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Title: My Shipmate Louise: The Romance of a Wreck, Volume 3 (of 3)

Author: William Clark Russell

Release date: June 12, 2020 [eBook #62375]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY SHIPMATE LOUISE: THE ROMANCE OF A WRECK, VOLUME 3 (OF 3) ***




Produced by Richard Tonsing 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. III.




                      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. III.


                                 London
                      CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
                                  1890




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




                                CONTENTS
                                   OF
                            THE THIRD VOLUME


               CHAPTER                               PAGE
                 XXIX. THE CAPTAIN BEGINS A STORY       1

                  XXX. THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL    21

                 XXXI. THE FORM OF AGREEMENT           45

                XXXII. A TRAGEDY                       67

               XXXIII. THE CARPENTER CALLS A COUNCIL   90

                XXXIV. I ASSENT                       116

                 XXXV. MY CAPTAINCY                   140

                XXXVI. I CONVERSE WITH WETHERLY       164

               XXXVII. CAPE HORN                      184

              XXXVIII. LAND!                          208

                XXXIX. THE ISLAND                     233

                   XL. I ESCAPE                       256

                  XLI. WE SAIL AWAY                   278

                 XLII. CONCLUSION                     302




                           MY SHIPMATE LOUISE




                              CHAPTER XXIX
                       THE CAPTAIN BEGINS A STORY


For a couple of days nothing that need find a place in this narrative
happened. On the afternoon of the third day of our being aboard the
barque we sighted a sail, hull down, to windward. I climbed into the
main-top and examined her through the glass, and found her a brig, very
loftily rigged, her canvas soaring into moonsails, a sight I had never
before witnessed at sea, even in those days when ships went more heavily
draped than they do in these. She was heading our course, perhaps making
a slightly more weatherly navigation, and full blown as she looked to
be—a large, soft cloud of canvas in the lenses of the telescope—we
passed her at the rate of two feet to her one; and some time before
sunset we had sunk her to her royals on the quarter.

Miss Temple wanted me to ask Captain Braine to run the _Lady Blanche_
into speaking distance of the brig, that we might ascertain where she
was bound to and get on board of her. ‘For she may be sailing,’ she
said, ‘to some South American port that will be, comparatively speaking,
close at hand, where we shall be easily able to find a ship to convey us
home.’ But after thinking a little, I decided to keep quiet. It would
not sound very graciously to request Captain Braine to tranship us into
an outward-bound vessel: nor would it be wise to put him to the trouble
of deviating from his course merely, perhaps, to ascertain that the brig
was bound round the Horn to parts more distant than the Mauritius.
Besides, I had no wish to court a blunt refusal from Captain Braine to
put his vessel within hailing distance of another until a real
opportunity to get to England should present itself by some
homeward-bound ship passing close; when, of course, I should take my
chance of his assent or refusal. So I suffered the brig to veer away out
of sight without speaking to the captain about her, or even appearing to
again heed her after I had come down from aloft.

It was a terribly dull, anxious, weary time; I am speaking of those two
uneventful days. The hot breeze had drawn abeam, and blew feverishly
under a cloudless sky that was a dazzle of brass all about the sun from
morn till evening. We showed royals and a foretopmast-studdingsail to
it, and drove along over the smooth plain with half a fathom’s height of
foam at the cutwater, and a spin and hurry of snow alongside that made
the eyes which watched it reel. I entered the day’s work and the
necessary observations, and so forth, in the log-book in compliance with
the captain’s request. He was delighted with my handwriting, sat
contemplating it with his unwinking gaze for some considerable time, as
though it were a picture, and then, drawing a deep breath, exclaimed:
‘There’s no question but that eddication’s a first-class article. Look
at your writing alongside of mine, and at mine alongside of Chicken’s.
Chicken and me was brought up in the same college—a ship’s forecastle,
and so far from standing amazed at my own fist and that there spelling,
I’m only astonished that I’m able to read or write at all.”

However, though he broke forth thus, he fell silent, and remained so
afterwards, became, indeed, extraordinarily meditative, and at mealtimes
scarcely opened his lips, though his stare grew more deliberate in
proportion as his reserve increased, until it came at last to his never
taking his eyes off one or the other of us. Again and again Miss Temple
would say to me that she was certain he had something on his mind, and
she looked frightened as she theorized upon his secret. Sometimes, when
on deck, I would observe him standing at the rail, gazing seaward, and
talking to himself, frequently snapping his fingers, whipping round, as
though suddenly conscious that he had talked aloud, then starting off in
a short, restless, unsteady walk, coming to an abrupt halt to again
mutter and to snap his fingers with the air of one laboring to form a
resolution.

It was on the afternoon of the second day of those two about which I
have spoken, and it was drawing on to six o’clock, four bells of the
first dog-watch. The captain had been on deck since four, and for the
last twenty minutes he had been standing a little to the right of the
fellow who was steering, eyeing me with an intentness that had a long
time before become embarrassing, and I may say distressing. Whenever I
turned my head towards him, I found his gaze fixed upon me. Miss Temple
and I were seated too near him to admit of our commenting upon the
singular regard that he was bestowing upon me. She contrived to whisper,
however, that she was certain his secret, whatever it was, was slowly
rising from the depths of his soul to the surface of his mind.

‘I seem to find a change in the man’s face,’ she said under her breath.
‘Let us walk, Mr. Dugdale. Such scrutiny as that is unbearable.’

As she spoke, four bells were struck forward. Mr. Lush, who was leaning
against his windlass end, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly
came aft to relieve the deck. I rose to walk with Miss Temple as she had
proposed. Captain Braine called my name. He met me as I approached him,
and said: ‘I want to have a talk with you in my cabin.’

There was something in his manner that alarmed me. How shall I express
it? An air of uneasy exultation, as of a mind proud of the achievement
of a resolution at which the secret instincts tremble. For a moment I
hung in the wind, strongly reluctant to box myself up alone, unarmed as
I was, with a man whose insanity, to call it so, seemed stronger in him
at this moment than I had ever before observed it. But the carpenter had
now gained the poop; and the captain, on seeing him, instantly walked to
the companion, down which he went to midway the ladder, and there stood
waiting for me to follow him.

Tut, thought I, surely I am more than his match in strength, and I am on
my guard! As I put my foot on the ladder—the captain descending on
seeing me coming—I paused to lean over the cover and say to Miss Temple:

‘If you will remain on deck, I shall be able to get away from him if he
should prove tedious, by telling him that I have you to look after.’

‘What do you imagine he wishes to say?’ she exclaimed with a face of
alarm that came very near to consternation.

I could only answer with a helpless shrug of the shoulders, and the next
minute I had entered Captain Braine’s cabin.

