw colour, most of the beards wagging to the excited gnawing upon junks of tobacco standing high in the cheek-bones, with here a wrinkled grin, there a sour cast, all combining to a picture that I have but to close my eyes to witness bright and vivid again as though it were of yesterday.
The trial was very decorously conducted; there were no jeers, no cries, no noise of any kind. I could hear the rumble of Cutbill’s deep-sea notes, and once or twice Muffin’s response, faint as the squeak of a rat deep down. Crimp was called as a witness, and declaimed a bit, but nothing reached me save the sulky rasp of his voice. The fooling did not last long. Cutbill got on top of his cask to address the jury, and I saw the fellow at the wheel near us shaking his sides at the preposterous figure of the man as he hugged his blanket to his heart, gravely nodding with his pudding-bag first to the six men on his left, then to the six men on his right, whilst he delivered his charge. When this was ended Captain Finn, with a look aft, sang out at the top of his voice, evidently that we should hear him:
‘Now, my lads, you who constitute the jury, what’s your vardict? Is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?’
‘Guilty!’ all twelve men roared out at once, on which Cutbill, still erect on his cask, passed judgment.
I strained my ear, but to no purpose. It was a monotonous rigmarole of a speech, and so long that I turned with a face of dismay to Wilfrid.
‘I say, what are they going to do with him? Why, Cutbill has said enough to include whipping, ducking, roasting, hanging, and quartering.’
‘They only mean to frighten him,’ he answered, looking anxious nevertheless.
The two men who grasped Muffin walked him into the head, faced him round, and stood on either hand him, still preserving their hold. Finn came aft, the men meanwhile hanging about in a body forward in a posture of waiting.
‘Well, what is decided on?’ cried Wilfrid, eagerly and nervously.
Finn touched his cap. He tried to look grave, but secret enjoyment was very visible in the twinkle of his eye, spite of the portentous curve of his mouth and the long drop of his chops to his chin end.
‘Your honour, the men’s vardict is that the prisoner’s to be cobbed and ducked.’
‘Cobbed!’ cried Wilfrid, whilst I exclaimed ‘Ducked!’ with a look at the fore yardarm that stood high above the sea.
‘Every man’ll give him a blow with a rope’s end as he walks forrard,’ explained Finn, ‘and arterwards cool him with a bucket o’ water apiece.’
Wilfrid’s eyes came to mine.
‘It will depend upon how hard every man hits,’ said I; ‘the ducking is innocent enough. Yet I see nothing of cruelty in the sentence; and really the fellow not only requires to be punished, but to be terrified as well.’
‘The hands are waiting for me to tell ’em to begin, your honour,’ said Finn with a glance forward. ‘It’ll make the punishment too severe to keep the poor devil a-waiting for it.’
‘One moment,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, ‘did he offer any excuses?’
‘Why, sir, he said he was egged on with the desire to return to his mother and get off the sea which disagrees with his insides and affects his hintellectuals. He says he meant no more harm than that. Don’t believe he did, but it might have ended in some smothering trouble all the same. “I came as a walet,” says he, “and here now am I,” says he, “broke—just a ship’s dog, a filthy scullion,” says he, “when my true calling,” says he, “is that of gentleman’s gentleman.”’
‘But, confound him!’ cried Wilfrid, ‘it was he who left me; I did not dismiss him. He went forward of his own will.’
‘My dear Wilfrid, he is cracked,’ said I.
‘Get on, get on, and make an end of this, now, Finn,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, with a little colour of temper in each cheek. ‘I’m weary of the business, and want these decks cleared and quiet to the eye.’
The skipper promptly trudged forward, and sung out as he advanced. In a few moments most of the sailors had ranged themselves along the deck in a double line. Every man held a piece of rope in his hand—reef points they looked to me, though whether they had been cut for this special business or had been hunted for amidst raffle of the kind forward I cannot say. Meanwhile a couple of seamen handed buckets full of water along from a little pump in the head until every man had one at his feet. When these preparations were completed the brace of salts who had charge of Muffin suddenly whipped off his shirt, and laid bare his back, so that he stood in nothing but a pair of breeches, a very radish of a figure—his yellow anatomy glancing dully in the sunshine, whilst the ghastly pallor of his face was heightened yet by his plaster of coal-black hair, just as his inward terror was accentuated by the corkscrew-like writhing of his lean legs, the convulsive twitching of his arms, and the dismal rolling of his dead black, lustreless eyes. It was impossible not to feel sorry for the wretched creature. One felt that he was entitled, by virtue of the remarkable gift he had displayed, to a discipline of a more dignified sort than he was now to be subjected to. I laughed out,[197] however, when Cutbill formed a procession. Absurdity could not have gone beyond the figure the great whiskered tarpaulin cut in his blanket and the canvas bag that served him as headgear as, making a sign, he tragically entered the double line of men, beating with his hands that Muffin and his two supporters should keep time with his strides. When Muffin was brought to the aftermost end of the rank of seamen Cutbill seized him by the neck and forced him to give us a bow. The two sailors who had conducted him to this point then posted themselves with the others, each of them picking up a rope’s end, whereupon Cutbill, twisting Muffin so as to force him to face the vessel’s forecastle, took a couple of strides backwards, extending his arms under his blanket to hinder Muffin from running forwards.
‘Lay on now!’ he hoarsely bawled, and then whack! whack! whack! whack! sounded upon the unhappy Muffin’s spine as rhythmically as the tapping of a land-crab’s claws upon a polished floor. Every fellow administered his single blow with a will, one or two spitting on their hands before their turn came. The sufferer writhed pitifully to the very first stroke, and to the fourth howled out like a dog. The sight half-sickened me, and yet I found myself laughing—though, I dare say, there was something of hysteric nervousness in my merriment—at the preposterous spectacle of the staggering, twitching, dodging, almost nude figure of Muffin, throwing out into strong relief the huge blanketed form of Cutbill, who, with arms extended, his head with its adornment of oakum nodding gravely from side to side, as if bestowing approbation on each man for the blow he dealt, strode backwards on majestic legs, carefully turning out his toes as though he were giving Muffin a lesson in dancing, and sliding along the lines of knotted, hairy faces, with the air of some court functionary marshalling the progress of royalty.
As the echo of the last whack rose hollowly off Muffin’s back, the skin of which was unbroken, though it was barred with white lines that resembled flakes of peeled onion, Cutbill whirled him round again, choking the yell he was in the act of delivering into a moan, and ran him back to where he had first started. The ropes’ ends were now dropped; every man seized his bucket, and as Muffin moved, slowly confronted as before by Cutbill, who barricaded the way with outstretched arms, striding backwards once again with Cape-Horn graces, he received a deluge full in his face one after another till I thought the very breath would have been washed out of his body.
‘Now cut down below and dry and clothe yourself,’ roared Finn, as the last bucket was emptied over the shivering creature, ‘and the next time, my lad, ye try any of your pranks upon e’er a man aboard this wessel, whether he lives forward or whether he lives aft, we’ll send ye aloft to that yardarm there with a rope round your neck.’
Cutbill whipped off his blanket and tore the oakum and cap[198] off his head. In a few brief moments the decks resounded with the slapping of sailors swabbing up the wet; buckets were stowed away in their places, the rope’s-ends collected, and in an incredibly short space of time all was as though no such incident as I have related had happened, the planks drying fast, some seamen aft spreading the awning, other fellows at their several jobs in the rigging or on deck, just a grin now and again passing amongst them, but no laughter and no talk, and the yacht softly pushing forwards under the increasing glory of the sun fast approaching his meridian.
‘We shall hear no more of Muffin, I think,’ said Wilfrid, showing nothing of the excitement I had expected to find in him.
‘No,’ said I, with a yawn, and sickened somewhat by the business that had just ended, ‘but all this sort of business doesn’t look like the errand that has brought us out on to the face of these broad waters.’
‘Ay,’ said he, ‘but that errand was in jeopardy until this morning.’
He went to the rail and took a long thirsty look ahead. I waited thinking he meant to return. Instead he folded his arms and continued gazing, motionless, with eyes so intently fixed that I took a look too, conceiving that he beheld something to fix his attention. A strange expression of surprise entered his face, his brow lightened, an air of eagerness sharpened his visage. ’Twas as likely as not that he saw with his mind’s eye what he craved to behold in reality, and that the vision a sudden craze had raised up before him was as actual to his tainted imagination as if it lay bright to all hands upon the sea-line. But I felt wearied to the heart, sick as from a sort of ground-swell of emotion, worried with sharper longings to make an end of this idle quest than had ever before visited me. The mere sight of Wilfrid’s posture and face was enough to increase the fit of the blues upon me just then, and I quietly slipped below for such sunny influence as was to be got out of the presence of the sweet little woman in the cabin.
After this, for a good many days nothing in any degree noteworthy happened. It seemed, indeed, as though whatever little there was to alarm or divert during this extraordinary voyage had been packed into the beginning of it. Muffin lay ill of his back for two days in his bunk; but for Wilfrid, Finn would have had the poor devil up and about within an hour of drying and dressing himself. The skipper could not forgive that menace of mutiny which had been involved in the yellow-faced joker’s effort to procure the shifting of the yacht’s helm for home, and he would[199] always refer privately to me with violent indignation to the valet’s trick upon his master. But on Wilfrid’s hearing that the man was in pain and that his nerves had been prostrated by the punishment, he ordered Finn to let him remain below until he was better or well. There was no more ventriloquism; the midnight silence of the forecastle was left unvexed by muffled imprecations. The sailors, when Muffin left his bunk, asked him to give them an entertainment, to which he replied by saying he would see them in a nameless place first. The request, indeed, maddened him. I gathered from sullen Crimp’s sour version of the incident that Muffin shrieked at the men, shook his fist at them, his eyes started half out of his head, the foam gathered upon his lips, and he heaped curses and oaths of a nature so novel, so unimaginable, indeed, upon them, that the stoutest shrunk back from the screaming creature, believing him to be raving mad. However, he behaved himself very quietly on deck. I never caught him looking our way nor speaking, nor heard him again singing in a dog-watch in his woman’s voice. Life grew so tedious that I should have been glad to see him aft again for the sake of his parts as a mimic and actor. I was certain the man would have contrived a very good entertainment for us night after night; but Wilfrid said no, angrily and obstinately, once and for all, and so the subject dropped.
The north-east trades blew a fresh breeze and bowled us handsomely athwart the broad blue field of the Atlantic. The ‘Bride’ was a noble sailer when she had the chance, and some of our runs rose to three hundred miles in the twenty-four hours, with a hill of snow at either bow and the frothing surge of the trades chasing us, and a sensible increase of heat day after day in the loud and shrilling sweep of air and the glitter of flying-fish sparking on wings of gauze from the white and gold of our vessel’s shearing passage. We had entered the tropics, but had met with no ship that we could speak. At times a sail shone, but always afar. The lookout aloft was as steadfast as the rising and sinking of the sun. Day after day the polished tube up there was sweeping the glass-like sapphire of the ocean boundary, steadily circling the firm line of it, sweeping from either quarter to ahead. But the cry of ‘Sail ho!’ delivered at long intervals never resulted in more than the disclosure of a rig of a very different pattern from what we were in pursuit of.
A settled gloom fell upon my cousin’s spirits. He complained of sleeplessness; his appetite failed him, he talked but little, and his one subject was the ‘Shark.’ I would sometimes long for a startling incident to shake him out of the melancholy that sat darkly as the shadow of madness upon him. Miss Jennings tried hard to keep up her heart, but already I could see that the monotony of the voyage, coupled with an incessant strain of expectation, was proving too much for her. She had come to this strange quest, taking my cousin’s word for what was to happen. She had given Wilfrid’s programme of hopes no consideration.[200] We were bound to fall in with the ‘Shark’ at sea, or at the very worst to arrive at the Cape before her, and there lie in wait. She was finding out now that the ocean was the prodigious plain I had represented it for a pursuit of this kind, and that the journey had already grown infinitely tedious, though Table Bay lay some thousands of miles distant yet. Still, she stuck to her guns manfully. Her heart would show in her eyes when she thought herself unobserved; but if ever I approached the subject, in conversing with her on the vagueness and vanity of this pursuit, she would tell me that it was idle to talk, that she had made up her mind, that she had cast in her lot with Wilfrid in this chase, and that whilst he continued to pursue his wife, no matter to what part of the world he might direct Finn to steer the vessel, she would remain at his side.
