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diff --git a/old/62344-0.txt b/old/62344-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 993d0cb..0000000 --- a/old/62344-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7140 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Shipmate Louise, Volume 2 (of 3), by -William Clark Russell - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: My Shipmate Louise, Volume 2 (of 3) - The Romance of a Wreck - -Author: William Clark Russell - -Release Date: June 8, 2020 [EBook #62344] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY SHIPMATE LOUISE, VOLUME 2 *** - - - - -Produced by David E. Brown and The Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - -MY SHIPMATE LOUISE - -VOL. II. - - - - -NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. - - - A FELLOW OF TRINITY. By ALAN ST. AUBYN and WALT WHEELER. 3 vols. - - THE WORD AND THE WILL. By JAMES PAYN. 3 vols. - - AUNT ABIGAIL DYKES. By GEORGE RANDOLPH. 1 vol. - - A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE. By BRET HARTE. 1 vol. - - RUFFINO. By OUIDA. 1 vol. - -London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W. - - - - - MY SHIPMATE LOUISE - - The Romance of a Wreck - - - BY - - W. CLARK RUSSELL - - - [Illustration] - - - IN THREE VOLUMES - - VOL. II. - - - London - CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - 1890 - - - - - PRINTED BY - SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE - LONDON - - - - - CONTENTS - OF - THE SECOND VOLUME - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - XV. A SINGULAR PLOT 1 - - XVI. WE SIGHT A WRECK 22 - - XVII. THE ‘MAGICIENNE’ 45 - - XVIII. ADRIFT 66 - - XIX. NIGHT 86 - - XX. I SEARCH THE WRECK 108 - - XXI. WE SIGHT A SAIL 134 - - XXII. THE ‘LADY BLANCHE’ 156 - - XXIII. CAPTAIN BRAINE 178 - - XXIV. THE CREW OF THE BARQUE 202 - - XXV. I KEEP A LOOKOUT 223 - - XXVI. I AM QUESTIONED 245 - - XXVII. THE BRIG’S LONGBOAT 269 - - XXVIII. I QUESTION WETHERLY 289 - - - - -MY SHIPMATE LOUISE - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -A SINGULAR PLOT - - -It speedily ran amongst us of the cuddy that the dead sailor who had -been so very impressively interred by old Keeling had returned to the -ship, and was alive in some part of her, secure in handcuffs or in -leg-irons; but so much was made of the fire which had broken out that -Crabb’s reappearance lost as a miracle half the weight it would have -carried had it happened alone. Besides, the sense of the people soon -gathered that the business was a plot which had been managed with -astonishing cleverness, and it all seemed plain as mud in a wine-glass -when the whisper went round that Hemmeridge was under arrest as an -arch-conspirator in the matter. And certainly it made one feel far -from comfortable even to think that for the past weeks a ruffian of a -true piratical complexion had been secreted in the ship’s hold, where -his confederates would keep him supplied with tobacco and the means of -lighting it, and where, in his borings and pryings, he was tolerably -certain to have stumbled upon something inflammatory in the shape of -spirits. Indeed, it made me draw my breath short when my mind went to -the rum puncheons and the powder-magazine below, and to the vision of -Crabb, drunk, stupidly groping with a naked light in his hand, during -some midnight hour, maybe, when we were all in bed. - -However, the imagination of the passengers would hardly go to these -lengths. Their thoughts held to the fire, and their talk chiefly -concerned it. When the skipper came below for a glass of grog that -night, the ladies so baited him with questions that one pitied him -almost for not being able to enjoy the privilege of venting his heated -soul in a few strong words. - -‘I _cannot_ satisfy myself, Captain Keeling, that the fire is utterly -extinguished,’ said Mrs. Bannister. - -‘Might it not burst out again, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘There -should be plenty of pails kept filled with water ready to empty if -smoke is smelt.’ - -‘Perhaps something may be on fire even now!’ exclaimed Mrs Joliffe, -‘something that doesn’t make a smoke; and how _then_ are the sailors to -tell if all is right in the bottom of the ship?’ - -‘Captain Keeling,’ cried Mrs. Trevor, ‘is it quite safe to go to bed, -do you think?’ - -‘If a fire should break out,’ said Miss Hudson in a trembling voice, -as though shudder after shudder were chasing through her, ‘how can we -depend upon being called? It is impossible to hear downstairs what is -going on on deck.’ - -Poor old marline-spike made a bolt of it at last, fairly turning tail -and rushing up the companion steps when it came to the colonel striking -in and topping off the female broadsides by inquiries of a like nature -delivered at the very height of his pipes. - -However, the night passed quietly; and when next morning came and the -people assembled at breakfast, all fear of fire was seemingly gone, -and little more was talked about than Crabb and what his designs had -been, the topic gathering no mean accentuation from the doctor’s vacant -place. Somewhere about ten o’clock I was standing at the taffrail -watching the ship’s wake, that was languidly streaming off in a short -oily surface, and wondering whether, if we were to fall in with nothing -brisker than these faint airs and draughts of wind, all hands would not -have grown white-haired and decrepit by the time we were up with the -Cape, leaving the Indian Ocean and Bombay out of consideration, when -the head-steward came up to me. - -‘Captain Keeling’s compliments, sir, and he’ll feel greatly hobliged, -providing you’re not hotherwise occupied, by your stepping to his -cabin, sir.’ - -‘Oh yes, with pleasure,’ said I. ‘Is he alone?’ - -‘He is not, sir.’ - -I went down the companion steps, knocked at the captain’s door, and -entered. It was a roomy interior, a very noble ship’s berth, occupying -hard upon the width of the deck right aft, saving, as I have before -described, a sort of small chart-room alongside, bulkheaded off. There -was a large stern window, after the olden fashion, with the blue -line of the horizon gently sliding up and down it, and a shivering -light lifting off the sea to the glass, sharp and of a sort of azure -brilliancy, as though from diamonds set a-trembling. Keeling, in full -fig, his face showing of a dark red against some maple-coloured ground -of bulkhead or ship’s side, was seated at a table. He instantly rose -on my entering, gave me one of his wire-drawn bows, and motioned me -to a seat, thanking me in a few words for coming. On the starboard -hand stood Crabb and the sailmaker, handcuffed, and on either side of -them was a seaman with a cutlass dangling at his hip. On the port hand -sat Dr. Hemmeridge, his legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of -his waistcoat, and his head drooped. He was deadly pale, and looked -horribly ill and worried. Near him was one of the sailors, a young -fellow of some seven or eight and twenty, with a quantity of hair -falling over his brow, a straggling beard, and small black eyes, which -roamed swiftly in glances charged methought with the spirit of mutiny -and menace and defiance. Mr. Prance was at the captain’s elbow; and the -third mate was seated at an end of the table with a pen in his hand and -some paper in front of him. - -I bowed to Hemmeridge, but he took no notice. Until the captain -addressed me, I stared hard at Crabb; for even now, with the ugly -ruffian standing before me, my mind found it difficult to realise -that he was alive; that the creature I gazed at was the man whom all -hands of us, with an exception or two, supposed overboard a thousand -fathoms deep. There was, besides, the fascination of his ugliness. The -hunch-like curve of his back, his little blood-stained eyes looking -away from his nose, as though they sought to peer at something at the -back of his head, the greasy trail of carroty hair upon his back, -the fragment of nose over his hare-lip, these and the rest of him -combined into the representation of the most extravagantly grotesque, -ill-favoured figure ever witnessed outside the bars of a menagerie. The -sailmaker’s face was as white as one of his bolts of canvas, but it -wore a determined look, though I noticed a quivering in the nostrils of -his high-perched nose, and a constant uneasy movement of the fingers, -as of dying hands plucking at bedclothes. - -‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed old Keeling with the dignity and gravity of -a judge, ‘I’ve taken the liberty to send for you, as I am informed -by Mr. Prance that when that man there’--inclining his head towards -Crabb without looking at him--‘was lying, as it was supposed, dead in -his bunk, you accompanied Mr. Hemmeridge, the ship’s surgeon’--here he -indicated the doctor with a motion of his head but without looking at -him either--‘into the forecastle, and stood for some considerable time -surveying the so-called corpse.’ - -‘That is quite true,’ said I. - -‘Did Mr. Hemmeridge expose the man’s face to you?’ - -‘He did.’ - -‘What impression was produced upon your mind by the sight of the--of -the--body?’ - -Crabb gave a horrible grin. - -‘That he was stone-dead, Captain Keeling; so stone-dead, sir, that I -can scarcely credit the man himself is now before me.’ - -Hemmeridge looked up and fixed his eyes upon me. - -‘It is but reasonable I should inform you, Mr. Dugdale,’ continued -old marline-spike, ‘that Mr. Hemmeridge is under arrest on suspicion -of conspiring with Crabb, with Willett, and with Thomas Bobbins’--he -glanced at the man who stood next to the doctor--‘to plunder the ship. -Bobbins has given evidence that leaves me in no doubt as to the guilt -of Crabb and Willett.’ - -Crabb uttered a curse through his teeth, accompanied with a look at the -young seaman, in the one-eyed gleam of which murder methought was writ -too large to be mistaken for any other intention. Old Keeling did not -heed him. - -‘Bobbins’s story,’ he continued, ‘is to this effect: that Crabb was to -swallow a potion which would produce the appearance of death; that the -sailmaker was to have a hammock weighted, shaped, and in all respects -equipped to resemble the one in which Crabb would be stitched up: that -in the dead of night, when the ship was silent, and the deck forward -vacant, the sham hammock was to be placed upon the fore-hatch by the -sailmaker and Bobbins, and the cover containing that man’--inclining -his head at Crabb--‘conveyed into the sailmaker’s cabin, where it -was to be cut open, the man freed, and secreted in the berth till -consciousness had returned, and he was in a fit state to seize the -first opportunity of sneaking into the hold. All this was done,’ old -Keeling went on, Mr. Prance meanwhile looking as grave as an owl over -the skipper’s shoulder, whilst every now and again a hideous grin -would distort Crabb’s frightful mouth, though the sailmaker continued -to stare at the captain with a white and determined countenance, and -Hemmeridge to listen with a frowning worried look, his leg that crossed -the other swinging like a pendulum. ‘The man Crabb got into the hold, -was supplied with food and drink by Willett and Bobbins, and with tools -to enable him to break into the mail-room’---- - -‘And I’d ha’ done it too,’ here interrupted Crabb in a voice like a saw -going through a balk of timber, ‘if it hadn’t been for the stinking -smoke of them blasted blankets.’ - -‘This inquiry,’ continued Keeling, ‘now entirely concerns Mr. -Hemmeridge. You tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that Crabb seemed to you as a -stone-dead man.’ - -‘The devil himself couldn’t ha’ told the difference,’ bawled Crabb. -‘_He’s_ not in it,’ insolently motioning with his elbow towards the -doctor. ‘Wouldn’t that blooming Bobbins ha’ said so?’ and he darted -another murderous glance at the hairy young sailor. - -‘I can assure you, Captain Keeling,’ said I, ‘that the man was -perfectly dead. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Mr. -Hemmeridge was fully convinced the body was a corpse. Convinced, -captain, but dissatisfied too; and perhaps,’ said I, with a glance at -Crabb, ‘it is a pity for more sakes than one that he did not carry out -his idea of a post-mortem examination.’ - -‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge in a low, deep, trembling voice, -‘before God and man, I am innocent; and I hope to live to call Captain -Keeling to account for this monstrous slander, this enormous suspicion, -this dishonourable and detestable accusation.’ - -‘I’ve never heered,’ said the man named Bobbins, in a long-drawn -whining voice, ‘that this gent was consarned. I remembered Crabb asking -what was to be done if so be the surgeon should cut him up to see what -he died of, and Mr. Willett kissed the Bible afore Crabb and me to -this: that if the surgeon made up his mind to open Crabb, Willett was -to show him the bottle of physic, and to tell him that Crabb had took -it for some bad complaint, and that, though he might look dead, he -worn’t so.’ - -Crabb hove a fearful curse at the man. The bushy-whiskered sailor who -guarded him on the right significantly put his hand upon the hilt of -his cutlass whilst he said something to him under his breath. - -‘This is new to me,’ exclaimed Keeling, screwing his eye gimlet-fashion -into the face of Bobbins, and then letting it drop, as if satisfied. -‘Mr. Hemmeridge, I have _suspected_ you, sir; but it’s a little soon -for you to talk of my having _accused_ you. You are a medical man. If -anybody knows death by looking upon it you should. Yet, though this man -Crabb is merely counterfeiting death, you come aft to me and report him -dead! What am I to infer? Your ignorance or your guilt, sir?’ - -‘Captain Keeling,’ cried I, ‘believe me when I promise you the man -was not _counterfeiting_ death. He was to all intents and purposes -a corpse. How was this brought about? Surely by no exercise of his -own art. The look of the eye--the droop of the jaw--the hue of the -skin--Captain Keeling, it was death to the sight: no counterfeit--an -effect produced by something much more powerful than the effort of such -a will as that man has;’ and I pointed with my thumb at Crabb, who -told me with a curse to mind my own business. - -‘Mr. Dugdale, I thank you,’ said Hemmeridge, bowing to me. - -Captain Keeling held up a long thin phial about three-quarters full of -a dark liquor. I had not before noticed it. - -‘This has been produced,’ said he, ‘by the man Bobbins, who states that -it is the stuff which Crabb swallowed, and which caused the death-like -aspect you saw in him.’ He put the bottle down; then clenching his -fist, smote the table violently. ‘I cannot credit it!’ he cried. -‘I cannot be imposed on. Am I to believe that there is any drug in -existence which will produce in a living being the exact semblance of -death?’ - -‘Oh, I think so, sir,’ said Prance, speaking mildly. - -Hemmeridge sneered. - -‘A semblance of death,’ roared old Keeling, twisting round upon his -chief mate, ‘capable of deceiving the eye--the practised eye of a -medical man? You may give me a dose of laudanum, and I may look dead -to you, sir, but not to Mr. Hemmeridge yonder. No, sir; I am not to be -persuaded,’ and here he brought his fist down upon the table again. -‘It is either gross ignorance or direct connivance, and I mean to be -satisfied--I mean to sift it to the bottom--I mean to get at the truth, -by----!’ - -His face was full of blood, and he puffed and blew like a swimmer -struggling for his life. - -‘You’ve got the truth, and be so-and-so to you,’ broke in Crabb. - -The armed sailor ground his elbow into the fellow’s ribs. - -‘I am merely here to answer your questions, Captain Keeling,’ said I, -‘and must apologise for taking a single step beyond the object you -had in calling me to you; but at least permit me to ask, cannot Mr. -Hemmeridge explain the nature of the drug contained in that bottle?’ - -‘I do not know what it is,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge. - -‘Suppose, sir,’ said Mr. Prance, ‘we give Crabb another dose; then -you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’ - -‘You don’t give me no more doses!’ said Crabb. ‘Try it on yourselves.’ - -The captain sat a little, looking at me vacantly, lost in thought. He -suddenly turned to Hemmeridge. - -‘You are at liberty, sir; I remove the arrest.’ - -‘And is that all?’ exclaimed the other, after a brief pause, viewing -him steadily. ‘I must have an apology, sir; an apology ample, abundant, -satisfying.’ - -‘I will see you’--began old Keeling, then checked himself. ‘You can -leave this cabin, sir.’ - -Hemmeridge rose from his chair. ‘I leave this cabin, sir,’ said he, -‘and I also leave my duties. Professionally, I do no more in this -ship, sir. You have disgraced, you have dishonoured me. But,’ said -he, shaking his finger at him, ‘you shall make me amends at Bombay, -sir--you shall make me amends at Bombay!’ - -He stalked from the cabin, old Keeling watching him with a frown, but -in silence. - -‘Captain,’ I exclaimed, rising as the door closed behind the doctor, -‘I am persuaded that Mr. Hemmeridge is innocent of all participation in -this bad business. You have on board a gentleman who, I believe, has a -very extensive knowledge of drugs and herbs and the like--I mean Mr. -Saunders. It is just possible he might know the nature of the contents -of that bottle.’ - -Keeling reflected a minute, and then said: ‘Mr. Prance, send my -compliments to Mr. Saunders, and ask him to my cabin.’ - -The mate went out; I was following him. - -‘Pray, stay a little, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the skipper.--‘Men, take those -fellows forward.--Remain where you are,’ he added, turning to Bobbins. - -A seaman flung open the door, and Crabb and the sailmaker passed out, -followed by the second armed sailor, who silenced some blasphemous -abuse that Crabb had paused to deliver, by giving him a shove that -drove him headlong into the cuddy. - -‘I am sorry to detain you, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the captain. ‘Mr. -Saunders is a rather nervous gentleman, and it might be agreeable to -him to find you here.’ - -‘You do not detain me, Captain Keeling. This is an amazing business, -almost too wonderful in its way to believe in. Have you ascertained how -Crabb became possessed of that magical drug?--and magical it must be, -captain, for I give you my word that never showed any corpse deader -than that fellow when Hemmeridge removed the canvas from his face.’ - -‘I beg your honour’s pardon,’ exclaimed Bobbins, preserving his -lamenting and whining voice, and knuckling his forehead as he spoke, -whilst I could see old Keeling lifting his eyes to him with disgust -and aversion strong in his purple countenance. ‘Mr. Willett told me -that Crabb ’ud say he’d got that there stuff off a travelling Jew that -he fell in with at some Mediterranean port. He bought two lots of it, -and tried a dose on a man who took it unbeknown, reckoning it good for -spasms. He believed as it had killed the chap, sich was his corpse-like -swound; but he come to all right arter four-and-twenty hours, and niver -knowed nothen about it, and believed it still to be Monday when it were -Toosday. This put the scheme he tried on here into his head.’ - -‘Has he ever attempted anything of the same sort before?’ inquired -Keeling. - -‘I dunno, sir. He’s a bad un. It ’ud make a marble heffigy sweat to -hear him talk in his sleep.’ - -There was a knock at the cabin door, and Mr. Prance ushered in Mr. -Saunders. The little chap looked very small as he entered, holding his -large hat in his hand. He was pale, and stared up at us with something -of alarm as we rose to his entrance, the skipper giving him the same -hide-bound bow that he had greeted me with. - -‘Is Mr. Saunders acquainted with the story of this business, Mr. -Prance?’ old Keeling inquired. - -‘Yes, sir,’ replied the mate. ‘I gave him the substance of it in a few -words as we came along.’ - -‘It is extremely startling,’ said the little man, climbing on to the -chair into which old Keeling had waved him, and dangling his short legs -over the edge as a small boy might. - -‘Your knowledge of drugs and medicines, Mr. Saunders, is, I believe, -very considerable?’ said the skipper. The little fellow bowed. ‘This,’ -said Keeling, holding up the phial, ‘is a drug, the stupefying effects -of which, I am informed, are so remarkable that any one who takes it -entirely loses animation, and presents such an aspect of death as will -deceive the eye of the most expert medical practitioner. Is such a -thing conceivable, Mr. Saunders?’ - -The little man reflected very earnestly for some moments, with his eyes -fixed upon Keeling. He then asked Mr. Prance to hand him the phial, -which he uncorked, and smelt and tasted. - -‘I cannot be positive,’ he exclaimed, with a slow, wise shake of -his large head; ‘but I strongly suspect this to be what is known as -_morion_, the death-wine of Pliny and Dioscorides. Mr. Dugdale, observe -the strange, peculiar faint smell--what does it suggest?’ - -I put the bottle to my nose and sniffed. ‘Opium will it be, Mr. -Saunders?’ - -‘Just so,’ he cried. ‘Captain Keeling, smell you, sir.’ - -The old skipper applied the bottle to his nostrils and snuffled a -little. ‘I should call this a kind of opium,’ said he. - -‘If,’ exclaimed Mr. Saunders, ‘it be morion, as I believe it is, it -is made from the mandragora or mandrake of the kind that flourishes -in Greece and Palestine and in certain parts of the Mediterranean -seaboard.’ - -‘But am I to understand,’ said Keeling, ‘that a dose of it is going to -make a man look as dead as if he were killed?’ - -‘The effect of morion,’ responded Mr. Saunders, ‘is that of suspended -animation, scarcely distinguishable from death.’ - -‘Could it deceive a qualified man such as Dr. Hemmeridge?’ demanded the -skipper. - -‘I should think it very probable,’ answered little Saunders cautiously; -‘in fact, sir, as we have seen, he _was_ deceived by the effects of -that drug, be it morion or anything else.’ - -‘You can go forward,’ said the captain to Bobbins. - -The fellow flourished a hand to his brow and left the cabin. - -‘Mr. Saunders, I am obliged to you, sir, for your information,’ -continued old Keeling. ‘I trust to have your opinion confirmed either -in Bombay or in London. To me it seems a very incredible thing. Mr. -Dugdale, I thank you for the trouble you have given yourself to attend -here.’ - -He bowed; and little Saunders and myself, accompanied by Mr. Prance, -entered the cuddy. - -‘A most extraordinary business altogether,’ cried the little man: ‘it -is wonderful enough, supposing the stuff to be morion, that a common -sailor should be in possession of such a drug; but much more wonderful -yet that it should occur to him to employ it as an instrument in -probably the most audacious project ever adventured on board ship.’ - -‘Hemmeridge might have opened Crabb,’ said I. - -‘Well, the rogue foresaw it, and provided against it, as we know,’ -exclaimed Mr. Prance. ‘There is pocketable booty in the mail-room to -the value of hard upon a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A man like -Crabb will run risks for such plunder, Mr. Dugdale. If the sailmaker -had kept his word and produced the bottle to Hemmeridge, the doctor -would have been pretty sure to stay his hand.’ - -‘Why, likely as not,’ I exclaimed: ‘but tell me, Mr. Prance--that -fellow Bobbins seems to have been coaxed very easily into peaching.’ - -‘Ay,’ said he; ‘there’d been an ugly quarrel between him and Willett -ten days ago. I believe the rascal would not have split whilst Crabb -lay snug and secret in the hold, but on his showing himself, Bobbins -took fright, thought of his neck, and being actuated besides by hatred -of Willett, came forward and volunteered the whole yarn.’ - -‘And how is he to be served?’ inquired Mr. Saunders. - -‘Left to be at large, sir,’ answered the mate; ‘and punishment enough, -too, as any one may suppose, of a false-hearted, lily-livered shipmate -who has to swing his hammock three or four months among a forecastle -full of hands. For my part,’ added he with a laugh, ‘if I were that -miscreant, I’d rather be snug in irons along with Willett and the -cast-eyed pirate, stowed safe out of sight.’ - -He entered his cabin, and Mr. Saunders and I stepped on to the -quarter-deck. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -WE SIGHT A WRECK - - -The wonder and excitement raised in us by the extraordinary forecastle -conspiracy to plunder the ship’s mail-room passed away in two or three -days. Monotony at sea is heavy and flattening. It passes over the soul -as an iron roller over a lawn, and smoothes down every asperity of -memory into the merest flatness of moods and humours. Hemmeridge showed -himself no more. I never again saw him whilst I was in the _Countess -Ida_. He lay hid in his cabin, where he was fed, by the captain’s -orders, from the cuddy table; but he refused to leave his berth, swore -he would not prescribe so much as a pill though a pestilence should -fall upon the whole ship’s company, and virtually left us all without -the means of obtaining professional advice. His part in Crabb’s and the -sailmaker’s scheme was vehemently discussed, as you will suppose. The -colonel of course was without a shadow of a doubt of his guilt; but -the rest of us, saving Mr. Johnson, who declined to give an opinion, -considered him as wholly innocent. - -Little Saunders gave himself a small air of importance as a person -referred to by the captain on his knowledge of herbs, and strutted on -the merits of his suspicion that the liquor was what he called morion. -He took me into his cabin, and climbing into his bunk, produced a folio -volume half the size of himself, with which he dropped upon the deck, -hugging the book to his heart as though it were his wife. - -‘Here,’ said he, opening the volume and pointing at it and looking -up into my face, ‘is an account of the growth out of which morion is -extracted. That,’ continued he, still pointing with a little forefinger -and a long white nail, ‘is a picture of the plant in flower. This is -an illustration of the young fruit. Here is the ovary, and here is the -stamen. It is, in short, the well known mandragora of Hippocrates. It -consists of three or four species of stemless herbs, perennial,’ said -he, carrying his eyes to the book, ‘and very hardy. Their roots are -large and thick; and, as I told the captain,’ cried he with a little -movement of triumph, and pointing to the sentence eagerly, ‘it is an -inhabitant of the Mediterranean parallels.’ - -And then the little chap read out a long description of the flowers of -the mandrake, of the corolla and lobes, of the berries and leaves, and -I know not what else besides, in all of which my ignorant ear could -find nothing of the smallest interest. - -He afterwards went with his big book to the skipper, who, Mr. Prance -told me, was impressed, though he was not to be persuaded. - -‘He will not believe,’ said the chief officer, ‘that there can be any -aspect in a living body to deceive a medical man into a belief that the -person is dead. I said to him: “How about the folks that are buried -alive, sir?” He answered: “They are unhappy wretches, whom ignorant -and gross persons, calling themselves medical men, lightly glance at -and pronounce dead, and hurry away from. Hemmeridge would know better, -sir. He _does_ know better. I cannot satisfy myself that he could not -distinguish life in that man Crabb. And what’s the inference then? No -matter, sir. I will have this thing gone closely into when we arrive -at Bombay.” Captain Keeling is an obstinate old sailor, Mr. Dugdale,’ -continued the mate. ‘In truth, Hemmeridge is as innocent as you or I.’ - -Three days passed away. All this while the Indiaman was scarcely doing -more than rippling through it. It was hard to realise that we were out -in the mid-heart almost of one of old earth’s mightiest oceans, so -peaceful was the water, so still the heavens, so placid the dim sultry -distances, where sky and sea were blended in a blue faintness, out of -the north-west corner of which the light wind blew without power enough -to swing the foot of the courses or to put a twinkle into the tall -moon-coloured cloths of the topmast studdingsails. - -It was a Monday morning, as very well indeed do I remember. I went -on deck at about seven o’clock for a bath; and on looking over the -forecastle rail, down away upon the starboard bow I caught sight of -something sparkling that might very well have passed for the reflection -in the water of a brilliant luminary. The old Scotch carpenter -was leaning against the forecastle capstan smoking a pipe, his -weather-hardened face of leather drooping over his folded arms. - -‘Pray, what is that object shining down there?’ said I. - -‘Well, it puzzled me, sir,’ he answered, slowly raising his head, -and then leisurely staring in the direction of the appearance: ‘It’s -naething mair nor less than a ship’s hull, sir.’ - -By this time I was able to distinguish a bit clearer, and could trace, -amid the delicate haze of silver glory that was hanging all over the -sea that way, as it came in gushing and floating folds of magnificence -from the sun that was already many degrees above the horizon, the -outline of the hull of a small vessel, the proportions so faint as -to be almost illusive. She was too far distant to exhibit much more -than the mere flash she made, yet she was an object to constrain the -attention in that wide blank shining calm of sea, and I lingered a -little while looking at her, meanwhile yarning with the old carpenter -about Crabb and the sailmaker and the incident of the fire, and such -matters. - -At breakfast there was some talk about this hull, and Mr. Emmett told -the captain that he hoped a shot would be sent at her, as who was to -know but that another cargo of monkeys might be exorcised out of the -fabric. - -‘I should rather like to visit a wreck,’ I heard Miss Temple say across -the table to Mr. Colledge: ‘I mean, of course, an abandoned vessel -floating in the middle of the ocean.’ - -‘I protest I would rather die than think of such a thing,’ exclaimed -her aunt. - -‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Colledge; ‘it would be something to do and -something to talk about. Did you ever board a wreck, Captain Keeling?’ - -‘No, sir.’ - -‘I would choose a wreck,’ continued Miss Temple, in her clear, rich, -somewhat trembling voice, but with an air that let you know she -confined her speech to Mrs. Radcliffe and the young sprig opposite, -and old marline-spike, as I love to call him, ‘that had been abandoned -for months, indeed for years, if such a thing could be: a hull covered -with shells and weed and grass, into which the spirit of the enormous -loneliness of the wide ocean had entered, so that you could get to -think of her as a creation of the sea itself, as an uninhabited island -is, or a noble seabird. Think,’ she continued, fixing her large dark -eyes upon Colledge with a light, almost sarcastic smile flickering -about her lips, as though she was perfectly sensible that her -thoughts and language were a trifle taller than that honourable young -gentleman’s intellectual stature rose to--‘think of being utterly alone -during a long, breathless, moonlit night on board such a wreck as I am -imagining. The stillness! the imaginations which would come shaping out -of the shadows! By putting one’s ear to the hatchway, as you sailors -call it, Captain Keeling, what should one be able to hear?’ - -‘The noise of water washing about below, ma’am--I don’t see what else,’ -answered the old skipper, stiffening up his figure, whilst he adjusted -his cravat, and gazing at her with a highly literal countenance over -the points of his shirt collars. - -She did not seem to hear him; her head had drooped, as though to a -sudden engrossing thought, and her gaze rested upon something which her -delicate fingers toyed with upon the table. - -‘What very odd fancies you have, Louise,’ exclaimed Mrs. Radcliffe with -a peck of her face at the girl’s handsome profile. - -‘Rather a good subject for a descriptive article, Johnson,’ exclaimed -Emmett aside with a drawl. - -‘Or for a picture,’ answered Johnson; ‘better on canvas than on paper, -I think; don’t you, Mr. Saunders? Calm sea--a moon up in the air--a -wreck showing black against the white reflection under the planet--a -haughty young lady’--here he softened his voice--‘inclining her head to -the fore-hatch with her hand to her ear.--A first-class idea, Emmett. -Seize it, or it may occur to another man.’ - -Miss Temple was speaking again, but the rude imbecile jabber of the -journalist prevented me from hearing her; and bestowing a sea-blessing -on his head under my breath, I left the table and went on deck. - -There was every promise of a dead calm anon. The sea looked like ice -in places with the bluish glint of the brine that softened the lines -and curves betwixt the crawlings of the air into a tender contrast for -the lustrous azure of the water where it was touched by the wind. It -was a high, hot, cloudless morning, the topmost canvas, white as milk, -looking dizzy up in the blue, as though it trembled in some sultry -belt of atmosphere there. I went to the rail to view the wreck, and -instantly made out on the other side of her the shining square of a -sail--some ship on the rim of the horizon that had crawled into sight -since six bells of the morning watch, and was now creeping down the -smooth plain of sea with her yards braced somewhat forward, making a -wind for herself out of what was scarce more than a catspaw to us, who -had the thin fanning nearly over the stern. - -Prance came up from the breakfast table with a telescope in his hand -and stood by my side. - -‘That ship down yonder grows,’ he exclaimed, pointing the glass and -speaking with his eye at it; ‘there’ll be more air stirring down there -than here; but little enough anywhere presently, though I tell you -what, Mr Dugdale, there’s drop enough in the mercury to inspire one -with hope.’ - -He brought the telescope to bear upon the hull, and was silent for -a few moments, whilst I waited impatiently for him to make an end, -wanting to look too. - -‘I don’t think I can be mistaken,’ said he presently in a musing -voice: ‘look you, Mr. Dugdale.’ - -‘At what?’ said I, as I took the glass from him. - -‘At the hull yonder.’ - -I put the telescope upon the rail and knelt to it. Points which were -invisible to the naked sight were clear enough now. The wreck was that -of a vessel of some two hundred and fifty tons. She sat very light or -high upon the water, and it was a part of the copper that rose to her -bends which had emitted the flash that caught my eye on the forecastle. -Her foremast was standing, and her foreyard lay crossed upon it. Her -bowsprit also forked out, but the jib-booms were gone. Lengths of her -bulwark were smashed level to the deck; but gaunt as her mastless -condition made her look, miserable as she showed in the mutilation of -her sides, the beautiful shape of the hull stole out upon the sight -through the deformities of her wrecked condition, as the fine shape of -a woman expresses itself in defiance of the beggar’s rags which may -clothe her. - -‘By George, then, Mr. Prance--why, yes, to be sure! I see what you -mean,’ I cried all on a sudden--‘that must be our buccaneering friend -of the other day!’ - -‘Neither more nor less,’ said he; ‘an odd rencontre certainly, -considering what a big place the sea is. And yet I don’t know: such -a clipper will have sailed two feet to our one, though she exposed -no more than her foresail. She’ll have run as we did, and the light -airs and baffling weather which followed will easily account for this -meeting.’ - -‘She is not yet the handful of charred staves you thought her, Mr. -Prance,’ said I; ‘they managed to get the fire under anyway, though -they had to abandon the brig in the end. What is that fellow beyond -her? She has the look of a man-of-war: a ship, I believe: yes, I think -I can catch sight of the yards on the mizzen peeping past the sails on -the main.’ - -All her canvas had risen, but nothing of her hull, saving the black -film of her bulwark hovering upon the horizon with an icy gleam betwixt -it and the sea-line, as though there was no more of her than that. When -the others came on deck there was no little excitement amongst them on -learning that the hull was neither more nor less than the veritable -wreck of the brig whose presence had filled us with alarm and misery a -few days before. Glasses of all sorts were brought to bear upon her, -and by this time it was to be ascertained without doubt that she was -absolutely deserted; ‘unless,’ I heard Mr. Emmett say to Mr. Prance, -‘her people should be lying concealed within, hoping to coax us to -visit her by an appearance of being deserted, when, of course, they -would cut us off, and plunder our remains--I mean, those who would be -fools enough to board her out of curiosity.’ - -‘Likely as not,’ Mr. Prance answered with a sour smile. ‘I would advise -you not to attempt to inspect her.’ - -‘Not I,’ answered the painter; and the chief officer turned abruptly -from him to smother a laugh. - -It was not long, however, before the delicate miracle of distant canvas -shining past the hull upon the calm blue like some spire of alabaster -was recognised as a man-of-war, not alone by the cut of her canvas and -by other peculiarities aloft readily determinable by the seafaring -eye, but by the chequered band upon her hull, that had mounted fair -to the firm crystal-like rim of the ocean, and by the line of white -hammock-cloths that crowned her tall defences. She was some small -corvette or ship-sloop, with her nationality to be sworn to even all -that way off. - -‘An Englishman, do you think, Captain Keeling?’ asked Colonel Bannister. - -‘Oh, God bless my heart, yes, sir,’ answered the skipper. - -‘Now, _how_ do you know, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. - -‘By my instincts as a Briton, ma’am,’ he answered; ‘patriotism so -enlarges the nostril that a man can taste with his nose whenever -anything of his country’s about in the air.’ - -‘To think of it now!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hudson. ‘I’m sorry the robbers -have left that wreck. I should like the pirates to have been caught by -the man-of-war and hung up.’ - -The hour of noon had been ‘made,’ as it is called at sea, and it was -then a dead calm, with the clear chimes of eight bells ringing through -a wonderful stillness on high, so faint was the undulation in the -water, so soft the stir in the canvas to the gentle swaying of the -tall spars. The wreck of the brig lay about two miles distant off the -starboard beam, and by this hour the corvette, as she now proved to -be, with the crimson cross fluttering at her peak, had floated to -within a mile and a half or thereabouts on the other side of the hull; -and thus the three of us lay. The corvette, slewing her length out to -us to the twist of some subtle current upon the still surface, showed -a very handsome stately figure of a ship, at that distance at least. -Her sails had the fairy-like delicacy of silver tint you observe in -the moon when she hangs in an afternoon sky; they fitted the yardarms -to perfection, and I stood admiring for a long quarter of an hour at -a time the graceful lines of the bolt-ropes faintly curving to the -yardarm sheave-holes, each clew looking a little way past the corner of -the sail beneath it. A gilt figure-head of some royal device flashed -at her bows and shed a ruddy gleam upon the water under it. There was -the glistering of gilt about her quarter-galleries, and the sparkle of -glass there. But Mr. Prance said that he would swear she was an old -ship, her timbers as soft as cheese, and her chain-pumps nearly worn -out with plying, for all that she looked in the perspective of that -azure atmosphere as airy a beauty as ever gave the milk-white bosoms of -her canvas to the wind. - -I went down on the quarter-deck to smoke a pipe, and whilst I lay -over the bulwark rail watching the man-of-war, my eye was taken by a -somewhat curious appearance in the line of the ocean away down in the -south-west quarter. It was a sensible depression in the edge of the -sea, as though you viewed it through defective window-glass. It was -an atmospheric effect, and an odd one. The circle went round with the -clearness of the side of a lens, save to that part, and there it looked -as though some gigantic knife had pared a piece clean out--with this -addition: that there was a curious sort of faintness as of mist where -the sky joined the sea in the hollow of this queer dip. I ran my eye -over the poop to see if others up there were noting this appearance, -but I did not observe that it had won attention. For my part, I should -have made nothing of it, accepting it as some trick of refraction, but -for it somehow entering into my head to remember how the second mate of -the ship I had made my first voyage in once told me of a sudden shift -of weather that had taken his craft aback and wrecked her to her tops, -and that it had been heralded, though there was no man to interpret the -sign, by just such another horizontal depression as that upon which my -eyes were now resting. - -However, on dismounting from the bulwarks for a brief yarn with little -Saunders, the matter went out of my mind and I thought no more of it. - -Whilst we were at lunch, Mr. Cocker came down the companion steps cap -in hand, and said something to the captain. - -‘All right, sir,’ I heard old Keeling answer: ‘it will be a visit of -curiosity rather than of courtesy. How far is the boat?’ - -‘She’s only just left the wreck, sir.’ - -‘Very well, Mr. Cocker.’ - -The second mate remounted the steps. - -‘The corvette,’ exclaimed old Keeling, addressing us generally, ‘has -sent a boat to the wreck, presumably to overhaul and report upon her. -The boat is now approaching us. I have little doubt that the corvette -is homeward bound, in which case, ladies and gentlemen, you might be -glad to send letters by her. There will be plenty of time. The calm, I -fear, threatens to last.’ - -There was instantly a hurry amongst the passengers, most of whom rushed -away from the table to write their letters. - -I emptied my wine-glass and went on deck, and saw a man-of-war’s boat -approaching us; the bright ash oars rose and fell with exquisite -precision, and the white water spat from the stem of the little craft -as she was swept through it by the rowers, with a young fellow in -the uniform of a naval lieutenant of that day steering her. She came -flashing alongside; up rose the oars, the lively hearty in the bows -hooked on, and the officer, lightly springing on to the rope ladder -which had been dropped over the side for his convenience, gained the -deck with a twist of his thumb that was meant as a salutation to the -ship. - -Old Keeling was now on the poop, and Mr. Cocker conducted the -lieutenant to him. I happened to be standing near, talking with -Colledge and Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Temple not yet having returned with -the letter which she had gone to her cabin to write. The skipper -received the naval officer with a gracious bow. - -‘Our captain,’ exclaimed the young fellow, in a gentlemanly easy way, -‘instructed me to overhaul yonder wreck, and then come on to you to see -if we can be of any service;’ and I saw his eye rest with an expression -of delight upon Miss Hudson, who rose through the companion at that -instant and drew close to hear what passed. - -‘Sir,’ cried old Keeling, with another bow, ‘I am obliged to your -captain, sir. It is, sir, very considerate of him to send. My -passengers are preparing letters, and we shall be very sensible of your -goodness in receiving and transmitting them.’ - -‘Pray, what ship is this, sir?’ exclaimed the lieutenant, glancing -about him with the curiosity of a stranger, and then taking another -thirsty peep at the golden young lady. - -‘The _Countess Ida_, sir, of and from London for Bombay, so many days -out. And pray, what ship is that?’ - -‘His Majesty’s ship _Magicienne_.’ - -Colledge started. ‘Beg pardon,’ he exclaimed. ‘Isn’t Sir Edward Panton -her commander?’ - -‘He is,’ answered the lieutenant. - -‘By George, my cousin!’ cried Colledge; ‘haven’t seen him these seven -years. How doocid odd, now, to fall in with him _here_!’ - -‘Oh, indeed,’ said the lieutenant, with a hint of respect in his manner -that might have been wanting in it before. ‘May I venture to ask your -name?’ - -‘Colledge.’ - -‘Ah! of course; a son of my Lord Sandown. This will be news for Sir -Edward.’ He sent a look at the corvette, as though measuring the -distance between the vessels. - -‘Sir,’ here said old Keeling, ‘I believe that luncheon is still upon -the table. Let me conduct you below, sir. It will have been a mighty -hot ride for you out upon those unsheltered waters.’ - -The lieutenant bowed, and followed the skipper to the companion. -Colledge put his arm through mine and led me to the rail. - -‘I say, Dugdale,’ he exclaimed. ‘I should like to see my cousin. It -would be rather a lark to visit his ship, wouldn’t it? Not too far off, -is she, d’ye think?’ he added, cocking his eye at the vessel. - -‘Why, no; not on such a day as this.’ - -‘Will you come if I go?’ - -‘With the greatest pleasure.’ - -‘Oh, that’s downright jolly of you, by George. We’ll go in my cousin’s -boat, and he’ll send us back. I like the look of those men-of-war’s -men. It makes one feel safe even to see them rowing. Ah, there goes -something to drink for the poor fellows. Upon my word, old Keeling -buttons up a kind heart under that queer coat of his.’ - -‘I presume,’ said I, ‘that the lieutenant will make no difficulty in -consenting to carry us in his boat. I am ignorant of the rules which -govern his service. Suppose you step below, and arrange with him? If he -may not take us, Keeling will lend us a boat, I am sure.’ - -Down he went full of eagerness, his handsome face flushed with -excitement. Mrs. Radcliffe had joined two or three ladies, and stood -with them asking questions of Mr. Cocker about the corvette and the -wreck. On glancing through the skylight presently, I saw the lieutenant -picking a piece of cold fowl at the table, with a bottle of champagne -at his elbow. Old Keeling sat at his side, and opposite were Colledge -and Miss Temple. The four of them were chatting briskly. I took a peep -at the boat under the gangway. It was a treat to see the jolly English -faces of the fellows, and to hear the tongue of the old home spoken -over the side. A number of our seamen had perched themselves on the -bulwarks and were calling questions to the men-of-war’s-men whilst they -watched them draining the glasses which the steward had sent down to -them in a basket. From the answers the fellows made I gathered that the -_Magicienne_ was from Simon’s Bay, having been relieved on the coast, -where she had been stationed for I will not pretend to remember how -long. Small wonder that the bronzed, round-faced, bullet-headed, but -exceedingly gentlemanly lieutenant should have fixed a transported eye -on the sweet face and golden hair and the violet stars of Miss Hudson -after his unendurably long frizzling months of West African beauties. - -In about twenty minutes he made his appearance upon deck, followed by -Keeling and Miss Temple and Colledge, who came sliding up to me to say -that it was all right: the lieutenant would convey us with pleasure and -bring us back: and what did I think? Miss Temple was to be of our party. - -‘Humph!’ said I; ‘any other ladies?’ - -He made a grimace. ‘No,’ he responded in a whisper; ‘the lieutenant -suggested others; but I could twig in Miss Temple’s face that if others -went she would remain. You know there’s not a woman on board that she -cares about. I rather want,’ said he, returning to his former voice, -‘to introduce her to my cousin. He will be seeing my father when he -returns, and is pretty sure to talk,’ said he, giving me a wink. - -‘Does Miss Temple know that you’ve invited me?’ - -‘She does, Trojan.’ - -‘And how did she receive the news?’ - -‘With rapture,’ he cried. - -‘A fig for such raptures! but I’ll go, spite of her delight.’ - -By this time Miss Temple had made known her intentions to her aunt. -I became aware of this circumstance by the old lady uttering a loud -shriek. - -‘It is entirely out of the question; I forbid you to go,’ she cried, -with a face of agony on her. - -‘Nonsense!’ answered Miss Temple: she and her aunt and old Keeling and -the lieutenant were slowly coming towards the break of the poop, where -Colledge and I waited whilst this altercation proceeded; so everything -said was plainly to be heard by us. ‘It is as calm as a river,’ -exclaimed the girl, sending one of her flashing looks at the sea. - -‘You may be drowned; you may never return. I will not permit it. What -would your mother think?’ cried poor Mrs. Radcliffe vehemently, pecking -away with her face, and clapping her hands to emphasise her words. - -‘Aunt, do not be ridiculous, I beg. I shall go. It will amuse me, and -I am already very weary of the voyage. Only consider: at this rate of -sailing we may be five or six months longer at sea. This is a little -harmless, safe distraction. Now, _don’t_ be foolish, auntie.’ - -The old lady appealed to Captain Keeling. He was looking somewhat -dubiously round the horizon when the lieutenant broke in; then Colledge -indulged in a flourish, and though I can’t trace the steps of it, nor -recollect the talk, somehow or other a little later on the three of us -were in the boat, a bag of letters on a thwart, the lieutenant picking -up the yoke-lines as he seated himself, the bow-oar thrusting off, -with a vision through the open rail of the poop of old Captain Keeling -stiffly sawing the air with his arms, in some effort, as I took it, to -console Mrs. Radcliffe, who flourished a handkerchief to her face as -though she wept. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -THE ‘MAGICIENNE’ - - -The corvette looked a mighty long distance away from the low elevation -of the boat’s gunwale--almost as far as the horizon, it seemed to my -eyes, though from the height of the deck of the Indiaman the sea-line -showed something above the bulwarks of the man-of-war. One hardly -noticed the movement in the sea on board the _Countess Ida_, so solemn -and steady was the swing of the great fabric, a movement stealing into -one’s thoughts like a habit, and leaving one unconscious of it; but -the heave was instantly to be felt in the boat, and I own that I could -not have believed there was so much swell until I felt the lift of the -noiseless polished fold and marked the soft blue volume of the water -brimming to the hot and blistered sides and green sheathing of the -Indiaman. - -A huge lump of a ship she looked as we were swept away from her; her -masts soaring in three spires with the flash of a vane above the airy -gossamer of the loftiest cloths; groups of passengers watching us from -the violet-tinted shadow under the awning, heads of seamen at the rail, -or figures of them upon the forecastle near the huge cathead that -struck a shadow of its own into the water under it. The great bowsprit -went tapering to the delicacy of the flying-jib-boom end marshalling -the flight of white jibs; a stream of radiance floated in the water -under each large window. Inexpressible is the effect she produced taken -along with the dwindling of her to the impulse of our oars, with the -fining down into thinnest notes of the voices of the people, and with -the soft and still softening sounds of her canvas lightly swaying. - -‘A grand old ship,’ exclaimed the lieutenant. - -‘I had no idea she owned such a handsome stern,’ said Colledge; -‘quite a blaze of gilt, I do protest, Miss Temple. How gloriously old -Keeling’s cabin-window sparkles amid the gingerbread magnificence of -decoration.’ - -‘What is there in the art of painting to reproduce such a picture -as that?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, with her dark eyes glowing to the -mood of delight raised in her by the beautiful spectacle. ‘It is like -looking at an image in a soap-bubble. What brush could fling those -silver-bluish daintinesses of tint upon canvas, and make one see the -ship through this atmosphere filled with ocean-light?’ - -‘Ocean-light!’ exclaimed the lieutenant, viewing her with an air of -profound admiration; ‘that is the fit expression, madam. Light at sea -is different from light on shore.’ - -‘As how?’ cried Colledge. - -‘Oh, my dear fellow, see what a reflecting eye the ocean has,’ said I; -‘it stares back in glory to the glory that looks down upon it. Mould -and clay can’t do that, you know.’ - -‘True,’ said the lieutenant. - -‘Pray,’ said I, addressing him, ‘when you overhauled that hull yonder, -did you meet with anything to warrant our suspicion that she was a -rover?’ - -‘I found no papers,’ said he; ‘forward, she is burnt into a shell. All -her guns are gone--dropped overboard, I suppose, to keep her afloat. -She has a little round-house aft, and in it sits a man.’ - -‘A man?’ exclaimed Miss Temple. - -‘He sits in a musing posture,’ continued the lieutenant; ‘he frowns, -and seems vexed. He holds a feather pen in one hand, and supports his -head on the elbow of his left arm, but he doesn’t write: possibly -because there is no ink and the wind seems to have blown his paper -away.’ - -‘Is he dead?’ exclaimed Miss Temple. - -‘Quite,’ responded the lieutenant, with a smile of enjoyment of her -beauty. - -‘God bless me!’ cried Colledge, staring at the hull under the sharp of -his hand. - -‘Is she a picaroon, think you, sir?’ said I. - -‘Impossible to say,’ he answered; ‘there are stands of small-arms in -her cabin below, and a sweep of ’tweendecks full of piratic bedding. -She will have been crowded with sailors, I should think, sir.’ - -The six men-of-war’s men were making the fine little cutter hum as -they bent to their oars, one hairy face showing past another, the eyes -of each man upon his blade, though now and again one or another would -steal a respectful peep at Miss Temple. What exquisite discipline their -demeanour suggested! One hardly needed to do more than glance at them -to sound to the very depths the whole philosophy of our naval story. -How should it be otherwise than as it is with a nation that could be -the mother of such children as those fellows? - -The lieutenant was very talkative, and had a deal to say about the -West Coast of Africa and Cape Town; and he had a great many questions -to ask about home. Miss Temple constantly directed her eyes over the -side, as though affected and even startled by the proximity of the -mighty surface. And boundless the light blue heaving plain looked as it -went swimming to the far-off slope of sky that it seemed to wash--the -vaster, the more enormous for the breaks of toy-like craft upon it; for -the Indiaman and the corvette were standards to assist the mind into -some perception of the surrounding immensity, and never to me did the -heavens seem so high nor the curve of the ocean boundary so remote as I -found them from the low seat of the cutter, with the corvette growing -over the bow, and the Indiaman astern dwarfed to the dimensions of a -boy’s model of a ship. - -It was a longer pull than I should have believed, and roastingly hot, -thanks to the flaming reflection that filled the heart of the sea, and -to the motionless atmosphere, which was scarcely to be stirred even -into the subtlest fanning of the cheek by our passage through it. Miss -Temple’s face in the shadow of her parasol resembled some incomparable -carving in marble, and but little of vitality was to be seen in it -outside of her rich, full, eloquent eyes, when she fell into some pause -of thought and looked away into the dim blue distance as though she -beheld a vision down in it. The corvette appeared deserted, with her -high bulwarks topped yet with a line of hammocks; but it was easy to -see that it was known on board the lieutenant was bringing a lady along -with others to visit the man-of-war, for there was already a proper -gangway ladder over the side, with a grating to step out on, though the -broad-beamed craft swayed more to the swell than the Indiaman, and so -dipped the platform that it needed a deal of manoeuvring to save Miss -Temple from wetting her feet. - -Sir Edward Panton, a tall, exceedingly handsome man, with iron-grey -hair and a sun-reddened complexion, received us at the gangway. He -seemed scarcely able to believe his eyes when Colledge called out to -him. He welcomed Miss Temple with an air of lofty respectful dignity -that would have sat well upon some nobleman of magnificence welcoming -a royal visitor to his home. Chairs were brought from the cabin and -placed on the quarter-deck in the shelter of the awning, along with -a little table, upon which were put some excellent sherry, claret, -and seltzer-water, and a box of capital cigars. The look of this -ship, after the Indiaman’s encumbered decks broken by their poop and -topgallant forecastle, was a real treat to the seafaring eye. She -was flush fore and aft: every plank was as white as a peeled almond; -the black breeches of her artillery gave a noble, massive, imposing -character to her tall, immensely thick bulwarks; the ratlines showed -straight as thin bars of iron in the wide spread of shrouds and -topmast rigging; the running gear was flemish-coiled; the brass-work -sparkled like burnished gold; the snow-like cloths of the fore-course -gathered an amazing brightness from their mere contrast with the red -coat of a marine pacing the forecastle; the sailors, in white clothes, -straw-hats, and naked feet, sprang softly here and there to the light -chirrupings of a pipe, or went on with the various jobs they were about -on deck and in the rigging amid a silence that one might ask for in -vain among a crew of merchantmen. Far away down upon the starboard beam -was the Indiaman, blue in the airy distance, with a sort of winking of -shadows upon her square and lofty canvas, as the cloths swung in and -out, brightening and dimming. - -Sir Edward was delighted to see his cousin, and it seemed as if there -was to be no end to their talk, so numberless were the questions -the commander put about home, his family, doings in London, matters -political, and so on, and so on. I had a chance, whilst Colledge was -spinning some long twister of private interest to Sir Edward, to -exchange a few words with Miss Temple, whose behaviour in the main -might have easily led me to believe that she was absolutely unconscious -of my presence; in fact, I shouldn’t have addressed her then but for -finding in the domestic and personal gossip of the two cousins an -obligation of either talking or walking away. - -‘The _Countess Ida_ looks a long distance off, Miss Temple.’ - -‘Farther, I think, than this ship looks from her.’ - -‘That is owing to a change in the atmosphere. We shall be having some -weather by-and-by.’ - -‘Not before we return, I hope.’ - -‘The blue thickens yonder,’ I exclaimed, indicating that quarter of the -sea where I had noticed the depression of the horizon. - -She gazed listlessly; her eyes then went roaming over the ship with a -sparkle in them of the pleasure the whiteness and the brightness and -the orderliness of all that she beheld gave her. - -Presently Sir Edward exclaimed: ‘Miss Temple, you would like to inspect -this vessel, I am sure. I wish to show Stephen my wife’s portrait, and -I want you to see it. Mr. Dugdale, you will join us.’ - -Down we went into a very pleasant cabin, and the captain produced a -water-colour sketch of his lady. - -‘A sweet face!’ exclaimed Miss Temple; whilst Sir Edward gazed at the -picture with eyes full of the yearning heart of a sailor long divorced -from his love. - -‘Have you found your charmer yet, Stephen?’ said he. ‘Any girl won your -budding affections?’ - -The youth looked at me suddenly and turned of a deep red. I believe he -would have said no at once, and with a cocksure face, had I not been -there. Miss Temple’s gaze rested upon him. - -‘Why, who is it, Stephen, eh?’ exclaimed Sir Edward with a merry laugh. -‘See how he blushes, Miss Temple! a sure sign that he has let go his -anchor, though he is riding to a long scope all the way out here. Who -is it, Steve?’ - -‘Oh, hang it, Ned, never mind; you bother a fellow so,’ answered -Colledge with a fine air of mingled irritation and confusion, and a -half-look at me that was just the same as saying, ‘What an ass I am -making of myself!’ - -‘Miss Temple,’ exclaimed Sir Edward, laughing heartily again, ‘he -may possibly have confided the lady’s name to you? Pray satisfy my -curiosity, that I may congratulate him before we part.’ - -‘I am as ignorant as you are,’ she replied, with an expression of cold -surprise in her face. - -I marched to a porthole to look out, that I might conceal an -irrepressible grin. - -‘I say, show us the ship, will ye, Ned?’ shouted Colledge; ‘there’s a -long pull before us, and we’re bound to India, you know.’ - -Captain Panton led the way out of the cabin, and went in advance with -Miss Temple, pointing here and explaining there, and full of his ship. -Colledge sidled up to me. - -‘Dugdale,’ he exclaimed in a whisper, ‘do you believe that Miss Temple -will guess from my idiotic manner just now that I’m engaged to be -married?’ - -‘Oh yes; I saw her gaze sink right into you and then go clean through -you. It is best as it is, Colledge. You may breathe freely now.’ - -He smothered an execration, and continued gloomy and silent for some -time. There was not very much to be seen below. We were presently on -deck; and after another ten minutes’ chat, during which Colledge seemed -to regain his spirits, the boat was ordered alongside. - -‘It shall be my secret as well as yours, Stephen, long before you are -home from your tiger-hunts!’ exclaimed Sir Edward at the gangway, -waggishly shaking his forefinger at his cousin. - -We shook hands, entered the boat; the lieutenant took his seat, the -oars sparkled, and away we went with a flourish of our hats to the -commander, who stood for some time in the open gangway watching us. - -‘There’s a trifle more swell than there was, I fancy,’ said I to the -lieutenant. - -‘I think there is,’ he answered, looking over the sea as if he thought -of something else. - -‘What a confounded quiz Ned is!’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘He’s rather too -fond of a laugh at other people’s expense. I think that sort of thing a -mistake myself.’ - -‘He is a very handsome gentleman,’ said I. - -‘Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen him,’ said Colledge. ‘He’s a dear -good fellow, only---- I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip, Miss Temple?’ - -‘Thoroughly, thank you; it is a delightful change. How strange to think -of that toy yonder as being our home for some months to come! It is -like fancying one’s self as dwelling in a star, to see her floating out -there in the blue haze, as though she were poised in the atmosphere.’ - -She fastened her eyes on the Indiaman as she spoke. One saw in this -that she had a sailor’s observation for atmospheric effect. Star-like -the ship looked in the distance--a dash of misty light in the blue -haze, hovering, as it were, above the junction of sea and sky, where -the blending of the elements was so dim and hot that you couldn’t tell -where they met. - -‘Isn’t it thickening up a trifle, somehow?’ said I to the lieutenant. -‘Look to the right of the wreck there--what is that appearance?’ - -‘What do you see?’ he exclaimed. - -‘Why, to my fancy, it is as though there were a dust-storm miles away -yonder.’ - -He smiled, and answered: ‘Mere heat. One doesn’t need many months on -the West African coast to grow used to that sort of aspects. They -suggest nothing but quinine to me.’ - -‘What time is it?’ said Colledge. - -We pulled out our watches: it was half-past four. - -‘I am sorry we are returning to the Indiaman,’ said he. ‘I should like -to get away from her for a little while; then one would find something -of freshness in her when one returned. I am not thirsting to meet Mr. -Johnson and Mr. Emmett and Mr. Greenhew again. Are you, Miss Temple?’ - -She slightly smiled, and said, ‘I wish Bombay were as near to us as the -_Magicienne_ is to the Indiaman.’ - -‘I have an idea!’ cried Colledge, whose shining eyes, methought, seemed -to suggest the influence of the last large bumper of sherry he had -tossed down before leaving the corvette. ‘Let us kill another hour by -boarding the wreck.’ - -‘I shall be very pleased to put the boat alongside,’ said the -lieutenant. ‘What do you say, Miss Temple?’ - -She looked at the Indiaman, and then sent a swift glance at me, as -though she would read my face without having me know she had peeped at -it. - -‘Will there be time before it falls dark?’ she answered. ‘I am in -no hurry to return; but I do not want to make my aunt miserable by -remaining out upon the water until after sunset.’ - -‘Oh, we have abundance of time,’ said the lieutenant. - -‘It will give us so much to talk about,’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘I want -to see what sort of a ship it was that frightened us so abominably the -other day.’ - -‘What do you say, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple. - -‘I am thinking of the lonely sentinel this gentleman was telling us -about as we came along,’ said I. - -‘Oh, one peep! one peep at him, just one peep!’ cried Colledge: -‘_don’t_ let us go back to the Indiaman too soon. At this rate,’ he -added, turning up his slightly flushed face to the sky, ‘we may have -another six months of her.’ - -The lieutenant laughed, and, anxious to please him, as I supposed, -quietly pulled a yoke-line and swept the boat’s head fair for the -hull. His making nothing of the appearance I had called his attention -to was reassuring. I should have thought nothing of it either but for -the indent in the horizon that morning, and the recollection that grew -out of it, as I have told you. But then old Keeling had let us start -from his ship without a hint, and Sir Edward had uttered no caution, -though, to be sure, in those days the barometer was not the shaper -of marine speculations it has since become; and the silence of these -two skippers, and the smile and careless rejoinder of the lieutenant, -should have been amply satisfying. Nevertheless, there was no question -but that the light swell heaving out of the north-west was sensibly -gaining in volume and speed, and that it was the mere respiration of -the ocean I could by no means persuade myself, though it might signify -nothing. - -Colledge grew somewhat frolicsome; indeed, I seemed to find an -artificiality in his spirits, as though he would clear Miss Temple’s -memory of Captain Panton’s _badinage_ by laughter and jokes. The -lieutenant fell in with his humour, said some comical things, and told -one or two lively anecdotes of the blacks of that part of the coast the -corvette was fresh from. The men-of-war’s men pulled steadily, and the -keen stem of the cutter sheared through the oil-smooth surface with a -noise as of the ripping of satin; but now and again she would swing -down into a hollow that put the low sides of the wreck out of sight, -whilst, as we approached, I noticed that the hull was leaning from side -to side in a swing which did not need to greatly increase to put the -lieutenant to his trumps to get Miss Temple aboard. - -But by this time the girl was showing some vivacity, smiling at the -lieutenant’s jokes, laughing lightly in her clear, rich, trembling -tones at Colledge’s remarks. It seemed to me as if her previous -quietude had produced a resolution which she was now acting up to. -She was apparently eager to inspect the wreck, and said that such an -adventure would make a heroine of her at home when she came to tell the -story of it. - -It was a long, dragging pull over that heaving, breathless sea, and -through that sweltering afternoon, with its sky of the complexion -of brass about the zenith. The three craft, as they lay, formed a -right-angled triangle, the apex, to call it so, being the derelict, -and the getting to her involved a longer stretching of the Jacks’ -backs than, as I suspected, the lieutenant had calculated on. The -sweat poured from the men’s brows, and their faces were like purple -rags under their straw hats as they swung with the precision and the -monotony of the tick of a clock over the looms of their oars. - -‘She’s rather unsteady, isn’t she?’ exclaimed Colledge as we -approached the hulk. - -‘So much the better,’ said the lieutenant; ‘her bulwarks are gone, and -every dip inclines her bare deck as a platform for a jump.’ - -‘She may be sinking,’ cried Miss Temple. - -‘Dry as a bone, madam, I assure you,’ said the officer. ‘I looked into -her hold, and there’s scarce more water than would serve to drown a -rat.’ - -‘I see her name in long white letters under her counter,’ I exclaimed. -‘Can you read it, Colledge?’ - -‘The _Aspirante_,’ said the lieutenant. - -We now fell silent, with our eyes upon the hull, whilst the officer -manœuvred with the yoke-lines to run the cutter handsomely alongside. A -single chime from a bell came thrilling with a soft silver note through -the hushed air. Miss Temple started, and the officer grinned into -Colledge’s face, but nothing was said. She was a very clean wreck. Her -foremast stood stoutly supported by the shrouds; but the braces of the -foreyard were slack, and the swing of the spar, upon which the canvas -lay rolled in awkward heaps, roughly secured by lines, as though the -work of hands wild with hurry, somehow imparted a strange, forlorn, -most melancholy character to the nakedness of that solitary mast. She -showed no guns; her decks appeared to have been swept; the rise of her -in the water proved that her people must have jettisoned a deal of -whatever they were able to come at; her wheel was gone, and her rudder -slowly swayed to every heave. There were a few ropes’ ends over her -side, the hacked remains of standing-rigging; but the water brimmed -clear of wreckage to her channels. - -‘Oars!’ cried the lieutenant. The bowman sprang erect; and in a few -moments we were floating alongside, soaring and falling against the -black run of her, with the deck gaping through the length of smashed -bulwark to the level of our heads when we stood up, each time she came -lazily rolling over to us. The clear chime of the bell rang out again. - -‘What is it?’ cried Miss Temple. - -‘The ship’s bell,’ said the lieutenant; ‘it has got jammed as it hangs, -and the tongue strikes the side when the heave is a little sharper than -usual.’ - -He followed this on with certain directions to the men. Two of them, -watching their chance, sprang on to the slope of the deck, and then -went hoisting up away from us as the hull swayed wearily to starboard. -‘Stand by now!’ bawled the lieutenant. ‘Miss Temple, let me assist you -on to this thwart.’ She leapt upon it with something of defiance in her -manner, and the officer, grasping her elbow, supported her. I thought -Colledge looked a little uneasy and pale. We waited; but an opportunity -was some time in coming. - -‘Mr. Colledge,’ said the lieutenant, ‘be kind enough to take my place -and support the lady.’ He jumped lightly into the main-chains, and was -on deck in a jiffy. ‘Haul her in close, men. Now, Miss Temple. Catch -hold of my hand and of this sailor’s when I say so.’ - -Up swung the boat; the girl extended her hands, which were instantly -grasped. ‘Jump, madam!’ and she went in a graceful bound from the -thwart to the deck. - -I watched till a heave brought me on a line with the chains into which -I jumped. - -‘Now, Mr. Colledge!’ called out the lieutenant. He hung in the wind, -and I thought he would refuse to leave the boat; but Miss Temple with -her face slightly flushed stood watching as though waiting for him, -her noble figure swaying with a marvellous careless grace upon the -floating slopes of the planks; and this started him. He got on to a -thwart, where he was supported by a sailor till a chance offered for -his hands to be gripped, and then he was hauled on to the hull; but -he came perilously near to going overboard, for the sudden sinking -away of the cutter from under him paralysed his effort to jump, and he -swung against the side of the wreck in the grasp of the lieutenant and -a seaman, who dragged him up just in time to save his legs from being -ground by the soaring of the boat. The two sailors then jumped into the -cutter, which shoved off, and lay rising and falling upon the quarter -to the scope of her painter. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -ADRIFT - - -There was a small deck-house standing abaft the jagged ends of the -stump of the mainmast, a low-pitched, somewhat narrow, and rather long -structure, with a door facing the wheel, or where the wheel had stood, -and a couple of small windows on either hand, the glass of which was -entirely gone. - -‘The lonely watchman of this wreck is still at home, doubtless waiting -to receive us,’ said the lieutenant, pointing to the little building. -‘Shall we pay him a visit?’ - -‘Oh yes; let us see everything that there may be to look at,’ answered -Colledge, who had not yet recovered his breath, but who was working -hard, I could see, to regain his late air of vivacity, though he was -pale, and shot several uneasy glances around him as he spoke. - -‘I would rather not look,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it will make me dream.’ - -‘You will have nothing to talk about, then,’ said Colledge. - -‘It is the most natural object in the world,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; -‘if he could be stuffed, preserving the posture he is in, and exhibited -in London, thousands would assemble to view him.’ - -I left them to persuade Miss Temple if they could, and walking aft, -opened the door, and peeped in. It was just a plain, immensely strong, -roughly furnished deck erection, with a small hatch close against the -entrance, conducting, as I supposed, to the cabin beneath. On either -side went a row of lockers; in the centre was a short narrow table, -supported by stanchions; and at this table sat the figure of a man. He -was in an attitude of writing; his right hand grasped a long feather -pen; his left elbow was on the table, and his cheek was supported by -his hand. He was dressed in white jean breeches, the ends of which were -stuffed into a pair of yellow leather half-boots. There was a large -belt round his waist, clasped by some ornament resembling a two-headed -eagle, of a shining metal, probably silver. His shirt was a pale red -flannel, over which was a jacket cut in the Spanish fashion; his hair -was long, and flowed in black ringlets upon his back. His hat was a -large sombrero, and I had to walk abreast of him to see his face. I was -prepared to witness a ghastly sight. Instead, I beheld a countenance -of singular beauty. It was as if the hand of death had moulded some -faultless human countenance out of white wax. The lids of the eyes -drooped, and the gaze seemed rooted upon the table, as though the man -lay rapt and motionless in some sweet and perfect dream. His small -moustache was like a touch of delicate pencilling. He looked to have -been a person of some three or four and twenty years of age. - -As I stood surveying the figure, the interior was shadowed. Miss Temple -and the others stood in the doorway. The lieutenant and Colledge -entered; the girl would not approach. - -‘Here, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘is the handsomest man I have ever seen.’ - -‘Can he be dead?’ exclaimed Colledge in a subdued voice of awe. - -‘He’ll never be deader,’ said the lieutenant, peering curiously into -the face of the corpse. ‘_Handsome_, do you consider him, sir? Well, -we all have our tastes, to be sure. He looks like a woman masquerading.’ - -‘Who was he, I wonder?’ asked Miss Temple in a low tone, standing in a -half-shrinking attitude at the door. - -‘Very hard to say,’ said I. ‘Too young for the captain, I should think. -Probably the mate.’ - -‘A pirate, anyway,’ said the lieutenant. - -‘Hark!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘this ship is tolling his knell.’ - -The mellow chime floated past the ear. The effect was extraordinary, so -clear was the note as it rang through the soft sounds of the weltering -waters; so ghostly, wild, and unreal, too, the character it gathered -from the presence of that silent, stirless penman. - -‘I say, we’ve seen enough of him, I think,’ exclaimed Colledge. - -‘Shall we bury him?’ said I. - -‘Oh no, sir,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; ‘this sheer hulk is his coffin. -Leave the dead to bury their dead. Now for a glimpse of the cabin.’ - -Miss Temple entered with some reluctance; the lieutenant handed her -through the hatch down the short ladder, and Colledge and I followed. -We found ourselves in a moderately-sized state-room of the width of the -little vessel, with bulkheads at either end, each containing a couple -of cabins. There was a small skylight overhead, all the glass of it -shattered, but light enough fell through to enable us to see easily. -Colledge had plucked up heart, and now bustled about somewhat manfully, -opening the cabin doors, starting as if he saw horrible sights, -cracking jokes as in the boat, and calling to Miss Temple to look here -and look there, and so on. - -‘Hallo!’ cried the lieutenant, putting his head into one of the -cabins at the fore-end of the state-room; ‘I missed this room when I -overhauled her. What have we here? A pantry is it, or a larder?’ - -I looked over his shoulder, and by the faint light sifting through the -bull’s-eye in the deck, made out the contents of what was apparently -a storeroom. There were several shelves containing crockery, cheeses, -hams, and other articles of food. Under the lower shelf, heaped upon -the deck, were stowed several dozens of bottles in straw. - -‘The corsairs,’ said the lieutenant, ‘will always be memorable for the -excellence of their tipple. What is this, now?’ - -He picked up a bottle, knocked off the head, and taking a little tin -drinking-vessel from a shelf, half filled it, then smelled, and tasted. - -‘An exquisite Burgundy,’ he cried. ‘Try it, Mr. Dugdale.’ - -It was indeed a very choice sound wine. The lieutenant half filled a -pannikin for Colledge, who emptied it with a sigh of enjoyment. ‘What -would my father give for such stuff as this!’ said he. - -The lieutenant found a wine-glass, which he carefully cleansed with -the liquor, and then filling it, he asked Miss Temple to drink to the -confusion of all pirates. She laughed, and declined. - -‘Oh, you must sip it, if you please,’ cried Colledge, ‘if only to -heighten the romance of this adventure. Think of the additional colour -your story will get out of this incident of drinking perdition to the -corsairs in wine of their own!’ - -She was about to answer, when the hull rolled heavily. The lieutenant -slipped; the wine-glass fell to the deck, and was shivered; Colledge, -grasping me to steady himself, threw me off my balance, and the pair of -us went rolling to the bottles. The young fellow scrambled on to his -legs with a loud laugh. - -‘I believe this vessel is tipsy,’ said he. - -‘Do you mark the increase in the weight of the swell?’ I exclaimed as I -regained my legs. - -The roll of the vessel the other way had been severe, and now she was -dipping her sides regularly with an oscillation extravagant enough to -render standing very inconvenient. - -‘We must be off, I think,’ said the lieutenant. - -‘Miss Temple hasn’t drunk confusion to the pirates,’ exclaimed Colledge -with the persistency of brains flushed with wine. - -‘I would rather not do so,’ she answered, her fine face looking -curiously pale in that dull light, whilst she glanced restlessly -towards the state cabin. She pulled out a little watch. ‘It is -certainly time to return to the Indiaman,’ she added. - -‘Oh, but don’t let us leave all this noble drink to go down to the -bottom of the sea,’ cried Colledge. ‘Is there nothing that we can pack -some of the bottles in? If we could only manage to get away with a -couple of dozen--twelve for ourselves and twelve for my cousin?’--and -with red face and bright eyes he went staggering with the heave of the -hull to the shelves and stood holding on, looking about him. - -‘It might be managed, I think,’ said the lieutenant, who seemed all -anxiety to oblige him. - -‘I wish to be gone,’ exclaimed Miss Temple with a strong hint of the -imperiousness that had been familiar to me in the Indiaman in the air -with which she looked at and addressed the lieutenant. ‘What is the -meaning of this increased rolling? I shall not be able to enter the -boat.’ - -‘No fear of that, madam,’ answered the lieutenant; ‘a dismasted -egg-shell like this will roll to the weakest heave. A trifle more swell -has certainly set in, but it is nothing.’ - -I was not so sure of that. What he was pleased to describe as -a trifling increase was to my mind, and very distinctly too, -a heightening and broadening of the undulations, of which the -significance was rendered strong by the suddenness of the thing. It -meant wind close at hand, I could swear. - -‘I’ll go on deck and see how things are,’ said I. - -‘Take me with you, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple. - -‘You will suffer me to assist you?’ said the lieutenant. - -‘Oh, I say, _don’t_ leave all this wine here,’ cried Colledge. ‘Mr.--I -mean Lieutenant--upon my word, I must apologise for not having asked -your name--can’t we manage to find some old basket’---- - -‘What is that down in the corner there, Mr. Colledge?’ said the -lieutenant, laughing. - -‘Pray, take me on deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ exclaimed Miss Temple haughtily -and with temper, and she came to my side and passed her arm through -mine. - -The swaying of the light hull without top-hamper to steady her so -hindered one’s movements by the staggering lurches it flung one into, -that it cost me no small effort to steer a fair course with Miss Temple -hanging to me, to the cabin steps. I helped her up the ladder, and felt -in her arm the shudder that swept through her as she sent a single -swift glance at the dead figure at the table. - -The moment I emerged I cried out: ‘My God! see there! Why, if we are -not quick’---- And putting my head into the doorway again, I roared -down the hatch: ‘For heaven’s sake, come on deck, or we shall lose both -ships!’ - -Indeed, all away in the north-west was a white blankness of vapour -bearing right down upon the hull, with a long and heavy swell rolling -out of it, the heads of which as they came washing from under the base -of the thickness were dark with wind. The sky overhead was of a sort -of watery ashen colour, going down to the eastern sea-line in a weak, -dim blue, so obscure with the complexion of the approaching vaporous -mass that the corvette on the left hand and the Indiaman on the right -appeared as little more than pallid smudges, with a kind of looming -out of their dull, distorted proportions that made them show as though -they hung upon the very verge of the ocean. I told Miss Temple to hold -to the side of the deck-house to steady herself, and rushed to the -quarter. The cutter lay there to the scope of her painter, rising and -falling in a manner bewildering to see to one who knew that she had to -be entered from these perilously sloping decks. The moment my head was -seen, one of the sailors bawled out: ‘The Indiaman’s fired two guns, -sir.’ - -‘Why the deuce,’ I shouted in a passion, ‘didn’t one of you jump aboard -to report what was coming? Haul alongside, for God’s sake.’ - -At this moment the lieutenant appeared, followed by Colledge. He took -one look, and came in a bound to the sheer edge of the deck, where the -remains of the line of crushed bulwarks stood like fangs. ‘Lively now!’ -he cried; ‘hand over hand with it.’ - -‘We shall be smothered out of sight in a few minutes,’ I exclaimed; -‘shall we be acting wisely in quitting this hull? We may lose both -ships in that weather there, and what will there be to do then?’ - -‘Don’t frighten the lady, sir,’ he answered, turning upon me with a -frown. ‘Miss Temple, there is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall get -you into the boat simply enough, and the vapour will speedily clear. I -know these waters.’ - -Colledge stood gazing round him, looking horribly frightened. The boat -was dragged alongside: one moment she was above the level of the naked -edge of the deck; the next she was sliding away out of sight into the -hollow, with the wreck rolling heavily off from her. - -‘Now, Miss Temple,’ cried the lieutenant. ‘Help me to steady the lady, -Mr. Dugdale. Stand by, two of you men there, to receive her.’ - -Miss Temple set her lips, and her eyes were on fire with anger and -fear. ‘I shall not be able to enter that boat,’ said she. - -‘Oh, madam, be persuaded,’ cried the lieutenant, speaking irritably -out of his clear perception of the danger of delay and of the peril of -passing her into the cutter. ‘Mr. Dugdale, take Miss Temple’s arm.’ - -She shrank back, with a firmer grip of the deck-house, against which -she had set her shoulder to steady herself. ‘You will kill me!’ she -cried. - -‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the lieutenant wildly, ‘for God’s sake, jump -into the boat, that Miss Temple may see how easily it is to be done. I -must be the last to leave.’ - -‘Let Mr. Colledge jump first,’ said I. ‘I may probably be more useful -to you and the lady than he.’ - -‘Jump, Mr. Colledge!’ cried the lieutenant. - -The young fellow went to the edge of the deck. ‘I shall break my neck,’ -he shouted; ‘I shall fall into the sea; I shall be drowned.’ - -‘No, sir! no, sir!’ roared one of the seamen; ‘jump as the boat lifts; -we’ll catch you.’ - -‘_Now!_’ cried the lieutenant. - -Colledge sprang; down sank the boat out of sight; then up she soared -again with Colledge safe in the embrace of one of the most powerful of -the sailors. - -‘Here it comes!’ said I. - -As the words left my lips, the wind, with a long fierce howl, swept -over the deck of the hull, and a moment later the fog was boiling -all about us. It was like a mighty burst of steam; and in a breath -the ocean vanished, and there was nothing to see but the wool-white -blankness and a space of thirty or forty feet of water beyond the -wreck. All on a sudden, the lieutenant, who had gone to the edge of -the deck, perhaps to see how it was with Colledge, or to bawl some -further directions to the seamen, staggered to a deep and swinging heel -of the hull and went overboard. It happened in a second. My instant -impression was that he had jumped for the boat; but I knew better when -I heard the men roaring out. - -‘For heaven’s sake, Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘keep a firm hold, and do -not attempt to stir, or the angle of the decks will certainly rush you -over the side.’ - -So saying, I staggered to the quarter where there were some eight or -ten feet of bulwarks still standing, and looked over. The men had -let go the painter of their boat, and were shouting instructions to -one another as some of them flung their oars over into the rowlocks, -whilst others overhung the gunwale eagerly with pale faces and looks -of consternation and dread, searching the round volumes of the swell, -which the wind was now whipping into yeast, for any signs of their -officer. - -‘Keep alongside!’ I bellowed; ‘he will rise near.’ - -But the fellows were distracted, unnerved, and there was nobody to give -them orders. The howling of the wind, the sudden leaping down upon them -of this blindness of white vapour, the violent upheavals and sinkings -of the cutter upon the run of the liquid hills, heavily increased the -distraction raised in them by their lieutenant’s disappearance. They -had three oars out, possessed, I suppose, by some mad fancy of merely -paddling whilst they stared round the water; and even whilst I watched -them, and whilst I yelled to them to get their six oars over, and to -pull for their lives to alongside the wreck, the boat, yielding to the -full weight of the blast and to the long irresistible heavings of the -swell, faded out of sight in the flying thickness; and ere I could -fully realise what had occurred, the narrow space of foam-freckled -pouring waters showed blank to where the flying vapour seemed to hang -like a wall of white smoke. - -I continued to stare, occasionally bringing my eyes away from the spot -where the boat had vanished to the water alongside; but the lieutenant -had sunk. There could be no doubt that the poor fellow on rising from -his first dive had struck the bends of the hull as she rolled heavily -over to the trough where he had vanished, and so had been drowned, -struck down again into the depths, to rise no more. I could not realise -the truth. I felt as if I had fallen crazy, and was imagining dreadful -horrors. It was but a minute or two before that he had turned to me -with a frown--it was but a little while before that he was full of -jokes and laughter in the cabin--and now he lay a dead man, sinking and -yet sinking under our heaving and plunging keel, dead as the figure -yonder in that little cabin, of whom he had spoken jestingly so lately -that the words and tone of his voice were still in my ear! - -‘Where is the boat, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -I turned slowly round and looked at the girl with an air of -stupefaction, then stared again into the blankness, and with shuddering -heart swept my eyes over the water alongside, brimming in humpbacked -rounds to the very line of the deck, and sweeping away into the near -thickness with a spitting and seething and flashing of foam off each -long slant to the fierce shrill smiting of the wind. - -‘Has the boat left us, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -With a desperate effort I rallied myself, and watching for my chances -betwixt the wild slopings of the deck, I reached the deck-house, and -held on by the girl’s side. - -‘The boat has been blown away. The men fell imbecile, I do believe, -when they saw their officer drop overboard. What madmen to let go the -painter, to manœuvre with three oars in a heavy cutter in the teeth of -such a wind as this, and on the top of that swell!’ - -‘Did they recover the lieutenant?’ she asked. - -‘No.’ - -‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she shrieked, ‘do you tell me he is drowned?’ - -‘Yes--yes--he is drowned,’ I answered, scarce able to articulate for -the sudden fit of horror that came upon me again. - -‘Drowned!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh no--not so suddenly! He may be struggling -close against the vessel now’--she moved as if to go to the side to -look. I grasped her arm. - -‘Do not stir,’ I cried; ‘the slope of the deck will carry you -overboard. It is all open to the water abreast of us.’ - -‘Shocking! It is unendurable! Drowned so swiftly! And the boat--the -boat, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -The cruel distress in her voice, the anguish of mind expressed in her -parted lips, her heaving breast, her strained, brilliant, wide-open -staring looks about her, obliged me to recollect myself by forcing me -to understand my obligations as a man. - -‘Miss Temple, this fog may prove but a passing thickness. There is a -clear sky over it, and when the vapour settles away, the sea will open -to its confines. The Indiaman knows we are here. We were watched, too, -from the corvette, no doubt, and she must regain her boat besides. The -cutter is a powerful little fabric, and there is nothing as yet in this -weather or in that sea to hurt her. It is a hard experience for you; -but it will prove a brief one only, I am sure. Let me assist you to a -seat in this deck-house. Your having to hold on here is fatiguing and -dangerous.’ - -‘I could not enter whilst that man is there,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, hark -to that bell!’ she cried hysterically; ‘it is tolling for _us_ now!’ - -‘You must be sheltered,’ I exclaimed; ‘and that body must come out of -it. Will you sit on the deck? You will be safer so.’ - -She sank down; and to still further secure her, I went sliding and -clawing like a monkey to the quarter, where, with my knife, I severed -an end of rope--a piece of gear belayed to a pin--with which I -returned to her side. I passed the line round her waist, and firmly -attached the ends to one of several iron uprights which supported the -structure; and begging her to compose her mind, and not to doubt of our -deliverance within the next two or three hours, I entered the little -building. - -It was a loathsome job; but the girl must be sheltered, and it was not -to be borne that she should have such a companion as that corpse, when -there was the great graveyard of the sea within an easy drag to receive -the body. Yet I must own to coming to a stand with a long look at the -silent figure before I could muster up stomach enough to lay hands upon -him. Indeed, as I now fixed my eyes on the body, I wondered whether -he could be really dead, so startlingly lifelike was his posture, so -pensive his air, so vital the aspect of him to the minutest feature, -down to the pen betwixt his fingers, and the reposeful position of his -small wax-white hand upon the table. How could I tell but that he might -be in some sort of trance, and that my heaving him overboard would be -the same as murdering him? However, after a spell of staring, I shook -off these alarms and conjectures, and grasping him by the arm, got him -upon the deck; and presently I had him abreast of that part of the -brig’s side where the bulwarks were gone; and trembling as violently as -though I were about to drown a living being, I waited for a roll of the -hull, then gave the body a heave, and away it went, striking the swell -in a diving attitude, and floating off and down into it, as if it swam. - -This done, I crept back to Miss Temple and squatted beside her. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -NIGHT - - -The wind blew hard, and the vapour swept past in a horizontal pouring, -masses of it coming on a sudden in a blinding thickness till you could -not see half the wreck’s length; then the silver-tinted volumes would -brighten for a breath or two, and show the steel-coloured sea heaving -its freckled and foamless folds into the vaporous faintness a few -hundred feet off; then the mist would boil down and over us once more -until it was like being in a room filled with steam. - -‘The cabin is empty,’ said I--the girl being on the port side, I had -taken care to drag the body to starboard--‘there are seats, and you -will be sheltered there. This is damping stuff.’ - -‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I am as safe here. I hate the thought of -having anything to screen the sea from me. I want to look--at any -moment the Indiaman or the man-of-war may come close to us.’ - -‘Be it so,’ said I. ‘Heavens, how rapidly has all this happened! One of -the cutter’s men shouted to me that the Indiaman had fired two guns. -Why did they not report this to us? Did they believe the swell would -not let them get aboard? They saw--of course they saw--this fog bearing -down; why did not the madmen let us know of it?’ - -‘What will my aunt think?’ - -‘Why, she will be in a terrible fright. But it will not last. We shall -be picked up presently. I would rather be here than in the cutter. If -they are wise, they will ride to their oars; if they row or allow the -wind and seas to drive them, they are bound to lose both ships, the -night being at hand; and then God help them!’ - -‘Oh, it was an evil moment,’ she cried, ‘when we sighted the corvette!’ - -‘It was an evil moment,’ I exclaimed bitterly and wrathfully, ‘when -Mr. Colledge, who had undoubtedly taken too much wine on board the -_Magicienne_, suggested that we should kill an hour on this hull. -Where,’ I cried passionately, ‘could the unhappy lieutenant’s wits -have been? He laughed at me for indicating the appearance I witnessed -in the north-west. Was there nothing in the weight of this swell to -convince him that there must be mischief not far off?’ - -‘What will my aunt think?’ she repeated, as though she scarcely heeded -my words, whilst she brought her hands, brilliant with rings, together -and stared into the thickness with her eyes on fire with fear and -amazement and the score of wild emotions which filled her. - -Though I held my peace on the subject, the wind, that was blowing with -the spite of an ugly squall, was exciting an alarm in me that rose -above all other considerations of our situation. The hatches lay open -and there was nothing to be seen of their covers about the decks. If -this weather continued, a high sea must presently follow, in which case -there could be nothing to save the wreck from filling and foundering. -The lieutenant had assured us that she was dry; but it was certain that -she had been badly wrenched by the lightning stroke that had dismasted -and apparently set her on fire forward, and by the furious gale that -had chased her afterwards; and though she may have been tight when -the lieutenant overhauled her, this constant working in the strong -swell might at any instant cause her to start a butt or open a seam, -and then what should I be able to do? Both pumps were smashed level -to the deck; there was no boat; there was nothing discoverable fore -and aft which I could launch and secure my companion and myself to. It -was with inexpressible anxiety, therefore, that I would send my gaze -from time to time to windward, in the hope of observing a thinning in -the thickness there, or any the faintest imaginable sign to elate me -with the belief that the worst of the fog was on us, that we were now -feeling the worst of the wind, and that the ocean would be clearing -soon. - -The time passed. I looked at my watch after we had been sitting a -little, and found it six o’clock. The sun would be setting in something -more than an hour, and a bitter black night was bound to follow if the -vapour had not cleared when daylight ended. There was now a smart sea -running, but the swell had flattened something, I thought. The hull was -horribly frisky, leaning at desperate angles from side to side, and -often recovering herself with a jerk that must have flung us to the -deck had we not been seated. But she was extraordinarily light, and -floated very tall, and though there would sometimes come a blow of salt -water against the bow that flashed across the deck in a mass of foam -and green crystals, yet she soared so nimbly to the height of every -surge that she took in amazingly little water. Indeed, it was not long -before I felt myself infinitely comforted by her behaviour, convinced -that it would have to breeze up with much more spite than the wind now -had to put us in jeopardy from a filling hold. - -Shortly before the hour of sundown, I induced Miss Temple to occupy -the deck-house. She entered with a great deal of reluctance, and -seated herself in a corner that was the furthest away from where the -body had been. It had not been very easy to converse outside. The -ceaseless roaring and washing noises of the water, with the alarming -thumps and leapings of froth at the bow, and the sounds of the rushing -wind sweeping in gusty cries over the mutilated rails of the hull as -she was hove up full into it, and then sinking into a sort of humming -moaning as the wreck drove down the liquid acclivity into the swift -comparative stillness of the trough: all this was distracting and -terrifying, and speech had been difficult. But the interior of the -deck-house was a shelter to the ear and voice. I seated myself opposite -the girl, giving her as wide, respectful a berth as the narrow cabin -permitted. The shadow of the evening lay already sullen in the white -mist that seemed to boil upon the wind, though at that hour it was not -so thick but that the gaze might be able to penetrate a distance of -a quarter of a mile. Miss Temple was deadly pale. Even her lips had -lost their delicate rosy tint, and sat blanched in their compression. -Her eyes looked preternaturally large, and there was an expression of -passionate desperation in them, as one might figure of some proud, -high-spirited creature driven at bay, and rounding upon the pursuer -with a gaze charged with despair and wrath and the misery of some -heart-breaking resolution. - -‘I believe I shall go mad,’ she said, ‘if this fog does not cease. I -feel as though I were now insane, and that what we are suffering is the -imagination of madness.’ - -‘It is a frightful time of suspense,’ I answered; ‘we must have -patience: there is no other medicine for this sort of affliction.’ - -‘I could stab myself,’ she cried, ‘for being in this position. There is -the Indiaman close at hand; I see her saloon cheerful with lamplight, -the tables glittering, the passengers seated, talking and laughing, -without a thought of us by this time.’ I shook my head. She continued: -‘I think of the security, the comfort of that ship, which I never once -reflected on when in her. And now contrast this!’ - -She rolled her wonderful eyes over the narrow compartment in a -shuddering way that was eloquent with abhorrence. - -‘Why am I here? It is my own fault. I could stab myself for my folly.’ - -It made one think of some beautiful wild creature newly caged to watch -her. - -‘It is bad enough,’ said I; ‘but it might be much worse. Think of -yourself in that open boat--on this high sea, and amidst this blinding -vapour: no water, no food, the blackness of the night coming down, and -a thousand leagues of ocean all around you.’ - -‘Is not the cutter safer than this horrible wreck?’ she cried. ‘If the -morning exposes the ships to the people in her, they can row; but what -can we do?’ - -‘If the morning exposes the ships,’ said I, ‘they’ll see us, and very -joyfully attempt to fetch us--that is to sail to us.’ - -She turned to look through a window the glass of which was gone, and -through which the wind was shrilling as though it blew into a cylinder. -It was fast darkening. In these latitudes twilight is brief, and in -such weather as this there would be none. It was little more now than -sombre blank greyness outside, with a sight of the steel-coloured -swell, over whose humps the seas were rushing in foam, shouldering and -vanishing into the thickness. But there was no increase in the wind, -and the run of the surge did not gain in weight. - -I watched the girl while she looked through the window. It is not in -language to convey the tragic irony that was put into our situation by -her sparkling holiday attire. Her dress was of some white material, of -a silken or lustrous nature, that most perfectly fitted the beauties of -her person. Her hat was some rich combination of richly plumed straw. -She had removed her gloves on descending into the cabin of the hull -when we boarded her, and many rings of splendour and value flashed on -her fingers in a very armour of jewels and gold. There were gems in her -ears, and a heavy chain of gold round her neck, terminating in a whole -cluster of trinkets at her girdle, in which was sheathed a watch of the -size of her thumb-nail. Think of this glittering figure, this stately, -most perfect shape of womanhood in the gloom of the strong, rude -interior of the deck-house, with its few rough details of fittings in -the shape of a table and lockers, nothing to see through the window but -the rough deck spreading naked to its splinters of bulwark, with the -angry foam of waters beyond, and a near sky of fast blackening vapour! - -‘What are we to do?’ she exclaimed, resuming her former attitude and -fixing her large desperate eyes upon me. - -‘We must wait,’ said I. - -‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Dugdale; tell me what you think?’ - -‘Well, first of all, we must be prepared to spend the night on this -wreck’---- She flashed her hands to her face and held them there, and I -waited for her to look at me again. ‘This weather,’ I proceeded, ‘is -not likely to last very long. The dawn will probably exhibit a clear -sky. If the ships are not in sight’--she drew in her breath with an -hysterical ‘Oh’--‘they will still have the bearings of the wreck, and -search for us. Were there but a single vessel to hunt after the hull, -we might still feel perfectly safe; but there are two, and one of them -is an English man-of-war.’ - -‘But will Sir Edward Panton know that we are here?’ - -‘No doubt. He or others will have seen the cutter deviate for the wreck -instead of pulling for the Indiaman.’ - -‘But they may think we are in the boat; and if she is not recovered, -they will search for her, and not trouble themselves about the wreck.’ - -‘We must be hopeful, and we must be patient,’ said I. - -It was now rapidly growing dark. The white waters showed ghastly over -the edge of the bare deck to each convulsive jerking roll of the hull, -and my companion’s white face was little more than a glimmer in the -gloom of the corner in which she sat. The thought of the long black -hours which lay before us was intolerable. I looked about me for a -lamp, but there was nothing of the kind, nor hook nor bracket to prove -that a lamp or lantern was ever used in this small abode. I told Miss -Temple that I would go below and search for something wherewith to make -a light. - -‘Will you be long?’ she asked. - -‘I’ll make haste,’ said I. - -‘Yes, if you please, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed. - -I had in my pocket the old-fashioned arrangement of tinder-box and -sulphur matches, being, indeed, too confirmed a smoker to stir very far -without that convenience. The mere descent of the steps was a horrible -labour, owing to the extravagant leaps and rolls of the mere shell of -wreck, and my progress was scarcely more than inch by inch, forced to -hold on as I was with the tenacity of the grip of a parrot’s beak. The -straining noises in the cabin might have easily led me to suppose that -the hull was going to pieces. Every blow of the sea trembled through -her down here as though the fabric forward were breaking up, and I -recollect swinging by a stanchion for some minute or two, overwhelmed -with the consternation excited in me by the sounds, and by a sudden -recollection of the lieutenant’s words that the brig in her forecastle -had been burnt out. But I had promised Miss Temple to be speedy; and -the thought of her sitting lonely above in terror and despair brought -my mind back to its bearings. - -It was almost pitch-dark, but remembering the situation of the pantry -in which the lieutenant had cracked the bottle of wine, I dropped on my -hands and knees, not daring to trust my feet, and crawled towards it. -When I guessed by groping that I was near the door, I kindled a match -and entered the pantry; and after consuming about half-a-dozen matches, -I met with a tin box that was full of long wax candles, which looked to -me very much like a sample of booty, as it was scarcely to be supposed -that a vessel of the class of the _Aspirante_ would lay in stores of -that quality. I hunted for a candlestick, and found a small empty -pickle bottle, which would very well answer the purpose of holding the -candle. This I squeezed under my waistcoat, and filled my coat-pockets -with a couple of bottles of wine, a handful of ship’s biscuit, and a -little tin drinking-vessel; and then putting the box of candles under -my arm, I fell again upon my hands and knees, crawled to the cabin -ladder, and joined the deck-house so wearied by the posture I had been -forced to adopt and by the convulsive motions of the deck, which had -put an aching as of rheumatism into every bone, that I was forced to -sit and remain quiet for some minutes. - -The wind swept in through the denuded windows; but the structure, as -I have before said, was long in proportion to its width, and at the -fore-end the atmosphere was quiet enough for a candle to burn in. I -secured the empty pickle bottle to a stanchion with my handkerchief, -and placed the lighted candle in it; and the square of the bottle -held the flame at a sufficient distance from the stanchion to provide -against all risk of fire. The light seemed to raise some little heart -in Miss Temple. - -‘You are brave,’ she exclaimed, with a glance at the black square of -the hatch, ‘to descend into that dreadful dungeon. There may be dead -bodies there.’ - -‘I am not afraid of dead bodies,’ said I. ‘I wish there were nothing -more harmful in this world than dead men. Here are two bottles of wine -and some biscuit. You will be the better for a little refreshment.’ - -I knocked off the head of a bottle and handed her a draught. She -looked at the rough drinking-vessel for a little, and then said with a -painful smile: ‘A desperate change, Mr. Dugdale, from the table of the -Indiaman! Will this wine hurt me?’ - -‘I will drink first, to reassure you, if you please,’ said I. - -‘No,’ she exclaimed; ‘I must not be too cowardly;’ and she drank. - -I took a good drain myself, and found it the same noble wine that the -poor lieutenant had tasted. - -‘Try one of these biscuits, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘they are but coarse -eating for you, I fear; they are the bread that poor Jack is fed on.’ - -She took one and nibbled at it. - -‘Ha!’ said I, ‘this is an ocean experience indeed. This is being -shipwrecked. You will have a deal more to talk about when you get home -than Colledge could have dreamt of in proposing this excursion for that -purpose. Can you bite that biscuit?’ - -‘Yes,’ she answered. - -‘It is rather flinty,’ said I, munching. ‘There should be something -more relishable than this to be come at below. I will make another -hunt.’ - -‘No, if you please,’ she cried vehemently; ‘do not leave me, Mr. -Dugdale.’ - -‘Ay, but food apart, since we must needs remain here through the night, -I must endeavour to find something soft for you to lie upon. You cannot -rest upon that hard locker.’ - -‘Oh, I do not want to rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think I could -sleep? I shall sit as I am, and pray for the light to come and for a -sight of the ships.’ - -I made no answer, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say I was -sorry for her sake that it was I, and not Colledge, whom she was adrift -with. It was an impulse coming through some sudden hot recollection of -her treatment of me on board the _Countess Ida_; but I bit my lip, and -was grateful for my silence a moment after, when I saw her fine eyes -swimming with tears. - -‘Pray have hope,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am sure after a bit you will find -plenty of courage in your heart to confront this little passage, hard -as it is. I will do what I can. I would you had a better sailor than I -by your side; but what can be done by me shall be done, and the worst -is a long way off yet, I am certain.’ - -She put her hands upon the table and hid her face in them. I lifted the -lid of the locker I was using as a seat, to stow away the bottles in a -safe place; for, talk as I might, it was only God could know whether it -might not end in a single drop of the liquor becoming more precious to -us than twenty times the value of the cargo of the Indiaman. There were -some wearing apparel, a few small coils of ratline-stuff, and other -odds and ends in the locker, but nothing noticeable. I then clawed my -way to the deck-house door to take a look round. It was black as fog -and darkness could make it. Close alongside, the foam glanced dimly, -with now and again a flash of phosphoric light in some dark coil down -whose slope the hull was sliding; but there was nothing else to see. -The wind still blew fresh, but there was no recognisable increase in -it since the hour of its first coming down upon the wreck. It made a -most dismal and melancholy noise of howling in the sky, as it swept -through the dark obscurity, splitting upon the foremast and the shrouds -which supported the spar, in a low-toned long-drawn shriek, which -had something of the sound of a human note as it pierced through the -hissing and seething round about, and through the strange, low, dull -thunder made by the shouldering of liquid folds coming together as they -ran, and by the hurl of the surge as it rounded and dissolved into foam. - -There could be very little doubt that the drift of a light empty shell -of a wreck with a yard and mast and shrouds forward for the wind to -catch hold of would be considerable in such weather as this. Helped -by the beat of the seas, she might easily blow dead to leeward, in -the trough as she was, at the rate of some three to four miles in the -hour, so that daybreak would find her forty or fifty miles distant -from the spot where we had boarded her. However, I comforted myself -with the reflection that the commanders of the two ships would have -a clear perception of such a drift as I calculated, and allow for -it in the search they would surely make for the hull. I had but one -fear: that the cutter had been seen leaving the wreck, for there was -an interval at least of a minute or two between her dropping astern -and manœuvring with her three oars and her envelopment by the fog. If, -then, she had been sighted, the inference would inevitably be that Miss -Temple, Colledge, and myself were in her; and so the hunt would be for -the cutter, without reference to the hull, with every prospect of the -search carrying the ships miles below the verge of our horizon. - -Meanwhile, as I stood in that doorway looking into the blackness over -the sides, I bent my ear anxiously forward; but though there were -constant shocks of the sea smiting the bow, I never caught the noise -of water falling in weight enough upon the deck to alarm me. The leap -of the surge seemed to be always forward of the fore-shrouds, and the -ducking and tossing of the fabric was so nimble, and the pouring of -the blast so steadfast, that nearly all the water that sprang to the -blow of the bow was carried overboard by the wind. This was about as -comforting an assurance as could come to me; for I tell you it was -enough to turn one’s heart into lead to look into that starless wall of -blackness close against the ship, to see nothing but the pallid glimmer -of froth, to hearken to the noises in the air, to feel the sickening -and dizzy heavings of the sea, and then realise that this hull had been -struck by lightning, that the forepart of her was burnt into a thin -case of charred timbers, and that all three hatches in her, together -with the skylight, lay open and yawning like the mouths of wells to the -first rush of sea that should tumble over the side. - -I will not feign to remember how that night passed. The tall wax candle -burnt bravely and lasted long; but the guttering of it to the circlings -of the air in the extremity of the cabin obliged me to light another -before the night was spent. It a little encouraged Miss Temple to be -able to see. God knows how it might have been with her had we been -obliged to sit in that blackness. Once the candle was blown out, and -when I had succeeded in lighting it afresh, after a few minutes of -groping and hunting and manœuvring with my tinder-box, I looked at the -girl, and knew by the horror that shone in her eyes, and the marble -hardness in the aspect of her parted lips, as though her mouth were -some carved expression of fear, how heart-subduing had that short spell -of blackness proved. From time to time she would ask for a little wine, -which she sipped as though thirsty, but she swallowed a few drops only, -as if she feared that the wine, by heating her, would increase her -thirst; yet when I spoke of going below to seek for some fresh water, -she begged me not to leave her. - -‘It is the memory of the body that sat at this table which makes -loneliness insupportable to me, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed. ‘I seemed -to see the dreadful object when the candle went out. I thought I had -more spirit. I am but a very weak woman, after all.’ - -‘I do not think so,’ said I; ‘you are bearing this frightful trial -very nobly. How would it be with some girls I know? They would be -swooning away; they would be exhausting themselves in cries; they would -be tearing themselves to pieces in hysterics. And how is it with me? -Sometimes I am frightened to death, but not with fears of darkness or -of the dead. I am certain we shall be rescued; this hull is making -excellent weather of it; there is food and drink below, yet I am filled -with consternation and grief. Why should it be otherwise? We are -creatures of nerves, and this is an experience to test the courage of a -saint.’ - -Well, we would exchange a few sentences after this pattern, and then -fall silent for a whole hour at a time. She never closed her eyes -throughout the night. Whenever I glanced at her, I met her gaze -brilliant with emotion. The change was so sudden that I found it -impossible to fully realise it. When I thought of Miss Temple aboard -the _Countess Ida_, her haughtiness, her character of almost insolent -reserve, how she had hardly found it in her to address me with an -accent of courtesy, her ungracious treatment of me after the service -I had done her in rescuing her from a perilous situation: I say when -I recalled all this and a deal more, and then viewed her as she sat -opposite, crouching in a corner, supporting herself by grasping the -table with her heavily ringed fingers, the high-born delicate beauty of -her lineaments showing like some cameo in ivory, and reflected that she -and I were absolutely alone, that it might come to her owing her life -to me, or that we might be doomed to miserably perish together--this -girl, this unapproachable young lady, at whom I had been wont to stare -furtively with fascinated eyes on board the Indiaman for long spells -at a stretch--I could not bring my mind to credit the reality of our -situation. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -I SEARCH THE WRECK - - -All night long it blew a strong wind, but shortly before daybreak it -fined down on a sudden into a light air out of the south-west, leaving -a troubled rolling sea behind it. It was still very thick all round -the horizon, so that from the door of the deck-house my gaze scarcely -penetrated a distance of two miles. It was no longer fog, however, -but cloud, sullen, low-lying, here and there shaping out; a familiar -tropical dawn in the parallels, though it made one think too of the -smothers you fall in with on the edge of the Gulf Stream. - -I stepped on deck to wait for the light to break, and Miss Temple -came to the door to look also. The hull still rolled violently, but -without the dangerous friskiness of the jumps, recoils, and staggering -recoveries of the night when there was a sharp sea running as well as a -long heaving swell. My heart was in my gaze as the dim faintness came -sifting into the darkness of the east. In a few minutes it was a grey -morn, the sea an ugly lead, and the horizon all round of the aspect -of a drizzling November day in the English Channel. We both swept the -water with our sight, again and again looking, straining our vision -into the dim distances; but to no purpose. - -‘Do you see anything?’ exclaimed Miss Temple. - -‘No,’ I answered, ‘there is nothing in sight.’ - -‘Oh, my heart will break!’ she cried. - -‘We must wait awhile,’ said I: ‘this sort of weather has a trick of -clearing rapidly, and it may be all bright sky and wide shining surface -of ocean long before noon; then we shall see the ships, and they will -see us. But this is a low level. Something may heave into view from -the height of that mast. I shall not be long gone. Be careful to hold -on firmly, Miss Temple; nay, oblige me by sitting in the deck-house. -Should you relax your grasp, a sudden roll may carry you overboard.’ - -In silence, and with a face of despair, she took her seat on a locker, -and very warily I made my way forwards. We had taken but a brief view -of the hull when we boarded her, and the appearance of her towards the -bows was new to me. There were twenty signs of her having been swept -again and again by the seas. No doubt, her hatches had been uncovered, -that her people might rummage her before going away in her boats; and -the covers, for all I could tell, might have been rolled overboard by -some of her violent workings. Yet it was certain that she must have -been swept when her hatches were covered, or the lieutenant would not -have found her with a dry hold. But I had been long enough at sea to -know that it is the improbable conjecture that oftenest fits the fact -of a marine disaster. - -I took a view of the foremast, to make sure that all was sound with -it, and then sprang into the shrouds and gained the top. Some few feet -of the splintered topmast still stood, and under the platform at which -I had arrived the foreyard swang drearily to its overhauled braces -hanging in bights. There was no more to see here than from the deck. -The thick atmosphere receded nothing to this elevation, and would have -been as impenetrable had I climbed a thousand feet. It was like being -in the heart of an amphitheatre of sulky shadows. The water rolled -foamless, and there was little more air to be felt than was made by -the sickeningly monotonous swing of the solitary spar from whose -summit I explored the ocean limits in all directions, frowning to the -heart-breaking intensity of my stare. By heaven, then, thought I, we -_are_ alone! and if we are to be picked up by either of the ships, it -will not be to-day nor maybe to-morrow! - -I glanced down at the deck of the hull, and observed that the sides of -the fore-hatch were black with extinguished fire. The head-rail was -gone to port, and from the eyes of her to the deck-house aft the fabric -had a fearfully wrecked look, with its mutilated bulwark stanchions, -its yawning hatchways, its dislocated capstan, and other details of -a like kind, all helping to a horrible wildness of appearance to one -who viewed, as I did, from an eminence, the crazy, fire-blackened, -dismasted old basket, that wallowed as though every head of swell that -rolled at her must overwhelm and drown her hollow interior. - -I again sent my eyes in another passionate search, then descended. As I -sprang from the shrouds on to the deck, my eye was taken by the brig’s -bell, that dangled from a frame close against the foremast. Dreading -lest some increase in the swell should start it off into ringing -in some dismal hour of gloom and heighten Miss Temple’s misery and -terror, I unhooked the tongue of it, and threw it down, and rejoined my -companion, whose white face put the piteous question of her heart to me -in silence. - -‘No,’ said I, swaying in front of her as I held on to the door; ‘there -is nothing to be seen.’ - -‘Oh it is hard! it is hard!’ she cried. ‘If one could only recall a few -hours--be able to go back to yesterday! I do not fear death: but to die -thus--to drown in that dreadful sea--no one to be able to tell how I -perished.’ She sobbed, but with dry eyes. - -There was no reasoning with such a fit of despair as this, nor was it -possible for me to say anything out of which she might extract a grain -of comfort, seeing that I could but speak conjecturally, and with no -other perception than was to be shaped by the faint light of my own -hopes. My heart was deeply moved by her misery. Her beauty showed wan, -and was inexpressibly appealing with its air of misery. The effects -of the long and fearful vigils of the night that was gone were cruelly -visible in her. There was a violet shadow under her eyes, her lips were -pale, her lids drooped, her hair hung in some little disorder about her -brow and ears; her very dress seemed significant of shipwreck, mocking -the eye with what the grim usage of the sea had already transformed -into mere ironical finery. Yet there was too much of the nature she had -familiarised me to on board the Indiaman still expressed in the natural -haughty set of her lips, even charged as they were with the anguish -that worked in her, to win me to any attempt of tender reassurance. I -watched her dumbly, though my soul was melted into pity. Presently she -looked at me. - -‘I suppose there is nothing to be done, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -‘Indeed, then,’ said I, ‘there is a deal to be done. First of all, you -must cheer up your heart, which you will find easy if you can credit me -when I tell you that this hull is perfectly buoyant; that though the -weather is thick and gloomy, the sun, as he gains power, is certain -to open out the ocean to us; that there are two ships close at hand -searching for us; that there are provisions enough below to enable -us to support life for days and perhaps weeks; and that, even if the -Indiaman or the corvette fail to fall in with us, we are sure to be -sighted by one of the numerous vessels which are daily traversing this -great ocean highway. What, then, are we to do but compose our minds, -exert our patience, keep a bright lookout, be provided with means for -signalling our distress, and meanwhile not to suffer our unfortunate -condition to starve us? And that reminds me to overhaul the pantry for -something better than biscuit to break our fast with.’ - -A softness I should have thought impossible to the spirited fires of -her eyes when all was well with her entered her gaze for a moment as -it rested upon me, and a faint smile flickered upon and vanished off -her lips; but she did not speak, and I dropped through the hatch to -ascertain if the pantry could yield us something more nourishing than -ship’s bread. - -The sullenness of the day without lay in gloom below. I was forced to -return for a candle, with which I entered the little cabin that I had -visited on the previous day; but when I came to make a search I could -find nothing more to eat than cheese, biscuit, and marmalade. There -was a number of raw hams, but the galley was gone, and there was no -means to cook them. There were two casks of flour, a sack of some kind -of dried beans, and a small barrel of moist sugar. These matters had -probably been overlooked when the crew hurriedly removed themselves -from the brig. No doubt, at the time of jettisoning such commodities -as the hold might have stored, they had broken out as much food and -water as they could take with them. There was more than a bottle of -wine in the deck-house; down here, stowed away in straw and secured -by a batten, were some three or four scores of full bottles, all, I -supposed, holding the same generous liquor contained in the first -of them we had tasted. But there was no fresh water. I sought with -diligence, but to no purpose. Possibly the people might have left some -casks of it in the hold; but that was a search I would not at present -undertake. - -I took some cheese and marmalade and another handful of biscuits, -along with a knife and a couple of tin dishes. As I passed through -the cabin, the light of the candle I held glanced upon a stand of -small-arms fixed just abaft the short flight of the hatch-ladder. -There were some thirty to forty muskets of an old-fashioned make, even -for those days, and on either hand of them, swinging in tiers or rows -from nails or hooks in the bulkhead, were a quantity of cutlasses, -half-pikes, tomahawks, and other items of the grim machinery of murder. -I placed the food upon the deck-house table. - -‘A shabby repast, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘but we may easily support life -on such fare until we are rescued.’ - -She ate some biscuit and marmalade, and drank a little wine; but she -incessantly sent her gaze through the windows or the open door, and -sighed frequently in tremulous respirations, and sometimes there -would enter a singular look of bewilderment into the expression of -her eyes, as though her mind at such moments failed her, and did but -imperfectly understand our situation. I would then fear that the horror -which possessed her might end in breaking down her spirits, and even -dement her, indeed. Already her eyes were languid with grief and want -of rest, and such strength and life as they still possessed seemed -weakened yet by the shadowing of the long fringes. I endeavoured to win -her away from her thoughts by talking to her. - -I possessed a pocket-book, which supplied me with pencil and paper, -and I drew a diagram of the two ships’ and the wreck’s position, as I -was best able to conceive it, and made arrows to figure the direction -of the wind, and marked distances in figures, and enlarged freely and -heartily upon our prospects, pointing with my pencil to the paper -whilst I talked. This interested her. She came round to the locker on -which I sat, and placed herself beside me, and leaned her face near -to mine, supporting her head by her elbow whilst she gazed with eyes -riveted to the paper, listening thirstily. I had never had her so close -to me before saving that day when we swung together on to the hencoop, -but then it was a constrained situation, and she had let me suspect -that it was very distasteful to her. It was far otherwise now. She was -near me of her own will; I felt her warm breath on my cheek; the subtle -fragrance of her presence was in the air I respired. I talked eagerly -to conceal the emotions she excited, and I felt the blood hot in my -face when I had made an end with my diagram, and drew a little away to -restore the book to my pocket. - -She now seemed able and willing to converse, but she did not offer to -leave my side. - -‘Suppose the ships are unable to find us, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -‘Some other vessel is certain to fall in with us.’ - -‘But she may be bound to a part of the world very remote from India or -England.’ - -‘True,’ said I; ‘but as she jogs along she may encounter a vessel -proceeding to England, into which we shall be easily able to tranship -ourselves.’ - -‘How tedious! We may have to wander for months about the ocean!’ - -‘It is always step by step, Miss Temple, in this life. Let us begin at -the beginning, and quit this wreck, at any rate.’ - -‘All my luggage is in the Indiaman. How I am to manage I cannot -conceive,’ said she, running her eyes over her dress, and lifting her -hand to her hat. - -‘Pray let no such consideration as dress trouble you. The experience -will gain in romance from our necessities, and we shall be able to read -“Robinson Crusoe” with new enjoyment.’ - -She faintly smiled, with just a hint of peevishness in the curl of her -lip. - -‘If this be romance, Mr. Dugdale, may my days henceforth, if God be -merciful enough to preserve us, be steeped in the dullest prose.’ - -‘I wonder where Colledge and the cutter’s crew are?’ said I. - -‘I do not think,’ she exclaimed, ‘if Mr. Colledge were in your place he -would show your spirit.’ - -‘He was a great favourite of yours, Miss Temple.’ - -‘Not great. I rather liked him. I knew some of his connections. He was -an amiable person. I did not know that he was engaged to be married.’ - -I was astonished that she should have said this, but I was eager to -encourage her to talk, and in our state of misery it would signify but -little what topic we lighted upon. - -‘Did he inform you he was engaged?’ said I. - -‘No. I perceived it in his looks when his cousin asked him the -question. Did he ever tell you who the young lady was?’ she added -listlessly, and though she spoke of the thing it was easy to see that -she was without interest in it. - -I could not tell a lie, and silence would have been injurious to my -wishes for her. Besides, she had guessed the truth by no help from -me, and then, again, our situation rendered the subject exquisitely -trifling and insignificant. - -‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘we were cabin fellows, and intimate. He showed me -the girl’s portrait--a plump, pretty little woman. Her name is Fanny -Crawley, daughter of one of the numberless Sir Johns or Sir Thomases of -this age.’ - -She was looking through the cabin door at the sea, and scarcely seemed -to hear or to heed me. Am I strictly honourable in this? thought I. -Pshaw! it was no moment to consider the rights and wrongs of such a -thing. Her discovery had freed me from all obligation of secrecy, and -what I had supplied she would have easily been able to ascertain for -herself on her return home, if, indeed, home was ever to be viewed -again by either of us. - -‘What horrible weather!’ she exclaimed, bringing her eyes to my face; -‘there is no wind, and the sea rolls like liquid lead. When you were at -sea, were you ever in a situation of danger such as this?’ - -‘This is an uneasy time,’ said I; ‘but do not call it a situation of -danger yet. I am going shortly to overhaul the wreck. I must keep her -afloat until we are taken off her.’ - -‘How long were you at sea, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -‘Two years.’ - -‘Is your father a sailor?’ - -‘No; my father is dead. He was captain in the 38th Regiment of Foot, -and was killed at Burmah.’ - -There was a kind of dawning of interest in her eyes, an expression I -had not noticed when she talked of Colledge and his engagement. - -‘My father was in the army, too,’ said she; ‘but he saw very little -service. Is your mother living?’ - -‘She is.’ - -She sighed bitterly, and hid her face whilst she exclaimed: - -‘Oh, my poor mother! my poor mother! How little she knows! And she was -so reluctant to let me leave her.’ She sighed again deeply, and let her -hands fall, and then sank into silence. - -I quitted the deck-house to take another look round. Just then rain -began to fall, and the sea became shrouded with the discharge. So -oil smooth now was the swell that each drop as it fell pitted the -lead-coloured rounds with a black point, and the water alongside looked -to be spotted with ink. As I had met with no fresh water in the little -room that I call the pantry, and as there might be none in the hold, or -none that with my single pair of hands I should be able to come at, I -resolved to take advantage of the wet that was pouring down, and dived -into the cabin to search for any vessel that would catch and hold it. -The flour and sugar casks in the pantry would not do. I peered into the -other berths, but could see nothing to answer the purpose. It was of -the first consequence, however, to us that we should possess a store -of drinking water to mix with our wine, for we were in the tropics; -the atmosphere was heavy with heat, even under a shrouded heaven; it -was easy to figure what the temperature would rise to when the sun -should shine forth; and the mere fancy of days of stagnation and of -vertical suns, of this hull roasting; under the central broiling eye, -of the breathless sea, stretching in feverish breathings into the -dim, blue distance, unbroken by any tip of sail, and no fresh water -to drink, was horribly oppressive, and rendered me half crazy to find -some contrivance to catch the rain, which might at any moment cease. -The thought of the lockers in the deck-house occurred to me. I mounted -the ladder and searched them, and to my unspeakable joy, found in the -locker upon which Miss Temple had been seated during the night, four -canvas buckets, apparently brand new, as I might judge, from the cloth -and from the rope handles. The rain fell heavily, and the water gushed -in streams from the roof of the deck-house at many points of it. In a -very short time the buckets were filled, but they were of a permeable -substance, and it was necessary to decant them as soon as possible. -There was no difficulty in doing this, for there were several empty -bottles in the shelves below along with a couple of large jars, some -tin pannikins, and so forth. These I brought up, washed them in the -rain, and then filled them, and in this manner contrived to store away -a good number of gallons, not to mention the contents of the buckets, -which I left hanging outside to fill up afresh, meaning to use them -first, and taking my chance of loss through the water soaking through -them. - -All this, that is to be described in a few lines of writing, signified -a lengthy occupation, that broke well into the day. Miss Temple watched -my labours with interest, and begged to be of service; but she could be -of little use to me, nor would I suffer her to expose herself to the -wet. - -‘Will not this rain fill the hull,’ she exclaimed, ‘and sink her?’ - -‘It would need to keep on raining for a long while to do that,’ said -I, laughing. ‘I am going below to inspect the forepart of her, and to -ascertain, if possible, what her hold contains. Will you accompany me? -The hull rolls steadily; you will not find walking inconvenient, and it -is very necessary that you should occupy your mind.’ - -‘I should like to do so,’ she answered; ‘but ought not one of us to -stay here in case the sea should clear and show us the ships?’ - -‘Alas!’ said I, ‘there is no wind, and the ships probably lie as -motionless as we. This weather will not speedily clear, I believe. -We shall not be long below, and any sort of exertion is better than -sitting here in loneliness and musing upon the inevitable, and adding -the misery of thought to the distress of our situation.’ - -‘Yes, you are right,’ she exclaimed, rising. ‘You give me some heart, -Mr. Dugdale, yet I do not know why. There is nothing that you can say -to encourage me to hope.’ - -To this I made no reply, but took her hand, and assisted her to descend -the ladder. She came to a stand at the foot of it, as though terrified -by the gloom. - -‘It is dreadful,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘to think that only -a few short hours ago the poor lieutenant whose heart was beating -high with thoughts of returning home, should have been laughing and -joking--here! I can hear his voice still; I can hear Mr. Colledge’s -laughter. Hark! What noises are those?’ - -‘Rats!’ I exclaimed. - -The squeaking was shrill and fierce and close to. I lighted a candle, -she meanwhile coming to my side, her elbow rubbing mine, as though she -would have my hand within an instant’s reach of her own. The squeaking -continued. It sounded as though there were some score of rats worrying -something, or fighting among themselves. - -‘Hold this candle for a moment,’ said I, and I advanced to the bulkhead -and grasped a cutlass, and then peeped into the little passage that -divided the after cabins. The rats were somewhere along it, but it was -too dark to see; so laying the cutlass aside, I took down a musket -and sent the heavy weapon javelin-fashion sheer into the thick of the -hideous noise. A huge rat as big as a kitten rushed over my feet; Miss -Temple uttered a shriek, and let fall the candle. - -‘Do not be alarmed!’ I shouted; ‘the beasts know their way below;’ and -seeing the pallid outline of the candle upon the deck I picked it up -and relighted it. - -‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, in a voice that trembled with disgust and -fear, ‘what am I to do? I dare not be here, and I dare not be above, -alone. What is more shocking and terrifying than a rat?’ - -I told her that rats were much more afraid of us than we could possibly -be of them; but, commiserating her alarm, I offered to escort her to -the deck-house. - -‘But you will not leave me there,’ she exclaimed. - -‘It is very necessary,’ said I, ‘that I should examine the state of the -hull.’ - -‘Then I will stay with you,’ said she. ‘I cannot endure to be alone.’ - -She gathered up her dress, holding the folds of it with one hand, -whilst she passed the other through my arm. I could feel her shuddering -as she clung to me. Her eyes were large with fright and aversion, and -they sparkled to the candle-flame as she rolled them over the deck. -At the extremity of the passage that separated the foremost berths -from the pantry stood what I believed a bulkhead; but on bringing the -candle to it I discovered that it was a door of very heavy scantling -that slided in grooves with a stout iron handle for pulling it by. It -travelled very easily, as something that had been repeatedly used. -The moment it was open there was plenty of daylight, for the open -square of the main hatch yawned close by overhead, of dimensions -considerable enough to illuminate every part of this interior. I stood -viewing with wonder a scene of extraordinary confusion. There were -no hammocks, but all about the decks, in higgledly-piggledly heaps -and clusters, were mats of some sort of West Indian reeds, rugs and -blankets, bolster-shaped bags, a few sea-chests, most of them capsized, -with their lids open, and a surprising intermixture of hook-pots, -tin-dishes, sea-boots, oilskins, empty broken cases, staves of casks, -tackles, and a raffle of gear and other things of which my mind does -not preserve the recollection. Several large rats, on my swinging the -door along its grooves, darted from out of the various heaps and shot -with incredible velocity down through the large hatch that conducted -into the hold, and that lay on a line with the hatch above. - -‘By all that’s---- Well, well! here’s been excitement, surely,’ said -I. ‘Was ever panical terror more incomparably suggested? But this brig -was full of men, and there was manifestly a tremendous scramble at the -last. Would not anyone think that there had been a fierce fight down -here?’ - -‘Do you think there are any dead bodies under those things?’ exclaimed -Miss Temple in a hollow whisper. - -‘See!’ cried I; ‘lest there should be more rats about, suppose I -contrive some advantage for you over the beasts;’ and so saying I -dragged one of the largest of the sea-chests to the bulkhead and helped -her to get upon it. - -This seemed to make her easier. Filled as my mind was with conflicting -emotions excited by the extraordinary scene of hurry and disorder -which I surveyed, I could yet find leisure to glance at and deeply -admire her fine, commanding figure, as she stood with inimitable, -unconscious grace, swaying upon the chest to the regular rolling of the -hull. It was a picture of a sort to live as long as the memory lasted. -There she stood, draped in the elegancies of her white apparel, her -full, dark eyes large and vital again in the shadow of her rich hat, -under which her face showed colourless and faultless in lineament as -some incomparable achievement of the sculptor’s art: her beauty and -dignity heightened in a manner not to be expressed or explained by -the character of the scene round about--the uncovered square of hatch -through which the rain was falling, the wild disorder of the deck, the -rude beams and coarse sides of the interior. - -I approached the edge of the hatchway and looked down. Little more was -to be seen than ballast, on the top of which lay a couple of dismounted -guns, apparently twelve-pounders. A short distance forward in the gloom -were the outlines of some casks and cases. The hull was dry, as the -lieutenant had said. Water there undoubtedly must have been, washing to -and fro under the ballast and down in the run, but too inconsiderable -in quantity to give me the least uneasiness. One glance below sufficed -to assure me that the fabric of the wreck was tight. - -I considered a little whether it might not be possible to so protect -the yawning hatches as to provide against any violent inroads of water -should this dirty shadow of weather that overhung the wreck in wet end -in wind; but there were no tarpaulins to be seen, no spare planks or -anything of a like kind which could be converted into a cover, nothing -but mats and rugs, which were not to be put to any sort of use in the -direction I had in my mind. - -I left Miss Temple standing on the chest, darting alarmed glances at -the huddled heaps which littered the decks, and walked forward to a -doorway in a stout partition that bulkheaded off a short space of -forecastle from these ’tweendecks. There was an open forescuttle here -that made plenty of light. This was the interior that had been burnt -out, as the lieutenant had told me, to the condition of a charred -shell. The deck and sides were as black as a hat, and the place showed -as if it had been constructed of charcoal. A strong smell as of fire -still lingered. Whatever had been here in the shape of sea-furniture -was burnt, or removed by the people. I picked up a small handspike, -and entering the cindery apartment, beat here and there against the -semi-calcined planks, almost expecting to find the handspike shoot -through; but black as the timber looked it yielded a hearty echo to my -thumps, and I returned to Miss Temple satisfied that the hull was still -very staunch, and, but for her uncovered hatches, as seaworthy as ever -she had been at any time since her launch. - -Whilst turning over some of the mats and wearing apparel on the deck -with my foot I spied a large cube of something yellow, and, picking it -up and examining it, I was very happy to discover that it was tobacco. -I made more of this than had I found a purse of a hundred guineas, for, -though I had my pipe in my pocket, I was without anything to smoke, and -I cannot express how hungrily during the night I had yearned for the -exceeding solace of a few whiffs, and with what melancholy I had viewed -the prospect of having to wait until we were rescued before I should -obtain a cigar or a pipe of tobacco. - -‘What have you there, Mr. Dugdale?’ cried Miss Temple. - -‘A little matter that, coming on top of the discovery that this hull -is as good as a cork under our feet, helps very greatly towards -reestablishing my peace of mind--a lump of very beautiful tobacco,’ and -I smelt it fondly again. - -‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, I thought it was a dead rat,’ she exclaimed. ‘What -are all those mats?’ - -‘The privateersmen used them to sleep on, I expect. The quantity of -them tells us how heavily manned this old waggon went.’ - -‘There is no wind, Mr. Dugdale. The rain falls in perfectly straight -lines. Let us return to the deck-house.’ - -I took her hand and helped her to dismount. She gathered her dress -about her as before, and passed with trepidation through the darksome -cabin, holding tightly by my arm, and then, with a wearied despairful -air, seated herself upon a locker and leaned her chin in her hand, -biting her under lip whilst she gazed vacantly through the little -window at the sullen raining gloom of the sky. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -WE SIGHT A SAIL - - -I should but tease you by attempting to narrate the passage of the -hours from this point. All day long it rained; no air stirred, and -the leaden sea flattened into sulky heavings wide apart, on which the -hull rolled quietly. Possessing but the clothes in which I stood, I -fetched an oilskin from the ’tweendecks to save me from a wet skin, and -thus attired made several journeys into the foretop, where I lingered, -straining my gaze all around into the shrouded horizon till my eyeballs -seemed to crack to the stretching of my vision. Sometimes, when in -the deck-house, I would start to my feet on fancying I heard a sound -of oars, but it was never more than some sobbing wash of swell, or -some stir of the rudder swayed on its pintles by the movement of the -fabric. There was plenty of stuff below with which to produce smoke, -but no preparation for such a signal could be made whilst it rained, -nor could any purpose be served by having the materials ready until the -weather cleared, and wind blew, and something hove into sight. - -Miss Temple’s miserable dejection grieved me bitterly. The horror -of our situation seemed to increase upon her, and say what I might -I never succeeded in coaxing the least air of spirit into her face. -It was distressing beyond language to see this haughty, beautiful, -high-born woman, accustomed to every refinement and elegance that was -to be purchased or contrived, reduced to such a pass as this: languidly -putting her lips to the rough pannikin in which I would hand her a -draught of wine and water; scarcely able to bite the flinty biscuit -which, with marmalade and cheese, formed our repasts; sitting for weary -long spells at a time motionless in a corner of the rough structure, -her eyelids heavy, her gaze fixed and listless, her lips parted, with -all their old haughty expression of imperious resolution gone from -them, her fingers locked upon her lap, her breast now and again rising -and falling with hysteric swiftness to some wrenching emotion which -yet found her face marble-like, and her eyes without their familiar -impassioned glow. - -I recollect wondering once, whilst watching her silently, whether -there would prove anything in this experience to change her character. -Should the Indiaman recover us, there might be a full fourteen or even -sixteen weeks of association before us yet. Once safely aboard the -_Countess Ida_, would she let this experience slip out of her mind -as an influence, and repeat in her manner towards myself the cold -indifference, the haughty neglect, the distant supercilious usage -which I had found so objectionable, that I was coming very near to -as cordially hating her character as I deeply admired the beauties -and perfections of her face and person. Was she not a sort of woman -to accept an obligation and to look, if it suited her to do so, very -coldly afterwards upon the person who had obliged her? Ridiculous as -the emotion was at such a time, when, for all I knew, in a few hours -the pair of us might be floating a brace of corpses, fathoms deep in -that leaden ocean over the side, yet I must confess to a small stir -of exultation to the thought that supposing us to be rescued, let her -behave as she pleased, she never could escape the memory of having -been alone with me in this horrible hull, nor avert the discovery of -this circumstance by her relatives and friends. It was a consideration, -indeed, to bring her mightily closer to me than ever she had dreamt of, -and to my mind it was as complete a turning of the tables as the most -romantic fancy could have invented--that she who could scarce address -me on board the Indiaman for pride, and for dislike too, for all I -could tell, should now be in the intimate and lonely association of -shipwreck with me, clinging to me, entreating me not to leave her side; -dependent upon such spirit and energy as I possessed for the food and -drink that was to support us, and again and again talking to me with -a freedom which she would have exhibited to no living creature in the -Indiaman, her aunt excepted. - -When that second night came down black as thunder, raining hard, the -ocean breathless, I entreated her to rest. - -‘You must sleep, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘I will keep watch.’ - -She shook her head. - -‘Nay,’ I continued, ‘you will rest comfortably upon this locker. You -need but a pillow. There is nothing in the cabins to be thought of for -that purpose; but I believe I can contrive a soft bolster for you out -of my coat.’ - -‘You are very kind, but I shall not be able to sleep.’ - -I continued to entreat her, and I saw she was affected by my -earnestness. - -‘Since it will please you if I lie down, Mr. Dugdale, I will do so,’ -said she. - -I whipped off my coat and rolled it up, and she removed her hat with -a manner that made me see she abhorred even this trifling disturbance -of her apparel, as though it signified a sort of settling down to the -unspeakable life of the wreck. The fabric swayed so tenderly that the -bottle containing the candle stood without risk of capsizal upon the -table, and the small but steady flame shone clearly upon her. How -delicate were her features by that light; how rich and beautiful the -exceeding abundance of the dark coils of her hair, the richer and the -more beautiful for the neglect in it, for the shadowing of her white -brow by the disordered tresses, for the drooping of it about her ears, -with the sparkle of diamonds there! Presently she was resting. - -I removed the candle to the stanchion, and secured the bottle where -the light would be off her eyes, and sat me down near the doorway as -far from her as the narrow breadth of the structure would permit, -where I filled a pipe and smoked, expelling the fumes into the air, -and listening with a heavy heart to the faint sounds breaking from the -interior of the hull to the washing moan at long intervals of some -passing heave of swell, and to the squeaking of the rats in the cabin -below--a most dismal and shocking sound, I do protest, to hearken to -amidst the hush and blackness of that ocean night, scarce vexed by more -than the pattering of the rain. - -From time to time Miss Temple would address me; then she fell silent, -and by-and-by looking towards her, and observing her to lie motionless, -I softly crept to abreast of her, keeping the table between, and found -her sleeping. - -It was then something after ten by my watch, and she slept for five -hours without a stir, though now and again she spoke in her sleep. I -know not why I should have remained awake unless it was to keep my -weather-eye lifting for the rats. There was nothing to watch for or to -hope for in such weather as that. Once, when the beasts below were -very noisy--for, as you will suppose, in that solemn stillness their -squeakings rose with a singularly sharp edge to the ear--I bethought -me of the pantry, and could not remember whether I had shut the door. -For all I could yet tell, the stores we had to depend upon were in -that little cabin, and if the rats found their way to the food, we -might speedily starve. I lighted a second candle, that, should the girl -suddenly awake, she might not find herself in the dark, and stepped -below, and found the door closed. I opened it, and minutely surveyed -the interior, and observing all to be well, shut the door and came -away; but never can I forget the uncontrollable chills and shudders -which seized me on passing through that cabin! I do not doubt my mind -had been a little weakened. The remains of the mainmast pierced the -deck, and stood like a pillar; it stirred to the movement of the candle -in my hand, and I stopped with a violent start to gaze at it while -the perspiration broke from my forehead. Vague indeterminable shapes -seemed to flit past and about the stand of arms. The dull noises in the -hold took to my alarmed ear the notes of human groans. Several rats -scurried in flying forms of blackness towards the after cabins: they -seemed to start up through the deck at my feet! - -When I resumed my seat on the locker, I was trembling from head to -foot, and my heart beat with feverish rapidity. A draught of wine -rallied me, and I tried to find something ridiculous in my fears. But -all the same my dejection was as that of a man under sentence of death, -and again and again I would put up a prayer to God for our speedy -deliverance, whilst I sat hearkening to the noises below, to the steady -pattering of the rain, to the occasional melancholy sob of water, and -to the broken, unintelligible muttering of the sleeping girl. - -At some hour between three and four my companion awoke. She sat up with -a cry of wonder, and by the candle-light I observed her staring around, -with looks of astonishment and horror such as might appear in the face -of a person who starts from some pleasant dream into the realities of a -dreadful situation. I waited until she should have recollected herself, -to use the fine expressive word of the old writers. - -‘I have been dreaming of home,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘of safety, -of comfort, of everything that I am now wanting. What time is it, Mr. -Dugdale?’ - -I put my watch close to my face and told her the hour. - -‘How black the night continues!’ she said--‘how silent, too!’ she -added, after hearkening awhile. ‘It has ceased to rain, and there is -not a breath of air.’ - -‘It has not rained for these two hours past,’ said I. ‘I am impatient -for the day to break. The horizon should be tolerably clear, if there -be no rain; yet what can daybreak possibly disclose to us on top of -such a night of stagnation as this has been?’ - -‘Have you slept?’ - -‘No.’ - -‘Then you will take some rest now. It is my turn to watch.’ - -‘The dawn will be breaking in a couple of hours,’ said I; ‘I will -wait till it comes to take a look. Should nothing be in sight, I will -endeavour to rest. You will not suffer in the daylight from the feeling -of loneliness that would make you wretched now if I slept.’ - -‘Whilst you are here, although sleeping, Mr. Dugdale, I should not feel -lonely. Your voice assures me that you need sleep. I have been resting -five hours. How patient you are!’ - -She took up my jacket, reformed it pillow-fashion, placed it on the -locker where her own head had lain, and moved to make room for me, -seating herself where my feet would about come. - -‘Pray lie down, Mr. Dugdale. I shall be closer to you here than you -have been to me, and I can awaken you in an instant if there should be -occasion to do so.’ - -I complied, rather to please her than to humour my own wishes; for -though my eyelids had the heaviness of lead, there was a thrilling and -hurrying of nervous sensation in me which were as good as a threat that -I should not sleep. And so it proved, for after I had held my head -pillowed for some half hour, I was still broad awake; and then growing -impatient of my posture, I sat erect. - -‘No use, Miss Temple, I cannot sleep; and since that is so, pray resume -this hard couch and finish out your slumbers.’ - -But this she would not do, protesting that she was fully rested. I was -too desirous of her company to weary her with entreaties, and until the -day broke we sat at that narrow table with the light close enough to -enable us to see each other clearly. I remember saying to her: - -‘Since this is an experience you were fated to pass through--I suppose -we must all believe in the pre-ordination of our lives--my sincere -regret is that you should not have been imprisoned in this hull with -somebody more agreeable to yourself than I.’ - -‘Why do you say that?’ she exclaimed, giving me a look that carried me -back. ‘In this state of misery a compliment would be shocking.’ - -‘I seek no compliment,’ said I. ‘I am merely expressing a regret.’ - -‘You regret that you are here?’ she exclaimed. ‘So do I, for then I -should not be here. But since it is my lot to be here, I am satisfied -with my companion; I would not exchange him for any other person on -board the _Countess Ida_.’ - -I bowed. - -‘Should we be rescued,’ she continued, keeping her dark gaze full upon -me as she spoke (and something of their beauty and brilliancy of light -had returned to her eyes with her rest), ‘I shall be deeply in your -debt. My mother will thank you, Mr. Dugdale.’ - -‘I have done nothing, Miss Temple. It is you who are now complimentary, -and I fear ironical.’ - -She slightly shook her head and sighed, then remained silent for a -minute or two, and said: ‘How small and contemptible my spirit shows -itself when I am tested! Do you recollect when this wretched brig was -lying near us, how I took a parasol from my aunt and levelled it at -this vessel and talked of wishing to see a sea fight and of shooting a -man? How brave I was when there was nothing particularly to be afraid -of, and how cowardly I have shown myself here.’ - -‘I should have scarcely believed,’ said I, ‘that you were sensible of -my presence at the time you speak of.’ - -‘Why?’ she asked. - -‘Indeed,’ I continued, ‘I should have scarcely believed that you were -sensible that I was on board the ship.’ - -‘Mr. Dugdale, if my manner did not please you, this is no time to -reproach me with it.’ Her eyes sparkled and her lip curled peevishly. - -‘Hark!’ I exclaimed; ‘I hear a rippling noise as of approaching -wind.’ I passed round the table, gained the door, and looked out. The -atmosphere was still motionless, but the sounds of rippling drew near, -and presently I felt a pleasant little air blowing over the stern of -the hull, accompanied with the tinkling and lipping noises of water -set in motion trembling to the brig’s side. But it was still pitch -dark, and search the sky where I would, I could observe no break of -faintness, no leanest vision of star, no vaguest outline of cloud in -the impenetrable obscurity. - -I returned to the table, this time seating myself opposite to Miss -Temple. It was easily seen in her face that she was sensible I did this -consciously. Indeed, the gaze she rested upon me was a look of inquiry -as though she would discover whether this holding aloof on my part was -due to respect or to dislike. Then, as though she suddenly sickened to -such idle considerations, she exclaimed with an eager awakening of her -in her whole manner, ‘Does this breeze come from the direction where -the ships are, or where you may suppose them to be, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -‘For the life of me I could not tell you,’ I responded; ‘there are no -quarters of the compass for human senses on such a night as this, in -a hull that may be headed on all sorts of courses by the set of the -swell; but the dawn will be here anon, and if this draught hold, we -shall be able to find out whence it proceeds.’ - -It was still blowing the same light breeze when day broke, and I then -knew that the wind sat about north-west. Miss Temple and I stepped on -to the deck, where we stood in an agony of impatience awaiting the full -revelation of the sea. One saw why it should have been so pitch dark -throughout the night; the sky was overcast from horizon to horizon by a -sheet of sallowish leaden-hued vapour. Yet the atmosphere had cleared -so as to enable the sight to penetrate to the verge of the normal -sea-line, where the ocean stood in a firm rim of the darkness of indigo -in the east against the grey of the morning that was spreading out -behind it. I took a long and steady view of the circle; my companion’s -eyes were riveted upon me as I did so; she had rather trust my sight -than hers, and her gaze glowed with an inexpressible eagerness to -witness in my face an expression that should inform her I beheld a sail. - -‘It is the same inhuman abominable blankness as that of yesterday,’ -said I, fetching a deep breath of rage and grief; then shocked by the -air of horror and despair in Miss Temple, I added: ‘Yet this gives us -a view of but little more than seven miles. Here is an air, surely, to -whip something along. The ships of this ocean cannot all have rotted -in yesterday’s pestilential calm. Oh for such another telescope as Mr. -Prance’s!’ and so saying I trudged forwards, and in a few minutes was -sweeping the horizon from the elevation of the foretop. - -I ran my eyes slowly and piercingly along the sea-line, starting from -the part into which the vessel’s mutilated bowsprit pointed, and when -my vision was over the starboard quarter, I beheld trembling upon -the utmost verge of the livid waters stretching to the shrouded sky -a minute fragment of white--a tip as of a seagull’s pinion, but of a -certainty a sail! I lingered to make sure. Miss Temple watched me from -abaft the deck-house. My glance went to her for an instant, and I saw -her bring her hands together and lift them, as though she witnessed in -my posture that I descried something. My heart hammered violently in my -ears, and my breathing was short and laboured. - -‘What do you see?’ Miss Temple cried at last, her rich voice, tremulous -with excitement and expectation, floating up like the notes of a flute. - -‘A sail!’ I exclaimed, calling with an effort. ‘Patience! I must stay -here to make sure of the direction she is taking,’ and I stood for a -minute pointing while she strained her sight; but there was nothing for -her to see down there. - -The breeze had weight enough to determine the matter with some -despatch, and I knew that if the sail were heading away from us, it -must speedily vanish, so mere a speck was it that showed. Instead, -though I will not say that it _grew_ whilst I stood staring, it hung -with a fixedness to satisfy me that the vessel was steering a course -that must bring us into the sphere of her horizon; and not having the -least doubt of this, I dropped over the short futtock shrouds of the -wreck and sprang on to the deck. - -‘It is a ship, Mr. Dugdale!’ cried Miss Temple with something of an -hysteric accent of inquiry in her voice. - -‘Assuredly,’ I answered. - -‘Will she see us, do you think?’ - -‘Ay, if she does not shift her helm. But we will _compel_ her to see -us.’ - -The girl suddenly grasped my hand in both hers, bowed her head over -it, and I felt a tear. I was so affected that I stood looking, unable -to speak. It was a sort of submission in its way. I cannot convey my -thoughts of it. She was without her hat; I see her now as she bent -over my hand; I feel the ice-cold pressure of her fingers, and recall -the tears glittering through the beauty of her downcast lashes as they -rose. She slowly lifted her large wet eyes to my face. - -‘What an experience this has been!’ she whispered; ‘how shall I be able -to persuade people that I underwent it and lived?’ - -She still unconsciously held my hand. I put my lips to her fingers, and -she released me. - -‘It must always be one of the very happiest memories of my life to me,’ -said I. ‘I shall never make you believe in the joy your deliverance -will fill me with.’ - -‘Oh yes, yes!’ she cried passionately; then sending a look over the -quarter, she added: ‘Are we not losing time? Is there not something we -can do to summon her to us? Will it be long before she appears?’ - -‘No; we are not losing time,’ I answered. ‘I shall have plenty of -leisure to make a smoke, and that is what we must presently do. If she -be the Indiaman or the corvette, all that is visible of her from yonder -foretop is her royals. Her topgallant sails, her topsails, and her -courses will have to climb before her hull shows. Her speed to this air -will not exceed four knots. She is probably twenty miles distant yet, -and we must allow her, unless the breeze freshens, a good three hours -to give us a full sight of herself on that horizon out there. So let us -first get something to eat, Miss Temple, and then I will go to work.’ - -But our excitement was too strong to suffer us to make more than -a phantom of a meal. A little biscuit soaked in wine formed my -companion’s breakfast, but her spirits had returned to her; the -remembered brilliancy was in her eyes again; a faint, most delicate -flush was on her cheek; with unconscious fingers she caressed her -hair as though, influenced by a womanly instinct of which she was -insensible, she adjusted her tresses in preparation of our reception by -the people of the ship. She was sure it was the _Countess Ida_. There -was real gaiety in the laugh with which she said that she knew Mrs. -Radcliffe’s character, that she could well imagine how her aunt had -tormented Captain Keeling, how ceaselessly the old lady would importune -the captain to make haste and recover her niece. - -‘Oh, what a meeting it will be!’ she cried. - -‘The sail may prove the corvette, though,’ said I. - -‘But she will rescue us, Mr. Dugdale, and hunt after the Indiaman, and -Sir Edward will put us on board of her.’ - -I left her to enter the ’tweendecks, where I collected a number of -mats, blankets, staves of casks, and other material, which would burn -and produce a thick smoke; and presently, with the assistance of Miss -Temple, had a great heap of these things stacked on deck betwixt the -foremast and the mainhatch. It was a hard job to get the stuff to -kindle, for the mats were damp and the staves not to be set on fire -by a sulphur match. But on overhauling the lockers in the deck-house -I found a tin can half full of oil and a small parcel of rags; and by -means of these I set my bonfire alight. The planks of the deck were -thick and wet, and securely calked, and the burning stuff was well -clear of the hatch; there was no fear then, as I believed, of the fire -penetrating the deck. It made a prodigious smoke. The mass of damp -blankets and rags smouldered into a dark thick column, which mounted -high ere it arched over to the wind. It was a signal to be sighted as -far away as the ship was, and I stood watching it with transported eyes -as it soared in belching folds gyrating into and blackening out upon -the breeze till it showed like a steamer’s smoke or a ship on fire. - -I waited a little, and then got into the fore-shrouds to mark the sail -afresh, and beheld the gleam of her canvas when I was still two or -three ratlines below the futtock shrouds: good assurance, indeed, of -her rising, and nimbly too, and heading square for us. I strained my -gaze at her from the height of the top, but she was far too remote to -be distinguishable; nothing more, indeed, than a little ivory shaft -against the sulky sallow of the sky. - -It now occurred to me that I might accentuate the signal of the smoke -by letting fall the foresail, for here was a space of canvas that would -not only catch the eye, but suggest the hull as a still inhabited wreck -that was on fire. I called to Miss Temple. She looked up eagerly. - -‘Do you see those ropes leading to the deck from the arms of this -yard?’ said I, pointing. - -‘Yes.’ - -‘I want you to haul them taut, Miss Temple--gather in the slack to -prevent the yard from swinging, as I mean to get upon it.’ - -She understood me perfectly. Her jewelled fingers flashed upon the rope -as she threw the brace off the belaying pin, and I gazed down with a -smile of deep admiration at her noble figure whilst she swayed at the -line tightening and then belaying it again. - -‘You should have been a sailor’s daughter,’ I cried; ‘there is the -true skill of the ancient mariner in your trick of holding on with one -hand and making fast with the other. Will you please now tighten the -brace on the right-hand side.’ - -She did so, and I got upon the yard and, ‘laying out’ upon it, as it -is called, severed with my knife the ropes with which the canvas was -frapped to the spar, and down fell the sail with a large rent right -amidships of it, though that signified nothing in a square of white -that was to serve as a signal only. I descended to the deck. - -‘Why have you loosed that sail?’ inquired Miss Temple. I explained. -‘But will not the wreck now blow away from that ship?’ - -‘No,’ said I; ‘she will fall off and come to. But the yard must be -trimmed to achieve that.’ - -So saying I let go the weather-brace and swung the yard fore and aft -as far as I could bring it, then overhauled the clew-garnets, that all -there was of the sail might show. The hull slewed to the pressure, then -hung quiet; meanwhile I continued to feed the blaze, heaping on rugs -and blankets and so firing up that at times the smoke hung as thick to -leeward as a thundercloud. - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -THE ‘LADY BLANCHE’ - - -So light was the breeze, that it was drawing on to ten o’clock in the -morning before the approaching vessel lay plain on the sea. Long before -this I had made her out to be a square-rigged craft, and sometimes I -would imagine that she was the corvette, and sometimes that she was -the _Countess Ida_. It had been a time of breathless expectation, of -crushing suspense. Again and again had I mounted the rigging to make -sure that she had not shifted her course, and was edging away from -us. Again and again had I run my eyes round the sea with a passionate -prayer in my heart that the wind might hold; for if it shifted, we -stood to lose the ship; and if it fell, the calm might last all day, -with the prospect of another black night before us and a deserted ocean -at daybreak. - -But now, drawing on to this hour of ten, the hull of the vessel had -risen to its bends, and though I might be certain of nothing else, -it was absolutely sure that the stranger was neither the _Magicienne_ -nor the _Countess Ida_. She had puzzled me greatly for a considerable -time; for even when her fore-course had fairly lifted she yet seemed to -be rising more canvas. But by this hour I could distinguish. She was a -small vessel, painted white--whether barque or ship I could not then -tell. She had studdingsails out and skysails set, and showed as an airy -delicate square of pearl; and indeed I might have believed that she was -the Indiaman for that reason, until her snow-white body came stealing -out to the stare I fixed upon her, and then I looked at Miss Temple. - -Her sight for seafaring details was not mine. She was trembling as she -said: ‘Which ship is she, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -‘Neither,’ I answered. - -‘Neither!’ she cried. - -‘Do not you observe that yonder craft has a white hull, and that she is -a small ship? But what does it matter? She is bound to see us. She will -rescue us; and, let the future be what it may, our one consuming need -now is to quit this hull.’ - -She had so reckoned upon the stranger proving either the corvette or -the Indiaman, that, had the approaching craft been no more than a -mirage, had the fabric melted upon the air as we watched it, she could -not have looked more blank, more wildly and hopelessly disappointed. - -‘Neither!’ she repeated, breathing with difficulty. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, -what are we to do?’ - -‘Why, get on board of her, in the name of God,’ I cried--‘giving Him -thanks when we are there.’ - -‘But she may--she will be’--she paused, unable to articulate: then with -an effort: ‘She may be going to another part of the world.’ - -‘It matters not,’ I answered, observing with rapture that the vessel -was heading more directly for us; ‘she will put us aboard something -homeward bound. Will not that be better than stopping here, Miss -Temple?’ - -‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ she cried; ‘but if we waited a little, the Indiaman -might find us.’ - -‘Heaven forbid! we have waited long enough.’ - -So speaking, I rushed forward, picked up the handspike with which I -had beaten upon the forecastle wall, secured a blanket to it, and, -dancing aft, fell to flourishing it with all my might. Very slowly -the vessel came floating down upon us with a light swaying of her -trucks from side to side, and a tender twinkling of the folds of her -lower canvas, which there was not weight enough in the wind to hold -distended. Her hull was exceedingly graceful, and of a milky whiteness; -and, as she leaned from us on some wide fold of the breathing waters, -she exposed a hand’s-breadth of burnished copper, which put a wonderful -quality of beauty and delicacy into the whole fabric, as though she -were a little model in frosted silver. - -‘Before she takes us on board, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple, -‘will not you mount the rigging to see if there is another ship in -sight that may prove the Indiaman?’ - -‘But even if the Indiaman were in sight,’ said I, ‘we should seize this -the first of our opportunities to escape from this floating tomb. For -heaven’s sake, let us get aboard that fellow!’ - -As I spoke, I seized the handspike again and frantically flourished it. -All this while there was a column of smoke ascending steadily from my -fire of rugs and mats and darkening the sea over the starboard bow. I -was now able to make out that the coming craft was a barque. My eyes -were glued to her; my heart thumped furiously; the wildest alternations -of joy and dread seized me. Suppose she should prove some foreigner in -charge of a man indifferent to human life, some cold-blooded miscreant -who had shifted his helm merely to satisfy his curiosity, and who, on -perceiving that the smoke was no more than a signal, and that the wreck -floated high, should slide quietly on and leave us to our fate? Such -things had been; such things were again and again happening. As she -drew with a snail-like motion abreast without touching a brace, without -any signs of movement about her deck, my eyes turned dim; I feared I -was about to swoon. - -‘Will she not stop?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, in a voice of terror. - -Lifting the handspike with its fluttering blanket high above my head, -I waved it furiously for some moments, then flinging it down upon the -deck, applied my hands to the sides of my mouth, and, in a voice of -such energy that it came near to cracking every vein in my head, I -yelled: ‘Barque ahoy! For God’s sake, send a boat and take us off.’ - -As the words left my throat, the vessel’s helm was put down; the clew -of the mainsail mounted, and her topsail yard slowly revolved, bringing -every cloth upon the main aback, and in a few minutes the graceful -little craft was lying without way within speaking distance of us. - -In the violence of my transport, I grasped Miss Temple’s hand and again -and again pressed my lips to it, congratulating her and myself so, for -I had no words. The figures of the people were clearly visible: a row -of heads forward, the fellow at the wheel on a short raised deck, and -two men dressed in white clothes with large straw hats at the mizzen -rigging. One of them leisurely clambered on to the rail, and, holding -by one hand to a backstay, sang out: - -‘Wreck ahoy! How many are there of you?’ - -‘Two of us only,’ I shouted back; ‘this lady and myself.’ - -‘Any contagious sickness?’ - -‘No, no,’ I bawled, amazed by the question. ‘Pray, send a boat.’ - -He continued to stand, as though viewing us meditatively; then, ‘Wreck -ahoy!’ - -‘Hallo!’ I cried, scarcely able to send my voice owing to the -consternation excited in me by the man’s behaviour. - -‘Are you a sailor?’ he roared. - -‘Oh, say yes, say yes!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘he may be in want of men.’ - -‘Ay, ay,’ I cried; ‘I’m a sailor.’ - -‘What sort of sailor?’ - -‘I belonged to an Indiaman.’ - -‘Afore the mast?’ - -‘No, no! send a boat--I’ll tell you all about it.’ - -He descended from the rail and apparently addressed the man that stood -near, who walked to the companion-hatch and returned with a telescope; -the other took it from him, then knelt down to rest the glass on the -rail, and surveyed us through the lenses for at least a couple of -minutes, after which he rose, returned the glass to his companion, and -flourished his hand at us. I watched, utterly unable to guess what was -next to happen. My fears foreboded the departure of the barque, and -the impatience in me worked like madness in my blood. But mercifully -we were not to be kept long in this intolerable state of suspense. -A few minutes after the man, whom I supposed to be the captain, had -motioned to us with his arm, a number of sailors came to the davits at -the foremost extremity of the raised after-deck, where swung a small -white boat of a whaling pattern. Four of them entered her, and she -sank slowly to the water’s edge, where she was promptly freed from her -tackles, and three oars thrown over. The fellow in the stern sheets -was the man who had handed the glass to the other. The oarsmen pulled -swiftly, and in a very short time the little craft was alongside. - -‘Only two of ye, is it?’ said the fellow who grasped the tiller, a -short, square, sun-blackened, coarse-looking sailor. - -‘Only two,’ I cried. - -‘Any luggage?’ - -‘No,’ I answered. - -‘Nothen portable aboard worth carrying off, is there?’ - -‘Yes,’ I answered, cursing him in my heart for the delay these -questions involved; ‘there are several hams, bottles of fine wine, -cheeses, and the like below.’ - -‘Odds niggers! we’ll have ’em then,’ he exclaimed; and in an instant he -was in the wreck’s chains, wriggling over the side and calling to one -of his fellows to follow him. They hung in the wind a moment, staring -their hardest at Miss Temple and myself; then said the short square man -in white: ‘Where be the goods, master?’ - -I pointed to the hatch in the deck-house, and directed them to what I -called the pantry. But nothing could have induced me to leave the deck. -As they disappeared I stepped to the side where the bulwarks were gone. - -‘Bring the boat close under, my lads,’ I exclaimed to the two fellows -in her, ‘and stand by to receive the lady.’ - -The hull was rolling gently, with just enough of depression to render -a jump into the little fabric as it rose very easy and safe. ‘Now, -Miss Temple,’ I cried. She sprang without an instant’s hesitation, was -caught by one of the sailors, and in a jiffy the pair of us were snug -in the stern sheets side by side. - -The two men could not take their eyes off us. They surveyed us with -countenances of profound astonishment, running their gaze over Miss -Temple as though she were some creature of another world: as well they -might, indeed, seeing the contrast between the groaning, mutilated, -smoking hull and this girl leaping from her deck in the choice and -elegant attire of the highest fashion, as the two poor devils would -imagine--for what eye would _they_ have for the disorder of her -apparel?--and her hands, breast, and ears sparkling with jewels of -value and splendour. - -‘Are ye English, sir?’ said one of them, a middle-aged man, of an -honest cast of countenance, with minute eyes deep sunk in his head, and -a pair of greyish whiskers uniting at his throat. - -‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ I answered. - -‘The lady too, sir?’ - -‘Yes, man, yes. What ship are you?’ - -‘The _Lady Blanche_,’ he answered. - -‘Where bound?’ - -‘To Mauritius, from the river Thames.’ - -I glanced at Miss Temple; but either she had not heeded the fellow’s -answer or her mind failed to collect its meaning. - -‘Been long aboard here, sir?’ said the man, indicating the hull by a -sideways motion of his head. - -‘Two nights,’ I answered. ‘There should be a corvette and an Indiaman -close at hand hereabouts. Have you met with either ship?’ - -‘No, sir.’ - -‘Sighted no sail at all?’ - -‘Nothen like un,’ exclaimed the other sailor. ‘Th’ ocean’s gone and -growed into a Hafrican desert.’ - -The square man in white, followed by his attendant seaman, arrived at -the side, bearing between them a blanket loaded with the produce of -the pantry, to judge by the clinking of bottle glass and the orbicular -bulgings of cheeses and rounds of hams. - -‘Catch this here bundle now,’ sung out the square man, who, later on, I -ascertained was the barque’s carpenter, acting also as the second mate. -‘Handsomely over the bricks. It’s wine, bullies.’ - -The blanket and its contents were received, and deposited in the bottom -of the boat. The men entered her, and we shoved off. - -‘Did you make up that there fire, sir?’ inquired the square man, -bringing his eyes in a stare of astonishment from Miss Temple to -myself. - -‘Yes; nobody else. This lady and I are alone.’ - -‘Then you’ve set the bloomin’ hull on fire,’ said he. - -I started, and sent a look at the column of smoke, at which I had never -once glanced whilst lying alongside, so distracted was my attention by -the multiplicity of emotions which surged in me. There was no need to -gaze long to gather that more was going, to the making of the coils of -smoke which were now rising in soot than the nearly consumed remains of -the mats and rugs which I had stacked and fed. - -‘The fire’s burnt clean through the deck,’ said the square man, ‘and -there are some casks in flames just forrads of the main hatch. What -might they have contained, d’ye know?’ - -‘I don’t know,’ I answered, trembling like a half-frozen kitten as I -watched the smoke, and thought of what must have come to us, if yonder -barque’s approach had been delayed! - -‘I suppose there’ll be gunpowder aboard?’ continued the square man. -‘Pull, lads! If a bust-up happens, it’ll find us too near at this.’ - -The men bent their backs, and the sharp-ended little boat went smoking -through the quiet rippling waters. Nothing more was said. The square -man, whose rugged, weather-blackened face preserved an inimitable air -of amazement, eyed us askant, particularly running his gaze over Miss -Temple’s attire, and letting it rest upon her rings. The toil of the -seamen kept them silent. For my part, I was too overcome to utter a -word. The passion of delight excited by our deliverance--that is to -say, as signified by our rescue by the barque--was paralysed by the -horror with which I viewed the growing denseness of the smoke rising -from the hull. She was on fire! Great heaven, what would have been -our fate--without a boat, without the materials for the construction -of a raft--with no more than a few staves of casks to hold by! Such a -sea-brigand as the wreck had been in her day was sure to have a liberal -store of gunpowder stowed somewhere below: in all probability, in a -magazine in the hold under her cabin. What, then, would there have been -for us to do? We must either have sought death by leaping overboard, -or awaited the horrible annihilation of an explosion! - -Miss Temple’s eyes were large and her lips pale and her face bloodless, -as though she were in a swoon. She was seeing how it was, and how it -must have been with us, and she seemed smitten to the motionlessness -of a statue by the perception as she sat by my side staring at the -receding hull. - -We swept to the little gangway ladder that had been dropped over the -rail, and with some difficulty I assisted the girl over the side, -swinging by the man-rope with one hand and supporting her waist with -the other. The man who had hailed us stood at the gangway. I instantly -went up to him with my hand outstretched. - -‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you are the captain, no doubt. I thank you for this -deliverance, for this preservation of our lives, for this rescue from -what _now_ must have proved a horrible doom of fire.’ - -He took my hand and held it without answering, whilst he continued to -stare at me with an intentness that in a very few moments astonished -and embarrassed me. - -‘What is your name, sir?’ he presently said. - -‘Laurence Dugdale,’ I answered. - -‘Mate of an Indiaman, I think you said, sir?’ - -‘No,’ I replied. ‘I was for two years at sea in an Indiaman as -midshipman.’ - -He let fall my hand, and his face changed whilst he recoiled a step, -meanwhile running his eyes from top to toe of me. - -‘A midshipman?’ he exclaimed, with an accent of contempt. ‘Why, a -midshipman ain’t a _sailor_! How long ago is it since you was a -midshipman?’ - -‘Six years,’ I answered, completely bewildered by questioning of this -sort at such a moment. - -‘Six years!’ he cried, whilst his face grew longer still. ‘Why, then, I -don’t suppose you’ll even _know_ what a quadrant means?’ - -‘Certainly I know all about it,’ I answered, with a half-glance at Miss -Temple, who stood beside me listening to these questions in a torment -of surprise and suspense. - -‘Are ye acquainted with navigation, then?’ inquired the captain. - -‘Sufficiently well, I believe, to enable me to carry a ship to any -part of the world,’ I rejoined, controlling my rising temper, though I -was sensible that there was blood in my cheeks and that my eyes were -expressing my mood. - -‘Why, then, that’s all right!’ he cried, brightening up. ‘You tell me -you could find your way about with a sextant?’ - -‘Yes, sir, I have told you so.’ - -‘By heaven! then,’ he roared, ‘I’m glad to see ye! Welcome aboard the -_Lady Blanche_, sir. And you, mem, I am sure.’ Here he pulled off his -immense straw hat and gave Miss Temple an unspeakably grotesque bow. -‘What have you got there?’ he bawled to the square man. - -‘A blanket full of wines and cheeses and ’ams,’ answered the man, who -was helping to manœuvre the bundle inboards over the side. - -‘All right, all right!’ shouted the captain. ‘Now put ’em down, do, and -get your boat hooked on and hoisted, d’ye hear? and get your topsail -yard swung. Why, who’s been and set that wreck on fire?’ - -‘The flare’s burnt through her deck,’ cried the square man in a surly -tone, ‘and I allow she’ll be ablowing up in a few minutes.’ - -But she was too far distant to suffer this conjecture to alarm the -captain. - -‘Let her blow up,’ said he; ‘there’s room enough for her,’ and then -giving Miss Temple another convulsive bow, he invited us to step into -the cabin. - -This was a little state-room under the short after-deck, and, with -its bulkheaded berths abaft, a miniature likeness in its way of the -_Countess Ida’s_ saloon. It was a cosy little place, with a square -table amidships, a bench on either hand of it screwed to the deck, a -flat skylight overhead, a couple of old-fashioned lamps, a small stove -near to the trunk of the mizzenmast, a rack full of tumblers, and so -forth. - -‘Sit ye down, mem,’ said the captain, pointing to a bench. ‘Sir, be -seated. I heard Mr. Lush just now talk of wines, and cheeses, and hams; -but what d’ye say to a cut of boiled beef and a bottle of London stout? -Drifting about in a wreck ain’t wholesome for the soul, I believe; but -I never heard that it affected the appetite.’ - -‘You are very good,’ I exclaimed; ‘our food for the last three days has -been no more than ship’s bread and marmalade--poor fare for the lady, -fresh from the comforts and luxuries of an Indiaman’s cuddy.’ - -He went to the cabin door and bawled; and a young fellow, whom I -afterwards found out was his servant, came running aft. He gave him -certain directions, then returned to the table, where he sat for a -long two minutes first staring at me and then at Miss Temple without -a wink of his eyes. I observed that my companion shrunk from this -extraordinary silent scrutiny. I had never witnessed in any other human -head such eyes as that fellow had. They were a deformity by their size, -being about twice too big for the width and length of his face, of a -deep ink-black, resembling discs of ebony gummed upon china. There was -no glow, no mind in them, that I could distinguish, scarcely anything -of vitality outside their preternatural capacity of staring, that -was yet immeasurably heightened by the steadiness of the lids, which -I never once beheld blinking. His face was long and yellow, closely -shorn, and of an indigo blue down the cheeks, upon the chin, and upon -the upper lip. He had a very long aquiline nose with large nostrils, -which constantly dilated, as though he snuffed up rather than breathed -the air. His eyebrows were extraordinarily thick, and met in a peculiar -tuft in the indent of the skull above the nose; whilst his hair, black -as his eyes, and smooth and gleaming as the back of a raven, lay combed -over his ears down upon his back. He was dressed in a suit of white -drill, the flowing extremities of his trousers rounding to his feet -in the shape of the mouth of a bell, from which protruded a pair of -long square-toed shoes of yellow leather. I should instantly have put -him down as a Yankee but for his accent, that was cockney beyond the -endurance of a polite ear. - -I broke into his intolerable scrutiny by asking him from what port -his ship hailed; but he continued to stare at me in silence for some -considerable time after I had made this inquiry. He then started, -flourished a great red cotton pocket-handkerchief to his brow, and -exclaimed: ‘Sir, you spoke?’ - -I repeated the question. - -‘The _Lady Blanche_ is owned at Hull,’ said he; ‘but we’re from the -Thames for Mauritius. And what’s your story? How came you and this -beautiful lady aboard that hull? You’re gentlefolks, I allow. I see -breeding in your hands, mem,’ fixing his unwinking eyes upon her -rings. ‘You talk of an Indeeman. Let’s have it all afore the boiled -beef comes along.’ - -So saying, he hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, brought his back -against the table, and forking his long shanks out, sat in a posture of -attention, keeping his amazing eyes bent on my face whilst I spoke. It -did not take me very long to give him the tale. He listened without so -much as a syllable escaping from him, and when I had made an end, he -continued to craze at me in silence. - -‘By what name shall I address you?’ said Miss Temple. - -He started, as before, and answered: ‘John Braine; Captain John Braine, -mem; or call it Captain Braine: John’s only in the road. That’s my -name, mem.’ - -She forced a smile, and said: ‘Captain Braine, the _Countess Ida_ -cannot be far distant, and I have most earnestly to entreat you to -seek her. I am sure she is to be found after a very short hunt. I have -a dear relative on board of her, who will fret her heart away if she -believes I am lost. All my luggage, too, is in that ship. My mother, -Lady Temple, will most cheerfully pay any sum that may be asked for -such trouble and loss of time as your search for the Indiaman might -occasion.’ - -I thought he meant to stare at her without answering; but after a short -pause he exclaimed: ‘The Indeeman’s bound to Bombay, ain’t she? Well, -we’re a-navigating the same road she’s taking. It is three days since -you lost her; where’ll she be now, then? That can only be known to -the angels, which look down from a taller height than there’s e’er a -truck afloat that’ll come nigh. Now, mem, I might shift my hellum and -dodge about for a whole fortnight and do no good. It would be the same -as making up our minds to lose her. But by keeping all on as we are, -there’ll ne’er be an hour that won’t hold inside of it a chance of our -rising her on one bow or t’other. See what I mean, mem? You’re aboard -of a barque with legs, as Jack says. Your Indeeman’s had a three days’ -start; and if so be as she is to be picked up, I’ll engage to have ye -aboard of her within a week. But to dodge about in search of her--the -Lord love’ee, mem! The sea’s too big for any sort of chiveying.’ - -‘I am completely of Captain Braine’s opinion,’ said I, addressing -Miss Temple, whose face was full of distress and dismay. ‘It would be -unreasonable to expect this gentleman to delay his voyage by a search -that, in all human probability, must prove unprofitable. A hunt would -involve the loss of our one chance of falling in with her this side the -Cape.’ - -She clasped her hands and hung her head, but made no reply. The -captain’s servant entered at that moment with a tray of food, which -he placed upon the table; and the skipper bidding us fall to and make -ourselves at home in a voice as suggestive of the croak of a raven as -was his hair of the plumage of that bird, stalked on to the deck, where -the sailors--who by this time had hoisted the boat and trimmed the -barque’s yards--were coiling down the gear and returning to the various -jobs they had been upon before they had hove the ship to. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -CAPTAIN BRAINE - - -After three days of sailors’ biscuit and strong cheese and marmalade -of the flavour of foot sugar, the lump of cold salt beef that the -captain’s man set before me ate to my palate with a relish that I -had never before found in the choicest and most exquisitely cooked -meat; and a real treat, too, to my shipwrecked sensibilities, was the -inspiration of home and civilisation in the tumbler of foaming London -stout. Miss Temple seemed too harassed, too broken down in mind, to -partake of food; but by dint of coaxing and entreating I got her to -taste a mouthful, and then put her lips to a glass of stout; and -presently she appeared to find her appetite by eating, as the French -say, and ended with such a repast as I could have wished to see her -make. - -When the man put the tray down, he went out, and the girl and I -were alone during the meal. Now that I had recovered from the first -heart-subduing shock of the discovery that the hull was on fire, and -could realise that, even supposing she had not been set on fire, we -had still been delivered from what in all probability must have proved -a long, lingering, soul-killing time of expectation, dying out into -hopelessness and into a period of famine, thirst, and death: I say now -that I could realise our rescue from these horrors, my spirits mounted, -my joy was an intoxication, I could have cried and laughed at the same -time, like one in hysteria. I longed to jump from my chair and dance -about the cabin that I might vent the oppression of my transports -by movement. I was but a young man, and life was dear to me, and we -had been in dire peril, and were safe. What a paradise was this cosy -little cabin after that ghost-haunted, narrow crib of a deck-house! -How soothing beyond all words to the nerves was the light floating -rolling of the graceful little snow-white barque, under control of her -helm, and vitalised in every plank by the impulse of her airy soaring -canvas, compared with the jerky, feverish, staggering, tumblefication -of the wreck, with its deadly deck leaning at desperate angles to the -fang-like remnants of the crushed bulwarks, and its uncovered hatches -yawning to the heavens, as though in a dumb mouthing of entreaty for -extinction! - -‘Oh! Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘I cannot bring my mind to believe in our -good fortune! This time yesterday! how hopeless we were! And now we are -safe! I thank God, I most humbly thank God, for His mercy! Your lot -would soon have become a frightful one aboard that wreck.’ - -‘Yet what would I give,’ she exclaimed, ‘if this ship were the -_Countess Ida_! What is to become of us? For how long are we to wander -about in a state of destitution, Mr. Dugdale--mere beggars, without -apparel, without conveniences, dependent for our very meals upon the -bounty of strangers?’ and she brought her eyes, with the old flash in -them, from the table to my face, at which she gazed with an expression -of temper and mortification. - -‘You would not be a woman,’ said I, ‘if you did not think of your -dress. But, pray, consider this: that your baggage is now recoverable; -whereas, but for this _Lady Blanche_----’ - -‘Oh! but it would have been so happy a thing, that might so easily have -happened too, had this vessel been the Indiaman.’ - -‘Cannot you summon a little patience to your aid?’ said I. ‘Our -strange-eyed captain spoke with judgment when he suggested the -probability of your exchanging his ship for the _Countess Ida_ within a -week.’ - -‘Well, I will be patient, if I can,’ said she, looking down with an air -of trouble and distress in the pout of her lip; ‘but is it not about -time that the adventure ended?’ - -‘Suppose it may be only now beginning?’ - -She gave me a side-glance and exclaimed somewhat haughtily: ‘I really -believe, Mr. Dugdale, you enjoy this sort of experiences; and if I -were a man---- But it _must_ end!’ she added with an air as though she -was about to weep. ‘It is unendurable to think of being carried about -the world in this fashion. I shall insist--well, I shall bribe Captain -Braine to question every ship he passes as to her destination, and the -first vessel we encounter that is going home I shall go on board of.’ - -‘Alone?’ said I. - -‘No,’ she answered, half closing her eyes and looking a little away -from me; ‘you would not suffer me to travel alone? Besides, do not you -want to get home too?’ - -‘I would rather find my way to Bombay,’ said I. ‘My baggage as well as -yours is aboard the _Countess Ida_, and I should like to get it, though -not at the cost of too much trouble. I am bound to India on a visit, -and am not expected home for a good many months. Now, I don’t see why -both of us shouldn’t keep our appointments by sticking in this barque, -and sailing in her to the Mauritius, whence we ought to be able, -without difficulty, to ship ourselves for Bombay. The _Lady Blanche_ -has the hull of a clipper, and it will be strange if the pair of us are -not ashore at Bombay some weeks before the _Countess Ida_ sails.’ - -She listened with impatience, and when I had ended, said: ‘If the -chance offers, I shall certainly go home. I shall take the first ship -that passes, though it should cost a thousand pounds to bribe Captain -Braine and the commander of the vessel that receives me. How is it -possible for me to continue thus?’ and here she looked at her dress. -‘And where is Mauritius? Is it not nearly as far off as Bombay? Whereas -England is not so very remote from this part of the ocean.’ - -‘Well, Miss Temple, I am your humble servant,’ said I. ‘Head as you -will, I shall most dutifully follow you.’ - -‘I beg that you will not be satirical.’ - -‘God forbid!’ said I, averting my eyes; for I was sensible that they -were expressing more than I had any desire she should observe. ‘I wish -to see you safe, and meanwhile happy. If we pick up a ship homeward -bound, we can commission Captain Braine to request Keeling, if he -encounters him, to transfer our baggage to the first craft he speaks -going to England. Your aunt’s maid will know all about your luggage.’ - -She watched me, as though doubtful whether I was joking or not; but I -was cut short by the entrance of Captain Braine. - -‘I hope you have done pretty well?’ he exclaimed, after gazing at us -for a short time without speaking; ‘it is poor fare, mem, for the likes -of you. But the ship’ll afford nothing fresh till we kill a pig. What -did you say your name was, sir?’ - -‘Dugdale,’ said I. - -‘Ha!’ he cried, whilst he viewed me steadfastly, ‘to be sure. Dugdale. -That was it. Well, Mr. Dugdale, there might be an edifying sight for -you and the lady to behold from the deck.’ - -‘What?’ swiftly exclaimed Miss Temple with a start. - -‘The hull, mem, we took you from,’ he replied in his hollow somewhat -deep voice, ‘is rapidly growing into a big blaze.’ - -Her face changed to a mood of disappointment. I believe she thought -that the captain had come to announce the Indiaman in sight: I was -about to speak: - -‘Captain Braine,’ she said, approaching him by a dramatic stride, and -exclaiming proudly, as though she would subdue him by her mere manner -to acquiescence in her wishes, ‘I am without wearing apparel, saving -the attire in which you now view me, and it is absolutely necessary I -should return home as speedily as possible. My mother will fear that I -have perished, and I must be the bearer of my own news, or the report -of my being lost may cause her death, so exceedingly delicate is her -health. She is rich, and will reward you in any sum you may think -proper to demand for enabling me to return to England quickly.’ - -An indescribable smile as she said these words crept over the man’s -face and vanished. I was strongly impressed by the expression of it, -and observed him closely. - -‘Therefore, Captain Braine,’ she proceeded, ‘I have to entreat you to -promise me that you will signal to the ships you may pass, and put me -on board the first one, no matter what sort of vessel she be, that is -sailing directly to England.’ - -He silently surveyed her, and then directed his eyes at me. - -‘You’ll be wanting to get home too, sir, I suppose?’ said he. - -‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘Miss Temple is under my care, and I must see her -safe.’ - -He turned to her again, and stood staring; then said: ‘That’ll be all -right, mem; we’re bound to be falling in with something coming along -presently; and if England’s her destination and she’ll receive ye, the -boat that brought you from the hull shall take you to her, weather -permitting. That’ll do, I think?’ - -She bowed, looking as pleased as agitation and anxiety would allow her. - -‘Come now and take a look at the hull,’ continued Captain Braine; ‘and -then’---- - -‘You quite understand, I hope,’ she interrupted, ‘that any sum’---- - -He broke in with an odd flourish of his hand. ‘No need to mention -that matter, mem,’ he exclaimed;--‘we are Christian men in that part -of the country where I come from, and there’s never no talk of pay -amongst us for doing what the Lord directs--succouring distressed -fellow-creatures.’ - -With which he spun upon his heels and walked out of the cabin, leaving -us to follow him. - -I had no eyes nor thoughts for anything else than the hull the moment -I saw her. I remember recoiling as to a blow, and panting for a few -breaths with my hand to my side. She had slipped to something more -than two miles away down on the starboard quarter, and although only a -portion of her was as yet on fire, she was showing as a body of flame -brilliant and forked, soaring and drooping against the leaden-hued -background of sky. Shudder after shudder went like ice through me as my -sight swept the mighty girdle of the deep, coming back to the little -body of flame that most horribly to every trembling instinct in me -accentuated the lonely immensity of the surface on which it glowed. - -‘Think--if we were on her now!’ I muttered to Miss Temple. She hid her -face. - -‘Was there any valleyables aboard her, Mr. Dugdale, d’ye know?’ said -the captain. - -‘I cannot tell you,’ I answered in a voice subdued by emotion; ‘I did -not search the sleeping-berths. There was little enough in her hold.’ - -‘Ye should have crept away down in the run,’ said he; ‘that’s where the -chaps which peopled her would stow their booty if they had any. If I’d -known she’d been a privateersman---- How came ye to set her on fire?’ - -‘My signal burnt through her deck, so I was informed by that gentleman -there,’ I replied, indicating the square man, who stood a little way -from us. - -‘Was that so, Mr. Lush?’ cried the captain. - -‘Was what so?’ asked Mr. Lush. The captain explained. ‘Well, I dunno,’ -answered the other; ‘there was fire in the hold when I looked down, and -it seemed to me as if flakes of it was falling through the deck. But -what does it signify? Wood ain’t cast-iron, and if ye makes a flare -upon a timber deck, why, then what I says is, stand by!’ - -‘Oh look, Mr. Dugdale!’ shrieked Miss Temple at that moment, tossing -her arms in horror, and standing with her hands-upraised, as though in -a posture of calling down a curse upon the distant thing. - -My eye was on the wreck, as hers had been, and I saw it all. There was -a huge crimson flash, as though some volcanic head had belched in fire; -daylight as it was, the stretch of clouds above and beyond the wreck -glared out in a dull rusty red to the amazing stream of flame; a volume -of smoke white as steam, shaped like a balloon, and floating solid to -the sight, slowly rose like some phenomenal emanation from the secret -depths of the ocean. There followed the sullen, deep-throated blast of -the explosion. Captain Braine snatched a telescope from the skylight -and levelled it, and after peering a little, thrust the glass into my -hand. - -‘See if you can find out where she’s gone to,’ said he with a singular -grin, in which his eyes did not participate. - -I looked: the water delicately brushed by the light wind flowed in -nakedness under the shadow of the slowly soaring and enlarging cloud of -white smoke. Not the minutest point of black, not the merest atom of -fragment of wreck, was visible. I put down the glass with a quivering -hand, and going to the rail, looked into the sea to conceal my moist -eyes, too overcome to speak. - -‘A good job you weren’t in that hull, mem,’ said the captain to Miss -Temple; ‘it would be sky high with any one that had been there by -this time: a devil of a mount, as Jack says. But you’re aboard a tidy -little ship now. If so be that you are at all of a nautical judge, -mem, cast your eyes aloft and tell me if there’s e’er an Indeeman or -a man-of-war, too, if ye will, with spars stayed as my masts is, with -such a fit of canvas, with such a knowing cocked-ear like look as the -run of them yardarms has, with such mastheads tapering away like the -holy spire of a meetinghouse, and that beautiful little skysail atop to -sarve as a cloud for any tired angel that may be flying along to rest -upon! Ha!’ - -He drew so deep a breath as he concluded that I turned to look at him. -He stood gazing up at the canvas on the main as though in an ecstasy; -his hands were crossed upon his breast after the manner of coy virgins -in paintings; his right knee was crooked and projected; I could not -have imagined so curious a figure off the stage. Indeed, I supposed he -was acting now to divert Miss Temple. I glanced at the tough, sullen, -storm darkened face of old Lush, to gather his opinion on the behaviour -of this captain; but his expression was of wood, and there was no other -meaning in it that I could distinguish save what was put there by the -action of his jaws as he gnawed upon a junk of tobacco, carrying his -sight from seawards to aloft and back again as regularly as the swing -of the spars. - -Miss Temple drew to my side with a manner of uneasiness about her. She -whispered, while she seemed to be speaking of the wreck, motioning with -her hand in the direction of the smoke that was slowly drawing on to -our beam in a great staring, still-compacted mass, white as fog against -the leaden heaven: ‘I believe he is not in his right mind.’ - -‘No matter,’ I swiftly replied; ‘his ship is sound. Captain,’ I -exclaimed, ‘I hope you will have a spare cabin for this lady. For my -part, you may sling me a hammock anywhere, or a rug and a plank will -make me all the bed I want.’ - -‘Oh, there’s accommodation for ye both below,’ he answered; ‘there’s -the mate’s berth unoccupied. The lady can have that. And next door to -it there’s a cabin with a bunk in it. I’ll have it cleared out for you. -Come down and see for yourselves.’ - -He led the way into the little cuddy, as I may term it, and conducted -us to a hatch close against the two sleeping berths right aft. -He descended a short flight of steps, and we found ourselves in -’tweendecks in which I should not have been able to stand erect with -a tall hat on. It was gloomy down here. I could distinguish with -difficulty a number of cases of light goods stowed from the deck to -the beams, and completely blocking up all the forward portion of -this part of the vessel. There were two cabins in the extremity -corresponding with the cabins above, with such another small hatch -as we had descended through lying close against them, but covered: -the entrance as I took it to ‘the run’ or ‘lazarette.’ Captain Braine -opened the cabin door on the port side, and we peered into a small but -clean and airy berth lighted by a large scuttle. I noticed a couple of -sea-chests, a suit of oilskins hanging under a little shelf full of -books, a locker, a mattress, and a bundle of blankets in the bunk, a -large chart of the English Channel nailed against the side, and other -matters of a like sort. - -‘You’ll be able to make yourself pretty comfortable here, mem,’ said -Captain Braine. - -‘Are there any rats?’ asked Miss Temple, rolling her eyes nervously -over the deck. - -‘Bless you, no!’ answered the captain. ‘At the very worst, a cockroach -here and there, mem.’ - -‘But this cabin is occupied,’ said I. - -‘It was, young gentleman, it was,’ he exclaimed, in a hollow raven -voice, that wonderfully corresponded with his countenance, and -particularly somehow or other with his hair--‘it was my chief-mate’s -cabin. But he’s dead, sir.’ He gazed at me steadfastly, and added, -‘Dead and gone, sir.’ - -Miss Temple slightly started, and with a hurried glance at the bunk, -asked how long the man had been dead. - -‘Three weeks,’ responded Captain Braine, preserving his sepulchral -tone, as though he supposed it was the correct voice in which to -deliver melancholy information. - -‘May I see the next cabin?’ said Miss Temple. - -‘Certainly’ he answered; and going out, he opened the door. - -This room was the same size as the berth which adjoined it; but it was -crowded with a collection of sailmakers’ and boatswains’ stores, bolts -of canvas, new buckets, scrubbing brushes, and so on. There was a bunk -under the scuttle full of odds and ends. - -‘I would rather occupy this berth than the other,’ said Miss Temple. - -‘You’re not afraid of ghosts, mem?’ exclaimed the captain, fixing his -immense dead black eyes upon her. - -‘I presume this room can be cleared out, and I prefer it to the other,’ -she answered haughtily. - -I broke in, somewhat alarmed by these airs: ‘Oh, by all means, Miss -Temple. Choose the cabin you best like. Captain Braine is all kindness -in furnishing us with such excellent accommodation. This stuff can be -put into my berth, if you please, captain. I shall merely need room -enough to get into my bunk.’ - -‘I’ll make that all right,’ he answered somewhat sulkily. ‘How about -bedding? The lady’s a trifle particular, I fear. She wouldn’t be -satisfied to roll herself up in a dead man’s blanket, I guess.’ - -‘Leave me to manage,’ said I, forcing a note of cheerfulness into -my voice, though I was greatly vexed by Miss Temple’s want of tact. -‘There’s more bedding than either of us will require in less than a -bolt of your canvas. We are fresh from an experience that would make a -paradise of your forepeak, captain. And so,’ said I, plunging from the -subject, in the hope of carrying off the ill-humour that showed in his -face, ‘you are without a chief-mate?’ - -‘I’ll tell you about that by-and-by,’ said he. ‘This here crib, then, -is to be the lady’s? Now, what have I got that you’ll be wanting, mem? -There’s a bit of a looking-glass next door. He used to shave himself -in it. You won’t mind that, perhaps? His image ain’t impressed on the -plate. It’ll show ye true as you are, for all that he shaved himself in -it.’ - -Miss Temple smiled, and said that she would be glad to have the glass. - -‘There’ll be his hairbrush,’ continued Captain Braine, ‘though _that_ -might prove objectionable,’ he added doubtfully, talking with his eyes -fixed unwinkingly upon her. ‘And yet I don’t know; if it was put to -soak in a bucket of salt-water, it ought to come out sweet enough. -There’s likewise a comb,’ he proceeded, taking his chin betwixt his -thumb and forefinger and stroking it: ‘there’s nothing to hurt in a -comb, and it’s at your sarvice, mem. If poor old Chicken were here, -he’d be very willing, I’m sure; but he’s gone--gone dead.’ - -He looked at Miss Temple again. I watched him with attention. He seemed -to sink into a fit of musing; then, waking up out of it in a sudden -way, he cried: ‘You’ve got no luggage at all, have ye, mem?’ - -‘No,’ responded Miss Temple with gravity. - -‘I’m sorry,’ said he, ‘that I didn’t bring Mrs. Braine along with -me this voyage. She wanted to come, poor thing, observing me to be -but very ordinary during most of the time I was ashore--very ordinary -indeed,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘If she was here we could -manage.’ - -‘Pray, give yourself no concern on that head, captain,’ said I; ‘we -shall be falling in with the Indiaman presently; and supposing the -worst to come to the worst--what time do you give yourself for the run -from here to the Mauritius?’ - -‘I’m not agoing to say--I’m not agoing to say!’ he cried with an accent -of excitement that astonished me; ‘what’s the good of talking when you -don’t know? Wouldn’t it be a sin to go and make promises to people -in your condition and disappoint ’em? I can just tell ye this: that -Baltimore itself never turned out a keel able to clip through it as -this here _Lady Blanche_ can when the chance is given her. And now,’ he -exclaimed, changing his voice, ‘suppose we clear out of this, and go up -into the daylight and fresh air;’ and without pausing for an answer he -trudged off. - -I handed Miss Temple up the ladder, and we gained the little cabin, -or living-room as it might be termed. The young fellow who acted as -steward or servant was busy at the glass-rack. The captain called -to him, and peremptorily and most intelligently gave him certain -instructions with respect to the clearing out and preparing of the -berths below for our reception. He told him where he would find a -spare mattress--‘Quite new, never yet slept on,’ he said, contorting -his figure into a bow to Miss Temple--he had a couple of shawls and a -homely old rug which had made several voyages, and these were to be put -into her bunk; the man was to see that the lady lacked no convenience -which the barque could afford. ‘The late Mr. Chicken’s mattress was -to be given to me along with his bedding, if so be that I was willing -to use the same.’ Other instructions, all expressive of foresight and -hospitable consideration, he gave to the fellow, who then went forward -to obtain help to clear out the cabins. - -‘We are deeply indebted to you, captain,’ said I, ‘for this very -generous behaviour’---- - -‘Not a word, sir, if you please,’ he interrupted. ‘I have a soul as -well as another, and I know my duty. Lady, a hint: you have some fine -jewelry upon you; take my advice and put it in your pocket.’ - -She was alarmed by this, and looked at me. - -I smiled, and said, ‘The captain of a ship is Lord Paramount; his -orders must be obeyed, Miss Temple.’ - -Without another word she began to pull off her rings, the skipper -steadfastly watching her. - -‘Will you take charge of them for me, Mr. Dugdale?’ said she. - -I placed them in my pocket. She then took off a very beautiful diamond -locket from her throat, and this I also carefully stowed away. - -‘I will remove my earrings presently,’ she exclaimed with a slight -flush in her cheek and a sparkle as of ire in her gaze, though her lips -still indicated an emotion of dismay. - -‘My advice to you is--at once, mem,’ said the captain. - -‘We must believe that Captain Braine is fully sensible of the meaning -of his requests,’ said I, answering the glance she shot at me. - -She removed the earrings and gave them to me. The captain stood running -his eyes over her figure; then, with a melodramatic gesture, pointed -to her watch. This, too, with the handsome chain belonging to it, I -pocketed. He now addressed himself to contemplating me. - -‘You don’t need to show any watch-chain,’ said he, speaking with -his head drooping towards his left shoulder; ‘there’s no good in -that signet ring either. As to the breast-pin’--he half-closed one -eye--‘well, perhaps that’s a thing that won’t hurt where it is.’ - -He waited until I had taken off my ring and dropped my chain into my -waistcoat pocket, and then, looking first of all aft and then forward, -then up at the little skylight, whilst he seemed to hold his breath -as though intently listening, he approached us, as we stood together, -by a stride, and said in a low deep voice, tremulous with intensity -of utterance: ‘My men are not to be trusted. Hush! If they imagined I -suspected them, they would cut my throat and heave me overboard.’ - -Miss Temple took my arm. - -‘Let me understand you?’ said I, wrestling with my amazement. ‘In what -sense are they untrustworthy?’ - -He stared eagerly and nervously about him again, and then, extending -the fingers of his left hand, he touched one of them after another, as -though counting, whilst he said: ‘First, I have reason to believe that -Lush, the carpenter, who acts as my second mate, committed a murder -four years ago.’ - -‘Good God!’ I ejaculated. - -‘Hold!’ he cried. ‘Next, there ain’t no shadow of a doubt that two at -least of my able seamen are escaped convicts. Next, there is a man -forward who was concerned in a mutiny that ended in the ringleaders -being hung. Next’--he paused, and then exclaimed: ‘but no need to go on -alarming the lady.’ - -‘But were you not acquainted with these men’s characters at the time of -their signing articles?’ said I. - -‘No, young man--no,’ he answered with a most melancholy shake of the -head; ‘it’s all come out since, and a deal more atop of it. But hush! -Discretion is the better part of valour, as Jack says. There’s no call -to be afraid. They know the man I am, and what’s better, they know I -know _them_. Ye’re quite safe, mem; only, don’t be a-tempting sailors -of their sort by a sight of the valleyables you’ve been a-carrying -about with you. And now, perhaps you’ll excuse me whilst I goes and -looks after the ship.’ - -He gave us another extraordinary bow--I never met with any -posture-maker who approached this man in the capacity of distorting his -person--and walked out of the cabin. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -THE CREW OF THE BARQUE - - -Miss Temple released my arm and sank upon a bench. - -‘Can you doubt now that he is mad?’ she exclaimed. - -‘Somewhat eccentric, certainly, but perhaps not mad, though. He is -treating us very kindly. How intelligently he instructed his man in -regard to our cabins!’ - -‘He may be kind; but I believe we should have been safer on the hull -than here.’ - -‘Oh no, no, no!’ - -‘But I say yes,’ she exclaimed in her most imperious air, and gazing -at me with hot and glowing eyes. ‘It is quite true the wreck was -burnt; but if this vessel had not come into sight, you would not have -signalled, and then the hull would not have been set on fire. It is -maddening to think that perhaps within the next three or four hours the -Indiaman or the corvette may sail over the very spot where the wreck -blew up.’ - -‘I heartily hope that one or the other will do so,’ said I; ‘for if she -be so close to us as all that, we’re bound to fall in with her.’ - -She looked at her hands, turning her fingers back and front, as though -they were some novel and unexpected sight to her. - -‘I wonder, Mr. Dugdale,’ said she, ‘you can doubt that the man is -insane. Remember the extraordinary questions he put to you when we -first arrived. I believe, had you told him you were ignorant of -navigation, he would have sent us back to the wreck. And then how -he stares! There is something shocking in the fixed regard of his -dreadfully inanimate black eyes. What a very extraordinary face, too! -I cannot believe that he is a sailor. He has the appearance of a monk -just released from some term of fearful penance and mortification.’ - -‘On the other hand he has received us very kindly. He would not -suffer you to speak of paying him. He promptly set us down to such -entertainment as his vessel furnishes. He may be mad half-way round the -compass, but all the rest of the points are sound,’ - -‘I am astonished,’ she cried with a manner of petulant vivacity, ‘to -hear you say that we are safer in this ship than had we remained in the -hull. There we were alone; but who are the people with whom we must -be locked up in this vessel until we sight the Indiaman or some sail -that will receive us? A murderer--convicts--mutineers--a crew of men in -whose sight a jewel must not be exhibited lest they should be tempted. -Tempted to what?’ She violently shuddered. ‘How can you speak of this -ship as safer than the wreck?’ - -‘Because I happen to feel quite certain that she is; but I will not say -so, for it vexes you to hear me.’ - -‘Oh this ridiculous, this horribly ridiculous degrading situation -fills me with anger. To think of being reduced to a perfect state of -squalor--having to conceal one’s jewelry for fear of--of--something -awful, I am sure; and you dare not, though you _could_ name it, Mr. -Dugdale.’ I smiled, and her warmth increased. ‘That I should have -been ever tempted,’ she proceeded, ‘to undertake the odious voyage -to Bombay, for _this_! To be without a change of dress, to be obliged -to sleep in a little dark horrid cabin, and meanwhile not to have the -least notion when it is all to end!’ - -Well, thought I, as I looked at her eyes shining with spirit and -temper, and marked the faint hectic of her ill-humour in her cheeks, -the expression of mingled pride and fretfulness in her lips, the -wrathful rising and falling of her breast, here, to be sure, is a new -version of the play of Katharine and Petruchio; only, though she be -Kate to the life, it is not I, but old daddy Neptune who is to break -her spirit, and unshrew her into somebody’s very humble servant. -But is there any magic, I thought, even in ocean’s rough, brutal, -unconscionable usage to render docile such a woman as this? Nay, would -any man wish it otherwise with her than as it is when he gazes at her -eyes and figure, beholds the dignity and haughtiness of her carriage, -the assumption of maiden sovereignty visible in every move of her arm, -in every curl of her lip, in every motion of her form! - -‘What are you thinking of?’ she asked: ‘you are plunged in thought. I -hope you are struggling to do justice to my perception of the truth.’ - -I started, and then laughed out. ‘I will not tell you what I was -thinking of,’ said I; ‘but I will express what was in my mind whilst -you were speaking just now. You dwell with horror upon the captain’s -account of his crew. Well, I heartily wish for both our sakes that -they were an honest straight-headed body of men. But then every -ship’s forecastle is a menagerie. There is ruffianism, and there is -respectability. Quite likely that the carpenter Lush may have killed -a man; but one must hear the story before deciding to call him a -murderer. So of the convicts; so of the mutineers. In many ships at sea -there is unspeakable provocation, and crimes are committed of which -the blood rests upon the head of anyone sooner than those who are held -guilty and punished by the law. I am not to be greatly frightened by -Captain Braine’s talk of his crew, particularly since in a few days we -may either be on board the Indiaman or homeward-bound in another ship. -Let us now go on deck. I wish to take a view of the sailors, and see -what sort of a craft this is, for as yet I have seen but little of her.’ - -I could not help remarking that she kept very close to me as we -made our way out of the cuddy, and that the glances she directed -forwards where some seamen were at work were full of apprehension. -The short poop of the _Lady Blanche_ was gained by a central ladder -falling fair in the face of the little doorway of the cuddy front -with its two small windows and row of buckets. A low, handsomely -carved wooden rail was fixed athwart the break of this raised deck, -and I stood with Miss Temple at a point of it that provided me with a -clear view fore and aft. The captain sat on a grating abaft the wheel -reading. Mr. Lush was near the mizzen rigging, gazing seawards with -a stubborn wooden expression of face. After the spacious decks and -wide topgallant-forecastle of the Indiaman, this little _Lady Blanche_ -looked a mere toy. But though a ship shows least admirably from her -own deck, I found a deal to please and even delight me in the first -comprehensive look I threw around. She was as clean as a yacht; the -insides of her bulwarks were painted a delicate green, and they were as -spotless as though the brush were just off them; on either side were -two little brass guns, mounted on carriages, and they shone as freshly -as though the sunlight were upon them; the running gear was everywhere -neatly coiled away. The small caboose, with its smoking chimney, abaft -the foremast; the length of windlass close in under the overlap of the -short space of forecastle; the white longboat; the white scuttle-butt -abreast of it; the little winch abaft the mainmast; the brass-lined -circle of the wheel in the grasp of the sober, good-tempered-looking -old fellow who had made one of the boat’s crew; the two shapely -clinker-built quarter-boats hanging at the davits abreast of the mizzen -mast--these and much more seemed details of a miniature delicacy and -finish, that entered with surprising effect into the fabric’s general -character of toy-like grace and elegance. On high, the white canvas -soared in symmetrical spaces; but after the towering spires of the -Indiaman, the main-yard of this little barque seemed within reach -of the hand, and the tiny skysail that crowned the summit of the -airy, snow-white, faintly-swelling cloths, no bigger than a lady’s -pocket-handkerchief. - -‘This is really a beautiful little ship, Miss Temple,’ said I. - -‘I might be able to admire her from the deck of the _Countess Ida_,’ -she answered; ‘but there must be happiness to enable me to find beauty, -and I am not happy here.’ - -I searched the sea-line, but it was as bare and flawless as the rim of -a brand-new guinea. The dull shadow of the morning still overspread -the heavens; it was the same leaden sky, with here and there a little -break of faintness, revealing some edge of apparently motionless -cloud, and the ocean lay sallow beneath it, darker than it was for -the pencilling of the ripples which wrinkled the wide expanse as they -rode the long, light heave of the swell. There were some sailors at -work in the waist on jobs, of which I forget the nature; I examined -them attentively--they were within easy eyeshot; but though there -was no lack of prejudice in my observation, I protest I could find -nothing rascally in their appearance. They were all of them of the -then familiar type of merchant seaman, as like to members of the crew -of the Indiaman as one pea is to another; faces burnt by the sun and -decorated with the usual assemblage of warts and moles, all of them -of an unmistakably English cut--I am speaking of the five of them -then visible--dressed in the rough apparel of the ocean, rude shirts -revealing the bare hairy breast, duck breeches with stains of oil and -tar in them which there was no virtue in the scrubbing-brush and the -lee-scuppers to remedy. Miss Temple, standing at my side, gazed at them. - -‘They have quite the look of cut-throats, I think,’ said she. - -‘Well, now, to my fancy,’ said I, ‘they seem as honest a set of lively -hearties as one could wish to sail with.’ - -‘You merely say that to encourage me,’ she exclaimed with a pout of -vexation. ‘Observe that man with the black beard--the one that is -nearest to us. Could you figure a completer likeness of a pirate? I do -not like his way of glancing at us out of the corner of his eyes. An -honest sailor would stare boldly.’ - -I laughed, and then put on a face of apology. - -‘You will be smiling at these fears in a few days, I hope,’ I exclaimed. - -‘Yes; but it is the meanwhile we have to think of,’ she answered. ‘Look -at that man there’--meaning Mr. Lush; ‘pray, tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that -he has a very handsome, manly, good-tempered face.’ - -‘No; I confess I don’t like his appearance,’ I answered, stealing -a peep at the sulky-looking old dog, who continued to stare at the -horizon with the immovability of a figure-head; ‘yet inside of that -hide there may be stowed away a very worthy member of society. A -crab-apple is not a fruit to delight the eye; but I believe it is -wholesome eating, though a trifle austere.’ - -At that moment the captain looked up from his book, and after taking a -prolonged view of us, came in a slow walk to where we were standing, -holding the volume in his hand. - -‘You have a charming little ship here, captain,’ said I; ‘I am -exceedingly pleased with her.’ - -‘Yes, sir; she’s a handy craft. She will do her work,’ he answered, -sending his unwinking eyes with their sort of slow dead look along the -deck. - -‘Which of those men down there are the convicts and mutineers?’ began -Miss Temple. - -He whipped round upon her with a vehemence of manner that seemed a -veritable fury of temper to the first seeing and hearing of it. - -‘For God Almighty’s sake, not a word! D’ye want to see me a murdered -man?’ He twisted round on to me: ‘Sir, you are to know nothing if you -please. This lady is to know nothing. I asked ye both in the cabin -to be secret. God’s death! if that man yonder had overheard her!’ He -stopped short, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at Lush. - -Miss Temple was deadly pale. She had the same cowed air I had observed -in her during our first few hours aboard the wreck. - -‘I am very sorry--’ she muttered. - -‘For the love of God, mem!’ he exclaimed in a whisper, putting his -finger to his lips. - -It was time to change the subject. I asked him how long he had occupied -in his passage from the Thames to this point, spoke of the light -trade-wind and baffling airs we had encountered, told him once again of -the privateering brig, asked him what he thought would be the chance -of the corvette’s cutter in such weather as she went adrift in, and -in this way coaxed him out of his temper until I had got him to some -posture of affability once more. I do not recollect the number of days -he named as contained in his passage from London, but I can remember -that it was a very swift run, proving daily totals which must have -come very near to steam at times. - -‘Such a nimble keel as this should make you very easy, Miss Temple,’ -said I; ‘why, here is a craft to sail round and round the _Countess -Ida_. Even though we shouldn’t pick her up, it is fifty to one that of -all her passengers we two shall be the first to arrive in India.’ - -She fastened her eyes upon the deck with a countenance of incredulity -and despair. - -‘I suppose your port will be St. Louis, sir?’ said I. - -He stared at me for some moments without speaking, and then slowly -inclined his head in a single nod. - -‘I was never in that island,’ I continued; ‘but I presume we shall not -be at a loss for a vessel to carry us to some part of India whence we -may easily make our way to Bombay.’ - -His lack-lustre gaze seemed to grow deader as, after a pause, he -exclaimed: ‘There’ll be some French skipper to make terms with, I don’t -doubt, for a passage north.’ - -‘You talk, Mr. Dugdale,’ said Miss Temple, ‘as though you were well -assured that we should not fall in with the Indiaman.’ - -‘I am desirous of creating plenty of chances for ourselves,’ said I; -then gathering that this might not be a topic profitable to pursue -in the presence of so singular a listener as Captain Braine, I again -branched off. ‘How many,’ said I carelessly, ‘go to a crew with you, -captain?’ - -He answered leisurely: ‘Thirteen as we now are, all told. There was -fourteen afore Mr. Chicken died.’ - -‘Well, even at that,’ said I, ‘a single watch should be able to reef -down for you. I suppose’--here I sunk my voice--‘that Mr. Lush yonder -is now your chief mate?’ - -‘No,’ he replied, speaking stealthily; ‘I’m my own chief mate. He’s -the ship’s carpenter, and stands watch as second officer. But what are -ye to do,’ he proceeded, preserving his stealthy delivery, ‘with a man -whose education don’t let him go no further than making a mark for his -name?’ - -‘Then, I take it, there is nobody aboard capable of navigating the -vessel but yourself?’ - -‘We’ll talk about that presently,’ said he with a singular look, and -pointing with his finger to the deck. - -I observed that Miss Temple narrowly watched him. - -‘Was Mr. Chicken a pretty good navigator?’ said I. - -He appeared to forget himself in thought, then with a slow emerging -air, so to speak, and a steadfast, quite embarrassing stare, he -responded: ‘Chicken was acquainted with the use of the sextant. He -likewise understood the meaning of Greenwich time. He couldn’t take a -star; but his reckonings was always close when he got them out of the -sun. He’d been bred a collierman, and it took him some time to recover -the loss of coasts and lee shores and lights. But he was a good sailor, -and a religious man; and his death was a blow, sir.’ - -‘Almost a pity that it wasn’t Mr. Lush who was beckoned overboard,’ -said I. (The carpenter had now trudged aft, and was looking into the -compass out of hearing.) - -‘Ah!’ exclaimed Captain Braine, heaving a deep sigh and shaking his -head: ‘Lush’s loss would have been my gain. One Chicken was worth all -the Lushes that were ever afloat.--But hush, mem, if _you_ please.’ - -‘I shall certainly say nothing more about your crew,’ exclaimed Miss -Temple quickly and a little haughtily, while she slightly recoiled from -the face he turned upon her. - -‘Have you any books aboard, Captain Braine?’ said I, glancing at the -volume he held in his hand. ‘Any sort of amusement in the shape of -chess or cards to help Miss Temple and myself to kill an hour or two -from time to time?’ - -‘There are some vollums in Chicken’s cabin that belonged to him,’ -answered Captain Braine. ‘I’ve read two or three of them. His cargo -that way was usually edifying. There’s Baxter’s “Shove:” a good yarn; -there’s the “Pilgrim’s Progress;” and there’s the “Whole Dooty o’ -Man”--a bit leewardly; I couldn’t fetch to windward in it myself. -For my part, one book’s enough for me; and excepting some vollums on -navigation, it is the only work I goes to sea with.’ - -‘The Bible!’ I exclaimed, taking it from him. I was astonished and -pleased. There seemed little for one to apprehend in the character of -a man who could dedicate his leisure to the study of that Book, and I -was sensible of an emotion of respect for the strange-looking, staring -figure as I returned the little volume to him. - -He dropped it into a side-pocket, and then most abruptly walked to the -rail, took a long look at the weather and a long look aloft, trudged -over to Mr. Lush, with whom he exchanged a sentence or two, and -immediately afterwards disappeared down the companion. - -For some time after this Miss Temple and I paced the deck together. -There was much to talk about, and my companion found a deal to say -about Captain Braine, whilst, as we walked, I would catch her taking -furtive peeps at Mr. Lush, who, it was easy to see, had inspired her -with aversion and fear, though the man had not offered to address a -word to us, nor had he once looked our way, thirstily inquisitive as -his stare had been whilst in the boat. I could not help contrasting her -behaviour now with what I recollected of it aboard the _Countess Ida_. -She had put her hand into my arm, and the intimacy of our association -in this way might well have suggested an affianced pair. She talked -eagerly and with all the passion of the many emotions which rose in -her with her references, to our situation, to her aunt, to the chance -of our sighting the Indiaman, and the like; and I don’t doubt that the -men who watched us from the forepart of the vessel put us down either -as husband and wife or a betrothed couple. - -And all this in three days! Three days ago she could hardly bring -herself to speak or even to look at me; and now fortune had contrived -that she should have no other companion, that she should be locked up -with me alone in a dismasted hull, and then be brought, always with me -at her side, into a vessel where, as she believed, there was much more -to fill us with alarm than in the worst of the conditions which entered -into our existence aboard the wreck! Again and again she would ask, -with her dark and glowing eyes bent with an expression of despair upon -my face, when it was to end and how it was to end; and these questions -my heart would echo as I gazed at the cold and alarmed beauty of her -face, but with a very different meaning from what she attached to the -inquiries. - -At last she grew weary of walking, and I took her below and sat with -her awhile on a cushioned locker. It was now drawing on to four -o’clock in the afternoon; the breeze quiet, the sky in shadow, the -sea very smooth save for the soft undulation of the swell, which -pleasantly and soothingly cradled the little fabric as she slipped -through it, of a milky white from water-line to truck, to the impulse -of her wide overhanging pinions. After a bit, I observed a heaviness -in the lids of my companion, and urged her to lie down and take some -rest. She consented; and I lingered at her side until sleep overcame -her, and then I stood for awhile surveying with deep admiration the -calm sweetness of her face, into which had stolen the tenderness of -the unconscious woman, softening down the haughty arching of eyebrow, -unbending the imperious set of the mouth. It was as though her spirit -clad in her own beauty was revealed to me disrobed of all the trappings -of the waking humours. I could have knelt by her side, and in that -posture have watched her for an hour. Can it be, thought I, as I crept -softly to the cuddy door, that I am in love with her? - -I leisurely filled my pipe from the hunk of tobacco I had met with in -the wreck, taking, whilst I did so, as I stood on the quarter-deck, -a good steady look at such of the sailors as were about, though I -contrived an idly curious manner, and directed my eyes as often at the -barque’s furniture as at the seamen. After I had been on the poop a few -minutes, Mr. Lush left it to go forward; and with my pipe betwixt my -teeth, I lounged over to the binnacle to see how the ship headed. The -man who grasped the spokes was the honest-faced fellow I had before -noticed at the wheel; he, I mean, of the minute eyes and whiskers -joined at his throat, who had addressed me in the boat whilst we lay -alongside the hull. I noticed that he seemed to stir a little uneasily -as I approached, as though nervously meditating a speech, and I had -scarcely glanced into the compass bowl when he exclaimed: ‘I beg your -pardon, sir.’ - -I looked at him. - -‘The noose,’ said he, ‘came forrads afore I lay aft for this here trick -that the ship you came out of and lost sight of was the _Countess Ida_.’ - -‘That is so,’ I exclaimed. - -‘Might I make so bold,’ he continued, slightly moving the wheel, and -bringing his specks of eyes into a squint over my head as he sent a -glance at the tiny skysail pulling under the main-truck, ‘as to inquire -if so be that the bo’sun of that ship was a man named Smallridge?’ - -‘Yes, Smallridge; that was the boatswain’s name,’ I replied, warming up -to the mere reference to that hearty sailor. - -‘Well,’ said he, ‘I heerd that he was agoing bo’sun in that ship, and I -was pretty nigh signing for her myself, only that her date of sailing -didn’t give me quite long enough ashore. And how _is_ Mr. Smallridge, -sir?’ - -‘Very well indeed,’ said I. - -‘I’ve got a perticler respect for Mr. Smallridge,’ he continued; ‘he -kep’ company with my sister for some time, and would ha’ married her, -but she tailed on to a sojer whilst he was away, prefarring the lobster -to the shellback, sir. Well, I’m glad to larn that he’s hearty, I’m -sure. If so be as we should fall in with the _Countess Ida_, and put -you aboard without my seeing of Mr. Smallridge, I’d take it werry kind, -sir, if you’d give him Joe Wetherly’s respects.’ - -‘I certainly will,’ said I with alacrity; ‘but I fear there is little -chance of our meeting with the Indiaman.’ - -‘Well, there’s no telling,’ he exclaimed; ‘but she’ll have to be right -in this here barque’s road, supposing her to be ahead; and if we should -pass her in the dark, why, then, good-night! for she’s like grease in -the water is this here _Lady Blanche_.’ - -‘Smallridge and I were very good friends. He’d been a sailor in the -ship I was afterwards midshipman in.’ - -‘Oh, indeed,’ cried he. ‘And so _you_ was at sea, sir?’ - -I was about to reply, designing to lead him on into answering certain -questions I had in my mind concerning the captain and crew of the -barque, when Mr. Lush came up the poop ladder; so, knowing the -etiquette, I hauled off, but with the full intention of sounding Mr. -Joe Weatherly at large when an opportunity should offer. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -I KEEP A LOOKOUT - - -I slipped half-way down the little companion ladder to take a peep at -Miss Temple, and on observing her to be resting quietly, I returned, -and after lighting my pipe anew, stepped over to Mr. Lush, who was -employed in cutting off a piece of tobacco from a black cake to serve -him as a quid. - -‘It is not often hereabouts,’ said I, by way of starting a -conversation, ‘that one has a sky like that all day long overhanging -one’s mastheads.’ - -‘No,’ said he; ‘but it’s better than the roasting sun;’ and he opened -his lame mouth to receive the cube of tobacco into the hollow of his -cheek, whilst he eyed the sky askant, as though in recognition of it as -a subject of talk. - -‘Did you fall in with the smother that ended in the lady and I being -stranded aboard the wreck?’ I inquired. - -‘No; there’s been ne’er a smother with us.’ - -‘The death of Mr. Chicken,’ said I, ‘must have been a blow, seeing that -the barque carried but a couple of mates.’ - -‘How many mates do a ship of this size want?’ said he, without looking -at me and slowly masticating. - -‘Well, she has only one now, anyway,’ said I. - -‘No; she ain’t got even one,’ he exclaimed, with the manner of an -ill-tempered man who only listens for the sake of contradiction and -argument. - -‘Are not _you_ second mate?’ I asked. - -‘Not I,’ he replied with a gruff laugh. ‘They calls me second mate, -and I keeps watch and watch with the capt’n as if I _was_ second mate; -but what I’m signed for is carpenter, and carpenter I be, and there’s -nothen more to be made out of me than that, and I don’t care who the -bloomin’ blazes hears me say it.’ - -He drew to the rail by a step and expectorated violently over it. I -was too anxious for information about this little ship and her crew -to suffer my curiosity to be hindered by the man’s rough, coarse, -ill-natured speech and demeanour. - -‘I was wondering where you took your meals,’ said I. ‘I now understand. -You live forward?’ He gave me a surly nod. ‘But not in the forecastle?’ - -‘Where else? Ain’t the fok’sle good enough for me?’ - -‘But does not association of that sort weaken your control over the -men?’ - -‘_I’ve_ got no control, and don’t want none. The men’ll run if I sing -out. And what more’s to be expected of sailors?’ - -‘It seems queer, though,’ said I, ‘since you undertake the work of a -second mate, that you shouldn’t live aft. It must have been lonely -eating for the skipper after Mr. Chicken died?’ - -‘I did live aft afore Mr. Chicken died,’ he exclaimed, biting his -tobacco with temper, whilst his weather-stained face gathered a new -shade of duskiness to the mounting of the blood into his head; ‘and -then when the capt’n and me comes to be alone, he tarns to and finds -out that I ain’t choice enough to sit down with--says I ain’t got the -art of perlite eatin’, calls me a hog to my face, and tells me that my -snout’s for the mess kid and not for knives and forks and crockery. -Him!’ He turned his face to the rail and spat again, and looked at me -with an expression of anger, but checked himself with violence, and -pushed his hands into his breeches pockets with an irritable motion of -his whole frame. - -I considered that enough had been said; and though I had gained but -little information, it was at least made clear to me that there was no -love lost between Captain Braine and Mr. Lush. But further conversation -would have been rendered impossible in any case, for just then a man -struck eight bells on the main-deck, and a minute or two later the -wheel was relieved, the captain arrived, and the carpenter went forward -in a round-backed sulky walk, his legs bowed, his muscular arms hanging -up and down without a swing, each bunch of his fingers curled like -fish-hooks. - -I had talked enough, and was weary of standing and walking; so, when -I spied the skipper, I slipped off the poop and seated myself on a -bench abreast of my sleeping companion, where I remained for half an -hour, often gazing at her, my mind very busy with a hundred thoughts, -foremost amongst which was the shuddering recollection of our late -experiences and narrow escape, and deep thankfulness to God for His -merciful preservation of us. The entrance of the captain’s servant--a -young fellow named Wilkins, to be hereafter so called: a memorable -figure in this startlingly eventful passage of my life which I am -endeavouring to relate: a veal-faced, red-headed, shambling fellow of -some two-and-twenty years, with white eyebrows and lashes, and a dim -blue eye--the entrance, I say, of this man with a tray of tea-things -aroused Miss Temple, who, after a brief bewildered stare at me, smiled, -and sat upright. - -‘There is always something new now,’ she exclaimed, ‘to look at when I -open my eyes after sleeping. Yesterday it was the wreck; to-day it is -this ship. What will it be to-morrow? Is there anything in sight, Mr. -Dugdale?’ - -‘There was nothing when I left the deck half an hour ago,’ said I. - -She had awakened with a slight flush of sleep in her face that greatly -enriched her eyes; but the delicate glow quickly faded; she was -speedily colourless as alabaster. She smoothed her hair and put on her -hat, that she had removed when she lay down. - -‘It is strange,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘I should not seem able -to endure feeling that I am not in a condition to instantly leave this -vessel. It was so with me in the wreck. Even without my hat, I feel -unready; and then, again, there is the sense of not being exactly as I -was when I left the _Countess Ida_.’ - -The captain called through the skylight: ‘Wilkins, bring me some tea -and a biscuit up here.’ - -‘Ay, ay, sir.’ - -‘Pray,’ said I, ‘when and where does the captain dine?’ - -‘I took his dinner to his cabin,’ responded the young fellow; ‘he -mostly eats there. But now you’re here, I allow he’ll be a-jining of -you.’ - -‘This is no meal for you, Miss Temple,’ said I, with a glance at the -old teapot and the small plate of biscuits which furnished out the -repast. ‘No milk--brown sugar--no butter, of course!’ Wilkins grinned -whilst he poured out some tea into a cup. ‘You’ve had nothing to eat -since we first came aboard.’ - -‘I want nothing,’ she answered. - -‘Well, then, _I_ do,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine is quite right. -Shipwreck doesn’t impair the appetite.’ - -‘There’ll be supper at seven, sir,’ said Wilkins. - -‘And what do you call supper?’ I inquired. - -‘Why,’ answered the fellow, ‘there’ll be the beef ye had this morning, -piccalillis, bottled stout, biscuit after this here pattern, and cold -currant dumplings.’ - -He then went up the companion steps with some biscuit and tea for the -captain. I laughed out. - -‘Not so good as the Indiaman’s dinner-table, Miss Temple, but better -than the hull’s entertainment. We must wait till supper’s served. -Meanwhile, I’ll blunt my appetite on a biscuit. Will you give me a cup -of tea?’ - -It was genuine forecastle liquor, such as might have been boiled in a -copper, of the hue of ink, and full of fragments of stalk. However, -the mere looking at it was something to do, and we sat toying with our -cups, making-pretend, as it were, to be drinking tea and talking. - -‘I wonder,’ I exclaimed in the course of our conversation, ‘whether -the cutter was picked up by one of the ships? If she lost both of them, -will she have lived in the weather that followed? Anyway, the corvette -is certain to make a long hunt for her, with the hope also of falling -in with the Indiaman, for Sir Edward will think it possible that -Keeling has his men aboard, and will want to make sure. I fear this -business of the cutter may have led to such manœuvring on the part of -the two ships as must render our falling-in with one or the other of -them very unlikely.’ - -‘Oh, why do you say that?’ she cried. - -‘It is but a surmise,’ said I; ‘anyhow, I heartily hope the cutter -_has_ been picked up, if only for Colledge’s sake. The sudden loss of -the lieutenant will have dreadfully scared him.’ - -‘I earnestly wish that Mr. Colledge may have been saved,’ said she with -a faint glitter of temper in her gaze; ‘but I could wish ten times more -earnestly that he had never been born, or that he had sailed in any -other ship than the _Countess Ida_; for then I should not be here.’ - -‘Your aunt endeavoured to dissuade you.’ - -‘She did; and I am rightly served for not obeying her.’ - -‘You are very high-spirited, Miss Temple; it is your nature, and you -cannot help yourself. You are a young lady to insist upon having your -own way, and you always get it.’ - -‘Mr. Dugdale, you are too young to lecture me.’ - -‘How old do you think I am?’ said I. - -‘Oh, about six-and-twenty,’ she answered with a slight incurious run of -her eyes over me that recalled her manner in the Indiaman. - -‘Well, if I am,’ said I, ‘it is a good solid age to achieve. There -is room for enough experiences in six-and-twenty years to enable a -young man to utter several very truthful observations to high-spirited -young ladies who insist upon having their way, and then quarrel with -everybody because their way is not exactly the road they wish to tread.’ - -She slightly knitted her fair brows and looked at me fixedly. - -‘Mr. Dugdale,’ said she, ‘you would not have dared to talk to me like -this on board the _Countess Ida_.’ - -‘I was afraid of you there.’ - -‘You _respected_ me there, you mean, and now--because’---- She came to -a stop, with a little quivering at the extremities of her mouth. - -‘I am no longer afraid of you, or, rather, I no longer respect you -because you happen to be in this particular situation, which needs no -explanation whatever: that is, I suppose, what you wish to say. But -you misjudge me indeed. I was afraid of you on board the Indiaman, -but I did not respect you; nay, my aversion was as cordial as could -be possibly imagined in a man who thought you then, as he thinks you -still, the handsomest woman he has ever seen in his life, or could -ever have dreamt of. But that aversion is passing,’ I continued, -watching with delight her marvellous gaze of astonishment and the warm -flush that had overspread her face. ‘I am discovering that much of -what excited my dislike and regret aboard the Indiaman is artificial, -an insincerity in you. This afternoon, whilst you slept, I sat near -you for half an hour, gazing at you. All expression of haughtiness -had faded from your mouth: your countenance wore an air of exquisite -placidity, of gentle kindness, of tender good nature. In short, Miss -Temple, I saw you as you are, as your good angel knows you to be, as -you have it in your power to appear.’ I sprang to my feet. ‘How shall -we kill the blessed hours that lie before us? Only think, it is barely -five o’clock.’ - -She gazed at me with an amazement that seemed to render her speechless; -her face was on fire, and her throat blushed to where the collar of her -dress circled it. ‘It will not do,’ I continued, ‘to attempt to murder -time by talking, or it will come to your killing me instead of the -hours. I’ll go and overhaul the late Mr. Chicken’s bedroom, or, rather, -his effects. There _may_ be something to interest. Even the mouldiest -backgammon board would be worth a million;’ and I made for the little -hatch that conducted to our sleeping berths, leaving her motionless at -the table. - -Come, thought I, as I dropped into the ’tweendecks, a short spell of -loneliness will do you good, my haughty beauty, by making you realise -how it would be with you were you actually alone. This is the first of -the homely thrusts I have been preparing for you, and I will not spare -you less as I grow to love you more, taking my chance of your abhorring -me, though it may not come to _that_ either. - -I peeped into the berth that had been prepared for her, and found all -the odds and ends which had encumbered it gone; there was a clean -mattress on the bunk, and on top of it an old but comely rug and a -couple of shawls; a small looking-glass dangled near the porthole. But -what an interior for this delicately nurtured, high and mighty young -lady of quality to lie in! No carpet, no chest of drawers, nothing -beyond the looking-glass and a tin dish for washing in; in short, -a mere marine cell, as like as might be to any little whitewashed -room with grated window ashore in which a policeman would lock up a -pick-pocket! - -I entered my own berth. The boatswain’s and sailmaker’s stores were -not here, and I found a ‘clean hold,’ as a sailor might say. In fact, -all Chicken’s traps being about, caused the berth to present a much -more hospitable aspect than the adjacent one afforded. I examined the -books, but found most of them to consist of religious literature, as -the captain had said, and the rest of them works on the nautical life. -Though it was hard to reconcile a fancy of cards with the late Mr. -Chicken’s character as portrayed by the skipper, I yet looked into a -couple of chests in the hope of meeting with a pack; but neither cards -nor any species of object calculated to divert did I come across; and -growing weary of hunting, I returned to the cuddy. - -I perceived or imagined an air of reproach in Miss Temple; but she had -mastered her temper and astonishment. - -‘There is nothing belonging to the late Mr. Chicken to entertain us,’ -said I. - -‘It surely does not signify, Mr. Dugdale. Do you suppose that I have -the heart to play at cards or chess? Is not there more wind than there -was? I will ask you to take me on deck. Something may be in sight, and -it will not be dark for some time yet.’ - -I gave her my hand, and helped her up the little ladder. There was -more wind, as she had said; the skysails had been furled and a -studdingsail or two hauled down, and the little barque, with her -yards almost square, was sweeping swiftly over the smooth waters, -slightly heeling from side to side as she went. The foam in yeasty -bubbles and soft cream-hued clouds went spinning and writhing from -her bows into her wake, that ran like a path of coral sand over the -darkling waters, now complexioned into lividness by the gloomy plain -of vaporous sky. The crew were on the forecastle--it was well into -the first dog-watch--lounging, sitting, yarning, and smoking. Amidst -them I noticed Mr. Lush, leaning against the rail with a short sooty -pipe in his mouth, the bowl of which was inverted. He was in his -shirt sleeves, and he reclined with his arms folded upon his breast, -apparently listening, in that dogged posture, to one of the sailors, -who was reciting something with outstretched arm and a long forefinger, -with which he seemed to be figuring diagrams upon the air. Upon the -slope of the starboard cathead, coming into the deck, sat my friend Joe -Wetherly, with a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles on his nose; he pored -on a book with moving lips, from which he would expel at intervals -great clouds of smoke through a pipe betwixt his teeth. So small was -the barque, so seemingly close at hand the forecastle to the break of -the poop, that even such minute details as these were perfectly visible -to me. - -Captain Braine stood near the wheel. He continuously stared at us, -but did not shift his attitude nor offer to address us. I swept the -sea-line, but to no purpose. - -‘How sickeningly wearisome has that bare horizon grown to me!’ -exclaimed Miss Temple, with a shuddering sigh; ‘it has just the sort -of monotony that would speedily drive me crazy. I am sure; not the -wearisomeness of four walls, nor the tiresomeness of a single eternal -glimpse of unchanging country to be had through a window; no! there is -a mockery in it which you do not find in the most insipid, colourless -scene on land. It is not, and still it always _is_, the same. It -recedes to your pursuit, yet it is unalterable, and how cruelly barren -is it of suggestions!’ - -‘Yet a sight of the Indiaman,’ said I, ‘should develop whatever of the -picturesque may be hidden in that tiresome girdle.’ - -‘Ah, yes!’ she answered; ‘but we are now running away from our chances. -How swiftly this boat sails! If the Indiaman is behind us, we shall see -no more of her.’ - -‘Do not let us depress each other with talk of this kind,’ said I; ‘let -me give you my arm, and we will stroll a little.’ - -We had been on deck about twenty minutes, when the captain, who had -continued to steadfastly gaze at us in a most extraordinary ruminating -way, crossed the deck. - -‘Pray, sir,’ said he, ‘could I trust you to keep a lookout for me if I -went below for a short spell?’ - -‘I will do so with pleasure.’ - -‘D’ye know what orders to give, if anything requiring orders should -happen?’ - -‘Why,’ said I, smiling, ‘there are a good many orders going at sea, you -know, captain. Figure a situation, and I will see if I can recollect -the routine.’ - -He stared at me musingly with his dead black eyes, and then said: -‘Well, suppose the breeze freshens with a dark look to wind’ard, and -I’m below and asleep, and have left ye no instructions; what would you -do?’ - -‘Call you,’ said I. - -‘And quite right, too,’ he cried, with a vehement nod of approval, and -a glance at Miss Temple, as if he would have her participate in his -satisfaction. ‘But put me out of the question, and allow that you’ve -got to act for yourself.’ - -‘Why, Captain Braine,’ I exclaimed, ‘though my time at sea was brief, -I am no longshoreman. Such a question as yours means merely the first -letter in the marine alphabet.’ - -‘I ain’t so sure of that,’ said he, with his fixed regard. - -‘I admit,’ continued I, ‘that I have never been shipmate with a -fore-and-aft rigged mizzenmast; but if it’s merely a question of -shortening sail, why, what else under the moon is to be done than to -take in your studdingsails and clew up your royals and haul down your -flying jib, and then let go your foretopgallant halliards, and haul -down your light staysails’--and so I rambled on, winding up with, ‘I am -leaving your after-canvas untouched, because it is already in, you see; -whilst as to your jibs and staysails, I assume of course that they are -set.’ - -He lifted his hand. ‘Thank’ee,’ said he; ‘I shan’t be long;’ and down -he went. - -‘You will surely believe _now_ that he is mad!’ said Miss Temple with -anxiety, but softly, for the fellow at the wheel stood near, and I had -seen a grin crumple up his features to the skipper’s question. - -‘He may want me to serve him as a mate,’ said I, laughing. - -‘You will do nothing of the kind, I hope,’ she exclaimed, as we fell to -pacing the deck afresh. - -‘I will do anything that may help me to see you safe,’ said I. - -‘But cannot you perceive, Mr. Dugdale, that if he believes you fit to -serve him as a mate, as you call it, he may prevent you from leaving -his ship by declining to communicate with passing vessels?’ - -‘That is true,’ said I. - -‘I am certain,’ she cried, squeezing my arm in the energy of her -emotion, ‘that he has some design in his mind to make you serve -him. Why should he have teased you when we came, poor miserable -creatures! fresh from the wreck, with inquiries about your knowledge of -navigation? Oh, beware of him! He may not be quite mad, but he may be -as wicked as the worst of his men.’ - -‘We must wait,’ said I, for her conjectures were quite reasonable -enough to prove disturbing. ‘But after all,’ I cried, brightening up -to the new idea that possessed me, ‘if we are to sail to the Mauritius -with him’---- - -‘No!’ she exclaimed; ‘that is not to be dreamt of.’ - -‘Yet listen, I entreat you. If it is our uncomfortable doom to remain -in this barque until she reaches her port, I do not know but that the -captain would be very honestly in the right in expecting me to work -my passage--that is to say, to help him by keeping a lookout, and by -serving him in other ways which may be possible to me.’ - -‘Do not dream of sailing to the Mauritius!’ she cried impetuously; ‘we -must either soon meet with the Indiaman or return home.’ - -I could not forbear a smile at her imperious _we_, as though whatever -she did I must do. - -‘Ay, that is what we want,’ I exclaimed; ‘but then if we don’t fall in -with the Indiaman nor with a vessel homeward bound’---- - -‘Absurd! Dozens of ships are to be met with every day sailing home to -England from some part or other of the world. The idea of remaining -in this vessel is not to be entertained for an instant. It would be -intolerable enough for me even to make the comparatively short passage -home, destitute as I am of everything; but to leisurely proceed _all_ -the way to the Mauritius---- Oh, be very careful, Mr. Dugdale. I beg -you not to know anything at all about navigation and the duties of a -sailor.’ - -‘I can’t do that,’ I answered; ‘I have loaded my gun and must stick to -it; but I promise you I will put no more shot in it.’ - -She eyed me with great impatience and warmth, as though provoked by my -answer: but she held her peace, and presently our conversation went to -other matters. - -Shortly before six o’clock the sky cleared somewhat to windward. The -wide pall of leaden cloud lifted there, as though it were some huge -carpet a corner of which was being rolled up, and there looked to flow -a very lagoon of pure blue ether, moist and rich with the evening -shadow, into the space betwixt the rim of the sea and the edge of the -cloud. A clearer, more penetrating light broadened out; and going to -the companion hatch, I took the telescope that lay in brackets there -and carefully searched the horizon. But the sea washed bare to the sky -on all sides. - -I did not observe that the men gathered together on the forecastle -seemed to notice the captain’s absence, though I expected they would -come to stare a bit when the fellow who stood at the wheel should go -forward and tell them that I had been acting as mate of the watch. -For my part this queer duty coming upon me made the whole experience -more wild and improbable to my imagination than had been any other -feature of it since we quitted the Indiaman. Never was there such a -forcing of adventures, as it were, upon a man. It was like dreaming -to reflect that a little time ago I was a passenger, an easy-going, -smoking, drinking, chess-playing young fellow, without a care, with -plenty of clothes and money enough in my cabin, and that now I was -a half-starved, shipwrecked wretch, without the value of a straw in -the shape of possessions, outside of what I stood up in and had in -my pockets, keeping a lookout as though, faith, I was some poor, -struggling, hungry second mate, newly enlarged from an odious term -of apprenticeship! like dreaming, I say, to think that a little time -ago the young lady by my side was a reserved, disdainful creature, -with scarcely a word betwixt her lips to throw at me, and that now -she could not speak of her future without making me a sharer in it, -that she could not see enough of me, nor have my arm too close for her -hand; whilst in point of destitution she, the most richly clad of the -Indiaman’s lady passengers, she, who had seemed to me to appear in a -new dress nearly every day, was out and away more beggared than I; for -so far as I was concerned there was always the barque’s slop chest to -come upon; or, failing that, there would be jackets and breeches and -‘housewives’ enough forward to serve my turn if the push grew severe; -whereas Miss Temple was as badly off as if she had been cast away upon -a desert island! - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -I AM QUESTIONED - - -The captain did not again return on deck. At six o’clock Mr. Lush’s -white jacket was forked up to him through the forecastle hatch: he -slipped it on and came aft to relieve the watch; but though he looked -about a little for the skipper, I could not find in his wooden face -that he made anything of not perceiving him. By seven o’clock the sky -had cleared; the wide stretch of vapour which had all day long obscured -the sky had settled away down beyond the southern rim, and the soft -violet of the tropic evening heaven was made beautiful by spaces at -wide intervals of a delicate filigree-work of white cloud, dainty and -fine to the eye as frost on a meadow. The setting sun glowed in the -west like a golden target, rayless, palpitating, and a cone-shaped wake -of flame hung under him. There was a pleasant whipping of wind over the -sea, a merry air that whitened the heads of the ripples, and it blew -sweet and warm. - -Lush had loosed the skysails again and sent the royal studdingsails -up, and the barque went nimbly floating through it in the resemblance -of some golden-tinctured fabric of silver hull and sails of cloth of -silver; indeed, from the point of view of the space of deck abaft the -wheel, she showed like some fairy creation in that atmosphere that was -brimful of scarlet light, and upon that sapphire plain whose tender -long-drawn undulations seemed to wave a faint golden hue through, the -blue of the brine, as though there were dyes of a westering sun-colour -rising from the heart of the deep, and then subsiding. - -On looking through the skylight I perceived Wilkins placing supper -on the table. This was an unusual meal at sea, at least aboard of a -homely trader of the pattern of the _Lady Blanche_, and was a distinct -illustration in its way, to my recollections of seafaring life, of the -odd character of the man who commanded the barque. He came out of his -cabin as we seated ourselves, giving Miss Temple a grotesque bow before -taking his place. - -‘Sorry, mem,’ said he, casting his slow eye over the table, ‘that -there’s nothing choicer in the way of victuals to offer you. I find -that the wine brought aboard from the wreck is a middling good quality -of liquor, and it is to be saved for you, mem. Wilkins, open a bottle, -and give it to the lady. Pity that shore-going folks who take interest -in the nautical calling don’t turn to and invent something better for -the likes of me than salt pork and beef and biscuit, and peas which -are only fit to load a blunderbuss with. There have been times when a -singular longing’s come upon me for a cut of prime sirloin and a floury -potato, as Jack says. But the sea-life’s a hard calling, look at it -from which end of the ship ye may. How did you get on in your watch on -deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ he added with a gaunt smile, in which I could not -distinguish the least complexion of mirth. - -‘There was nothing to be done,’ said I, working away at a piece of salt -beef, for I was exceedingly hungry. - -‘But ye’d have known what to do if there had been?’ said he. - -Miss Temple’s glance admonished me to be wary. - -‘Oh, I am no sailor,’ said I, ‘in the sense that you and Mr. Lush are -sailors.’ - -‘Not Mr. Lush!’ he cried, elevating his forefinger and staring hard -at me past it. ‘Mr. Lush, as you term him, is a hog on two legs. Let -him go on all fours, and there’s ne’er an old sow under a longboat -that wouldn’t take him to her heart as one of her long-lost children. -Such manners, mem!’ he continued, addressing Miss Temple, whilst with -upturned eyes and raised hands he counterfeited an air of disgust; -‘when he ate, you could hear the smack of his lips fore and aft. He’d -make nothing of laying hold of a bit of cold beef and gnawing upon it -as a dawg might, head first on one side and then on t’other; and you’d -find yourself listening to hear him growl, if you looked at him. And -then his language! I’ve been eating by myself pretty nigh since Chicken -died, but it’s entertainment for me to have company;’ and he bestowed -another bow upon each of us. - -‘You will not find the manners of a nobleman in a plain ship’s -carpenter,’ said I, thankful to believe that he had forgotten the -subject of my sea-going qualifications. But I was mistaken. He gazed -at me with a steadfastness that was absolutely confusing, whilst he -seemed lost in deep thought, then said: - -‘I’m not going to regard you, Mr. Dugdale, as a tip-top sailor, of -course. Ye’ve knocked off too long; but it’ll all come back very soon.’ - -‘Mr. Dugdale was at sea for only two years,’ said Miss Temple. ‘It -would be unreasonable to expect anyone to know much of a calling in -that time.’ - -‘Don’t you believe _that_, mem,’ he exclaimed. ‘After twelve months -of it, there was but little left for me to larn--proper, I mean, to -fit me to sarve as able seaman aboard anything afloat, from a hoy to a -line-of-battle ship. What don’t ye know now, Mr. Dugdale?’ - -He somewhat softened his voice as he said this, and a queer sort of -yearning expression entered his unwinking stare. - -‘Oh, much, captain, much,’ I answered smiling, yet feeling somewhat -bothered betwixt these questions and Miss Temple’s glances. - -‘You could put a ship about, I suppose.’ - -‘Well, I might do that,’ I replied; ‘but there would be a chance of my -getting her into irons, though.’ - -‘You’d be able to know when to shorten sail anyway, and what orders to -give. You told me ye could take a star?’ - -‘Did I?’ I exclaimed. - -‘Certainly you did, sir,’ he cried. - -‘I do not recollect,’ said Miss Temple. - -‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, with another of his mirthless grins, ‘the lady’s -afraid of your knowing too much, sir. I don’t mean no offence, but -there’s a forecastle saying that all the male monkeys ’ud talk if it -wasn’t for their sweethearts, who advise them to hold their jaw lest -they should be put upon.’ - -Miss Temple’s face changed into stone, after one withering glance at -the man, whose countenance remained distorted with a smile. - -‘Some of Jack’s sayings are first class,’ he went on. ‘Yes, ye told me -you could take a star. Can you find the latitude by double altitudes?’ - -‘A few trials would recall the trick, I daresay,’ I answered. - -‘And of course you know how to find the longitude by lunar -observations?’ - -‘Pray excuse me, Captain Braine,’ said I; ‘but what, may I inquire, is -your motive in asking these questions?’ - -He eyed me fixedly for some moments, and then silently nodded his head -three or four times. Miss Temple seemed to shrink slightly as she -watched him. - -‘Mr. Dugdale,’ said he very slowly, ‘on your giving me to understand -that you had sarved aboard an Indiaman, I was willing to receive you -and the lady aboard my ship. When you came aboard, you told me that you -understood navigation. Didn’t ye?’ - -I felt the blood in my cheek as I answered: ‘I have some recollection -of speaking to that effect.’ - -‘Then why d’ye want to go and try to make out _now_ that ye know -nothing about it?’ - -‘I am trying to do nothing of the kind,’ said I, assuming an air of -dignity and resentment, though I feared it was good for very little. -‘You have questioned me, sir, and now I ask _you_ a question. I have -a right to an answer, seeing how you expect that I should rapidly and -fluently reply to you.’ - -‘I’ll be talking to you afore long,’ he said, bestowing another -succession of dark mysterious nods upon me. - -‘Captain Braine,’ cried Miss Temple, breaking with an air of -consternation out of the cold, contemptuous resentment that had made -marble of her face, ‘you have rescued us from a condition of dreadful -distress, and I have your promise that you will not lose an opportunity -to transfer us to the first ship you meet that is homeward bound, -providing we do not shortly fall in with the _Countess Ida_.’ - -‘I ha’n’t broke my promise yet, have I?’ he replied, rounding slowly -upon her and staring. - -‘I can only repeat,’ she continued, preserving her expression of -dismay, ‘that any sum of money you may choose to ask’---- - -‘I know all about that, mem,’ he interrupted, but not offensively, and -with a gesture that was almost bland. He then leisurely turned to me. -‘You gave me to believe this morning, sir, that you was acquainted with -navigation?’ - -‘And what then?’ I exclaimed impatiently. - -‘I hope that you didn’t deceive me,’ he said with a dark look. - -‘You shall have the full truth when I know your motive in examining me -in this fashion,’ said I hotly, ‘and not before.’ - -But immediately after I had spoken I was sensible of my folly in losing -my temper. Talk as we might, vapour as we would, we were in this man’s -power: in the power of a man who was absolutely unintelligible as a -character whether sane or mad, and the girl’s and my own safety might -wholly depend upon our judgment and tact. He gazed at me with eyes -whose expression seemed to grow more and more malignant, though, God -knows, this might have been my fancy, since I was in the humour at the -moment to figure all things very blackly. - -‘Understand me,’ I exclaimed, wholly changing my manner, and speaking -in a softened tone; ‘if I can be of service to you in any direction, -you have but to command me. I owe you my own and this lady’s life; and -though it is an obligation beyond my power of discharging in full, yet -it must be my duty and happiness to diminish it in any direction I am -equal to.’ - -‘We will before long talk together, sir,’ said he, and then fell -silent, nor did he again open his lips during the seven or eight -minutes in which we continued sitting together at that table. - -I was exceedingly puzzled and troubled by what had passed. What did -this captain mean by his dark mysterious nods, by his saying that he -would talk to me presently, by his insistence in ascertaining the -extent of my nautical knowledge? It was possible, indeed, that being -the only navigator aboard his vessel, he might consider himself in -serious need of some one to take his place if he should fall sick. But -his behaviour was scarcely reconcilable with this plain clear want, and -it seemed certain that there was more going to his speech and manner -than the desire that I should fill the part of mate to him. - -It was a fair, warm, delightful night, rich with stars, and soothing -with the dew-sweetened wind that blew with steady freshness over the -quarter, running the pale shape of the barque over the dark waters, -as though she were some wreath of mist that must presently dissolve. -Miss Temple and I, sometimes walking, sometimes sitting on the -skylight, held to the deck till a late hour. She abhorred the thought -of withdrawing to the cabin allotted to her; and short as my sleep -had been since the hour of my quitting the Indiaman’s side, I was as -little willing as she to quit the silence and coolness and beauty of -the open night for the confinement of a small hot berth. - -The captain had charge of the deck from eight to twelve; but he only -once approached us to say that a lantern containing an end of candle -had been placed in each of our berths; ‘and I will ask you both,’ he -added, ‘to mind your fire, for we’re full up with dry light goods in -the steerage.’ He then returned to the side of the deck he had crossed -from, and did not again offer to approach us. - -You will suppose that the girl and I could talk of nothing but the -captain’s intentions, the probable condition of his intellect, and the -like. - -‘He may refuse to part with me,’ said I, ‘and yet be perfectly willing -to send you on board of the first homeward-bound ship we sight. What -then, Miss Temple?’ - -‘I could not travel alone. It is not endurable that such a man as -Captain Braine should compel you, against your wishes, to remain with -him! How could he do so? How could he compel you to take a star, as -he calls it, whatever that may mean; and to keep watch?’ She sighed -deeply. ‘Alas! my language is fast becoming that of the common sailor. -To think of me talking to you about taking a star and keeping watch!’ - -‘And why not? Jack’s is a noble tongue. Omit the oaths, and there is no -dialect more swelling and poetic than that of the sea.’ - -‘I detest it because it is forced upon me. An odious and dreadful -experience obliges me to think and speak in it. Otherwise, I might -rather like it. But tell me now, Mr. Dugdale, surely this captain could -not compel you to remain with him?’ - -This led to a deal of talk. I did my utmost to reassure her; I exhorted -her to bear in mind that whilst we were on board the barque, we were -literally at the mercy of the skipper, who, down to the present moment, -had certainly treated us with great humanity, though his behaviour -and conversation in the main were undeniably of a lunatic sort. I -bitterly condemned myself for losing my temper, and I entreated her -to be patient, to control all resentment that the man might excite by -purposed or involuntary insult, not to doubt that he would put her on -board a ship proceeding home, and to leave me to play a part of my own -that should keep us together. - -‘For,’ said I, ‘since fate, cruel to you, but not to me, Miss Temple, -has placed you so far in my keeping, I must be jealous of all -interference down to the very termination of our adventure.’ - -‘I wish for no other companion,’ she exclaimed in a low voice; ‘my -mother will thank you, Mr. Dugdale.’ - -‘And, please God, your mother shall,’ said I, ‘trifling as may be my -claims upon her gratitude. But however my merits may turn out before we -again sight Old England, I shall be abundantly satisfied if I believe -that you think of me with more kindness than you did on board the -_Countess Ida_.’ - -‘Mr. Dugdale, I thought of no one on board the _Countess Ida_. But let -us avoid that subject--you have already been very plain-spoken.’ - -She ceased. I made no answer, and for some time we paced the deck in -silence, harking then back again to the old topic of the captain’s -intentions, the whereabouts of the Indiaman, and so on, and so on. -By-and-by I looked at my watch; the dial-plate showed clearly by the -starlight. It was eleven o’clock; and as I looked the ship’s bell -rang out six chimes, which came floating down again in echoes out of -the tremorless pallid concavities on high. Miss Temple was still most -reluctant to leave the deck. - -‘I am thinking of Mr. Chicken,’ she exclaimed. - -‘Chicken’s ghost, like a hen’s egg, is laid,’ said I. ‘Besides, what -remains of him will be all about my bunk.’ - -‘Oh for the Indiaman’s saloon,’ she cried, ‘for my dear aunt, for -old Captain Keeling! How welcome would be a sight of even the most -intolerable of the passengers, say Mr. Johnson; even that horrid little -creature with the eye-glass, Miss Hudson’s admirer.’ - -‘I fear I am tolerated for the same reason that would render Mr. -Johnson endurable to you.’ - -‘No!’ she answered quickly and warmly; ‘you are incessantly personal. I -do not like it.’ - -‘Suffer me to escort you to your cabin?’ - -She lingered yet, turning her face to the skies. - -‘How rich are those stars! Such lovely jewels are never to be seen in -the English heavens. Mark how the meteors score the dark spaces between -the lights with scars and paths of diamond dust! Oh that some gigantic -shadowy finger would shape itself up there pointing downwards, to let -us know where the _Countess Ida_ is.’ - -She rose from the skylight with a long tremulous sigh, and passed her -hand through my arm that I might conduct her below. For an instant I -hung in the wind. - -‘Why do you wait? I am now ready,’ said she. - -‘I am debating within myself whether I should offer to stand watch -to-night--the captain might expect me to do so.’ - -‘I do believe you desire that I should think you as mad as he is,’ she -exclaimed, exerting pressure enough on my arm to start me towards the -poop-ladder; ‘you shall do nothing of the sort with my consent. If you -wish to resume your old vocation, Mr. Dugdale, pray wait until this -adventure is ended.’ - -‘Anyway, we must bid him good-night,’ said I; and with that I called -out to him. He answered: ‘Good-night, Mr. Dugdale; good-night to you, -mem. If there’s anything a-missing which the _Lady Blanche_ can supply -let me know, and you shall have it.’ - -‘You’re extremely good, and we’re very much obliged to you,’ said I. - -‘Good-night, Captain Braine,’ called Miss Temple in her rich voice; and -down we went. - -The cabin lamp showed a small light. Miss Temple waited here whilst I -went below for one of the two lanterns which the captain had told me -I should find in our berths. I was obliged to kindle a sulphur match, -and I remember cursing the tardy operation of obtaining a light whilst -I stood hammering away with flint and steel, injuring my knuckles, and -wishing the tinder-box at the deuce. I found the lanterns, and left one -alight in Miss Temple’s cabin, and carried my own, also alight, into -the cuddy. Miss Temple’s eyes sparkled to the glare as I approached -her, and her face might have been a spirit’s for its whiteness in that -faint illumination vexed with shadows as the lantern swayed to the -light rolling of the barque. - -‘I wish I could sleep here,’ said she. - -‘You will be equally comfortable below,’ said I; ‘and what is better, -quite private.’ - -‘Did you see any rats?’ - -‘None.’ - -She took my arm with a firm clasp, and hardly seemed willing to release -me at the hatch, though the aperture was too narrow to admit of our -descending together. When we had gained the lower deck, she again -seized my arm and stood staring and hearkening. - -‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, ‘it is very lonely down here!’ - -‘Yes; but you are not alone. You must have courage. I would rather you -should be next me than overhead next the captain.’ - -Yet, as I spoke, my heart was full of pity for her. It was indeed -lonely, as she had said, with a sense of imprisonment besides, all that -way down, thinking of where we stood, I mean, with reference to the -poop. The stowed cases in the forepart seemed to stir as though to some -internal throes to the weak light that swung in my hand; the atmosphere -was charged with an unpleasant smell of cargo and the mingled fumes -of a ship’s hold; and there was something of the heat of an oven also -in the air that felt to rest with a sort of weight upon the head, due -perhaps to the fancy begotten by the nearness of the upper deck or -ceiling as you may term it. Small straining noises stole upon the ear -from round about in stealthy notes, as though they were giants below -moving warily. I say I was full of concern for the poor girl. Somehow -the misery of her condition had not before affected me as it now did. - -‘It will not last long. It will be a thing of the past very shortly: -meanwhile, keep up your heart, and trust me as your protector whilst -God leaves me a hand to lift,’ I exclaimed with a tenderness of which -I was insensible until a little later on, when the tones of my voice -recurred to me in memory. - -She looked at me as though she were about to speak, yet said nothing; -and releasing my arm, she stepped to her cabin door and peeped in. - -‘Is there anything I can do?’ said I, keeping at a respectful distance. - -She peered awhile, and then answered: ‘I think not. But that candle -will not last long, and I shall be in darkness. Or if I should -extinguish it, how am I to light it again?’ - -‘If you want a light,’ said I, ‘knock on the bulkhead. I shall hear -you, and will answer by knocking. But it already draws on for twelve -o’clock. The dawn will be breaking at five or thereabouts. I trust you -will sleep. You greatly need rest.’ - -I removed my cap to kiss her hand, and met her gaze, that was fixed -full of wistfulness upon me. ‘Good-night, Miss Temple,’ said I. She -entered her cabin looking as though her heart was too full for speech, -and closed the door. - -I was now feeling exceedingly weary, yet, as I feared that she might -need me, or, in some nervous fit, knock if it were but to know that -I was awake, I filled my pipe, got into Mr. Chicken’s bunk, and sat -smoking. I cannot express the peculiar character of the stillness down -here. It was very extraordinarily accentuated by the sounds which at -intervals penetrated it: such as the muffled jar of the rudder working -upon its post, the dim wash of water, startlingly close at hand, along -with the faint seething noise of the barque’s wake hissing within arm’s -reach, as it seemed, and coming and going upon the hearing fitfully. -The suit of oilskins against the bulkhead swayed to the heave of the -fabric, and they resembled the body of a man who had hanged himself by -the nail from which they dangled. There was a pair of sea-boots up in -a corner with a dropsical bulging out about the foot of them in the -part where a man’s bunions would come, and they showed so very much as -if they had just been drawn off the legs of Mr. Chicken, that they grew -ghastly presently, and to relieve my imagination, I directed my eyes at -other objects. - -I sat smoking and full of thought. My eyelids were as of lead, yet my -mind continued impertinently active. The horrors we had escaped from -lay like the shadow of a thundercloud upon my spirits; the oppression -was too violent to suffer the continuance of any emotion of exultation -over our deliverance. Dark and dismal fancies possessed me. I thought -of Captain Braine as a man whose reason was unsound, and who was -capable of playing me some devilish trick; I thought of the coarse -and surly carpenter, and of the charge of murder hinted against him -by the skipper. I thought of the convicts and of the mutineer in the -forecastle, and then my raven-like imagination going to Miss Temple, -I reflected that I was unarmed, that I had no weapon about me but a -knife, that must prove of very little use should it come to my having -to make a fight of it for hers and my own life. Surely, I mused, -old Chicken will not have come to sea without some instrument of -self-defence, be it blunderbuss, pistol, or cutlass. - -I took an earnest view of the interior. There was a locker against the -bulkhead that divided Miss Temple’s cabin from mine; I had incuriously -opened and looked into it when searching for something to divert -ourselves with, being by the time I had come to that locker too tired -to continue overhauling the dead man’s effects. Besides this receptacle -there were two chests of clothes and other matters along with a bagful -of things, and a shelf over the bunk filled with odds and ends. There -was still about an hour of candle-light in the lantern. I raised the -lid of the locker, and found within a truly miscellaneous ‘raffle’ of -objects, as a sailor would term it: charts, slippers, sextant in case, -a number of tobacco pipes, bundles of papers, and I know not what -besides. At the bottom, in the left-hand corner, was a small canvas bag -very weighty for its size. I drew it out, and found about forty pounds -in gold inside it, with three Australian one-pound notes, dark with -thumbing and pocketing, and a five-pound note scarcely distinguishable -for dirt and creases. I replaced the bag; and coming to the other end -of the locker, working my way to it through a very rag-and-bottle shop -of queer gatherings, I met with the object that I was longing for: to -wit, a heavy, long, double-barrelled pistol, with a couple of nipples -and a ramrod, and a butt massive enough to bring an ox to earth with. -There were a parcel of bullets, and a small brown powder-flask full in -the piece of canvas in which the pistol was wrapped; but for some time -I could not find any caps. Without them, the pistol would not be of the -least use, and my satisfaction yielded to mortification as I continued -to probe into the locker without result. I was about to abandon the -quest in despair, when my fingers touched a circular metal box like to -those which used to contain paste for the polishing of boots; I fished -it up, and was mighty glad to find it filled with caps. Come, thought -I, if difficulties are to happen, I am better off now than I was half -an hour ago, anyhow. - -All this time there had been no noise next door, and I could but hope -that Miss Temple was sleeping. I carefully put the pistol and its -little furniture into the foot of my bunk, and pulling off my coat -and waistcoat, and removing my shoes, I vaulted on to Mr; Chicken’s -mattress, blew out the candle in the lantern and stretched my length. -It was hard upon two o’clock, however, before I fell asleep. The -scuttle or porthole was abreast of the bunk, and the black disc of it -framed the low-lying stars of the horizon as they slided up and down -to the lift and fall of the hull. My thoughts went out to the great -dark ocean, and shivers chased me, hot as the cabin was, as I lay -reflecting upon the fire and explosion of the wreck, and upon how it -would have been with us if Captain Braine, having taken a view of the -hull, had proceeded and left us to our fate. The noises which violated -the singular stillness down in that part of the ship where we lay, and -which had rendered me somewhat uneasy at first, now proved lulling -as I lay hearkening to them, growing drowsier and drowsier. There -was a slumberous monotony in the creaking and jarring of the rudder, -something soothing in the dim hissing of the wake dying out, and then -seething afresh like the noise of champagne in a glass held to the -ear, as the frame of the barque slightly soared and sank in delicate -floating movements upon the under-run of the dark swell. Perhaps by -this time to-morrow we may be aboard a ship homeward-bound, I remember -thinking: and that was the last of my thoughts that night, for I -immediately afterwards sank into a sound sleep. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -THE BRIG’S LONGBOAT - - -I was awakened by a knocking at the door. The little cabin was bright -with sunshine, that was flashing off sea and sky upon the thick glass -of the scuttle. ‘Hallo!’ I cried, ‘who is that?’ The voice of the young -fellow Wilkins responded: - -‘Capt’n Braine’s compliments, sir, and he’d be glad to know if there’s -anything you or the lady wants which it’s in his power to supply ye -with?’ - -I got out of the bunk and opened the door. - -‘Captain Braine is very kind,’ said I to the veal-faced youth, who -stood staring at me with faint eyes under his white lashes and brows. -‘What time is it, Wilkins?’ - -‘Half-past eight, sir,’ he answered. - -I knocked upon the bulkhead. ‘Are you awake, Miss Temple?’ - -‘Oh yes,’ she answered, her voice sounding weak through the partition. - -‘Captain Braine wishes to know if you are in want of anything it is in -his power to let you have?’ - -‘There are many things I want,’ she exclaimed; ‘but they are not to -be had, I fear. I am afraid I shall have to use that comb. I can do -nothing with my hair, Mr. Dugdale.’ - -‘All right, Wilkins,’ said I; ‘we shall be on deck in a few minutes.’ -He went away. - -I found the comb that had belonged to Mr. Chicken on a shelf, and -knocked on Miss Temple’s door. She opened it, and an arm of snow, of -faultless shape, was projected to receive the comb. ‘Thank you,’ said -she, whipping the door to, and I entered my cabin, calling out that I -would wait for her there till she was ready. - -Happily, in respect of toilet conveniences we were not wholly -destitute. The water in my can was indeed salt, but I contrived to get -some show of lather out of the fragment of marine soap which I found -inside of the tin dish that served me as a wash-basin. I was without -Miss Temple’s scrupulosity, and found old Chicken’s hairbrush good -enough to flourish. There was a little parcel of razors, too, on -the shelf where the comb had been, and with one of them I made shift -to scrape my cheeks into some sort of smoothness, wholly by dint of -feeling, for Miss Temple had Chicken’s glass, and there was nothing in -my cabin to reflect my countenance. By the time this little business -was ended, and I had carefully concealed the pistol and powder-flask, -Miss Temple was ready. She knocked on my door, and I stepped out. - -I could see her but very imperfectly in the dim light of that steerage, -yet it seemed to me that there was more vivacity in her eyes, more life -in her carriage and air, than I had witnessed in her on the yesterday. -She told me that she had slept soundly, and that her mattress was as -comfortable as her bed aboard the _Countess Ida_. - -‘I am heartily glad to hear that,’ said I. ‘You found the marine soap -tough, I fear?’ - -‘It cannot be good for the complexion, I should think,’ said she with a -slight smile. - -‘How shocking,’ I exclaimed, as we moved to the hatch, ‘would such a -situation as yours be to a young lady who is dependent for her beauty -on cosmetics and powder! How would Miss Hudson manage if she were here, -I wonder?’ - -‘Is there anything in sight, do you know, Mr. Dugdale? That is a more -important subject to me than complexions.’ - -‘I did not ask; but we will find out.’ - -It was a brilliant morning, a wide blue, blinding flash of day, as it -seemed to my eyes after the gloom below. The sea was all on fire under -the sun, and the wind held it trembling gloriously. A hot and sparkling -breeze in the same old quarter gushed freshly into the wide expanded -wings of the _Lady Blanche_, whose swift pace over the smooth plain of -ocean seemed a sort of miracle of sailing to me when I contrasted it -with the rate of going of the _Countess Ida_. The flying-fish in scores -sparkled out from the barque’s white sides. The foam came along her -sheathing like a roll of cotton-wool to her wake. The ocean line ran -round in a firm edge with an opalescent clarification of the extreme -rim that gave the far-off confines a look of crystal. - -But I had not stood longer than a minute gazing around me when I spied -a gleam of canvas about a point on our weather-bow. I saw it under the -curve of the fore-course that lay plain in sight under the lifted clew -of the mainsail. - -‘A sail, Miss Temple.’ - -‘Where?’ she cried, with her manner full of fever on the instant. I -pointed. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, bringing her hands together, ‘if it -should be the Indiaman!’ - -But the captain was walking aft, and it was time to salute him. - -‘Good morning, sir,’ I said as I approached him with Miss Temple at my -side. ‘We have paused a moment to admire this very beautiful morning. I -perceive a sail right ahead, captain.’ - -It was a part of his destiny, I suppose, that he should stare hard at -those who accosted him before answering. He carried his unwinking dead -black eye from my companion to me, and then stepped out of the shell of -his mood of meditation as a bird might be hatched. - -‘Hope you slept pretty comfortably?’ - -‘Yes; I passed a good night; and I am happy to know that Miss Temple -rested well.’ - -‘Which way is that ship going?’ cried the girl, whose cheeks were -flushed with impatience. - -‘She is not a ship, mem,’ he answered; ‘she is seemingly a big boat -that’s blowing along the same road as ourselves under a lug.’ - -The telescope lay on the skylight, and I pointed it. Sure enough, the -sail was no ship, as I had first imagined, though the white square -hovering upon the horizon exactly resembled the canvas of a large -craft slowly climbing up the sea. I could readily distinguish a boat, -apparently a ship’s longboat, running before the wind under a lugsail; -but she was as yet too distant to enable me to make out the figures of -people aboard, considerable as were the magnifying powers of the glass -I levelled at her. - -‘Only a boat?’ cried Miss Temple, in accents of keen disappointment. - -‘What will a craft of that sort be doing in the middle of this wide -sea?’ said I. - -‘She may have gone adrift, as you did,’ answered Captain Braine. - -‘Is it imaginable that she should be the corvette’s cutter?’ cried Miss -Temple, straining her fine eyes, impassioned with conflicting emotion, -at the object ahead. - -‘Oh, no,’ said I. ‘First of all, the cutter had no sail; next, yonder -boat is three or four times bigger than she was; and then, even if she -had a sail, I question if she could have run all this distance in the -time from the spot she started from.’ - -I noticed whilst I spoke that Captain Braine watched me with a singular -expression, and that his face slightly changed as to an emotion of -relief when I had concluded my answer. - -‘The lady,’ said he, ‘is speaking of the man-of-war cutter that rowed -ye aboard the wreck, and lost ye there?’ - -‘Yes,’ said I. - -‘How many of a crew?’ he asked. - -‘Six men and a lieutenant; but the officer was drowned.’ - -He took the telescope from me, and brought it to bear upon the little -sail over the bow, and kept it levelled for some moments. He then put -the glass down and said: ‘Have you had any breakfast?’ - -‘Not yet,’ I answered. - -He called through the skylight to Wilkins, and told him to put some -biscuit and tea and cold meat upon the table. ‘I have made my meal,’ -said he, contriving one of his extraordinary bows as he addressed Miss -Temple; ‘and so, I hope, mem, you’ll excuse my presence below. Eat -hearty, both of ye, I beg. There’s no call to stint yourselves, and I’m -sorry I can’t put anything more tempting afore ye, as Jack says.’ - -We at once descended, both of us being anxious to get the meal, such as -it might be, over. - -‘Why is he repeatedly saying, “as Jack says?”’ asked Miss Temple. - -‘Ah!’ I exclaimed,‘and why does he stare so? Yet, on my word, he seems -an exceedingly good-natured fellow. I assure you we might have fallen -into worse hands. No man could make a homeward-bound ship to rise up -out of the sea or signal our whereabouts to the _Countess Ida_ when she -is leagues and leagues out of sight; but another captain might not have -shown half the friendly concern this poor eccentric creature exhibits -in our comfort.’ - -She agreed with me, but quickly dropped the subject as something -distasteful, and spoke of her disappointment, and of the strangeness of -meeting a small boat in the middle of such an ocean as we were sailing -through. By some trick above my comprehension, she had contrived to -smooth out her dress, insomuch that a deal of its castaway aspect had -left it. She had also manœuvred in some fashion with the feather in her -hat; and I told her, as she sat opposite me, that she looked as fresh -as though she had just left her cabin in the Indiaman. - -‘Youth must always triumph,’ I said, ‘if it be but fairly treated. -Sleep has made your former self dominant again: but I will reserve all -my compliments until I am able to pull my hat off to you ashore and say -good-bye.’ - -She shot a glance at me under her long fringes, but held her peace. - -The tea was so vile that I called to Wilkins, who stood on the -quarter-deck, to procure us some coffee if there were any aboard; and -in a few minutes he returned with a sailor’s hook-pot full of it from -the galley. This Miss Temple seemed able to sip without a face of -aversion. It vexed me to see her imperilling her delicate white teeth -with the hard fare that was sheer forecastle stuff, and bad at that; -but it was not for me to give orders, nor was I willing to protract our -sitting by inquiring if there was other food aboard. Besides, every -hour in such weather as this might provide us with the opportunity we -hungered for, to escape into some homeward-bound ship with a cabin -capable of affording endurable entertainment. - -We rose from the table, and regained the deck. The moment my head -showed above the companion-way, the captain called to me hastily. There -was a look of disorder in his countenance that immediately excited my -wonder; there was the alacrity of fear in his manner; he could address -me now without a prolonged stare and his usual tardy emergence of mind. - -‘Please, take this glass,’ said he, thrusting the telescope into my -hand; ‘and look at that there boat, and tell me what you think.’ - -The smooth, swift sliding of the _Lady Blanche_ over the level surface -of sea that was running in fire and foam lines to the brushing of -the merry breeze and the sparkling of the soaring sun, had closed us -rapidly with the boat ahead since Miss Temple and I left the deck. -The little fabric was now scarcely more than a mile on the bow, and -the captain’s glass, when I put it to my eye, brought her as close -to me as if she were no further off than our forecastle. She was a -large, carvel-built longboat; one of those round-bowed, broad-beamed -structures which in the olden days used to stand in chocks betwixt a -ship’s foremast and galley, with often another boat stored inside of -her, unless she was used to keep sheep or other live-stock in. She was -deep in the water, and as much of her hull as was visible was of a -dingy sallow white. She showed a broad square of dark old lug, before -which she was running with some show of nimbleness. She seemed to -be crowded with men, and even whilst I stood looking at her through -the glass, I counted no less than twenty-seven persons. They were -all looking our way, and though it was scarcely possible to define -individual faces amid such a yellow huddle of countenances, I could -yet manage to determine a prevailing piratic expression of the true -sort, suggested not so much by the vagueness of swarthy cheek and -shaggy brow as by the singularity of the fellows’ apparel--the flapping -sombrero, the red sash, the blue shirt, with other details--which but -very faintly corresponded indeed with one’s notion of the coarse homely -attire of the merchant sailor. - -Captain Braine’s eyes were fixed upon me as I turned to him. ‘What do -you think of her, sir?’ said he. - -‘I don’t like the look of those fellows at all,’ I answered. ‘I would -not mind making a bet that they are a portion of the crew of the -privateering brig from whose hull you rescued us yesterday morning.’ - -‘Just the idea that occurred to me,’ he cried. He levelled the glass -again. ‘A boatful of rascals, sir. Armed to the teeth, I daresay, and -on the lookout for some such a vessel as mine to seize and get away -back to their own waters in. And yet, it is awful, too, to think that -the creatures may be in want of water. What’s to be done? I can’t allow -them to board: and I’m not going to heave to, to give ’em a chance of -doing so.’ - -‘We’re overhauling them fast,’ said I. ‘Best plan perhaps, captain, -will be to hail them as we slide past and ascertain their wants, if we -can understand their lingo; and if they need water, there’s nothing -to be done but to send some adrift for them to pick up. But for God’s -sake, sir, don’t let them come aboard. They look as devilish a lot of -cut-throats as ever I saw; and besides the safety of our lives and of -the ship, we have this lady to consider.’ - -Captain Braine listened to me with his eyes fixed upon the boat. - -‘She can’t hook on at this,’ said he, as if thinking aloud; ‘we should -tow her under water at such a pace. By heavens,’ he shouted, with a -wild look coming into his face, ‘if she attempts to sheer alongside, -I’ll give her the stem!’ and springing with the agility of a monkey -upon the rail, he grasped a backstay, and stood in a posture for -hailing the boat as we swept past. - -Forward, the seamen had quitted the jobs they were upon, and were -staring open-mouthed from the forecastle rail. I picked up the glass -again to look at the crowd, and every face in the lens was now as -distinct as Miss Temple’s who stood beside me. An uglier, more -ferocious-looking set of men never stepped the deck of a picaroon. -I had not the least doubt whatever that they were a portion of the -crew of the brig. Indeed, I seemed to have some recollection of the -boat, for I remembered, whilst examining the brig from the poop of the -Indiaman, that I had been struck by the unusual size of her longboat, -and that the colour of her was the sallow pea-soup tint of the fabric -yonder. There were several chocolate-coloured faces amongst the little -crowd; here and there, a coal-black countenance with a frequent glitter -of earrings and gleam of greasy ringlets. Many of them eyed us over -the low gunwale under the sharp of their hands; one stood erect on -the thwart through which the mast was stepped, clasping the spar with -his arm, and apparently waiting to hail us. The steersman watched us -continuously, and now and again the boat’s head would slightly fall off -to a sneaking movement of the helm, as though to some notion of edging -down upon us without attracting our observation. But the barque’s keen -stem was ripping through the water as the jaws of a pair of shears -drive through a length of sailcloth. I had no fear of the boat hooking -on; she would have to manœuvre under our bows to do that, and it needed -but a little twirl of the spokes of our wheel to drive her into staves -and to send her people bobbing and drowning into our wake. - -‘Boat ahoy!’ shouted the captain with such delivery of voice as I -should have thought impossible in so narrow shouldered a man. - -‘Yash! yash!’ vociferated the fellow who clasped the mast, frantically -brandishing his arms. ‘Ve are sheepwreck--you veel take us--ve starve!’ - -The captain looked and hardly seemed to know what to say. - -‘How long have you been adrift?’ he bawled. - -The fellow, who wore a red nightcap, shook it till the tassel danced to -the violent gestures of his head. He evidently did not understand the -question. ‘Take us!’ he shrieked;--‘ve starve!’ - -The boat was now on the bow, within pistol-shot from the forecastle -rail. - -‘Mind your helm, Captain Braine,’ I suddenly shouted, ‘or she’ll be -aboard you!’ for my young and, in those days, keen eyes had marked the -action of the fellow who steered the boat, and even as I bawled out, -the head of the little fabric swept round with a fellow in the bows -flourishing a boathook, to which was attached a length of line, and -others standing by ready to help him when he should have hooked on. - -‘Steady as she goes!’ cried Captain Braine. - -‘Oh Mr. Dugdale,’ shrieked Miss Temple, ‘they will get on board of us!’ - -The boat’s head drove sheering alongside into our bow just forward of -the fore-chain plates. I saw the fellow erect in her head fork out his -boathook to catch hold. - -‘Let go!’ roared a voice forward. The figure of Joe Wetherly overhung -the rail, poising either an iron marline-spike or a belaying-pin, or -some short bar of metal; this I saw. Then he hurled it at the moment -that the boathook had caught a plate. The missile struck the man full -on the head; he fell like a statue in the bottom of the boat, and the -boat herself ground past us as the barque, to the impulse of her great -overhanging squares of studdingsail, swept onwards at some seven or -eight knots in the hour. - -They were so crowded as to be in one another’s road. I saw a dozen -grimy paws extended to catch hold of the main-chain plates as the -boat came bruising and groaning and washing past; but the iron bars -were swept like smoke out of the wretches’ frantic grip. Never shall -I forget the picture the little fabric offered in the swift glimpse -I caught of her as she glided past. The crowd, in their desperate -efforts to catch hold of the sweeping projections in the barque’s side, -squirmed and surged and rose and fell like rags of meat stirred up -in a boiling stewpot. Their cries, their yells, their Spanish oaths, -the brandishings of their arms, the fury expressed in their malignant -faces, the sudden uprootal and crash of their one mast and sail by the -fouling of it with our mainbrace, all combine into a memory which is -not to be expressed in words. I caught sight of a number of breakers -in the bottom of the boat along with some bags, and was instinctively -assured that they were lacking in neither food nor water. As the boat -sped under the rail on which Captain Braine was standing, the fellow -who had been at her helm, a brawny mulatto in a wide straw-hat, loose -red shirt, and naked feet, suddenly whipped a pistol out of his breast, -took aim at the skipper, and fired; and then, in a breath or two, the -craft was astern, tumbling in the seething white of our wake, lessening -into a toy even as you looked, with half of her people getting the -wreck of mast and rail inboard, and the rest of them furiously -gesticulating at us. - -Captain Braine stood on the rail watching them with an air of musing -that was incredibly odd in the face of the wild excitement of the -moment. - -‘Are you hurt?’ I cried. - -He turned slowly to survey me, then very leisurely dismounted from his -perch, meanwhile continuing to gaze at me. - -‘No,’ said he, after an interval during which I ran my eyes over him -with anxiety, thinking to see blood or to behold him suddenly fall; -‘it’s all right. This is the fourth time I’ve been shot at in my -life; and be my end what it will, it is certain I am not to perish by -another man’s bullet. Rogues all, ha!’ he continued, directing his dead -black vision at the boat astern; ‘they would have carried the little -_Blanche_, and slit our throats. Just the sort of ship, sir, for the -likes of their trade: the heels of a racehorse and the sober look of -the honest marchantman. Slit our throats; all saving _yours_, mem, I -expect; but only to reserve ye for something worse than death to you, -if your noble looks don’t belie your taste.’ - -‘They never could have held on with that boathook,’ said I, struck more -by the man’s manner than his speech, strange as it was. ‘I suppose -they hoped to cling long enough to chuck a few of their beauties aboard -us. Well, Miss Temple, let us trust that we have now seen the very last -of that confounded privateer brig and the gallant, good-looking chaps -who stocked her.’ - -‘When is all this going to end?’ said she. - -‘Every man of them,’ exclaimed the captain, ‘will have had a firearm in -his breast.’ - -‘No doubt,’ I answered; ‘the vessel must have been handsomely furnished -in that way to judge by what we found remaining in the cabin of the -wreck.’ - -‘Were they starving, d’ye think?’ he exclaimed with a sudden troubled -manner, as he looked at the speck in our wake. - -‘I should say not,’ said I; ‘there were breakers in the bottom of the -boat, and parcels resembling bread bags aft.’ - -‘Thirst is a fearful thing at sea, sir,’ said he, slowly: ‘it’s worse -than hunger. Hunger, whilst it remains appetite, is agreeable; but -the first sensation of thirst is a torture. I have known ’em both--I -have known ’em both,’ he added, with a melancholy shake of his head -and a profound sigh; then bringing his unwinking stare to bear upon -me, he exclaimed: ‘Supposing that shot had taken effect, the _Lady -Blanche_ would now be without a master; and if you wasn’t on board, -she’d be without a navigator. Less than two sea-going heads to every -ship _won’t_ do. I felt that truth when Chicken went, and I’m feeling -of it every time I catch sight of that there man Lush.’ Miss Temple -and I exchanged glances. ‘Well,’ said he, with one of his mirthless -grins, ‘I don’t expect those privateersmen’ll trouble us any more;’ and -in his abrupt way he walked to the compass, and stood there looking -alternately from it to the canvas. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -I QUESTION WETHERLY - - -It had now become so much one thing on top of another with us, and -everything happening in a moment, so to speak, too: first our being -left on the wreck all in a breath as it were: then our being picked up -by this barque without the dimmest prospect, as my instincts advised -me, of our falling in with the _Countess Ida_ this side of Bombay: -then our destitute condition aboard a craft whose skipper’s sanity I -was now honestly beginning to distrust, and whose people, if he did -not lie, were for the most part a gang of scoundrels: then this sudden -narrow shave of being boarded by above a score of miscreants whose -undoubted hope was to seize the _Lady Blanche_ and to use her in the -room of their own extinguished brig; I say it was so much one thing -on top of another--a catalogue of adventures scarcely conceivable in -these safe-going days of the ocean mailboat, though real enough and in -one way or another frequent enough in my time, I mean in the time of -this narrative--that I protest something of the dismay which possessed -Miss Temple visited me, though I struggled hard in the direction of -a composed face, as we talked over the incident of the morning, and -took a view of the singular staring figure who had charge of the -barque, and directed our eyes at the crew, all hands of whom hung -about forward, briskly yarning, as I might suppose, about the Spanish -longboat’s attempt (and with God knows what sympathy, I would think, as -I peered at the groups), or as we sent our eager gaze into the blue and -brilliant ocean distance in search of any little leaning flake of white -that might flatter us with promise of escape from our disagreeable -situation. - -‘I have fully and immovably formed my opinion on two points,’ said -Miss Temple to me as we continued to pace the deck together for some -half hour after the boat had disappeared astern: ‘one is, that Captain -Braine is mad; and the other that he is firmly bent on making you serve -him as his mate.’ - -‘I own that I now believe he is madder than I first suspected,’ I -answered. ‘His manner and language to you just now were extraordinary. -But as to his employing me as mate--I think this: if the man is crazy, -he may easily go wrong in his navigation; if we sight nothing that will -carry us home, we must obviously stick to the barque, and her safety, -therefore, is ours; consequently, it is desirable, I think, that I -should know what her skipper is doing with her from day to day; and -this I can contrive by consenting to oblige him with taking sights.’ - -‘I see what you mean,’ she exclaimed thoughtfully. ‘I had not taken -that view; but it is a cruel one to entertain; it implies our remaining -on board until--until---- Oh, Mr. Dugdale! this sort of imprisonment -for the next two or three months is not to be borne.’ - -‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘you now understand that our very safety demands we -should know where that fellow is carrying his ship. If, then, he should -request me to shoot the sun as we call it, you will not be vexed by my -compliance?’ - -‘Who am I, Mr. Dugdale, that you should trouble yourself about my -opinion?’ - -‘You can make yourself felt,’ said I, smiling; ‘I should consider your -eyes matchless in their power to subdue. There is a little passage in -Shakespeare that very exquisitely fits my theory of you.’ - -‘I would rather not hear it,’ she answered, with a slight curl of her -lip and a faint tinge of rose in her cheeks. ‘You once applied to me a -sentence from Shakespeare that was very unflattering.’ - -‘What was it?’ - -‘You compared my complexion to the white death that one of -Shakespeare’s girls talks about.’ - -‘I remember. I am astonished that your aunt should have repeated to you -what she overheard by stealth.’ - -‘I do not understand,’ she exclaimed, firing up. - -‘She was behind me when I made that quotation, and I was unconscious -of her presence. She should have respected my ignorance. I meant no -wrong,’ I went on, pretending to get into a passion. ‘Your complexion -is pale, and I sought to illustrate it to my little friend Saunders by -an expression of striking nobility and beautiful dignity. If ever I -have the fortune to find myself in your aunt’s company, I shall give -her my mind on this business. How am I to know but that her repeating -what she had heard me let fall excited in you the disgust I found in -your treatment of me?’ - -She cooled down as I grew hot. - -‘The extravagance of your language shocks me,’ she exclaimed, but with -very little temper in her voice. ‘Disgust? You have no right to use -that word. You were always very courteous to me on board the _Countess -Ida_.’ - -‘Am I less so here?’ said I, still preserving an air of indignation. - -‘Do not let us quarrel,’ she said gently, with such a look of sweetness -in her eyes as I should have thought their dark and glowing depths -incapable of. - -‘If we quarrel, it will not be my fault,’ said I, disguising myself -with my voice, whilst I looked seawards that my face might not betray -me. - -At that moment the captain called out my name: ‘Can I have a word with -you, sir?’ he cried along the short length of poop, standing as he was -at the wheel, whilst we were conversing at the fore-end of the raised -deck. - -‘With pleasure,’ I answered. - -‘I shall go into the cabin,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it is too hot here. You -will come and tell me what he wants.’ - -I waited until she had descended the ladder, and then strolled over -to the captain, determined to let him know by my careless air that -whatever I did for him he must regard as an obligation, or as an -expression of my gratitude; but that I was not to be commanded. I -believed I could witness an expression of embarrassment in his fixed -regard that I had not before noticed in him. He eyed me as though lost -in thought, and I waited. - -‘Would you object,’ said he, ‘to ascertain our latitude at noon to-day?’ - -‘Not in the least.’ - -He seemed to grow a little brighter. ‘And I should feel obliged,’ he -continued, ‘if you’d work out the longitude.’ - -‘With pleasure,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘But I have no sextant.’ - -‘I have a couple,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will lend you one;’ and down he -went for it with a fluttered demeanour of eagerness. - -I lingered till I supposed he had entered his cabin, then put my head -into the skylight and called softly to Miss Temple, who was seated -almost directly beneath for the air there: ‘He wishes me to take an -observation with him.’ - -‘What is that?’ she answered, also speaking softly and turning up her -face. - -‘I am to shoot the sun--you know, Miss Temple.’ - -‘Oh, pray, contrive to make some error--commit some blunder to make him -suppose’---- She checked herself, and I heard the captain say that it -was very hot as he came to the companion steps. - -In a few moments he arrived on deck, hugging a brace of sextant cases -to his heart. He told me to choose; I took the one nearest to me, -perceived that the instrument was almost new, and as it was now hard -upon the hour of noon, applied it to my eye, the captain standing -alongside of me ogling the sun likewise. I could see the men forward, -waiting for the skipper to make eight bells, staring their hardest at -the now unusual spectacle to them of two sextants at work. For my -part, I should have been shocked by the weakness of my memory if I had -not known what to do. During the two years I had spent at sea I was -thoroughly grounded in navigation--such as it was in those days; and as -I stood screwing the sun down to the horizon, the whole practice of the -art, so far as my education in it went, came back to me as freshly as -though I had been taking sights ever since. - -We made eight bells. Mr. Lush came aft to relieve the deck, and I went -below with Captain Braine to work out the barque’s position. - -I smiled at Miss Temple as I entered the cuddy; she watched me -eagerly, and the movement of her lips seemed to say, ‘Don’t be long.’ -In fact, her face had that meaning; and I gave her a reassuring nod -ere turning to follow the captain into his berth. The apartment was -small and cheerful, plainly stocked with the customary details of a -humble skipper’s sea bedroom; a cot, a small table, a cushioned locker, -a few mathematical instruments, a little hanging shelf of strictly -nautical books, and so on. His chronometer was a good one, handsome for -those days, of a quality one would hardly expect to find in a little -trading-barque of the pattern of this _Lady Blanche_. There was a bag -of charts in a corner, and a small chart of the world lay half unrolled -upon the table, with a bit of the Atlantic Ocean visible exhibiting the -skipper’s ‘pricking’ or tracing of his course down to the preceding day. - -‘Here’s ink and paper, sir,’ said he; ‘sit ye down, and let’s see if we -can tally.’ - -I was always a tolerably quick hand at figures, and had soon completed -my calculations, feeling as though I was at sea again in sober -professional earnest. The captain worked with extraordinary gravity; -his singular eyes overhung the paper without a wink, and his yellow -countenance, with his blue chops and chin, wore the melancholy of a -mute’s face, mixed with an indefinable quality of distress, as though -his mental efforts were putting him to physical pain. We agreed to a -second in our latitude, but differed in our longitude by something over -seven miles. - -‘You’ll be in the right, sir--you’ll be in the right!’ he cried, -smiting the table with his fist. ‘It is clear you know the ropes, Mr. -Dugdale. I’ll abide by your reckonings. And now I want ye to do me a -further sarvice.’ - -‘What is that, captain?’ said I. - -‘Well, ye may reckon, of course, that I can write,’ he answered; ‘but -I never was topweight with my pen, as Jack says, nor, for the matter -of that, was Chicken much of a hand. There was some words which he was -always making a foul hawse of. Now, what I want ye to do, Mr. Dugdale, -is to keep my log for me.’ - -‘All this,’ said I carelessly, yet watching him with attention, ‘is -practically making a chief officer of me.’ He did not answer. ‘Of -course, I don’t object,’ I continued, stimulated more perhaps by Miss -Temple’s than by my own views, ‘to oblige in any possible manner a -gentleman’---- - -‘I am no gentleman,’ said he, with a wave of the hand. - -‘----to whom Miss Temple and myself owe our lives. But I may take it -that it is thoroughly understood the young lady and myself are to quit -your hospitable little ship at the first opportunity that may offer.’ - -He regarded me in silence for I should say at least a minute; I was -positively beginning to believe that he had fallen dumb. At last he -seemed to come to life. He nodded slowly three times and said very -deliberately: ‘Mr. Dugdale, you and me will be having a talk later on.’ - -‘But good God, captain,’ cried I, startled out of my assumed manner of -indifference or ease, ‘you will at least assure me that you’ll make no -difficulty of transhipping us when the chance to do so occurs?’ - -He was again silent, all the while staring at me; and presently, in a -deep voice, said, ‘Later on, sir;’ and with that stood up. - -‘How much later on?’ I inquired. - -He tapped his brow with his forefinger and answered: ‘It needs -reflection, and I must see my way clearly. So far it’s all right. I’m -much obliged to ye, I’m sure;’ and he went to the door and held it -open, closing it upon himself after I had stepped out. - -At the instant I resolved to tell Miss Temple of what had passed; then -swiftly thought no! it will only frighten the poor girl, and she cannot -advise me; I must wait a little; and with a smiling face I seated -myself by her side. But secretly, I was a good deal worried. I chatted -lightly, told her that there was nothing whatever significant in the -captain’s request that I should check his calculations by independent -observations, and did my utmost, by a variety of cheerful small talk -referring wholly to our situation, to keep her heart up. Nevertheless, -secretly I was much bothered. The man had something on his mind of -a dark mysterious nature, it seemed to me; and I could not question -that it formed the motive of his interrogatories as to my seamanship, -and of his testing my qualities as a navigator by putting a sextant -into my hand. Whatever his secret might prove, was it likely to stand -between us and our quitting this barque for something homeward bound? -It was most intolerably certain that if Captain Braine chose to keep me -aboard, I must remain with him. For how should I be able to get away? -Suppose I took it upon myself to signal a vessel when he was below: the -hailing, the noise of backing the yards, the clamour of the necessary -manœuvring, would hardly fail to bring him on deck; and if he chose to -order the men to keep all fast with the boat, there could be no help -for it; he was captain, and the seamen would obey him. - -These thoughts, however, I kept to myself. The day passed quietly. -Again and again Miss Temple and I would search the waters for any -sign of a ship; but I took notice that the barrenness of the ocean -did not produce the same air of profound misery and dejection which -I had witnessed in her yesterday. In fact, she had grown weary of -complaining; she was beginning to understand the idleness of it. From -time to time, though at long intervals, something fretful would escape -her, some reference to the wretched discomfort of being without change -of apparel; to the misfortune of having fallen in with a ship, whose -forecastle people, if her captain was to be believed, were for the most -part no better than the company of brigands whom we had scraped clear -of that morning. But it seemed to me that she was slowly schooling -herself to resignation, that she had formed a resolution to look with -some spirit into the face of our difficulties, a posture of mind I was -not a little thankful to behold in her, for, God knows, my own anxiety -was heavy enough, and I did not want to add to it the sympathetic -trouble her grief and despair caused me. - -All day long the weather continued very glorious. The captain ordered -a short awning to be spread over the poop, and Miss Temple and I sat -in the shadow of it during the greater part of the afternoon. There -was nothing to read; there was no sort of amusement to enable us to -kill the time. Nevertheless, the hours drifted fleetly past in talk. -Miss Temple was more communicative than she had ever before been; -talked freely of her family, of her friends and acquaintances, of her -visits abroad, and the like. She told me that she was never weary -of riding, that her chief delight in life was to follow the hounds; -and indeed she chatted so fluently on one thing and another that she -appeared to forget our situation: a note almost of gaiety entered her -voice; her dark eyes sparkled, and the cold, marble-like beauty of her -face warmed to the memories which rose in her. I gathered from her -conversation that she was the only living child of her mother, and that -there was nothing between her and a very tolerable little fortune, as -I might infer from her description of the home Lady Temple had kept -up in her husband’s life, and that she still, though in a diminished -degree, supported for the sake of her daughter, though she herself lay -paralysed and helpless, looked after in Miss Temple’s absence by a -maiden sister. - -I recollect wondering whilst I listened to her that so fine a woman as -she, and a fortune to boot, had not long ago married. Was she waiting -for some man with whom she could fall in love? or was it some large -dream of title and estate that hindered her? or was it that she was -without a heart? No, thought I; her heart will have had nothing to -do with it. Your heartless girls get married as fast as the rest of -them. And was she heartless? It was not easy to let one’s gaze plumb -the glowing liquid depths of her eyes, which seemed to my fancy to be -charged with the fires of sensibility and passion, and believe her -heartless. - -There was something wild in the contrast betwixt the imaginations she -raised in me by her talk of her home and her pleasures with her own -beauty at hand to richly colour every fancy she inspired--betwixt -my imagination, I say, and the realities about us, as I would most -poignantly feel whenever I sent a glance at old Lush. He was a mule of -a man, and stood doggedly at a distance, never addressed nor offered, -indeed, to approach us, though sometimes I would catch him taking me -in from head to toe out of the corner of his surly eyes. Possibly, my -showing that I had a trick of navigation above his knowledge excited -his spleen; or maybe his hatred of the captain led him to dislike me -because of the apparent intimacy between the skipper and me. Anyway, -I would catch myself looking at him now with a feeling of misgiving -for which I could find no reason outside of the mere movement of my -instincts. - -It was in the second dog-watch that evening; Miss Temple was resting in -the little cuddy, and I stepped on to the main-deck to smoke a pipe. -The topmost canvas of the barque delicately swayed under a cloudless -heaven that was darkly, deeply, beautifully blue with the shadow of -the coming night. A large star trembled above the ocean verge in the -east; but the glow of sunset still lingered in the west over a sea of -wonderful smoothness rippling in frosty lines to the breeze that gushed -from between the sunset and the north. - -The carpenter had charge of the deck; the captain was in his cabin. -Whilst I lighted my pipe, I caught sight of the man Joe Wetherly seated -on the coaming of the fore-hatch past the little galley. He was puffing -at an inch of dusky clay with his arms folded upon his breast, and his -countenance composed into an air of sailorly meditation. This seemed -an opportunity for me to learn what he had to tell or might be willing -to impart about the inner life of the _Lady Blanche_, and I went along -the deck in an easy saunter, as though it was my notion to measure the -planks for an evening stroll. I started when abreast of him with a -manner of pleased surprise. - -‘Oh! it is you, Wetherly? My old acquaintance Smallridge’s friend! No -sign of the Indiaman, though. I fear we have outrun her by leagues. And -always when you are on the lookout for a sail at sea, nothing heaves -into sight.’ - -He rose to my accost, and saluted me with a respectful sea-bow, that -is, by scraping his forehead with his knuckle with a little kick back -of his left leg. - -‘That’s right enough, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been sailing myself in a -ship for six weeks in middling busy waters, too, with ne’er a sight of -anything--not so much as the tail of a gull.’ - -‘Pray sit,’ said I; ‘I’ll keep you company. This is the right spot for -a smoke and a yarn; quiet and cool and out of the road of the poop.’ - -He grinned, and we seated ourselves side by side. I talked to him -first about the _Countess Ida_, explained the circumstance of my being -in company with Miss Temple, told him who she was, and spoke of her -shipwrecked condition so far as her wardrobe went, and how eager she -was to return to England; but the old sailor made very little of her -being in want of a change of dress. - -‘There is no need, sir,’ said he, ‘for the lady to distress her mind -with considerations of a shift o’ vestments. I allow she can use a -needle for herself; there’s needles and thread at her sarvice forrads; -and how much linnen do she want? Why one of the skipper’s table-cloths -’ud fit her out, I should say.’ He turned his figure-head of a face -upon me as he added: ‘’Tain’t the loss of clothes, sir, as should -occupy her thoughts, but the feeling that she’s been took off that -there wreck and is safe.’ - -I fully agreed with him, with some inward laughter, wondering what Miss -Temple would think if she had overheard his speech. One thing led to -another; at last I said: - -‘Wetherly, I am going to ask you a plain question; it is one sailor -making inquiry of another, and you’ll accept me as a shipmate, I know.’ -He nodded. ‘Is not your captain wanting?’ and I touched my head. - -‘Well,’ he answered after a pause, ‘_I_ think so, and I’ve been -a-thinking so pretty nigh ever since I’ve been along with him.’ - -‘What caused his mate’s death?’ - -‘He died in a swound,’ he answered--‘fell dead alongside the wheel as -he was looking into the compass.’ - -‘Have the sailors noticed anything queer in their captain?’ - -‘They’re such a party of ignorant scow-bankers,’ said he, with a slow -look round, to make sure that the coast was clear, ‘that I don’t -believe they’re capable of noticing anything if it ain’t a pannikin of -rum shoved under their noses.’ - -‘I don’t mind whispering to you,’ said I, ‘that the captain hinted -to me they were not a very reputable body of men--talked vaguely of -mutineers and convicts, with one fellow amongst them,’ I went on, -bating my voice to a mere whisper, ‘who had committed a murder.’ - -He stared at me a moment, and then tilted his cap over his nose to -scratch the back of his head. - -‘He’ll know more about ’em, then, than I do,’ he responded; ‘they’re -ignorant enough to do wrong without troubling themselves much to think -of the job when it was over. Mutineering I don’t doubt some of ’em -have practised. As to others of ’em being convicts, why who’s to tell? -Likely as not, says I. But when it comes to murder--a middling serious -charge, ain’t it, sir? Of course I dunno--who might the party be, sir?’ - -‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, ‘it was a vague sort of talk, as I told you. But -if Miss Temple and I are to stick to this ship till we get to the -Mauritius, it would comfort her, and me, too, for the matter of that, -to learn that her crew are not the band of ruffians we have been led to -imagine them.’ - -‘Well, sir,’ he exclaimed thoughtfully--‘I’m sure you’ll forgive me, -but I don’t rightly recollect your name.’ - -‘Dugdale.’ - -‘Well, Mr. Dugdale, as you asks for my opinion, I’ll give it ye. Of -course, it’ll go no furder, as between man and man.’ - -‘Certainly not. I am myself trusting you up to the hilt, as what I have -said must assure you. You may speak in perfect confidence.’ - -He cast a cautious look round: ‘There’s but one man to be regularly -afeerd of, and that’s Mr. Lush. I believe he’d knife the capt’n right -off if so be as he could be sure we men wouldn’t round upon him. I -don’t mean to say he han’t got cause to hate the capt’n. He’s a working -man without knowledge of perlite customs, and I believe the capt’n’s -said more to him than he ought to have said; more than any gen’leman -would have dreamt of saying, and all because this here carpenter han’t -got the art o’ dining in a way to please the eye. But this here Mr. -Lush feels it too much: he’s allowed it to eat into his mind; and if so -be there should come a difficulty, the capt’n wouldn’t find a friend in -him, and so I tells ye, sir. I don’t want to say more n’s necessary and -proper to this here occasion of your questions; but though the crew’s -a desperate ignorant one, ne’er a man among ’em capable of writing or -spelling any more’n the carpenter hisself, there’s only _him_ to be -afeerd of, so far as I’m capable of disarning; though, of course, if he -should tarn to and try and work up their feelings, there’s naturally no -telling how the sailors ’ud show.’ - -‘They seem a pretty smart set of fellows,’ said I, finding but little -comfort to be got out of this long-winded delivery; ‘the ship is -beautifully clean, and everything looks to be going straight aboard of -you.’ - -‘Oh! every man can do his bit,’ he answered; ‘but if I was you, sir, -being in charge, as you are, of a beautiful young lady, for the likes -of which this here little barque, with nothen but men aboard and such -shabby food as goes aft, is no proper place--if I was you, I says, says -I, I’d get away as soon as ever I could.’ - -I mentally bestowed a few sea-blessings on the head of this marine -Job’s comforter, but contrived, nevertheless, to look as though I was -much obliged to him for his information and advice; and after we had -continued discoursing on a variety of nautical topics for some ten -minutes or a quarter of an hour longer, I proceeded aft, and spent the -rest of the evening in conversing with Miss Temple in the cabin or in -walking the deck with her. - - -END OF THE SECOND VOLUME - - - PRINTED BY - SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE - LONDON - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Shipmate Louise, Volume 2 (of 3), by -William Clark Russell - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY SHIPMATE LOUISE, VOLUME 2 *** - -***** This file should be named 62344-0.txt or 62344-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/3/4/62344/ - -Produced by David E. 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