‘Pray sit you down,’ said he. He pulled off his straw hat and sent it
wheeling through the air into a corner, as though it were a boomerang,
and fell to drying his perspiring face upon a large pocket-handkerchief;
then folding his arms tightly across his breast, and crooking his right
knee whilst he dropped his chin somewhat, he stood gazing at me under
the shadow of his very heavy eyebrows with a steadfastness I could only
compare to the stare of a cat’s eye.

‘Well, Captain Braine,’ said I in an off-hand way, though I watched him
with the narrowness of a man who goes in fear, ‘what now is it that I am
to hear from you? Do you propose to ask me more questions on navigation
and seamanship?’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, though the excitement
that worked in him rendered his voice deep and unusually clear and loud,
‘I have come to the conclusion that you are a gentleman very well able
to sarve me, and by sarving me to sarve yourself. I’ve been a-turning of
it over in all hours of the day and a good many hours in the night, too,
since the moment when ye first stepped over the side, and I’ve resolved
to take ye into my confidence.’

He nodded, and stood looking at me without speech for a few moments;
then seated himself near me and leaned forwards with a forefinger upon
his thumb in a posture of computing.

‘It was in the year 1831,’ he began, ‘that I was third-mate aboard of a
ship called the _Ocean Monarch_. We sailed from London with a cargo of
mixed goods, bound to the port of Callao. Nothing happened till we was
well round to the west’ards of Cape Horn, when the ship was set afire by
the live cinders of the cabin stove burning through the deck. The cargo
was of an inflammable kind. In less than two hours the vessel was in a
blaze from stem to starn, by which time we had got the boats over, and
lay at a distance waiting for her to disappear. There was two boats, the
long-boat and a jolly-boat. The long-boat was a middling big consarn,
and most of the men went in her along with the captain, a man named
Matthews, and the second mate, a foreign chap named Falck. In our boat
was the chief mate, Mr. Ruddiman, myself, two sailors, and a couple of
young apprentices. We was badly stocked with water and food; and after
the _Ocean Monarch_ had foundered, Captain Matthews sings out to Mr.
Ruddiman to keep company. But it wasn’t to be done. The long-boat ran
away from us, and then she hove-to and took us in tow; but there came on
a bit of a sea, and the line parted, and next morning we was alone.’

He paused.

‘I am closely following you,’ said I, fancying I perceived in his face a
suspicion of inattention in me, and wondering what on earth his story
was going to lead to. He stood up, and folding his arms in the first
attitude he had adopted, proceeded, his voice deep and clear.

‘It came on to blow hard from the south’ard and east’ard, and we had to
up hellum and run before the seas for our lives. This went on for three
or four days, till Mr. Ruddiman reckoned that we was blowed pretty nigh
half-way across to the Marquesas. It then fell a stark calm, and we lay
roasting under a broiling sun with no fresh water in the boat, and
nothing to eat but a handful of mouldy fragments of biscuit in the
bottom of a bag that had been soaked with spray o’er and o’er again. One
of the apprentices went mad, and jumped overboard, and was drownded. We
was too weak to help him; besides, ne’er a one of us but thought him
well off in that cool water, leaving thirst and hunger behind him, and
sinking into a deep sleep, as it might be. Then the other apprentice was
took bad, and died in a fit of retching, and we put him over the side.
When daylight broke on the morning following that job, we saw one of the
sailors dead in the bottom of the boat. T’other was the sicklier man of
the two, yet he hung out, sir, and lived for three days. We kept his
body.’

His deep tones ceased, and he stared at me. Just a story of a bad
shipwreck, thought I, so far.

‘There came a light breeze from the east’ard,’ he continued after a
little pause; ‘but neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me had the strength of a
kitten in our arms, and we let the boat drive, waiting for death. I
thought it had come that same afternoon, and on top of the sensation
followed a fit, I allow, for I recollect no more, till on opening my
eyes I found myself in a hammock in the ’tweendecks of a little ship.
The craft was a small Spanish vessel, called the _Rosario_. She had
floated into sight of our boat, and there was just enough strength left
in Mr. Ruddiman to enable him to flourish his handkerchief so as they
might see the boat had something alive in her. Ne’er a soul aboard spoke
a syllable of English, and neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me understood a word
of Spanish. We couldn’t even get to larn where the brigantine was bound
to, or where she hailed from. We conversed with the crew in signs all
the same as though we had been cast away among savages. We was both
hearty men in those days, and it wasn’t long afore we had picked up what
we had let fall during our ramble in the boat. Well, the course the
vessel made was something to the south’ard o’ west, and I took it we
were heading for an Australian port; but though I’d make motions, and
draw with a piece of chalk on the deck, I’d never get more’n a stare,
and a shake of the head and a grin, and a shrug of the shoulders, for an
answer. In fact, it was like being sent adrift along with a company of
monkeys.’

He dried his face again, took his seat as before, and leaned towards me
in his former computing posture with his eyes glued to my face. The
singularity of their habitual expression was now greatly heightened by a
look of wildness, which I attributed in a measure to the emotions
kindled in him by this recital of past and dreadful sufferings. I sat as
though engrossed by his story; but I had an eye for every movement in
him as well as for his face.

‘It came on to blow a gale of wind one night after we had been aboard
the brigantine about a fortnight. They were a poor lot of sailors in the
vessel, and so many as to be in one another’s road. They got the little
ship in the trough, somehow, under more sail than she could stand up to;
the main-topmast went; it brought down the fore-topmast, which wrecked
the bowsprit and jib-boom. The Spaniards ran about like madmen, some of
them crossing themselves, and praying about the decks; others bawling in
a manner to terrify all hands, though I can’t tell ye what was said; the
ship was in a horrible mess with wreckage, which nobody attempted to
clear away. It blew very hard, and the seas were bursting in smoke over
the brigantine, that lay unmanageable. At last the boatswain of her,
holding a sounding-rod in his hand, yelled out something, and there was
a rush for the boats stowed amidships. They were so crazy with fear they
hardly knew how to swing ’em over the side. Ruddiman says to me: “I
shall stick to the ship. If those boats are not swamped, they’ll blow
away, and her people’ll starve, and our late job in that line is quite
enough for me.” I said I would stick by the ship, too, and we stood
watching whilst the Spaniards got their boats over. It was luck, and not
management, that set the little craft afloat. The captain roaring out,
made signs to us to come; but we, pointing to the sea, made motions to
signify that they would be capsized and shook our heads. They were mad
with fright, and weren’t going to stay to argue, and in twos and threes
at a time they sprang into the boats like rats; and whether they took
food and water with them I can’t tell ye; but this I know, that within
twenty minutes of the Spanish bo’sun’s singing out, the two boats had
disappeared, and Mr. Ruddiman and me were alone.’

He rose as he said this, and fell to pacing the cabin floor in silence,
with his head drooped, and his arms hanging up and down like pump
handles.