‘Should I ever forgive myself, do you think, Mr. Monson,’ she would argue, ‘if after I had left him Wilfrid found Henrietta, and she refused to return with him for lack, perhaps, of the influence I should be able to exert?’
‘Ay, but do not you suppose too much?’ I would answer. ‘Perhaps Wilfrid might fall in with his wife; perhaps she might decline to have anything to do with him; perhaps if you were present she might yield to your entreaties. As my sympathies are not so deeply concerned as yours, I am able possibly to take more practical views. The one staggering consideration with me is this: we arrive at Table Bay and find the “Shark” has sailed, and there is nobody to tell us where she has gone. Figure our outlook then!’
‘But you are supposing too. The “Shark” may arrive whilst we are lying in Table Bay. What then, Mr. Monson?’
It was idle talk, though to her ‘what then?’ I might have replied by another question: ‘If Lady Monson, at Table Bay, should decline to allow her husband to carry her home in his yacht, what then?’
It must have fared hard with me, I think, but for this girl; for had I had during this journey no other companion than Wilfrid, likely as not it would have ended in my carrying ‘a bee in my bonnet’ for the rest of my days. Between us we managed to kill many tedious hours with cards, chess, chats, reading aloud, whilst Wilfrid lay hid in God knows what mysterious occupation in his cabin, or paced the deck alone, austere, unapproachable, with an iron sneer on his lip and on his brow the scowl of a dark mood out of which you might have looked to see him burst into some wild, unreasoning piece of behaviour, some swearing fit or insane soliloquy—one knew not what; only that the air of him held you restless with expectation of trouble in that way.
The night-time was the fairest part of this queer trip when we got under the tropic heights, with failing breezes, hot and moist, softly-running surges languidly gushing into a sheet-lightning of phosphoric froth, a full moon that at her meridian came near to the brilliance of sunrise, the planets large, trembling, and of[201] heavenly beauty, a streak of dim fire in the dark water over the counter denoting the subtle, sneaking pursuit of some huge fish; and reflections of white stars like dim water-lilies riding the polished ebony heave when it ran foamless. Evening after evening on such nights as these would Miss Laura and I placidly step the deck together or sit watching the exquisite effects of moonlight on sail and cordage; or the rising of the luminary above the black rim of ocean, with the tremble of the water in its light as though the deep thrilled to the first kiss of the moonbeams gliding from one romantic fancy to another as tenderly as our keel floated over the long-drawn respirations of the deep. Indeed, it would come sometimes to my thinking that if the ‘Bride’ were my yacht and Laura and I alone in her—with a crew to navigate the craft, to be sure—I should be very well satisfied to go on sailing about in this fashion in these latitudes, under those glorious stars and upon these warm and gentle seas, until she tired. In its serene moonlit moods the ocean possesses an incomparable and amazing magic of spiritualising. The veriest commonplace glows into poetic beauty under the mysterious, vitalising, enriching influence. I have seen a girl whom no exaggerated courtesy could have pronounced comely by daylight, show like an angel on the deck of a yacht on a hushed and radiant night when the air has been brimming to the stars with the soft haze of moonlight, and when the sea has resembled a carpet of black silk softly waving. The moon is a witch, and her pencils of light are charged with magic qualities. In the soft golden effulgence my companion’s face would sometimes grow phantasmal, a dream of girlish loveliness, the radiance of her hair and skin blending with the rich illusive light till I would sometimes think if I should glance away from her and then look again, I should find her fairy countenance melted—a romantic confession that tells the story of my heart! Yes, I was far gone; no need to deny it. Our association was intimate to a degree that no companionship ashore could approach. Wilfrid left us alone together for hour after hour, and there was nobody to intrude upon us. Finn clearly understood what was happening, and sour old Crimp was always careful to leave us one side of the deck to ourselves.
But there was now to happen a violent change: a transformation of peaceful, amorous conditions of the right kind to affright romance and to drive the spirit of poetry cowering out of sight.
We were in latitude about eight degrees north; the longitude I do not remember. The night had been very quiet but thick; here and there a star that was a mere lustreless blur in the void, and the water black and sluggish as liquid pitch without a gleam in it. The atmosphere had been so sultry that I could get no rest. The yacht dipped drearily from side to side, shaking thunder out of her canvas and sending a sound, like a low sobbing wail, off her sides into the midnight gloom. This prevented me from opening the scuttle and I lay half stifled, occasionally driven on deck by a sense of suffocation, though it was like passing from one hot room[202] to another in a Turkish bath. There was a barometer in the cabin just under the clock in the skylight; every time I quitted my berth I peeped at it, and every time I looked I observed that the mercury had settled somewhat, a very gradual but a very steady fall. That foul weather was at hand I could not doubt, but it was hard to imagine the character it would take down amongst these equatorial parallels, where one hardly looks for gales of wind or cyclonic outbursts, or the rushing tempest red with lightning of high latitudes; though every man who has crossed the Line will know that the ocean is as full of the unexpected thereabouts as in all other parts of the globe.
I somehow have a clearer recollection of that night than of the time that followed, or, indeed, of any other passage of hours during this queer sea ramble I am writing about. It was first the intolerable heat, then the unendurably monotonous lifeless rolling of the yacht, with its regular accompaniment of the yearning wash of recoiling waters, the ceaseless and irritating clicking of cabin doors upon their hooks, the idle beating of canvas above hollowly penetrating the deck with a muffled echo as of constant sullen explosions, the creaking and straining to right and to left and above and below, a hot smell of paint and varnish and upholstery mingled with some sort of indefinable marine odour; a kind of faint scent of rotting seaweed, such as will sometimes rise off the breast of the sluggish deep when stormy weather is at hand. I believe I drank not less than one dozen bottles of seltzer water in the small hours. I was half dead of thirst, and routed out the steward and obliged him to supply me with a plentiful stock of this refreshment. But the more I drank the hotter I got, and no ship-wrecked eye ever more gratefully saluted the grey of dawn than did mine when, wakening from a half-hour of feverish sleep, I beheld the light of morning lying weak and lead-coloured on the glass of the porthole.
An uglier jumble of sky I never beheld when I sent my first look up at it from the companion-hatch. It was as though some hundreds and thousands of factory chimneys had been vomiting up their black fumes throughout the night, the bodies of vapour coming together over our mastheads and compacting there lumpishly amid the stagnant air with the livid thickenings dimming into dusky browns; and here and there a sallow lump of gloom of the kind of yellowish tinge to make one think of fire and thunder. The confines of this ghastly storm-laden pall drooped to the sea within three miles of the yacht, so that the horizon seemed within cannon-shot—a merging and mingling of stationary shadows whose stirlessness was rendered the more portentous by the sulky pease-soup-coloured welter of the ocean washing into the shrouded distance and vanishing there. All hands were on the alert. What was to come Finn told me he could not tell, but he was ready for it. His maintopmast was struck, that is, sent down on deck; he had also sent down the topgallantyard. Every stitch of canvas was furled, saving the close reefed gaff-foresail and the reefed stay-foresail.[203] Extra lashings secured everything that was movable. Much to my satisfaction, I observed that he had struck the long gun forward down below. There was not a breath of wind as yet, and the yacht looked most forlorn and naked, as though indeed she were fresh from a furious tussle as she rolled, burying her sides upon the southerly swell that was growing heavier and heavier hour by hour.
We were at breakfast when the first of the wind took us. It came along moaning at first, with a small dying away, and then a longer wail as it poured hot as the breath of a furnace blast between our masts. This was followed by some five minutes of breathless calm, during which the yacht fell off into the trough again; then, having my eye upon a cabin-window, I bawled out, ‘There it comes!’ seeing the flying white line of it like a cloud of desert sand sweeping through the evening dusk, and before the words were well out of my mouth the yacht was down to it, bowed to her bulwark rail, every blessed article on the breakfast table fetching away with a hideous crash upon the deck, with the figures of the two stewards reeling to leeward, myself gripping the table, Wilfrid depending wholly for support upon his fixed chair, and Miss Jennings buoying herself off to windward upon her outstretched arms with her face white with consternation.
The uproar is not to be described. The voice of the gale bellowing through the gloom was a continuous note of thunder, and trembled upon the ear for all the world as though it was the cannonading of some fierce electric storm. The boiling and hissing of the seas made one think of a sky full of water falling into the ocean. The yacht at the first going off was beaten down on to her broadside and lay motionless, the froth washing over the rail; and the horror of that posture of seemingly drowning prostration, together with the fears it put into one, was prodigiously increased by the heavy blows of seas smiting the round of the hull to windward and bursting over her in vast bodies of snow. But she was a noble sea boat, and was soon gallantly breasting the surge, but with a dance that rapidly grew wilder and wilder as the tempestuous music on high rang out more fiercely yet, until it became absolutely impossible to use one’s legs. The sea rose as if by magic, and the slide of the hull down the liquid heights, which came roaring at her from a very smother of scud and vapour and flying spray, gave her such a heel that every recovery of her for the next buoyant upward flight was a miracle of resurrection in its way. The hatches were battened down, tarpaulins over the skylight, and as for some time the stewards were unable to light the lamp we remained seated in the cabin in a gloom so deep that we could scarcely discern one another’s faces. Off the cabin deck rose a miserable jangling and clatter of broken crockery and glass and the like, rolling to and fro with the violent movements of the yacht. For a long while the stewards were rendered helpless. They swung by stanchions or held on grimly to seats, and it was indeed as much[204] as their lives were worth to let go; for there were moments when the decks sloped like the steep roof of a house, promising a headlong fall to any one who relaxed his grip of a sort to break his neck or beat his brains out. At regular intervals the cabin portholes would turn blind to a thunderous rush of green sea, and those were moments, I vow, to drive a man on to his knees with full conviction that he would be giving up the ghost in a very little while; for to these darkening, glimmering, green delugings the cabin interior turned a dead black as though it were midnight; down lay the yacht to the mighty sweeping curl of water; a shock as of the discharge of heavy artillery trembled with a stunning effect right through her to the blows of the tons upon tons of water which burst over the rail to the height of the cross-trees, falling upon the resounding deck from that elevation with a crash that made one think of the fabric having struck, followed on by a distracting sound of seething as the deluge, flung from side to side, boiled between the bulwarks.
We had met with a few dustings before we fell in with this tempest, but nothing to season us for such an encounter as this. I made an effort after two hours of it to scramble on all-fours up the cabin ladder and to put my head out through one of the companion doors. Such was the power of the wind that to the first protrusion of my nose I felt as if my face had been cut off as by a knife and swept overboard. The hurricane was as hot as though charged with fire; the clouds of foam blown off the sea and whirling hoarily under the black vapour low down above our mastheads looked like steam boiling up off the hissing surface of the mighty ocean cauldron. I caught sight of a couple of fellows lashed to the wheel and the figure of Finn glittering in black oilskins crouching aft under the lee of the bulwark, swinging to a rope’s end round his waist; but all forward was haze, storms of foam, a glimpse of the yacht’s bows soaring black and streaming, then striking down madly into a very hell of white waters which leapt upwards to the smiting of the structure in marble-like columns, round, firm, brilliant, like the stem of a waterspout, but with beads which instantly vanished in a smoke of crystals before the shriek and thunder of the blast. The fragment of gaff foresail held bravely, dark with brine from peak to clew, with a furious salival draining of wet from the foot of it out of the hollow into which there was a ceaseless mad hurling of water.
Heaven preserve me! never could I have imagined such a sight as that sea presented. It might well have scared the heart of a far bolder man than ever I professed to be to witness the height and arching of the great liquid acclivities with their rage of boiling summits; the dusk of the atmosphere darkened yet by the flying rain of spume torn by the fingers of the storm out of the maddened waters; the ghastliness of the dissolving mountains of whiteness glaring out into the wet and leaden shadow; the leaping of the near horizon against the thick gloom that looked to whirl[205] like a teetotum, mingling scud and foam and hurtling billow into a sickening confusion of phantasmal shapes, a mad, chaotic blending of vanishing and reappearing forms timed by the yell and hum of the gale sounding high above the crash of the breaking surge and the shattering of wave by wave as though in very truth it fetched an echo of its own deafening roaring out of the dark sky rushing low over this tremendous scene of commotion.
Whatever it might be that blew, whether a straight-lined hurricane or some wing of rotating storm, it lasted for three days; not, indeed, continuing the terrible severity with which it had set in, for we were all afterwards agreed that a few hours of the weight of tempest that had first sprung upon us must have beaten the yacht down to her grave by mere blows of green seas, let alone the addition of the incalculable pressure of the wind. The stay-foresail in one blast that caught the yacht when topping a sea was blown into rags, and whirled up into the dusklike smoke. A fragment of headsail was wanted, but whilst some men were clawing forwards to effect what was necessary the vessel shipped a sea that carried three of them overboard like chips of wood, leaving the fourth stranded in the scuppers as far aft as the gangway with his neck and both legs broken! We were but a small ship, and luxurious fittings counted for nothing in such a hellish tumblefication as that. Wilfrid kept his berth nearly the whole time, having slightly sprained his ankle, which topped by the motion prohibited him from extending his leg by so much as a single stride. On the other hand Miss Laura would not leave the cabin. I endeavoured to persuade her to take some rest in her bunk, but to no purpose. I did what I could to make her comfortable, crawled like a rat to her berth, where I found her maid half dead with fright and nausea, procured a pillow, rugs, and so forth, got her over to the lee side, where there was not much risk of her rolling off the sofa, and snugged her to the best of my ability. I sat with her constantly, said what I could to keep her spirits up, procured food for her, fell asleep at her side holding her hand, saw to her maid, and in a word acted the part of a devoted lover. But heaven bless us, what a time it was! I would sometimes wonder whether if the ‘Shark’ met with this gale, she had seaworthiness enough to outlive it. Occasionally Finn would arrive haggard, streaming, the completest figure imaginable of a tempest-beaten-man, and report of matters above; but I remember wishing him at the devil when he told us of the loss of the four men, for a more depressing piece of news could not have reached us at such a time, and Miss Laura’s spirits seemed to utterly break down under it. It was impossible to light the galley fire, and we had to subsist upon the remains of past cookery and on tinned food. However, Finn told us that on the evening of the first day of the gale the cook had fallen and broken two fingers of his right hand: so that could a fire have been kindled there was no one to prepare a hot meal for us.
But a little before eleven o’clock on the night of the third day the gale broke. I was sitting alongside Miss Jennings in the cabin, with a plate of biscuit and ham on my knee, off which she and I were making a lover’s meal, I popping little pieces into her mouth as she lay pillowed close against my arm, then taking a snack myself, then applying a flask of sherry to her lips and finding the wine transformed into nectar by her kiss of the silver mouth of the flask. A steward sat crouching in the corner of the cabin; the lamp burnt dimly, for there had been some difficulty in obtaining oil for it and the mesh was therefore kept low. Suddenly, I witnessed a flash of yellow moonshine upon the porthole directly facing me, and with a shout of exultation I sprang to my feet, giving no heed to the plate that fell in a crash upon the deck, and crying out, ‘Thank God, here’s fine weather coming at last!’ I made a spring to the companion steps and hauled myself up through the hatch.
It was a sight I would not have missed witnessing for much. The moon at that instant had swept into a clear space of indigo black heaven; her light flashed fair upon the vast desolation of swollen waters; every foaming head of sea glanced with an ivory whiteness that by contrast with the black welter upon which it broke showed with something of the glory of crystalline snow beheld in sunlight; the clouds had broken and were sailing across the sky in dense dark masses; it still blew violently, but there was a deep peculiar note in the roar of the wind aloft, which was assurance positive to a nautical ear that the strength of the gale was exhausted, just as in a humming-top the tone lowers and lowers yet as the thing slackens its revolutions. By one o’clock that morning it was no more than a moderate breeze with a high angry swell, of which, however, Finn made nothing; for after escorting Miss Jennings to her cabin I heard them making sail on deck; and when, having had a short chat with Wilfrid, who lay in his bunk earnestly thanking God that the weather had mended, I went on deck to take a last look round before turning in, I found the wind shifted to west-north-west and the ‘Bride’ swarming and plunging over the strong southerly swell under a whole mainsail, gaff foresail and jib, with hands sheeting home the square topsail, Crimp singing out in the waist, and Finn making a sailor’s supper off a ship’s biscuit in one hand and a cube of salt junk in the other by the light of the moon.
The gale was followed by several days of true tropical weather: light airs before which our stem slided so softly as to leave the water unwrinkled; then pauses of utter stagnation with the horizon[207] slowly waving in the roasting atmosphere as if it were some huge snake winding round and round the sea and our mastheads wriggling up into the brassy blue like the points of rotating corkscrews.
I rose one morning early, loathing the narrow frizzling confinement of my cabin, where the heat of the upper deck dwelt in the atmosphere with a sort of tingling, and where the wall, thick as the scantling was and cooled besides outside by the wash of the brine, felt to the hand warm as a glass newly rinsed in hot water. I went on deck and found myself in a cloudless day. The sun was a few degrees above the horizon, and his wake flowed in a river of dazzling glory to the inverted image of the yacht reflected with mirror-like perfection in the clear, pale-blue profound over which she was imperceptibly stealing, fanned by a draught so tender that it scarcely lifted the airy space of topgallant-sail whose foot arched like a curve of new moon from one topsail yard-arm to the other.
I had noticed the dim grey outline of what was apparently a huge shark off our quarter on the previous night, and went to the rail to see if the beast was still in sight; and I was overhanging the bulwark, sniffing with delight the fresh salt smell that floated up from alongside, scarce warmed as yet by the early sun, and viewing with admiration the lovely representation of the yacht’s form in the water, with my own face looking up at me too, as though I lay a drowned man down there, when Finn suddenly called out: ‘A humpish looking craft, your honour; and I’m a lobster if I don’t think by the stink in the air that her cargo’s phosphate manure!’
I sprang erect, and on turning was greatly astonished to observe a barque of some four or five hundred tons approaching us just off the weather bow, and almost within hail. I instantly crossed the deck to get a better view of her. She was a round-bowed vessel, deep in the water, with a dirty white band broken by painted ports going the length of her, and she rolled as clumsily upon the light swell as if she were full of water. She had apparently lost her foretopgallant-mast, and the head of the topmast showed heavy with its crosstrees over the tall hoist of single topsail. A group of men stood on the forecastle viewing us, and now and again a head was thrust over the quarterdeck rail. But she was approaching us almost bow on, and her bulwarks being high, there was little to be seen of her decks.
‘Very queer smell,’ said I, tasting a sort of faint acid in the atmosphere, mingled with an odour of an earthy, mouldering kind, as though a current of air that had crept through some churchyard vault had stolen down upon us.
‘Bones or bird-dung, sir; perhaps both. I recognise the smell; there’s nicer perfumes a-going.’
‘Has she signalled you?’
‘Ay, sir; that she wanted to speak, and then she hauled her colours[208] down when she saw my answering pennant. She’s been in sight since hard upon midnight. Crimp made her out agin the stars, and how we’ve stole together, blessed if I know, for all the air that’s blowed since the middle watch wouldn’t have weight enough to slant a butterfly off its course.’
‘What do they want, I wonder?’ said I; ‘rather a novelty for us to be spoken, Finn, seeing that it has always been the other way about. Bless me! how hot it is! Pleasant to be a passenger aboard yonder craft under that sun there, if the aroma she breathes is warrant of the character of her cargo.’
A few minutes passed; the barque then shifting her helm slowly drew out, giving us a view of her length. As she did so she hauled up her main course and braced aback her fore-yards. This looked like business; for, had her intention been to hail us merely in passing, our joint rate of progress was so exceedingly slow as to render any man?uvring, such as heaving to, unnecessary. Finn and I were looking at her, waiting for the yacht to be hailed, when Crimp, who had been in the waist superintending the washing down of the decks—for he was in charge, though the captain had come up at once on hearing that there was a vessel close to us; sour old Crimp, I say, whom I had observed staring with a peculiar earnestness at the barque, came aft and said: ‘Ain’t this smell old bones?’
‘Foul enough for ’un,’ answered Finn.
‘Dummed,’ cried Crimp, gazing intently with his cross eyes whilst his mat of beard worked slowly to the action of his jaw upon a quid as though there were something behind it that wanted to get out, ‘if I don’t believe that there craft’s the “’Liza Robbins.”’
‘Well, and what then?’ demanded Finn.
‘Why, if so, my brother’s her skipper.’
Finn levelled his glass. He took a long look at the figure of a man who was standing on the barque’s quarter, and who was manifestly pausing until the vessel should have closed a little more yet to hail us.
‘Is your brother like you, Jacob?’ he asked, bringing his eye from the telescope.
‘Ay, werry image, only that his wision’s straight. We’re twins.’
‘Then there ye are to the life!’ cried Finn, bursting into a laugh and pointing to the barque’s quarterdeck.
Crimp rested the glass on the rail and put his sour face to it. ‘Yes,’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s ’Arry, sure enough,’ and without another word he returned to the waist and went on coolly directing the scrubbing and swabbing of the men.
‘Mr. Monson,’ said Finn, who had taken the glass from Crimp, and extending it to me as he spoke, ‘just take a view of them figures on the fo’k’sle, sir, will ’ee? There’s three of ’em standing alone close against the cathead. They ain’t blue-jackets, are they?’
But at that instant we were hailed, and I forgot Finn’s request in listening to what was said.
‘Schooner ahoy!’
‘Hallo!’ answered Finn.
‘What schooner is that and where are you bound?’ cried the man on the barque’s quarter-deck in a voice whose sulky rasping note so exactly resembled Jacob Crimp’s when he exerted his lungs, that I observed some of our sailors staring with astonishment, as though they imagined Muffin had gone to work again.
‘The “Bride” of Southampton on a cruise,’ responded Finn, adding in an aside to me: ‘no use in singing out about the Cape of Good Hope, sir.’
There was a brief pause, then Finn bawled: ‘What ship are you?’
‘The “’Liza Robbins,”’ was the answer, ‘of and for Liverpool from Hitchaboo with a cargo of gewhany.’
‘Thought so,’ exclaimed Finn to me with a snuffle; ‘d’ye smell it now, sir? How they can get men to sign for a woyage with such a cargo beats my going a fishing.’
‘Schooner ahoy!’ now came from the barque again.
‘Hallo?’
‘I’ve got a lady and gent here,’ roared the figure through his hands which he held funnelwise to his mouth, ‘as want to get aboard summat smelling a bit sweeter nor this. They was wrecked in a yacht like yourn, and I came across ’em in a open boat five days ago. Will’ee take ’em?’
‘What was the name of the yacht, can you tell me?’ cried Finn.
The man turned his head, evidently interrogating another, probably his mate, who stood a little behind him; then bringing his hands to his mouth afresh, he roared out ‘The “Shark”!’
Finn slowly brought his long face to bear upon mine; his figure moving with it as though the whole of him were a piece of mechanism warranted to perform that motion but no more. ‘Gracious thunder!’ he exclaimed under his breath and then his jaw fell. I heard the confused humming of the men’s voices forward, a swift flow of excited talk subdued into a sort of buzzing by their habits of shipboard discipline. I felt that I was as pale in the face as if I had received some violent shock.
‘The “Shark”!’ I cried in a breathless way; ‘the lady and gentleman then aboard that vessel must be the Colonel and Lady Monson. The yacht probably met with the gale that swept over us and foundered in it;’ then pulling myself together with an effort, for amazement seemed to have sent all my wits adrift for a moment, I exclaimed, ‘Hail the barque at once, Finn; say that you will be happy to receive the lady and gentleman. Ask the captain to come aboard, or, stay—where is Crimp? Let old Jacob invite his brother. We must act with extreme wariness. My God, what an astounding confrontment!’
‘Mr. Crimp,’ roared Finn, on a sudden exploding, as it were, out of his state of petrifaction. Jacob came aft. ‘Jump on that there rail, Mr. Crimp, and tell your brother who ye are and ask him aboard.’
The sour little man climbed on to the bulwarks, and in a voice that was the completest imaginable echo of that in which the fellow aboard the barque had hailed us, he shouted ‘’Arry ahoy!’
The other stood a while staring, dropping his head first on one side, then on the other, in the manner of one who discredits his sight and seeks to obtain a clearer view by dodging about for a true focus.
‘Why, Jacob,’ he presently sang out, ‘is that you, brother?’
‘Ay, come aboard, will ye, ’Arry?’ answered Crimp, with which he dropped off the rail and trudged sourly to the gangway without the least visible expression of surprise or pleasure or emotion of any kind.