‘A very interesting story, captain, so far as it goes,’ said I, shifting
a bit on my seat, as though I supposed that the end was not far off now.
‘Of course you were taken off by some passing vessel?’

He made no reply to this, nor, indeed, seemed to heed me. After several
turns, he stopped, and looked me in the face, and continued to stare
with a knitted brow, as though he were returning to his first resolution
to communicate his secret with an effort that fell little short of
mental anguish. He came slowly to his chair, and started afresh.

‘We sounded the well, and presently discovered that the water she was
taking in drained through the decks, and that she was tight enough in
her bottom; and we reckoned that if we could get her out of the trough,
she’d live buoyant; so we searched for the carpenter’s chest, and found
it, and let fly at the raffle with a chopper apiece, and after a bit,
cleared the vessel of the wrecked spars and muddle, and got her to look
up to it, and she made middling good weather, breasting it prettily
under a tarpaulin seized in the weather main rigging. The gale blew
itself out after twenty-four hours, and the wind shifted into the
east’ards. We let drop the foresail; there was no more canvas on her to
set, with the head of the mast gone, and with it the peak halliards and
the sail in rags. Our notion was to head for the Sandwich Islands, for
we stood by so doing to fall in with a whaler, and failing help of that
sort there was civilisation over at Hawaii; but t’others of the
Polynesian rocks were mostly cannibal islands, we believed, and we were
for giving them a wide berth. Yet we could do nothing but blow before
it. _That_ you’ll understand, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Quite,’ said I.

‘It came on thick,’ he continued, speaking with intensity and in an
utterance deep, clear, and loud, ‘with a bit of a swell from the
east’ards and a fresh wind singing over it. I was at the hellum in the
afternoon, and Ruddiman lay asleep close against the companion hatch. I
was drowsy for want of rest, and there was sleep enough in my eyes to
make me see very ill. Suddenly looking ahead, I caught sight of a sort
of whitish shadow, and even whilst I was staring at it, wondering
whether it was vapour or white water, it took shape as a low coral
island with clumps of trees here and there and a small rise of greenish
land amidships of it. I put the hellum hard over, and called to
Ruddiman, who jumps up and takes a look. “A dead lee-shore, Braine,”
says he; “what’s to be done? There’s no clawing off under this canvas.”
What _was_ to be done? The land lay in a stretch of reef right along our
beam, with the brigantine’s head falling off again to the drag of the
foresail, spite of the hellum being hard down. In less than twenty
minutes she struck, was took by the swell, and drove hard aground, and
lay fixed on her bilge with her deck aslope to the beach that was within
an easy jump from the rail.’

He broke off, and went in a restless, feverish way to the table and
unlocked and drew out a drawer, looked at something within, then shut
the drawer with a convulsive movement of the arm and turned the key. I
was now heartily wishing he would make an end. Down to this, the tale
was just a commonplace narrative of marine suffering, scarcely reclaimed
from insipidity by the singularity of the figure that recited it. But
that was not quite it. I was under a constant fear of the next piece of
behaviour he might exhibit, and my alarm was considerably increased by
the air of mystery with which he had examined the drawer and hurriedly
closed it, as though to satisfy himself that the weapon he had lodged
there was still in its place. Having locked the drawer, he stood
thinking a little, then taking up his Bible from the table, he
approached me with it.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘before I can go on, I must have ye kiss
this here book to an oath. Take it!’ he cried with a sudden fierceness;
‘hold it, and now follow me.’

‘Stop a minute,’ I said; ‘you are telling me a story that I have really
no particular desire to hear. You have no right to exact an oath from me
upon a matter that I cannot possibly be in the smallest decree
interested in.’

‘It’s to come,’ said he in a raven note; ‘ye shall be interested afore
long. Take the oath, sir,’ he added with a dark look.

‘But what oath, man, what oath is it that I am to take?’

‘That as the Lord is now a-listening to ye, you will never divulge to
mortal creature the secret I’m agoing to tell ye, so help you God: and
if you break your oath, may ye be struck dead at the moment of it, and
your soul chased to the very gates of hell. So help ye God, again!’

I looked at him with astonishment and fear. No pen could express his
manner as he pronounced these words—the dull fire that entered his eyes
and seemed to enlarge them yet, the solemn note his deep and trembling,
yet distinctly clear voice took—his mien of command that had the force
of a menace in it as he stood upreared before me, his nostrils wide, his
face a dingy sallow, one arm thrusting the little volume at me, the
other hanging at his side with the fingers clenched.

‘I dare not take that oath,’ said I, after a little spell of thinking,
with every nerve in me tight-strung, so to speak, in readiness to defend
myself should he attack me. ‘Miss Temple will certainly inquire what our
talk has been about; I will not undertake to be silent to her, sir. Keep
your secret. It is not too late. Your narrative is one of shipwreck, and
so far there is nothing in it to betray.’

With that I rose.

‘Stop!’ he exclaimed; ‘you may tell the lady. There need be no
objection. I see how it lies betwixt you and her, and I’m not so
onreasonable as to reckon she’ll never be able to coax it out of ye. No.
Your interests’ll be hers, and of course she goes along with us. ’Tis my
crew I’m thinking of.’

I was horribly puzzled. At the same time curiosity was growing in me;
and with the swiftness of thought I reflected that whether I had his
secret or not it would be all the same; he was most assuredly a madman
in this direction, anyhow, if not in others; and it could be nothing
more than some insane fancy which he had it in his head to impart, and
which might be worth hearing if only for the sake of recalling it as an
incident of this adventure when Miss Temple and I should have got away
from the barque.

‘Mr. Dugdale, you will swear, sir,’ he exclaimed.

‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but put it a little more mildly, please. Leave out
the gates of hell, for instance; or see—suffer me to swear in my own
way. Give me that book.’

I observed that his hand was trembling violently as I took the volume
from him.

‘I swear,’ I said, ‘to keep secret from all mortal persons in this
world, saving Miss Temple, whatever it is your intention now to tell me.
So help me God,’ and I put the book to my lips. ‘That oath excludes your
crew,’ I added, ‘and I hope you’re satisfied?’

His face took a little complexion of life, and he almost smiled.

‘It’ll do—oh yes, it’ll do,’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew I could count upon
you. Now then for it.’

He resumed his seat, and leaning towards me with his unwinking eyes
fixed upon my face as usual, he proceeded thus.