Meanwhile I had taken notice of strong manifestations of excitement amongst the little group on the forecastle of the barque—I mean the small knot of men to whom Finn had called my attention. The vessels lay so near together that postures and gestures were easily distinguishable. There could be no doubt now that the fellows had formed a portion of a yacht’s crew. Their dress betokened it; they gazed with much probing and thrusting of their heads and elbowing of one another at our men, who lined the forward bulwarks—most of our sailors having turned up—as though seeking for familiar faces. I eagerly looked for signs of the colonel and his companion, but it was still very early; they were doubtless in their cabins, and the crying out of voices from vessel to vessel was so recent that even if the couple had been disturbed by the noise they would not yet have had time to dress themselves and make their appearance on deck.
‘Will you go and report to Sir Wilfrid, sir?’ said Finn.
‘At once,’ I answered. ‘Let old Jacob’s brother have the full story, the whole truth, should he arrive before I return. His sympathies must be enlisted on Sir Wilfrid’s side, or there may happen a most worrisome difficulty if the Colonel refuses to leave that barque and should make some splendid offer to the skipper to retain him and her ladyship.’
‘I’ll talk with Jacob whilst his brother’s a-coming, sir,’ said Finn.
I stepped below with a beating heart. I was exceedingly agitated, could scarce bring my mind to accept the reality of what had happened, and I dreaded moreover the effect of the news upon my cousin. The ‘Shark’ foundered!—the couple we were in chase of picked up out of an open boat!—this great, blank, lidless eye of ocean, whose infinite distances I had pointed into over and over again to Miss Laura, yielding up the pair that we were in chase of in an encounter bewildering as a surprise and miraculous for its unexpectedness!—why I confess I breathed in gasps as I thought[211] of it all, making my way, absolutely trembling in my shoes, to Wilfrid’s berth. I knocked and was told to enter. He had nearly finished dressing, and looked up from a boot that he was buttoning with a cold, bitter, triumphant smile at me.
‘I know,’ he exclaimed in a voice infinitely more composed than I could have exerted; ‘this is Monday, Charles.’
It was Monday as he said! I stared stupidly at him for a minute, and then saw how it was that he knew. The window of his port was unscrewed and lay wide open; through it I could see the barque fluctuating in the silver and blue of the atmosphere as she swayed swinging her canvas in and out with every roll. The port made a very funnel for the ear as a vehicle of sound, for I could distinctly hear the orders given on board the vessel for lowering a boat; the voice of one of the ‘Shark’s’ men apparently hailing our fellows; the beat of her cloths against the mast; and the recoil of the water breaking from her broad channels as she buried her plates to the height almost of those platforms.
‘I am breathless with astonishment,’ said I; ‘but, God be praised, Wilf, I see you mean to confront this business coldly.’
‘The captain of that vessel is coming on board,’ he said, speaking with extraordinary composure, whilst his face, from which the smile had faded, still preserved the light or expression of its mingled triumph and bitterness.
‘He will be here in a minute or two,’ I answered.
‘Is Laura up?’
‘I do not know.’
‘See that she gets the news, Charles, at once. I shall want her on deck. Then return and we will concert a little programme.’
I quitted his cabin, marvelling exceedingly at his collectedness. But then I had noticed that his mind steadied in proportion as his attention grew fixed. This is true of most weak intelligences, I suppose; if you want them to ride you must let go an anchor for them. I was hesitating at Miss Jennings’ door, stretching my ear for the sound of her voice that I might know she was dressing and had her maid with her, when the handle was turned and the maid came out. I inquired if her mistress was rising. She answered ‘Yes.’ ‘Tell her,’ said I, ‘that there is a vessel close to us, and that Colonel Hope-Kennedy and Lady Monson are on board of her. Sir Wilfrid begs that she will make haste, as he desires her presence on deck as soon as possible.’ I then returned to my cousin’s berth, thinking that, though to be sure the news would immensely scare the little girl, it was best that she should have the whole truth at once, and so find time to tauten her nerves for what was to come.
As I entered my cousin’s cabin I heard through the open port the sound of the grinding of oars betwixt thole pins, and immediately after there rang out a cry of ‘Look out for the end of the line!’ by which I knew that Crimp’s brother was alongside of us. Wilfrid, having buttoned his boots, was now completely dressed. He stood with a hand upon the edge of his bunk, gazing at the[212] barque, which still hung fair in the blue and gleaming disc of the porthole, showing in that circular frame like a daguerreotype with the silvery flashing and fading of light, the shooting prismatic tints, the shot-silk-like alternations of hues that accompanied the floating heave of her by the swell to the sunshine. I picked up a small binocular glass that lay on the table, but could see nothing as yet of Lady Monson or her companion.
‘My wife was always a late riser,’ said Wilfrid, turning to me with a haggard smile and a cold sarcastic note in his voice that was steadied, as your ear instinctively detected, by the iron resolution of his mood, as the spine stiffens the form.
‘Had we not better go on deck?’ said I. ‘It might be useful to hear what the master of the barque has to say.’
‘Inch by inch, Charles. There is no hurry. I have my man safe,’ pointing at the vessel. ‘Let us briefly debate a course of action—or rather, let me leave myself in your hands. We want no “scene,” as women call it, or as little as possible. There are many grinning, merely curious spectators, and Lady Monson is still my wife. What do you advise?’
‘First of all, my dear Wilfrid, what do you want?’ I exclaimed, rather puzzled and not at all relishing the responsibility of offering suggestions. ‘You intend, of course, that Lady Monson shall come on board the “Bride.” But the Colonel?’
‘Oh,’ cried he, sharply and fiercely, ‘I shall want him here too!’
‘Then you don’t mean to separate them?’
‘Yes, I do,’ he answered; ‘as effectually as a bullet can manage it for me.’
‘Ha!’ said I, and I was silent a little and then said: ‘If I were you, I should leave Crimp’s brother to sail away with the rascal. The separation will be as complete as——’
He silenced me with a passionate gesture, but said, nevertheless, calmly, ‘I want them both on board my yacht.’
‘Will they come if they are fetched, think you?’
He walked impatiently to the door. ‘I must plan for myself, I see,’ he exclaimed. He grasped the handle and turned to me with his hand still upon it. ‘I see how it is with you, Charles,’ he said, almost gently; ‘you object to my fighting Colonel Hope-Kennedy.’
‘I do,’ I answered. ‘I object to this scoundrel being furnished with a chance of completing the injury he has done you by shooting you.’
He came to me, put his hand on my shoulder, bent his face close to mine, and said in a low voice, ‘Do not fear for me; I shall kill him. As you value my love’—his tone faltered—‘do not come by so much as a hair’s breadth between me and my resolution to take his life. If he will not fight me on board my yacht, he shall fight me on yonder vessel. He is a soldier—a colonel; he will not refuse my challenge. Come, my programme is arranged;[213] we are now wasting time.’ He stepped from his berth and I followed him.
As I turned to ascend the companion steps, Wilfrid being in advance of me, mounting with impetuosity, I saw Miss Jennings come out of her berth. I waited for her. Her face was bloodless, yet I was glad to see something like resolution expressed in it.
‘Is it true, Mr. Monson, that my sister is close to us in a ship?’ she asked.
‘She and the Colonel,’ I answered; ‘within eyeshot—that is to say, when they step on deck.’
She put her hand to her breast, and drew several short breaths.
‘Pray take courage,’ I said; ‘it is for your sister to tremble—not you.’
‘How has Wilfrid received this piece of extraordinary news?’ she asked, with a sort of panting in her way of speaking.
‘He is as unmoved, I give you my word, as if he were of cast iron. You shall judge; he has preceded us.’
I took her hand and led her up the ladder. Crimp’s brother had apparently just climbed over the yacht’s side. As I made my appearance he was coming aft from the gangway in company with Finn and surly old Jacob. All three rumbled with talk at once as they made, with a deep sea roll, for Wilfrid, who was standing so as to keep the mainmast of the yacht between him and the barque. Miss Jennings started and stopped on seeing the vessel, that had closed us somewhat since she had first hove-to, so that it was almost possible now to distinguish the faces of her people. When my companion moved again she seemed to shrink—almost cower indeed, and passed to the right of me as though to hide herself. Then peeping past me at the vessel, she said, ‘I see no lady on board.’
‘Your sister is still below, I expect,’ I answered.
She left me and clasped my cousin’s arm, just saying, ‘Oh, Wilfrid!’ in a tearful, pitiful voice. He gazed down at her and pressed his hand upon hers with a look of dreadful grief entering his face swiftly as a blush suffuses a woman’s cheek; but the expression passed quickly. Something he said in a whisper, then lightly freed his arm from her clasp and turned to the master of the barque.
‘Captain Crimp, your honour,’ said Finn, knuckling his forehead; ‘Jacob’s brother, Sir Wilfrid.’
Small need to mention that, I thought, for, saving that Jacob was the taller by an inch or two, whilst his brother’s eyes looked straight at you, the twins were the most ludicrous, incomparable match that any lover of the uncommon could have desired to see; both of the same sulky cast of countenance, both of the exact same build, each wearing a light kind of beard similarly coloured.
‘Yes, I’m Jacob’s brother,’ answered Captain Crimp. ‘Heard he was out a yachtin’, but didn’t know the name of the wessel.’
‘I’m very glad to have fallen in with you,’ said Wilfrid,[214] addressing him with a coolness that I saw astonished Finn, whilst Miss Laura glanced at me with an arching of her eyebrows as eloquent of amazement as if she had spoken her thoughts. ‘I hear that you have a lady and gentleman on board your ship.’
‘Ay,’ answered Captain Crimp bluntly, though somehow one found nothing offensive in his manner of speech; ‘they want to leave me, and,’ added he with a surly grin, ‘I don’t blame ’em. Gewhany ain’t over choice as a smell, ’ticularly down here.’
‘Their names are Colonel Hope-Kennedy and Lady Monson. Is that so?’ demanded Wilfrid, speaking slowly and coldly.
Captain Crimp turned a stupid stare of wonder upon his brother, and then, addressing Wilfrid, exclaimed: ‘Who tould ’ee? Ye’ve got the gent’s name right: the lady’s his missus—same name as t’other’s.’ Wilfrid set his teeth.
I looked towards the barque, but there were no signs of the Colonel or her ladyship yet.
‘The lady is my wife, Captain Crimp,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Ho, indeed,’ responded the man, showing no surprise whatever.
‘She has run away,’ continued my cousin, ‘with the gentleman you have on board your vessel, and we,’ looking round upon us, ‘are here in pursuit of them. We have met with them—very unexpectedly. It is likely when Colonel Hope-Kennedy discovers who we are that he may request you to trim your sails and proceed on your voyage home, and offer you a sum of money to convey Lady Monson and himself away from us. You will not do so!’ he exclaimed with sudden temper, which he instantly subdued, though it darkened his face.
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ answered Captain Crimp. ‘The parties have been a-wanting to get out of my wessel pretty nigh ever since we fell in with them, and here’s their chance. Only,’ he added with a wooden look at his brother, ‘if they don’t choose to quit I can’t chuck ’em overboard.’
‘Oh yes, ’ee can, ’Arry,’ said Jacob. ‘What ye’ve got to do is to tell ’em they must go. No sogerin’ in this business, ’Arry, so stand by. The law ain’t a-going to let ye keep a lawful wife away from her wedded spouse when he tarns to and demands her of ye. Better chuck ’em overboard than have the lawyers fall foul of ye, ’Arry.’
This was a long speech for Jacob, who nodded several times at his brother with energy after delivering it.
‘Well, and who wants to keep a wedded woman away from her lawful spouse, as ye calls it, Jacob?’ exclaimed Captain Crimp. ‘What I says is, if the parties refuses to leave I can’t chuck ’em overboard.’
‘See here, Captain,’ said Finn, ‘Jacob’s right, and what you as a sensible man’s got to do is to steer clear of quandaries. His honour’ll be sending for the lady and the gent, and you’ll have to[215] tell ’em to go, as Jacob says. If they refuse—but let ’em refuse first,’ he continued with a look at Wilfrid.
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘and I ain’t going to get in a mess for no man. Do what you think’s proper. What I ask is to be left out of the boiling.’
As he spoke I touched Miss Jennings’ arm. ‘There they are!’ I whispered.