                              CHAPTER XXX
                      THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL


‘Mr. Ruddiman and I got ashore and walked a little way up the beach, to
see what sort of spot we had been cast away on. It was a small island,
betwixt two and three miles long, and about a mile wide in the middle of
it. There were no natives to be seen. We might be sure that it was
uninhabited. There was nothing to eat upon it, and though we spent the
hours till it came on dark in searching for fresh water, we found none.
This made us resolve to land all we could out of the brigantine when
daylight should arrive. The weather cleared at midnight, the stars
shone, and the sea smoothed down with a light swell from the north-west,
which the trend of the reef shouldered off and left the water about the
stranded craft calm. As soon as daylight came we got aboard, and rigged
a whip on the fore-yardarm, and by noon we had landed provisions enough,
along with fresh water and wines and spirits in jars, to last us two men
for three months; but that didn’t satisfy us. There was no other land in
sight all round the horizon; we were without a boat; and though, if the
vessel broke up, we had made up our minds to turn to and save as much of
her as we could handle that might wash ashore, so as to have the
materials for a raft at hand if it should come to it, we hadn’t the
heart to talk of such a thing then, in the middle of that wide ocean,
with such a sun as was shining over our heads all day, and the sure
chance of the first of any squall or bit of dirty weather that might
come along adrowning of us. So we continued to break out all we could
come at. We worked our way out of the hold into the lazarette, and after
we had made a trifle of clearance there, we came across three chests
heavily padlocked and clamped with iron. “What’s here?” says Mr.
Ruddiman. “If these ain’t treasure-chests like to what the Spanish
marchants sends away gold in along the coast my eyes ain’t mates,” he
says. He went away to the carpenter’s chest, and returned with a crow
and a big hammer, and let fly at one of the padlocks, and struck a
staple off short. We lifted the lid, and found the chest full of Spanish
pieces of gold. The other two was the same, full up with minted gold;
and we reckoned that in all three chests there couldn’t be less in the
value of English money than a hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand
pounds! It wasn’t to be handled in the chests; so we made parcels of it
in canvas wrappers; and by the time the dusk drew down, we had landed
every farden of it.’

Once more he broke off and went to the drawer. I watched him with
profound anxiety, incapable of imagining what he was about to produce,
and collecting all my faculties, so to speak, ready for whatever was to
come. He took from the drawer, however, nothing more alarming than a
piece of folded parchment, round which some green tape was tied. This he
opened with trembling hands, smoothed out the sheet of parchment upon
the table, and invited me to approach. The outline, formed of thick
strokes of ink, represented an island. Its shape had something of the
look of a bottle with the neck of it broken away. It lay due north and
south according to the points of the compass marked by hand upon the
parchment; and towards the north end of it, on the eastern side, there
was a somewhat spacious indent, signifying, as I supposed, a lagoon.
Over the face of this outline were a number of crosses irregularly
dotted about to express vegetation. In the centre of the lagoon was a
black spot like a little blot of ink, with an arrow pointing from it to
another little blot in the heart of the island bearing due east from the
mark in the indent or lagoon. In the corner of the sheet of parchment
were written in a bold hand the figures, Long. 120° 3′ W.; Lat. 33° 6′
S.

‘This,’ said he, in a voice vibratory with excitement and emotion, ‘is
the island.’ I inclined my head. ‘You see how it lies, sir,’ he
continued, pointing with a shaking forefinger to the latitude and
longitude of the place in the corner. ‘Easter Island bears due
north-east from it. That will be the nearest land. Supposing you start
from Valparaiso, a due west-by-south course would run you stem on to the
reef.’

I waited for him to proceed. He drew away by a step, that he might keep
his eyes upon my face, whilst he continued to hold his trembling
forefinger pressed down upon his little chart.

‘We agreed to bury the gold,’ he said; ‘to hide it somewhere where we
should be easily able to find it when we came to look for it, if so be
as providence should ever allow us to come off with our lives from this
destitute reef. D’ye see this hollow, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘A lagoon, I suppose?’ said I.

‘Yes. This here mark amidships of it’—he turned his dead black eyes upon
the chart—‘signifies a coral pillar about twice as thick as my mainmast,
rising out of the water to about fourteen foot. We reckoned that there
was no force in nature outside an airthquake to level such a shaft as
that, and Mr. Ruddiman and me took it for a mark. We landed the
brigantine’s compass, and having hit on a clump of trees, found they
bore east three-quarters south from that there coral pillar. We fixed
upon a tree, and after trying again and again, made it exactly two
hundred and eight paces from the wash of the water in the curve of the
lagoon. There we buried the money, sir.’

‘And there it is now, I suppose?’ said I.

‘Hard upon two hundred thousand pounds,’ he exclaimed, letting the words
drop from his lips as though they were of lead. ‘Think of it, sir.’

He folded up the sheet of parchment, always with a very trembling hand,
replaced it in the drawer, which he locked; and then, after steadfastly
gazing at me for some little while, an expression of energy entered his
face, and he seemed to quicken from his eyes to his very toes.

‘All that money is mine,’ said he, ‘and I want you to help me recover
it.’

‘I!’

‘Yes, you, Mr. Dugdale. You and me’ll do it between us. And I’ll tell ye
how, if you’ll listen’——

‘But, my dear sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘I suppose you recollect that you are
under a solemn promise to Miss Temple and myself to transfer us to the
first homeward-bound ship we meet.’

‘I can’t help that,’ he cried with a hint of ferocity in his manner.
‘There’s this here fortune to be recovered first. After we’ve got it,
home won’t be fur off.’

Come, thought I, I must be cool and apparently careless.

‘It is very good of you, Captain Braine, to wish me to participate in
this treasure; but really, my dear sir, I have no title to any portion
of it; besides, I am a man of independent means, and what I possess is
quite as much as I require.’

‘Ye’ll not refuse it when ye see it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Money’s money; and
in this here world, where money signifies everything,—love, happiness,
pleasure, everything you can name—who’s the man that’s agoing to tell me
he can get too much of it?’

‘But you haven’t completed your story,’ said I, strenuously endeavouring
to look as though I believed in every word of the mad trash he had been
communicating.

‘As much as is necessary,’ said he. ‘I want to come to business, sir. I
could keep you listening for hours whilst I told ye of our life aboard
that island, how the brigantine went to pieces, how one day Mr. Ruddiman
went for a swim in the lagoon, and how the cramp or some fit took him,
and he sunk with me a-looking on, being no swimmer, and incapable of
giving him any help.’

‘And how long were you on the island?’ said I.

‘Four months and three days. It was one morning that I crawled from the
little hut we had built ourselves out of some of the brigantine’s
wreckage that had drifted ashore, and saw a small man-of-war with her
tops’l aback just off the island. She was a Yankee surveying craft, and
a boat was coming off when I first see her. They took me aboard, and
landed me at Valparaiso two months later. But all that’s got nothing to
do with what I want to talk to ye about. I’ve got now to recover this
money, and I mean to have it, and you’ll help me to get it, Mr.
Dugdale.’

‘But why have you waited all this time before setting about to recover
this treasure?’ said I.

‘I never had a chance of doing it afore,’ he replied; ‘but it’s come
now, and I don’t mean to lose it.’