Wilfrid saw them too in a flash. He slightly reeled, making a fierce grasp at some gear against the mainmast to steady himself. Distant as they were, one could see, nevertheless, that they were an uncommonly fine couple. A man who was apparently the mate of the barque stood near them, and, though seemingly above rather than below the average stature, he looked a very poor little fellow alongside the towering and commanding figure of the Colonel. I witnessed no gestures, no movements, nothing of any kind to denote astonishment or alarm in either of them. They stood stock-still side by side, surveying us over an open rail that exposed their forms from their feet; he, so far as I could make out, attired in dark blue cloth or serge, and a cap with a naval peak, the top protected by a white cover; she in a dress of some sort of yellow material that fitted her figure as a glove fits the hand. But more than this one’s sight could not distinguish, saving that her hat, that was very wide at the brim, was apparently of straw or chip with one side curled up to a large crimson flower there.
I saw Miss Laura gazing with the fascination of a bird at some gilded and glowing and emerald-eyed serpent. Captain Crimp, looking round at his vessel just then, said, ‘Them’s the parties.’
‘Ay, there’s her ladyship,’ whipped out Finn, biting his lip, however, as though ashamed of the exclamation, with a dodge of his head to right and left as he levelled a look at the couple under the sharp of his hand.
‘Finn,’ cried Wilfrid, with a face as crimson as though he had exposed it to the sun all day, and with a note in his utterance as if his teeth were setting spite of him whilst he spoke, ‘get a boat lowered and brought to the gangway. You, myself, Miss Jennings, and my cousin will go aboard that barque at once. Captain Crimp will attend us in his own boat.’ He turned swiftly upon the master of the barque, and exclaimed imperiously, with wrath surging into his words till it rendered the key of them almost shrill, ‘I count upon your assistance. You must order those people off your vessel. Yonder lady is my wife, and the man alongside of her I must have—here!’ stamping his foot and pointing[216] vehemently to the deck, ‘that I may punish him. Do you understand me?’
‘Why, of course I do,’ answered Captain Crimp, manifestly awed by the wild look my cousin fastened upon him, by his manner, full of haughtiness and passion, and his tone of fierce command. ‘What I says is, do what ye like, only let me be out of the smother. My crew’s troublesome enough. Don’t want to get in no mess through castaway folks.’
Finn was yelling orders along the deck for a boat’s crew to lay aft.
On a sudden the yacht was hailed by the man whom I had noticed standing near Colonel Hope-Kennedy. ‘Schooner ahoy!’
Jacob Crimp went to the rail. ‘Hallo!’ he bawled.
‘Will yer tell my capt’n, please,’ shouted the fellow from the barque’s quarterdeck, ‘that the lady and gent desire him to come aboard, as they don’t want nothen to do with your schooner? They prefer to keep where they are, and request that no more time be lost.’
‘Ha!’ cried Wilfrid, looking round at me with an iron grin; then he half screamed to the men who were running aft, ‘Bear a hand with the boat, my lads, bear a hand with the boat! We’ve found what we’ve been hunting in yonder craft—and by God, men, we’ll have that couple out of it or sink the vessel they stand on!’
Jack is almost certain to cheer to a speech of this kind; the sailors burst out into a loud hurrah as they sprang to the falls. Captain Crimp walked to his brother’s side, and putting his hand to his mouth cried to the mate of his vessel, for such the fellow undoubtedly was, ‘Mr. Lobb.’
‘Hillo, sir.’
‘My compliments to the lady and gent, and we’re all a-coming aboard. I don’t want no trouble, tell ’em, and I don’t mean to have none.’
Scarce was the sense of this remark gatherable when Lady Monson walked to the companion and vanished below, leaving the Colonel standing erect as a sentry at the rail.
‘She’s gone to her cabin, and will lock herself in probably. What’ll be to do then?’ said I to Miss Laura.
She wrung her hands, but made no answer.
Meanwhile, in hot haste the sailors had cast adrift the gripes of the boat and lowered her. She was a roomy fabric, pulling six oars, and capable of comfortably stowing eighteen or twenty people.
‘Mr. Crimp,’ said Wilfrid, ‘get tackles aloft ready for swaying out of the hold the eighteen-pounder that lies there. D’ye understand?’
‘Ay, it shall be done,’ answered Crimp, coming away from his brother, with whom he had been exchanging some muttering sentences.
‘An eighteen-pounder!’ cried Captain Crimp, whipping round.
‘Have everything in readiness,’ cried Wilfrid, making a move[217] towards the gangway, ‘to get the gun mounted, with ball and cartridge for loading. See to it now, or look to yourself, Crimp. Come!’ he cried.
He seized Miss Laura by the hand; Finn and I followed, Captain Crimp rolling astern of us. We descended the side and entered the boat, and then shoved off, waiting when we were within a length or two of the yacht’s side for Captain Crimp to drop into his own boat.
‘Skipper,’ sang out Finn to him, ‘hail your barque, will’ee, and tell ’em to get a ladder or steps over.’
This was done; the sailors of the barque, along with the three or four yachtsmen who had been picked up out of the ‘Shark’s’ boat, scenting plenty of excitement in the air, tumbled about with alacrity. They saw more sport than they could have got out of an evening at a theatre, and I question if a man of them could have been got to handle a brace until this wild ocean drama had been played through. Meanwhile the Colonel stood rigid at the rail looking on.
‘What is to be done, Mr. Monson,’ whispered Miss Laura to me, ‘if Henrietta has locked herself up in her cabin and refuses to come out?’
‘Let us hope that her door has no lock,’ said I. ‘There are easy ways, however, of coaxing a bolt.’
‘Give way, lads!’ cried Finn. The six blades cut the water sharp as knives, and a few strokes carried us alongside the barque. We held a grim silence, saving that as the bow oar picked up his boat-hook he expectorated violently to the evil smell that seemed to come floating off the vessel’s side as she rolled towards us, driving the air our way. Evil it was, as you may suppose of a cargo of guano mixed up with the rotting carcases of sea-fowl under the blaze of the sun whose roasting eye of fire was fast crawling to its meridian. The faint breeze was dying, and the heat alongside the barque was scarce sufferable with the tingling of the luminary’s light like fiery needles darting into one’s eyes and skin off the smooth surface that flashed with a dazzle of new tin. The Colonel had left the rail and had seated himself upon a little skylight, his arms folded. The first to climb the side was Wilfrid; Finn and I followed, supporting Miss Laura between us; then came Captain Crimp. The vessel was an old craft, her decks somewhat grimy, with a worm-eaten look; the smell of the cargo coupled with the heat was hardly supportable; the crew, half naked, unwashed, and many of them wild with hair, stood sweltering in a cluster near the fore-hatch staring at us, grinning and nudging one another. But the men who had belonged to the ‘Shark’ were already leaning over the side calling to our men to hook their boat more forward that they might have a yarn.
Wilfrid, who was a little in advance of us, walked steadily up to Colonel Hope-Kennedy, who rose as my cousin approached him, letting fall his arms from their folded posture. Handsome he was[218] not—at least to my taste—but he was what would be called a fine man—exceedingly so; six feet one or more in stature, with a body and limbs perfectly proportioned to his height; small dark eyes heavily thatched, coal-black whiskers and moustache, ivory-white teeth, and an expression of intelligence in his face as his air was one of distinction. He had a very careworn look, was pale—haggard almost; dark hollows under the eyes, brought about, as I might readily suppose, by exposure and privation in an open boat. I could witness no agitation in him whatever; his nerves seemed of steel, and he confronted Wilfrid’s approach haughtily erect, merely swaying to the heel of the deck, passionless and as unmoved in his aspect as any figure of wax.
Wilfrid walked right up to him and said composedly, whilst he pointed to the gangway, ‘You will be good enough to enter my boat that my crew may convey you at once to the yacht.’
‘I shall do nothing of the kind, sir,’ answered the Colonel quietly, but in a tone distinctly audible to us who had come to a halt some paces away. ‘Captain Crimp.’
‘Sir?’ responded the master of the barque, with an uneasy shuffling step or two towards the couple.
‘You are the commander of this vessel. It is in your power to order your deck to be cleared of these visitors. I am your passenger, and look to you for protection. I decline to exchange this vessel for that yacht, and request, therefore, that you will proceed on your voyage.’ He spoke with a fine air of dignity, the effect of which was improved, I thought, by his giving himself slightly the manner of an injured man.
‘Sir, I want no trouble,’ answered Captain Crimp. ‘I onderstand that the lady you’re with is this gentleman’s wife. Every man’s got a right to his own. The gentleman means to take the lady back with him to his yacht, and I don’t think that there’s any one aboard this wessel as’ll stop him.’
‘I mean to take my wife,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, still preserving what in him was an amazing composure of voice and manner, ‘and I mean to take you too. Colonel Hope-Kennedy, you are a bloody rascal! You shall fight me—but not here. You shall fight me—yonder;’ he pointed to the ‘Bride.’ ‘This you must repay.’ He struck him hard upon the face with the back of his hand.
The cheek that had received the blow turned scarlet, the other was of a ghastly pallor. He looked at Wilfrid for a moment with such a fire in his eye, such a hellish expression of wrath in his face, that I involuntarily sprang forward to the help of my cousin, resolved that there should be no vulgar, degraded exhibition of fisticuffs and wrestling between the men.
But I was misled by the Colonel’s looks. He folded his arms, and said—exhibiting in his utterance a marvellous control over his temper—‘That blow was needless. I will fight you here or on your own vessel, as you please. But if I fight you yonder the con[219]dition must be’—he was now looking at me and addressing me—‘that I am afterwards at liberty to return to this vessel.’
Wilfrid eyed him with a savage smile. I approached the man, raising my hat. He instantly returned the salute.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I am Sir Wilfrid Monson’s cousin, and agree to the condition you name. To save any further exhibition of temper before those men there, may I entreat you to at once step into the yacht’s boat?’
His eye wandered about the deck for a moment or two; he then said, ‘I am without a second. That need not signify. But I must be satisfied that the duel in other respects will be in accordance with the practice of such things ashore.’
‘Oh! certainly,’ I answered.
‘What are to be the weapons?’ he inquired.
‘Pistols,’ I replied.
‘I have no pistols. I have lost all by the foundering of my yacht.’
‘We have pistols,’ said I.
He bowed, then his eye roamed over the deck again, and he exclaimed, with the air of a man thinking aloud, ‘I am without a second,’ adding decisively, ‘I am perfectly willing to give Sir Wilfrid Monson satisfaction, but I submit, sir, that it would be more convenient to wait until he and I have arrived home——’
‘No!’ thundered my cousin. ‘I do not mean that you shall arrive home.’
The Colonel glanced at him with a sneer.
‘Will you be so good as to step into the boat, sir?’ said I.
He hung in the wind with a look at the little companion hatch. ‘The lady, I presume,’ he said, addressing me, ‘is to be left——’
‘Do not mention her name!’ said Wilfrid in a trembling voice, approaching him by a stride with a countenance dark with the menace of mad blood.
The Colonel fell away from him with a swiftly passing convulsion of countenance such as might have been wrought by a sudden spasm of the heart.
‘This way, sir,’ said Finn, moving in a bustling fashion towards the gangway.
I confess I drew a breath of relief when the Colonel, without a word, and with a mechanical step, followed him. There was, indeed, no other course that he could adopt. Captain Crimp had retreated doggedly to the gangway abreast of the one we had entered by, and lay over the rail in a wooden way, with resolution to give himself no concern in this business strong in his posture. The Colonel saw, therefore, that it was useless to hope for his interference. In a few moments he had descended the side, and was being pulled aboard the ‘Bride,’ with Finn standing up in the stern sheets and singing out to us that he would return for the rest of the party shortly.
I now missed Miss Laura, and was looking around the deck for her, when she suddenly came up out of the cabin. I was standing[220] close to the hatch at the moment, which was the reason, perhaps, of her addressing me instead of Wilfrid, who was at the skylight gazing at the withdrawing boat with an absent face.
‘Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed, ‘my sister will not answer me. I do not know where she is.’
‘Have you tried all the berths?’
‘I have knocked at every door and called to her. I did not like to turn the handles.’