‘What is your scheme?’

‘As easy,’ he cried, ‘as the digging up of the money’ll be. I shall head
straight away for Rio, and there discharge all my crew, then take in a
few runners to navigate the vessel to the Sandwich Islands, where I’ll
ship a small company of Kanakas, just as many as’ll help us to sail the
_Lady Blanche_ to my island. I shan’t fear _them_. Kanakas ain’t
Europeans; they’re as simple as babies; and we can do a deal that
they’ll never dream of taking notice of.’

I listened with a degree of astonishment and consternation it was
impossible for me to conceal in my face; yet I managed to preserve a
steady voice.

‘But you have a cargo consigned to Port Louis, I presume?’ said I. ‘You
don’t mean to run away with this ship, do you? for that would be an act
of piracy punishable with the gallows, as I suppose you know?’

He eyed me steadily and squarely.

‘I don’t mean to run away with this ship,’ he answered; ‘I know my
owners, and what they’ll think. It’ll be a deviation that ain’t going to
interfere with the ultimate delivery of my cargo at Port Louis, and I
don’t suppose it’ll take me much time to fix upon a sum that’ll make my
owners very well pleased with the delay, and quite willing that I should
do it again on the same tarms.’

‘But why do you desire to bring me into this business?’ I exclaimed,
startled by the intelligence I found in this last answer of his.

‘Because I can trust ye. You’re a gentleman, and you’ll be satisfied
with the share we’ll settle upon. Where am I to find a sailor capable of
helping me to navigate this ship that I could feel any confidence in,
that I could talk to about this here gold with the sartinty that he
wouldn’t play me some devilish trick? _Can’t_ ye see my position. Mr.
Dugdale?’ he cried with a wild almost pathetic air of eagerness and
pleading. ‘I can’t work out such a traverse as this alone. I must have
somebody alongside of me that I can confide in. Once the money’s aboard,
we can rid ourselves of the Kanaka crew, and ship a company of white men
for the run to the Mauritius. The gold’ll be aboard, and it’ll be my
secret and yourn.’

Though I never doubted for a moment that all this was the emission of
some mad, fixed humour, I was yet willing to go on questioning him as if
I was interested, partly that he might think me sincere in my profession
of belief in his tale, and partly that I might plumb his intentions to
the very bottom; for it was certain that, lie or no lie, his fancy of
buried treasure was a profound reality to his poor brains, and that it
would influence him, as though it were the truth, to heaven alone knew
what issue of hardship and fatefulness and even destruction to Miss
Temple and me.

‘I presume,’ said I, assuming an off-hand manner, ‘that your men have
signed for the run to Port Louis and back?’

‘Well, sir?’

‘How are you going to get rid of them at Rio?’

‘Half of them will run, and the rest I shall know how to start.’

‘But what excuse will you have for putting into Rio?’

‘Want of a chief mate,’ he answered, in a deep sepulchral voice.

This threw me all aback again, and thoroughly confounded me. Indeed, I
was well enough acquainted with the sea to guess that he was within the
truth when he spoke of an easy quittance of the crew at Rio; and
assuredly in the want of a chief mate he could find a reason for heading
to that South American port, against which it would be impossible for
his sailors to find anything to urge, supposing, a thing not to be taken
into account, that they had it in their power to insist upon his sailing
straight for Mauritius.

But even as I sat looking at him in an interval of silence that fell
upon us, a thought entered my head that transformed what was just now a
dark, most sinister menace, into a bright prospect of deliverance. As
matters stood—particularly now that I had his so-called secret—I could
not flatter myself that he would suffer me to leave his ship for a
homeward-bound craft, or even for the _Countess Ida_ herself, if we
should heave her into sight. Consequently, my best, perhaps the only,
chance for myself and the girl who looked to me for protection and
safety must lie in this madman making for a near port, where it would be
strange indeed if I did not find a swift opportunity of getting ashore
with Miss Temple. I saw by the expression in his own face that he
instantly observed the change in mine. He extended his hand.

‘Mr. Dugdale, you will entertain it? I see it grows upon ye.’

‘It is a mighty unexpected proposal,’ said I, giving him my fingers to
hold. ‘I don’t like the scheme it involves of running away with the
ship—the deviation, as you term it, which to my mind is a piratical
proceeding. But if you will sign a document to the effect that I acted
under compulsion, that I was in your power, and obliged to go with you
in consequence of your refusal to transfer me to another ship—if, in
short, you will draw up some instrument signed by yourself and witnessed
by Miss Temple that may help to absolve me from all complicity in this
sotermed deviation, I will consent to accompany you to your island. But
I must also know what share I am to expect?’

‘A third,’ he cried feverishly. ‘I’ll put that down in writing, too, on
a separate piece of paper. As to t’other document, draw it up yourself,
and I’ll copy it and put my name to it, for I han’t got the language for
such a job.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Is it settled?’

‘It will be settled,’ I answered, ‘when those two formal documents are
made out and signed.’

‘That can be done at once,’ he cried, with profound excitement working
in every limb of him, and agitating his face into many singular
twitchings and almost convulsive dilatations of the sockets of his eyes.

‘Give me leave to think a little,’ said I. ‘I will have a talk with Miss
Temple and settle with her the terms of the absolving letter you are to
write and sign.’

‘How long will it take ye?’ he asked with painful anxiety.

‘I shall hope to be ready for you before noon to-morrow,’ I replied.

‘All right,’ said he; ‘the moment it _is_ settled I’ll change my
course.’

I took his track-chart and opened it, and with a pair of compasses that
lay on the table measured the distance betwixt the point at which we had
arrived at noon and Rio. Roughly speaking, and allowing an average of a
hundred and fifty miles a day to the barque, I computed that the run
would occupy between ten and twelve days.

‘What are ye looking for?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘To see how far Rio is from us,’ I answered.

‘Well, and what d’ye make it?’

‘Call it fifteen hundred miles,’ I responded. He nodded in a sort of
cunning emphatic way. ‘Nothing remains to be said, I think?’ said I,
making a step to the door.

‘Only this,’ said he. ‘I _was_ thinking of asking ye to keep my lookout,
acting, as you will be, as my chief mate, but on consideration I believe
it’ll be best to wait till we’ve got a new crew afore ye take that duty.
Not that the men could object to my calling into Rio on the grounds that
you’re aboard and are good enough as a navigator to sarve my turn;
because they reckon that you’re to be transhipped along with the lady at
the first opportunity. But it’ll be safest, I allow, for you to remain
as ye are this side of Rio.’

‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but I can continue to take observations if you
like.’

‘Oh yes; there can be no harm in that,’ he answered.

I opened the door.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, softening his voice into a hoarse whisper
with a sudden expression of real insanity in the gloomy, almost
threatening look he fastened upon me, ‘ye’ll recollect the oath you’ve
taken, if you please.’