I thought to myself, suppose her ladyship has committed suicide!—lying dead below with a knife in her heart! Truly a pleasant ending of our chase, with a chance on top of it of the Colonel driving a bullet through my cousin’s brains! The girl’s gaze was fastened on me; her pallor was grievous, her face full of shame, grief, consternation; her very beauty had a sort of passing withered look like a rose in the hot atmosphere of a room.
‘Wilfrid!’ I exclaimed.
He brought his eyes away from the boat with a start and approached us. ‘Miss Jennings has been overhauling the cabin below,’ said I, ‘and cannot get your wife to answer her.’
‘Have you seen her, Laura?’ he cried in a half-breathless way, stooping his face to hers, with his near-sighted eyes moistening till I looked to see a tear fall.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘She has shut herself up in her cabin. I have knocked at every berth and called to her, but she will not answer me.’
His face changed. He shouted to Captain Crimp, who was leaning with his back against the starboard rail near the gangway, watching us out of the corner of his eyes, and waiting for us to take the next step. He came to us.
‘Kindly show us,’ said Wilfrid, ‘the cabin which the lady occupies.’
‘This way,’ he answered, and forthwith trundled down the companion steps, we at his heels. We found ourselves in what Captain Crimp would doubtless have called a state cabin, a gloomy dirty interior with a board-like rude table that travelled upon stanchions so that it could be thrust up out of the road when room was wanted, whilst on either hand of it was a row of coarse lockers, the covers of which were liberally scored with the marks of knives that had been used for cutting up cake-tobacco. The upper deck was very low pitched, and, as if the heat and the disgusting smell of the cargo did not suffice, there swung from a blackened beam a lighted globular lamp the flame of which burnt into a coil of thick black smoke that filled the atmosphere with a flavour of hot fat. Yet apparently, to judge by the number of berths this rank and grimy old barque was fitted with, she had served as a passenger vessel in her heyday. There were doors conducting to little cabins forward of the living room, and there were four berths abaft contrived much as the ‘Bride’s’ were, that is to say, rendered accessible by a slender alley-way or corridor.
‘The lady’s cabin,’ said Captain Crimp, pointing, ‘is the starn one to port, the airiest of ’em all. It was chosen because it was furdest off from this here smell,’ and he snuffled as he spoke.
Wilfrid, followed by Miss Laura, at once walked to the indicated cabin. I remained standing by the table with Crimp, watching my cousin. He tried the handle of the door, found the key turned or a bolt shot, shook it a little, then, after a pause, knocked lightly.
‘Henrietta,’ he exclaimed. ‘It is I—your husband. You know my voice. I want you.’
There was no answer. He knocked again, then Miss Laura exclaimed: ‘Henrietta, open the door. Wilfrid is here—I am here, I, Laura your sister. We have come to take you home to the little one that you left behind you. Oh, Henrietta, dear, for my sake—for your child’s sake, for our father’s sake—’ her voice faltered and she broke down, sobbing piteously.
‘I hope to heaven the woman has not killed herself,’ I exclaimed to Captain Crimp. ‘But it is for you to act now. Step aft with me. You don’t want to keep her on board, I suppose?’
‘Not I,’ he answered.
‘Threaten then to break open the door. If that don’t avail, send at once for your carpenter, for you may then take it that her silence means she lies dead.’
He walked aft and beat with a fist as hard as the stock of a musket, raising a small thunder. ‘Sorry to interfere, lady;’ he exclaimed, talking at the door with his nose within an inch of it; ‘this here’s no job for the likes of me to be messing about with.’ A dead pause. ‘There’s folks who are awaiting for you to come out.’ Here he grasped the handle of the door and boisterously shook it. ‘And as there’s no call now for you to remain, and as loitering in this here heat with the hatches flush with gewhany isn’t to none of our liking, I must beg, mum,’ he shouted, ‘that you’ll slip the bolt inside and open the door.’
Another dead pause. Miss Jennings looked aghast, and indeed the stillness within the cabin now caused me to forebode the worst. It was clear, however, that no fear of the sort had visited Wilfrid. He gazed at the door with a kind of terrier-like expression in his fixed eyes.
Captain Crimp once more beat heavily and again wrestled with the handle, trying the door at the same time with his shoulder. ‘Well, mum,’ he bawled, ‘you will do as you like, I suppose, and so must I. I’m not partial to knocking my ship about, but by thunder! lady, if this here door ain’t opened at once I’ll send for the carpenter to force it.’ Another pause. He added in his hoarsest voice, addressing us generally, ‘Do she know that the gent that’s been keeping her company has gone aboard the yacht?’
‘She’ll know it now,’ I answered, ‘if she has ears to hear with.’
I noticed Wilfrid violently start on my saying this.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘I’ll go and fetch the carpenter,’ and he had taken a stride when the bolt within was shot, the handle turned and the door opened.
Had we come fresh from the splendour of the morning on deck we must have had great difficulty in distinguishing objects in the gloom of the little, hot, evil-smelling interior that had been suddenly revealed to us; but the twilight of the narrow passage in which we stood had accustomed our sight to the dim atmosphere. Lady Monson stood before us in the middle of the cabin reared to her fullest stature, her hands clasped in front of her in a posture of passionate resolution. I must confess that she had the noblest figure of any woman I had ever seen, and no queen of tragedy could have surpassed the unconsciously heroic attitude of scorn, indignation, hate, unsoftened by the least air of remorse or shame, that she had assumed.
‘Captain Crimp,’ she cried in a clear, rich, contralto voice that thrilled through and through one with what I must call the intensity of the emotions it conveyed, ‘how dare you threaten me with breaking open my door? I am your passenger—you will be paid for the services you have rendered. I demand your protection. Who are these people? Order them to leave your ship, sir.’
She spoke with her eyes glowing and riveted upon Captain Crimp’s awkward, agitated countenance, never so much as glancing at her husband, at her sister, or at me.
‘Well, mum,’ answered Captain Crimp, passing the back of his hand over his streaming forehead, ‘all that I know is this: here’s a gentleman as says you’re his wife; his yacht lies within heasy reach; he wants you aboard, and if so be that you are his wife, which nobody yet has denied, then you’re bound to go along with him, and I may as well tell’ee that my dooty as a man lies in seeing that ye do go.’ And here the old chap very spunkily bestowed several emphatic nods upon her.
‘Henrietta,’ cried Miss Laura, ‘have you nothing to say to me or to Wilfrid?’
‘Go!’ she shrieked, with a sharp stamp of her foot and a wild, warding-off gesture of her arms, ‘what right have you to follow me. I am my own mistress. Leave me. The mere sight of you will drive me as mad as he is!’ pointing impetuously to Wilfrid but without looking at him.
The poor little darling shrank like a wounded bird, literally cowering behind me, dismayed and terrified, not indeed by the woman’s words, but by the passion in them, the air with which she delivered them, the wrath in her face and the fire in her eyes that would have made you think they reflected a sunset. I looked at Wilfrid. Had she exhibited the least grief, the least shame, any the feeblest hint, in short, of womanly weakness, I believe he would have fallen upon his knees to her. I had observed an expression almost of adoration enter into and soften his lineaments to an aspect that I do not exaggerate in calling beautiful[223] through the exquisite pathos of the tenderness that had informed it on her throwing open the door and revealing herself to us; but that look was gone. Her scornful reference to his madness had replaced it by an ugly shadow, a scowl of malignant temper. He stepped over the coaming of the doorway, and extended his hand as if to grasp her.
‘Come!’ he exclaimed, breathing dangerously fast. ‘I want you. This is merely wasting time. Come you must! Do you understand? Come!’ he repeated, still keeping his arm outstretched.
She recoiled from him as though a cartridge had exploded at her feet and pressed her back against the side of a bunk, the edge of which she gripped with her hands.
‘Leave me!’ she said, looking at him now. ‘I hate you. You cannot control me. I abhor the very memory of you. Madman and wretch! why have you followed me?’
Captain Crimp, who had been shuffling restlessly near me, now whipped in, hoarse, angry, and determined; ‘See here, mum; all this calling of names isn’t going to sarve anybody’s purpose. I see how the land lies now. The gentleman has a right to his own, and it’s proper ye should know that ’tain’t my intention to keep ye. Let there be no more noise aboard this wessel, I beg; otherwise you’ll be having my crew shoving down into the cabin to know what’s happening. Give her your arm, sir,’ he cried, addressing me, ‘and lead her to the gangway. Your boat’ll be retarned by this time.’
My arm, thought I! Egad, I’d liefer snug the paw of a tigress under my elbow!
‘Wilfrid,’ I exclaimed, ‘let me exhort you to go on deck and take Miss Jennings with you. I am sure Lady Monson will listen to my representations. It is due to her to remember that we are four and that she stands alone, and that the suddenness, the unexpectedness of this visit, scarcely gives her a chance fully to realise what has come about, and to form an intelligent decision.’
She uttered a short hysterical laugh, without a smile, whilst her face glimmered white with rage in the gloom of the cabin. ‘My decision is quite intelligent enough to satisfy me,’ she said, in a voice so irritatingly scornful that it is out of my power to furnish the least idea of it, whilst she looked at me as though she would strike me dead with her eyes; ‘I mean to remain here.’
‘No, mum, no,’ growled Captain Crimp.
‘You know, I presume, Lady Monson,’ said I, ‘that Colonel Hope-Kennedy has gone on board the “Bride”?’
‘I do not care,’ she answered; ‘Captain Crimp, I insist upon your requesting these people to leave me.’
‘Come!’ cried Wilfrid furiously, and he grasped her by the arm.
She released herself with a shriek and struck him hard on the[224] face; a painful and disgusting scene was threatened; Miss Jennings was crying bitterly; I dreaded the madman in Wilfrid, and sprang between them as he grasped his wife’s arm again.
‘For God’s sake, Wilfrid——’ I began, but was silenced by her shrieks. She sent up scream after scream, wrestling with her husband, whose grip of steel I was powerless to relax, and who, with a purple face and a devilish grin of insanity upon his lips, was dragging her towards the door. On a sudden she seemed to suffocate, she beat the air wildly with her arm that was free. Then clapped her hand to her heart, swayed a little, and fell to the deck. I was just in time to save her head from striking the hard plank, and there she lay in a dead faint.
‘This is our chance,’ exclaimed Captain Crimp; ‘she’ll go quietly now. She might have done it afore though. Let’s bear a hand or she’ll be reviving.’
‘Wilfrid, see if our boat’s alongside, will you?’ I cried, anxious to get him out of the way and to correct as far as possible the unmistakable mood of madness that had come upon him with Lady Monson’s insults and blow, by finding him occupation; ‘and send Finn to help us, and let the men stand by ready to receive the lady.’
He cast a look of fury at his wife as she lay motionless on the deck, her head supported on my arm, and sped away in long strides, chattering to himself as he went.
‘Is she dead!’ cried Miss Jennings, in a voice of terror and her ashen face streaming.
‘Bless us, no,’ said I, ‘a downright faint, and thank goodness for it. Now, captain.’
How between us we managed to carry her on deck, I’m sure I do not know. Captain Crimp had her by the feet, I by the shoulders, and Miss Laura helped to keep the apparently lifeless woman’s head to its bearings. She was as limber as though struck by lightning, and the harder to carry for that reason,—a noble figure, as I have said, and deucedly heavy to boot. My part was the hardest, for I had to step backwards and mount the companion ladder, that was almost perpendicular, crab-fashion. The captain and I swayed together, staggering and perspiring, bothered excessively by the ungainly rolling of the barque, both of us nearly dead with heat, and I half suffocated besides by the abominable acid stench from the hold. We were animated, however, into uncommon exertions by the desire to get her over the side before she recovered; and the fear of her awakening and resisting us and shrieking out, and the like, gave us, I reckon, for[225] that particular job the strength of four men. We conveyed her to the gangway, helped by Finn, who received us at the companion hatch, and with infinite pains handed her over the side, still motionless in her swoon, into the boat. A hard task it was; we durst not call out, for fear of reviving her, and the melancholy business was carried through by signs and gestures, topped off with sundry hoarse whispered orders from Finn.
I paused panting, my face burning like fire, whilst Captain Crimp looked to be slowly dissolving, the perspiration literally streaming from his fingers’ ends on to the deck as though he were a figure of snow gradually wasting.
‘Why couldn’t she have fainted away at first?’ he muttered to me. ‘That’s the worst of women. They’re always so slow a-making up their minds.’