‘Captain Braine,’ I replied with an assumption of haughtiness, ‘I am a
gentleman first of all, and my oath merely follows;’ and slightly
bowing, I closed the door upon him.

By this time it was nearly dark. I had scarcely noticed the drawing down
of the evening whilst in the captain’s cabin, so closely had my
attention been attached to him and his words. Indeed, the man had
detained me an hour with his talk, owing to his pausings and silent
intervals of staring; though the substance of his speech and our
conversation could have been easily packed into a quarter that time. I
went half-way up the companion steps, but feeling thirsty, descended
again to drink from a jug that stood upon a swinging tray. Whilst I
filled the glass, my eye at the moment happening to be idly bent aft, I
observed the door of the cabin adjoining that of Captain Braine’s to
open and a man’s head showed. It instantly vanished. It was too gloomy
to allow me to make sure. However, next moment the young fellow Wilkins
came out, no doubt guessing that I had seen him, and that he had
therefore better show himself honestly.

I was somewhat startled by the apparition, wondering if the fellow had
been in the berth throughout our talk, for if so, it was not to be
questioned but that he had overheard every syllable, for there was
nothing between the cabins but a wooden bulkhead, and the captain’s
utterance had been singularly clear, deep, and loud. But a moment’s
reflection convinced me that even if he had heard everything, his
knowledge (supposing he carried the news forward) would only help to
persuade the men that Captain Braine was a madman, and facilitate any
efforts I might have to make to deliver myself and Miss Temple from this
situation, should Braine’s craziness increase and his lunatic
imagination take a new turn. So, that the fellow might not think that I
took any special notice of his coming out of that cabin, I asked him in
a careless way when supper would be ready. He answered that he was now
going to lay the table; and without further words I went on deck.

It was a hot and lovely evening, with a range of mountainous but
fine-weather clouds in the west, whose heads swelled in scarlet to the
fires of the sun sinking into the sea behind them. In the east the
shadow was of a deep liquid blue, with the low-lying stars already
coming into their places. The breeze blew softly off the starboard beam,
and the barque, clothed in canvas to the height of her trucks and to the
outmost points of her far-reaching studding-sail booms, was floating
quietly and softly, like some spirit-shape of ship, through the rich and
tender tropic blending of nightdyes and westering lights.

Miss Temple stood at the rail, leaning upon her arms, apparently
watching the water sliding past. She sprang erect when I pronounced her
name.

‘I was beginning to fear you would never come on deck again,’ she
exclaimed as she looked at me with a passionate eagerness of inquiry.
‘How long you have been! What could he have found to say to detain you
all this while?’

‘Softly!’ I said, with a glance at old Lush, who was patrolling the
forward end of the poop athwartships with his hands deep buried in his
breeches’ pockets, and with a sulky air in the round of his back and the
droop of his head. ‘I have heard some strange things. If you are not
tired, take my arm, and we will walk a little. We are less likely to be
overheard in the open air than if we conversed in the silence of the
cabin.’

‘You do not look miserable,’ she exclaimed. ‘I expected to see you
emerge with a pale face and alarmed eyes. Now, please tell me
everything.’

There was something almost of a caress in her manner of taking my arm,
as though she could not suppress some little exhibition of pleasure in
having me at her side again. Also she seemed to find relief in the
expression on my face. She had been full of dark forebodings, and my
light smiling manner instantly soothed her.

I at once started to tell her everything that had passed between Captain
Braine and myself. I contrived to recite the skipper’s yarn as though I
fully believed it, always taking care to sober my voice down to little
more than a whisper as we alternately approached the fellow at the wheel
and the carpenter at the other end in our pendulum walk. Her fine eyes
glowed with astonishment; never did her beauty show with so much
perfection to the animation of the wonder, the incredulity, the
excitement raised by the narrative I gave her.

‘So _that_ is his secret?’ she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh
as I concluded, halting at the rail to gaze at her with a smile. ‘I
presume now, Mr. Dugdale, that you are satisfied he is mad?’

‘Perfectly satisfied.’

‘You do not believe a word of his story?’

‘Not a syllable of it.’

‘And yet it might be true!’ said she.

‘And even then I would not believe it,’ I answered.

‘Did he explain how it was that all that gold lay hidden in a poor ship
like the Spanish brigand—brig—whatever you call it?’ she asked, her
curiosity as a woman dominating for a moment all other considerations
which might grow out of that yarn.

‘No,’ said I; ‘nor would I inquire. It is giving one’s self needless
trouble to dissect the fabric of a dream.’

‘Poor wretch! But how frightful to be in a ship commanded by a madman!
What object has he in telling you this secret?’

‘He wants me to help him recover the treasure;’ and I then related the
man’s proposals.

She gazed at me with so much alarm that I imagined her fear had rendered
her speechless.

‘You tell me,’ she cried, ‘that you have consented to sail with him to
this island of his in—in—the Pacific? Are you as mad as he is, Mr.
Dugdale? Do you forget that I look to you to protect me and help me to
return home?’

Her eyes sparkled; the colour mounted to her cheek, her bosom rose and
fell to the sudden gust of temper.

‘I am surprised that you do not see my motive,’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course
I feigned to fall in with his views. My desire is to get to Rio as soon
as possible, and ship with you thence for England.’

‘To Rio? But I’m not going to Rio!’ she cried. ‘The captain solemnly
promised to put me on board the first ship going home. Why did you not
insist upon his keeping his word?’ she exclaimed, drawing herself up to
her fullest stature and towering over me with a flashing stare.

‘He’ll not tranship us now,’ said I. ‘I’m like Caleb Williams. I have
his secret, and he’ll not lose sight of me.’

‘Oh, what miserable judgment!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are frightened of
him! But were he ten times madder than he is, I would _compel_ him to
keep his word. Rio indeed! He shall put us on board the first ship we
meet, and I’ll tell him so when I see him.’

‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said I. ‘If you open your lips or
suffer your temper to come between me and any project I have formed, I
will wash my hands of all responsibility. I will not lift a finger to
help ourselves. He shall carry us whithersoever he pleases.’

‘How can you talk to me so heartlessly! I have no friend but you now,
and you are turning from me, and making me feel utterly alone.’

‘I am so much your friend,’ said I, ‘that I do not intend you shall
alienate me. My judgment is going to serve me better than yours in this
dilemma. I know exactly what I am about and what I intend, and you must
keep quiet and be obedient to my wishes.’

‘Oh, I should abhor you at any other time for talking to me like that!’
she exclaimed. ‘There was a time—— I shall _not_ go to Rio! He has
promised to put us on board a ship going home.’

‘Miss Temple, you talk intemperately. You are in an unreasonable mood,
and I will not converse with you. We will resume the subject by-and-by;’
and I half turned, as though to walk off, humming an air betwixt my
teeth.

She grasped my arm. ‘You must not leave me. I have been long enough
alone. I believe you will drive me as crazy as the captain.’

‘I will see you safely to England first,’ said I, ‘and then you shall
fall crazy.’

The tears suddenly gushed into her eyes, and she turned seawards to hide
her face. I moved away, but before I had measured half-a-dozen paces,
her hand was again upon my arm.

‘I am sorry,’ she said softly, hanging her stately head, ‘if I have said
anything to vex you.’

‘I desire but one end,’ said I, ‘and that is your safety. To ensure it
needs but a little exercise of tact on your part and a resolution to
trust me.’

‘I do trust you,’ she exclaimed; ‘but am I wholly wanting in brains,
that you will not suffer me to offer an opinion, nay, even to express a
regret?’

‘You would be able to do nothing with this mad sailor,’ said I. ‘Rio is
within a fortnight’s sail, and our safety depends upon our getting
there.’

‘A fortnight!’ she cried—‘another fortnight of this horrible ship!’

‘Yes; but England is a long way off from where we are. Were you to get
on board another vessel, you might be fully as uncomfortable as you are
here, unless she should prove a passenger craft with ladies in her. A
fortnight more or less could not signify. At Rio you will be able to
purchase such articles as you immediately need, and there will be a
choice of ships to carry us home in comfort.’

‘I believe you are right,’ said she, after a little pause, with
something of timidity in the lift of her eyes to my face. ‘I was shocked
and made irritable by alarm. I am sorry, Mr. Dugdale.’

The answer I was about to make was checked by Wilkins calling to us from
the companion way that supper was ready.




                              CHAPTER XXXI
                         THE FORM OF AGREEMENT


The captain did not arrive, and we had the table to ourselves. Miss
Temple was subdued, and her glances almost wistful. It gave me but
little pleasure to humble her, or in any way to triumph over her; but I
had made up my mind to be master whilst we were together, and not to
spare her feelings in my effort to assert myself; and I may add here
that I had determined, if it pleased God to preserve us, to make this
noble and beautiful woman my wife. For I was now loving her, but so
secretly, that my love was scarce like a passion even to my own reason;
and the conclusion I had formed was that the only road to her heart lay
behind the armour of her pride, which must be broken down and demolished
if ever I was to gain her affection. And sure I was of this too; that
she was of that kind of women who need to be bowed by a strong hand into
a submissive posture before they can be won.

We spoke very little; the captain’s cabin was not far off, and the
knowledge of his being in it held us very taciturn. However, we made
amends for our silence after we had supped and regained the deck. She
was now to be easily convinced that our best chance of escaping from
this barque was for me to fool the captain to the top of his bent, that
he might carry us to Rio; and before long she was even talking
cheerfully of our prospects, asking me in a half-laughing way how we
were to manage for money when we arrived at Rio, whether I had any
friends there, and so on.

‘There are my jewels,’ she said; ‘but I should be very sorry to part
with them.’

‘There will be no need to do that,’ said I. ‘I have a few bank-notes in
my pocket which I think may suffice. There is an English consul, I
suppose, at Rio, and he will advise us.’

Talk of this kind heartened her wonderfully. It gave her something happy
and hopeful to think about; in fact, before we went below she told me
that she now preferred the idea of proceeding to Rio to the old scheme
of going aboard a ship bound to England.

‘I shall be able to purchase a few comforts,’ she said; ‘whereas I might
be transferred to some horrid little vessel that would occupy weeks in
crawling along the sea, and in all that time I should be as badly off as
I am now. Do the ladies in South America dress picturesquely, do you
know? I should like to be romantically attired on my arrival home. How
my dearest mother would stare! What colour a long Spanish veil and a
dress of singular fashion would give to my story of our adventures.’

And so she talked.

It was a very calm and lovely night, with the moon, a few days old,
going down in the west. The breeze held everything silent aloft; a
murmur as of the raining of a fountain floated up from alongside as the
white body of the little barque slipped through the darkling waters
brimming in a firm black line to the spangled sky of the horizon. The
captain had arrived on deck at eight, but he kept to the after-part of
the poop, nor once addressed us, often standing motionless for ten
minutes at a time, till he looked like some ebony statue at the rail
floating softly up and down against the stars to the delicate curtseying
of his little ship. I seemed to notice, however, yet without giving much
heed to the thing, an indisposition on the part of the watch on deck to
coil themselves away for their usual fine-weather naps. From time to
time, though dimly, there would steal aft a hum of voices from the black
shadow upon the deck past the galley. Once a man kindled a phosphorus
match to light his pipe, and a small group of faces showed to the flash
of the flame, so to speak, as it soared and sank to the fellow’s sucking
at it; but I found nothing in this to arrest my attention saving that I
recollect asking Miss Temple to notice the odd effect produced by the
coming out of those faces amid the dusk; for one saw _them_ only and no
other portion of the men’s bodies.

We walked to the companion to leave the deck. I scarcely knew whether or
not to call a good-night to the captain, so absorbed in thought did his
motionless posture express him. But as Miss Temple put her foot upon the
steps, he quietly cried out: ‘Are ye going to bed?’

‘Yes, captain,’ I answered, ‘and we wish you a very good-night.’

‘A minute!’ he sung out, and came to us. He seemed to peer into Miss
Temple’s face, that showed as a mere faint glimmer in the starlight, the
moon being then sunk, and addressing me, exclaimed in a voice but a
little above a whisper: ‘I suppose you have told the lady everything,
Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘my oath allowed for that, you know.’

‘Certainly,’ said he. ‘It’s a grand opportunity for money-getting, mem.
The brace of you know more than the wife of my own bosom has any
suspicion of. As God’s my Saviour, never once have I opened my lips to
Mrs. Braine about that there money.’

‘I had hoped you would have transferred me to a homeward-bound ship,’
said Miss Temple.

‘You don’t want to be separated from a sweetheart, do you?’ he
exclaimed.

This was a stroke to utterly silence her. I believe she had spoken from
no other motive than to finesse, that the captain might suppose her as
sincere in her belief of his story as I was; but this word _sweetheart_
was like a blast of lightning. What her face would have exhibited if
there had been light enough to see it by, I could only imagine.

‘It grows late, captain; good-night,’ said I, pitying her for the
confusion and disorder which I knew she would be under.

‘Have you been thinking over the tarms of that letter we were talking
about?’ said he.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I’ll pay your cabin a visit after breakfast and
write it out.’

‘Very well, sir. That and the agreement about the division of the money
too. I shall want to shift my hellum for Rio to-morrow.’

He left us, and we descended in silence, nor did Miss Temple speak a
word to me as we made our way to our gloomy deep-sunk quarters,
excepting to wish me good-night.