Now that she was in the boat the trouble was at an end; though she recovered consciousness she could not regain the barque’s deck, and there was no power in her screams to hinder the yachtsmen’s oars from sweeping her to the ‘Bride.’ Preserve me! What a picture it all made just then: the wild-haired, wild-eyed, semi-nude figures of the barque’s crew overhanging the rail to view Lady Monson as she lay white and corpse-like in the bottom of the boat; the sober, concerned faces of our own men; Wilfrid’s savage, crazy look as he waited with his eyes fixed upon his yacht for Miss Laura to be handed down before entering the boat himself; the prostrate form of his wife with her head pillowed on Finn’s jacket, her eyes half opened, disclosing the whites only, and imparting the completest imaginable aspect of death to her countenance, with its pale lips and marble brow and cheek bleached into downright ghastliness by contrast of the luxuriant black hair that had fallen in tresses from under her hat. The men who had belonged to the ‘Shark’ stood in a little group near the foremast looking on, but with a commiserating respectful air. One of them stepped up to us as Miss Laura was in the act of descending the side, and addressing Finn whilst he touched his cap, exclaimed, ‘We should be glad, sir, if y’d take us aboard the “Bride.” We’ll heartily tarn to with the rest; you’ll find us all good men.’
‘No!’ roared Wilfrid, whipping round upon him, ‘I want no man that has had anything to do with the “Shark” aboard my vessel.’
The fellow fell back muttering. My cousin turned to Captain Crimp.
‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘I thank you for your friendly offices.’ He produced a pocket-book. ‘You have acted the part of an honest man, sir. I am obliged to you. I trust that this may satisfy all charges for the maintenance of Lady Monson on board your ship.’ He handed him a Bank of England note; Crimp turned the corner down to look at the figure—I believe it was a hundred pounds—and then buried it in his breeches pocket.
‘I’m mighty obliged to you, mighty obliged,’ he exclaimed.[226] ‘It’s a deal more’n the job’s worth. I’d like to see my way to wishing you happiness’—and he was proceeding, but Wilfrid stopped him by dropping over the side, calling to me to make haste.
‘Captain Crimp,’ I said hurriedly, ‘you will please keep your barque hove-to as she is now for the present. There’s to be a duel; you of course know that.’ He nodded. ‘You also heard the promise made to Colonel Hope-Kennedy, that after the duel he is to be at liberty to return to your vessel.’
‘Then I don’t think he will, for the guv’nor means to shoot him,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘and I’ll wager what he guv me that he’ll do it too; and sarve ’im right. Running away with another man’s wife! Ain’t there enough single gals in the world to suit the likes of that there colonel? But I’ll keep hove-to as you ask.’
All this he mumbled in my ear as I put my foot over the side waiting for the wash of the swell to float the boat up before dropping. We then shoved off.
We had scarcely measured a boat’s length, however, from the barque’s side, when Lady Monson stirred, opened and shut her eyes, drew a long, fluttering breath, then started up, leaning on her elbow staring about her. She gazed at the men, at me, at her husband and sister, with her wits abroad, but intelligence seemed to rush into her eyes like fire when her sight encountered the yacht. I thought to myself what will she do now? Jump overboard? Go into hysterics? Swoon away again? I watched her keenly, though furtively, prepared to arrest any passionate movement in her, for there had come a wilder look in her face than ever I had seen in Wilfrid’s. My cousin sat like a figure of stone, his gaze riveted to his schooner, and Miss Laura glanced at her sister wistfully, but, as one saw, on the alert to avoid meeting her gaze.
I could very well understand now that this fair, gentle, golden-haired girl should have held her tall, dark, imperious, tragic-eyed sister in awe.
I know I felt heartily afraid of her myself as I sat pretending not to notice her, though in an askant way I was taking her in from head to foot, feeling mightily curious to see what sort of a person she was, and I was exceedingly thankful that the yacht lay within a few minutes of us. But happily there was to be no ‘scene.’ She saw how things stood, and with an air of haughty dignity rose from the bottom of the boat and seated herself in the place I vacated for her, turning her face seawards to conceal it from the men. Nobody but a woman possessed of her excellent harmonious shape could have risen unaided with the grace, I may say the majesty, of motion she exhibited from the awkward, prostrate posture in which she had lain. The bitter, sarcastic sneer upon her lip paralysed in me the immediate movement of my mind to offer her my hand. She seemed to float upwards to her full[227] height as a stage dancer of easy and exquisite skill rises to her feet from a recumbent attitude. I might well believe that many men would find her face fascinating, though it was not one that I could fall in love with. She was out and away handsomer than her picture represented her, spite of the traces which yet lingered of suffering, privation, and distress of mind, such as shipwreck and even a day’s tossing about in an open boat might produce.
Not a syllable was uttered by any one of us as the flashing oars of the rowers swept us to the ‘Bride.’ The sailors with instinctive good feeling stared to right and left at their dripping and sparkling blades as though absorbed by contemplation of the rise and fall of the sand-white lengths of ash. Finn at the yoke-lines sat with a countenance of wood. We buzzed foaming to the accommodation ladder. I was the first to spring out, and stood waiting to hand Lady Monson on to the steps; but without taking the least notice of me she exclaimed, addressing her sister in a low but distinctly audible voice, ‘Take me at once to your cabin,’ and so saying she stepped on to the ladder. I helped Miss Laura out of the boat, and then they both passed through the gangway and I saw no more of them. Wilfrid mounted slowly at my heels. I passed my arm through his and walked him aft. He made as if he would resist, then came passively enough, sighing deeply as though his heart had broken.
‘Wilfrid,’ I said gently, ‘a hard and bitter part of the project of your voyage is ended. You have regained your wife—your one desire is fulfilled. Why not, then, abandon the rest of your programme? Yonder barque will be kept hove-to until we hail her to say that she may proceed. Colonel Hope-Kennedy does not want to fight you. Let me go to him and arrange that he shall return to that vessel forthwith. I abhor the notion of a duel between you. Your end has been achieved bloodlessly; your baby has such a claim upon your life, that if you will but give a moment’s thought to the significance of it, you would not, you dare not, turn a deaf ear to the infant’s appeal. Consider again, we are without a surgeon; there is no medical help here for the sufferer, be he you or be he your enemy. This colonel, again, is without a second. Wilfrid, in the name of God, let him go! He may reach England, and will meet you ashore, if you desire it; but between then and now there will be abundance of time for you to consider whether there is any occasion for you to give the scoundrel a chance of completing the injury he has already dealt you by sending a bullet through your heart.’
He listened to me with wonderful patience, his head bowed, his eyes rooted on the deck, his hands clasped in front of him. I was flattering myself that I had produced something of the impression I desired to make, when, lifting his face, he looked slowly round at me, and said quietly, almost softly, ‘Charles, I shall not love you less for your advice. You speak out of the fulness of your heart. I thank you, dear cousin, for your kindness. And[228] now do me this favour.’ He pulled out his watch and let his eye rest on it for a brief pause, but I doubt if he took note of the hour. ‘Go to Colonel Hope-Kennedy and make all necessary arrangements for our meeting as soon as possible. See Captain Finn, and request him to send the sailors below when the appointed time arrives. Come to my cabin and let me know the result. Colonel Hope-Kennedy shall have choice of the pistols in my case, and, seeing that he has no second any more than I have, for your office will simply consist in chalking the distance and in giving the signal, he must load for himself.’
He took my hand in both his, pressed it hard, and then, without a word, walked to the companion and disappeared. Captain Finn, who had been watching us from a distance, waiting till our conversation had ended, now walked up to me.
‘Can you tell me his honour’s wishes, sir?’ he inquired. ‘I suppose now that he’s fallen in with her ladyship he’ll be heading home?’
‘Let the yacht lie as she is for the present, Finn,’ said I; ‘no need to hoist in the boat either. She cannot hurt herself alongside in this smooth water. We may be wanting her shortly to convey Colonel Hope-Kennedy to the barque. Sir Wilfrid means to fight him, and at once. I would give half what I am worth to avert this meeting, but my cousin is resolved, and I must stand by him.’
‘Sir,’ said Finn, ‘he has been cruelly used.’
‘When the time comes,’ I continued, ‘he wishes the men to be sent below. You will see to that.’
‘Oh, yes. But I dorn’t think the helm should be desarted, sir.’
‘Certainly not,’ I exclaimed. ‘Arrange it thus: Let Mr. Crimp hold the wheel. I must have help at hand, for one of the men may fall badly wounded. Therefore, stay you on deck, Captain Finn, and keep by me within easy hail. Cutbill is also a strong, serviceable fellow in such an emergency as this. Post him at the forehatch to hinder any man from popping his head up to look. I shall thus have two—you and him—to assist me.’
‘Right, sir,’ he exclaimed, touching his cap.
‘Better mark off the ground, or deck rather, at once,’ said I; ‘fetch me a piece of chalk, Finn.’
He went forward, and in a few moments returned with what I required. A broad awning sheltered the whole of the quarterdeck that lay gleaming white as the flesh of the cocoa-nut in the soft, almost violet-hued shadow. There was just air enough stirring aloft to keep the lighter cloths quiet and to provide against the yacht being slued or revolved by the run of the long, delicate, tropic swell. I said to Finn, after considering a little and anxiously observing the effects of the sunshine gushing through the blue air betwixt the edge of the awning and the bulwark rail, or rising off the sea in a trembling flashing that whitened the air above it, ‘I don’t think it will matter which side of the quarterdeck we choose. The men must toss for position. But there’s a dazzle on the water off[229] the port bow that might bother the eye that faces forward. Better mark the starboard side therefore.’
He gazed thoughtfully around, and said, ‘The yacht’s position can be altered, if you like, sir.’
I answered, ‘No; leave her as she is. She rolls regularly and quietly thus.’
I had never before been concerned in a duel, and in the matter of the strict etiquette of this sort of encounter was entirely at a loss how to act. However, I had always understood that twelve paces were the prescribed distance, so ruling a line athwartships almost abreast of the mainmast, I made twelve steps and then scored another line crosswise, measuring the interval a second time, and finding that it was very fairly twelve of my own paces. The men had come together in a crowd forward, and were staring aft with all their might. They knew perfectly well what was going to take place, and they were not yet sensible that they were not to be admitted to the spectacle. It was to be something of a far more wildly exciting sort than catching a shark, ay, or even may be of seeing a man hung at a ship’s yardarm. It put a sort of sickness into me somehow to witness that swarm of whiskered mahogany-checked faces, all looking thirstily, expectation shaping every posture, with a kind of swimming of the whole body of them too in the haze of heat into which the yacht’s jibboom went twisting in a manner to make the brain dizzy to watch it. One never gets to see how thoroughly animal human nature is at bottom until one has examined the expression of the countenances of a mob, big or little, assembled in expectation of witnessing human suffering.
I stepped below. Colonel Hope-Kennedy sat bareheaded at the cabin table, supporting his head on his right elbow and drumming softly with the fingers of his left hand. I approached him, and giving him a bow, which he returned with an air of great dignity—men are amazingly polite when arranging the terms of some cut-throat job—I said, ‘It is my painful duty, sir, to inform you that my cousin desires the meeting between you and him should take place at once.’
‘Not a moment need be lost so far as I am concerned,’ he answered, gazing at me steadfastly with eyes that looked like porcelain with the singular glaze that seemed to have come suddenly upon them.
‘My cousin requests me to state,’ I continued, ‘that you will consider him as acting without a second equally with yourself. My unhappy office will consist simply in giving the signal to fire. I would to God that my influence had been powerful enough with him to arrest his resolution at this point——’
‘It could not have prevailed with me,’ he exclaimed. ‘The madman’s blow was needless. On what part of the yacht do we fight?’
‘On the quarterdeck,’ I answered.
‘Measured by you?’
I bowed.
‘As there are no seconds,’ he said, ‘I presume we load for ourselves?’
‘That is Sir Wilfrid Monson’s suggestion,’ I answered.
‘Have you the pistols, sir?’
‘I will fetch them.’
I went at once to Wilfrid’s berth and knocked, and walked in without waiting for him to tell me to enter. He was writing in his diary; he instantly threw down his pen and jumped from his chair.
‘Is all ready, Charles?’ he asked.
‘Your pistols are identical, I believe?’ said I.
‘Exactly alike,’ he answered.
‘Then Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s choice,’ said I, ‘cannot furnish him with any advantage over you, by his choosing, I mean, with a soldier’s experience the preciser weapon?’
‘There is not an atom of difference between them,’ he exclaimed. ‘Yonder’s the case, Charles. Take it, and let the scoundrel choose for himself.’
He could not have spoken more coolly had he been giving me the most commonplace instructions. I remember wondering whilst I looked at him and listened to him whether he actually realised his own intention; yet I should have known better than this if only for the meaning his face conveyed, and for a note in his voice that made every accent hard and steady. He said, ‘When you are ready ring the hand-bell on the table; I will then join you.’
‘But you will charge your own pistol,’ said I, ‘so I must return with the weapon after the Colonel has made his choice.’
‘No,’ he exclaimed; ‘carry the case on deck and load for me.’
‘Very well,’ said I, wearily and sick at heart, and devoutly wishing that some heavy black squall would come thundering down on the yacht as the precursor of a gale of wind and delay this wretched business, for the present anyway. I took the pistol-case, and returned it to Colonel Hope-Kennedy. He slightly glanced at the fire-arms, and said with a faint smile, ‘They are an elegant brace of weapons. Either will do for me.’
‘Will you load on deck or here, sir?’ said I.
‘Here, if you please.’
He extracted one of the pistols, poised it in his hand, toying a moment or two with it, tried the trigger once or twice, then loaded it, fitting the cap to the nipple with fingers in which I could not discern the least tremor. He then returned the pistol to the case. Both of us would know which one he had handled very well, as it lay against the side upon which the lid locked.
‘Have you a surgeon on board?’ he inquired.
I answered No. He looked a little anxious, and exclaimed, ‘No one of any kind qualified to deal with a wound?’ Again I answered No. He seemed to wince at this, the only expression[231] of uneasiness I had witnessed in him. Finding he asked no more questions, I said, ‘If you are ready, sir, I will summon my cousin.’
‘I am ready,’ he replied.
On this I rang the little hand-bell that stood upon the table, and in a minute Wilfrid came out. In grim silence we mounted the companion steps, my cousin leading the way, the Colonel next, and I at his heels, with the pistol-case under my arm and a very lively sense of murder in my heart. All was hushed where the ladies were. Whether Miss Laura guessed what was going forward I know not, but I was very thankful that she remained hidden, since, in the face of the Colonel’s coolness, it was most important that nothing should imperil Wilfrid’s composure. The yacht’s decks were deserted save by the figures of the men who it had been arranged were to remain. Forward at the hatch conducting to the forecastle stood the tall, burly figure of Cutbill; close beside the cabin skylight was Finn, pale, agitated, his mouth working in the middle of his face as though he were rehearsing a long speech; Crimp grasped the wheel. Heaven knows how it was that I should have found eyesight for small outside features of such a scene as this at that moment, but I clearly recollect observing that sour old Jacob, with a view, mayhap, of supporting his spirits, had thrust an immense quid into his cheek, the angle whereof stood out like a boil or a formidable bruise against the clear gleam of sky past him; up and down which the curtseying of the yacht slided his squab, homely figure, and I also observed that he gnawed upon this junk with an energy that suggested a mind in an advanced stage of distraction.
I said to the Colonel, ‘It will be satisfactory to myself, sir, if you will kindly measure the distance I have chalked.’
His eye swiftly ran from line to line, and then giving me a slight bow he said, nonchalantly, ‘I am quite satisfied.’
‘With regard to the light,’ I continued, looking from him to Wilfrid, ‘you will decide for yourselves, gentlemen, which end of the vessel you will face.’
‘It is immaterial,’ said the Colonel, with a slight shrug.
‘Then,’ said Wilfrid, ‘I will have my back to the wheel.’
I could not be sure that he was well advised, for the blue dazzle of sunshine past the awning would throw out his figure into clear relief, as I noticed Crimp’s was projected, clean lined as a shadow cast by the moonlight on a white deck.
‘It may be as well to toss for position,’ I said.
‘No,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘I am content.’
I loaded his pistol and handed the weapons to the men. My heart thumped like a coward’s in my breast, but I strove hard to conceal my agitation for Wilfrid’s sake. Each took up his respective post, and both held their pistols at level. The Colonel exclaimed ‘Tell your mad relative to feather-edge himself. He is all front. ’Tis too irrational to take advantage of.’
Wilfrid heard him and cried out, ‘Let him look to himself. Ready with the signal, Charles.’
I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief, and as I did so old Crimp suddenly let go the wheel and came skimming up to Finn, rumbling out, in a voice half choked with tobacco-juice, that the gent’s pistol (meaning the Colonel’s) was upon him full, and that he wasn’t going to be made cold beef of for any man.
‘Ready, gentlemen!’ I cried, and desirous of emphasising the signal, lest the Colonel’s keener sight should witness the fall of the handkerchief before the flutter of it caught Wilfrid’s eye, I called out ‘Now!’ and the handkerchief fell to the deck.
There was one report only; it was like the sharp crack of a whip. For the instant I did not know which man’s pistol had exploded, but the little curl of smoke at Wilfrid’s end told me that it was his. I saw the Colonel fling his arms up, and his weapon flashed as he seemed to fire it straight into the air. ‘Good God! how generous!’ was the thought that swept through me; ‘he will not fight.’ He continued holding his pistol elevated whilst you could have counted ten, with a slight backward leaning posture and an indescribable look in his face, absolutely as though he were endeavouring to follow the flight of the bullet; his weapon then fell to the deck, he made a clutch with both hands at his heart, with a deep groan sank—his knees yielding, and, with his hands still at his heart, dropped, as a wooden figure might, on his side and lay without motion.
Finn and I rushed up to him. Whilst the skipper freed his neck I grasped his wrist, but found it pulseless. Yet it was difficult to credit that he was dead. His face was as reposeful as that of a sleeper. There was no look whatever of pain in it—nay, such faint distinguishable expression as I remember had the air of a light smile. I opened his coat, and found a small perforation in the shirt under the right arm; the orifice was as cleanly clipped as though made with a pair of scissors. There was no blood.
‘Dead, sir!’ exclaimed Finn. ‘A noble-looking gentleman, too. A pity, a pity! How gents of this kind stand upon their honour! yet they’re the people to break up homes.’
‘Call Cutbill,’ said I, ‘and let the body be taken below.’
I rose from my knees and walked aft to Wilfrid, who remained standing at the chalked line, his arm that grasped the pistol hanging by his side. There was a kind of lifting look in his face, that with his swelled nostrils and large protruding eyes and a curve of the upper lip, that was made a sarcastic sneer of by the peculiar projection of the under one, indicated a mood of scornful triumph, of exultation subdued by contempt.
‘You have killed your man, Wilfrid,’ said I.
‘I have shot him through the heart,’ said he, talking like one newly aroused from his slumber and still in process of collecting his mind.
‘Most probably. You hit him in some vital part, anyway. He dropped dead.’
‘He made sure of killing me; I saw it in his cold, deliberate way of covering me.’ He laughed harshly and mirthlessly. ‘He’ll trouble no other man’s peace. I’ve merely liberated the spirit of a devil that is now winging its way on black, bat-like wings back to that hell it came from. There will be disappointment amongst the fiends. That fellow there,’ nodding at the body over which Cutbill and Finn were bending, ‘was good at least for another twenty years of scoundrelism. What are they going to do with him?’
‘Carry him below.’
‘Finn!’ he called.
‘Sir!’ answered the skipper, looking up from the body, whose arms he grasped.
‘Hide it in some forward cabin, and if stone-dead, as Mr. Monson declares, get it stitched up. I’ll tell you when to bury him.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ answered Finn promptly, but looking shocked nevertheless.
My cousin handed me his pistol. As he did so his manner changed; a broken-hearted look—I do not know how else to describe the expression—entered his face. He drew a long, deep breath, like to the sigh of a sufferer from some exquisite throe, and said in a low voice, trembling with the tears which pressed close behind, ‘His death does not return to me what he has taken from me. With him go my honour, my peace of mind, the love that was my wife’s—all gone—all gone!’ he muttered. ‘My God!’ he almost shrieked, ‘how blank has the world become, now that he lies there.’
‘Be advised by me, Wilfrid,’ said I; ‘withdraw to your cabin and rest. This has been a terrible morning—enough to last out a lifetime has been crowded into it. You met him bravely, fairly, honourably. He has paid the penalty of his infamy, and though Heaven knows I would have gone to any lengths to avert this meeting, yet, since it has happened, I thank God your life is preserved and that you have come out of it unharmed.’
His eyes moistened and he took my hand; but just then Cutbill and Finn came staggering towards the companion hatch, bearing the body between them, on which he walked hastily to the rail and stood peering over into the water, supporting his temples in his hands.
Jacob Crimp had resumed his hold of the wheel. I went up to him. ‘I’ll keep the helm steady,’ said I, ‘whilst you wipe out those chalk marks on the deck. Meanwhile pick up that pistol yonder and bring me the case off the skylight.’
Whilst he did this we were hailed from the barque. She lay close to us, with her sailors in a crowd about the fore-rigging, where they had been standing attentive spectators of the duel. ‘Beg pardon!’ bawled Captain Crimp, erect on the rail and steadying himself by a backstay, ‘but I should be glad to know if the gent’s coming aboard?’
I shouted back, ‘No. You need not wait for him.’
The man tossed his arm with a gesture very significant of a growling ‘Well, well!’ and then with a flourish of his hat he cried, ‘A lucky run home to ’ee, gentlemen all!’ dismounted, and fell to singing out orders. His wild-looking crew ran about, the maintopsail-yard slowly swung round, and presently the deeply-laden, malodorous craft, rolling clumsily upon a swell to whose light summer heavings our yacht was curtseying with fairy grace, was heading round to her course, blurring the water at her bows to the blowing of the mild breeze that had scarcely power enough to lift her foresail.
Finn and Cutbill arrived on deck, and Wilfrid on seeing them went below.
‘Better turn the hands up, I suppose, now, sir?’ said Finn to me. ‘There’ll be nothen more, your honour, that’ll be onfit for them to see.’
‘By all means, Captain Finn; and then get the boat hoisted and a course shaped for home, for our quest is over, and we have made southing enough, Heaven knows!’
Cutbill went forward. There is a magic in the mere sound of homeward bound that would put a jocund nimbleness into the proportions of a marine Falstaff. Cutbill tried to walk and look as though he were sensible that death lay under his feet and that the shadow of a dreadful event hung dark upon the yacht, but scarce was he abreast of the galley when his spirits proved too much for him, and he measured the rest of the deck in several gleesome, floundering jumps, pounding the scuttle with a capstan bar that he snatched up, and roaring out, ‘All hands trim sail for home!’ The men came tumbling up as though the yacht’s forecastle were vomiting sailors, and in a breath the lustrous decks of the ‘Bride’ were full of life, colour, and movement.
A man came to the wheel. I lingered a minute or two to exchange a few words with Finn.
‘You are sure the Colonel is dead?’
‘Ay, sir; he’ll be no deader a thousand years hence.’
‘A bloody morning’s work, Finn! I feel heart-sick, as though I had shared in the assassination of a man. But since it was bound to end in one or the other’s death, ’tis best as it is. Have you any particulars of the foundering of the “Shark”?’
‘The yarn her people—I mean the surwivors aboard the barque—spun our men whilst they lay alongside was that they met with a gale of wind, that, after blowing with hurricane fury for two days and two nights, ended in dismasting ’em. The fall of the mainmast ripped the plank out of the deck as clean as though shipwrights had been at work there. Then the pounding of the wreckage alongside started a butt, and she took in water faster than they could pump it out. There were boats enough for all hands and to spare, and they had just time to get away when the “Shark” foundered. ’Twas blowing hard then, and a high sea[235] running, and before it came on dark the boats had lost sight of one another. The Colonel and her ladyship were together, along with five sailors, one of whom fell overboard on the second day and was drownded. They were three days and four nights washing about afore the “’Liza Robbins” fell in with them. That’s all I got to hear, sir; but I suppose it’s the true yarn right enough.’
‘I dare say they encountered much such weather as we met with,’ said I; ‘the same straight-lined storm thundering up from the south, for all one knows. Well, now, Finn, drive us home as fast as ever you can. Bowl her along—we’ve all had enough of it. In what berth have you placed the body?’
‘In the one that was occupied by his honour’s walet, sir.’
I gave him a nod, and, with the pistol-case under my arm, descended the steps and went to my cabin.