I slept well, and rose next morning at seven to get a bath in the head;
for, as in the Indiaman, so in this barque, and so, indeed, in most
ships in those days, there was a little pump fixed in the bows for
washing down the decks of the fore-part of the craft. It was a very gay
brilliant morning, a fresh breeze about a point before the starboard
beam, and the _Lady Blanche_ was moving through it at a meteoric pace
with her royals and gaff topsail in, and all else save the flying jib
abroad. The water was of a rich blue, and rolled in snow; the violet
shadows of swollen steamcoloured clouds swept over the rolling lines of
the ocean, and by their alternations of the sunshine made a very prism
of the vast, throbbing disc of the deep. About two miles astern was a
large schooner, staggering along on a westerly course, so close hauled
that she seemed to look into the very eye of the wind and plunging bow
under with a constant boiling of foam all about her head. By the time I
had taken my bath she was a mere chip of white on the windy blue over
our weather quarter.

There were a few sailors cleaning up about the decks, and as I passed
them on the road to the cabin, I could not fail to observe that they
eyed me with a degree of attention I had never before noticed in them.
Their looks were full of curiosity, with something almost of impudence
in the bold stare of one or two of them. What, I reflected, can this
signify but that the fellow Wilkins overheard everything that passed
between the captain and me, and has carried the news into the
forecastle? So much the better, I thought; for should the captain come
to guess that the men had his secret, the suspicion must harden him in
his insane resolve to carry the barque forthwith to Rio to get rid of
his crew.

When Miss Temple came out of her berth there was a momentary touch of
bashfulness and even of confusion in her manner; then a laughing
expression flashed into her eye. As we repaired to the cabin we
exchanged some commonplaces about the weather. She warmed up a little
when I spoke of the noble breeze and of the splendid pace of the barque,
and assured her that the most distant port in the world could never be
far off to people aboard such a clipper keel as this. The captain joined
us at the breakfast table. I thought he looked unusually haggard and
pale, appearing as a man might after a long spell of bitter mental
conflict. His eyes seemed preternaturally large, and of a duller and
deader black than my recollection found common in them. He seldom spoke
but to answer the idle conversational questions one or the other of us
put to him. I observed that he drank thirstily and ate but little, and
that he would occasionally rest his forehead upon his hand as though to
soothe a pain there. Yet lustreless as was his gaze, it was singularly
eager and devouring in its steadfastness. He had been on deck since four
o’clock, he told us, and had not closed his eyes during the previous
four hours of his watch below.

‘I get but little sleep now,’ said he with a long trembling sigh.

‘That schooner astern this morning,’ said I, ‘looked as if she were
bound somewhere Rio way.’

He responded with a dull nod of indifference.

‘Were you ever at Rio, Captain Braine?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘No, mem.’

‘I suppose I shall easily find a ship there to carry me home?’ said she.

He stared at her and then at me; and then said, looking at her again,
‘Don’t you mean to go along with him?’ indicating me with a sideways
jerk of the head.

Her eyes sought mine for counsel.

‘It will be a question for you and me to discuss, captain,’ said I.
‘With all due deference to Miss Temple, it may be you will come to think
that the presence of a lady could but encumber us in such a job as we
have in hand.’

‘Ay, but she has my secret!’ said he swiftly and warmly.

‘Your secret is mine, and my interests are hers—you know that!’ I
exclaimed.

‘What are the relations between you?’ he asked.

A blush overspread Miss Temple’s face and her eyes fell.

‘Ask me that question presently, captain,’ said I, laughing.

He continued to stare slowly at one or the other of us, but remained
silent.

Wilkins entered with a pot of coffee. I furtively but attentively
surveyed his expressionless veal-like countenance; but I might as well
have explored the sole of his foot for hints of what was passing in his
mind. He came and went quickly. Indeed, his practice of waiting
consisted merely in placing our meals upon the table, and then lingering
out upon the quarter-deck within hearing of the captain’s voice if he
was wanted.

Presently the skipper rose.

‘I’ve made out that document consarning shares,’ said he; ‘perhaps you
might now come with me and con-coct the letter you want me to sign.’

‘Very well,’ I answered; ‘Miss Temple is to witness your signature, and
you will allow her to accompany us?’

For answer he gave her one of his astonishing bows, and the three of us
went to his cabin. He opened the drawer that contained the chart of his
island, and produced a sheet of paper, very oddly scrawled over.

‘I made this up last evening,’ said he; ‘jest see if it’ll do, Mr.
Dugdale. If so, I’ll sign it, and ye can draw me up a copy for my own
keeping.’

‘Miss Temple will have to witness this too,’ said I, ‘so I’ll read it
aloud:

  “Barque _Lady Blanche_.

                    At Sea (_such and such a date_).

  I, John Braine, master of the barque _Lady Blanche_, do hereby agree
  with        Dugdale, Esquire, that in consideration of his serving
  me as chief-officer for a voyage to an island situate in the South
  Pacific Ocean, latitude 83° 16′ S. longitude 120° 3′ W., unnamed,
  but bearing due south-west from Easter Island, distant       ; I say
  that in consideration of your helping me to navigate this ship to
  that there island, and from there to Port Louis in the island of
  Mauritius afterwards, the said John Braine do hereby undertake to
  give and secure to the said Dugdale, Esquire, by this here
  instrument as witnessed, one whole and full third of the money now
  lying buried in the above-said island, whereof the amount, as by
  calculation allowed, is in Spanish pieces from 180 to 200,000
  pounds.


  Witness my hand and seal.”’


It cost me a prodigious effort to keep my face whilst I read, almost
tragical as was the significance of this absurd document to Miss Temple
and myself, as forming a condition, so to speak, of the extraordinary
adventure fate had put us upon. I durst not look at her for fear of
bursting into a laugh. The man’s strange eyes were fixed upon me.

‘Nothing could be better,’ said I. ‘Now, sir, if you will kindly sign
it—and I will ask you, Miss Temple, to witness it.’

He turned to seat himself; the girl’s glance met mine; but heaven knows
there was no hint of merriment in _her_ face. She was colourless and
agitated, though I could perceive that she had a good grip of her
emotions. The captain signed his name with a great scratching noise of
his pen, then made way for Miss Temple, whose hand slightly trembled as
she attached her signature to the precious document. It was now my turn;
in a few minutes I had scribbled out a form of letter addressed to
myself guaranteeing me immunity from all legal perils which might follow
upon the captain’s piratical deviation from his voyage. This also he
signed, and Miss Temple afterwards put her name to it as a witness.

‘I’ll take copies of these,’ said I, ‘at noon, after helping you to work
out the sights.’

‘I beg pardon,’ he exclaimed, observing me to take a step towards the
door; ‘I should be glad to know the relations ’twixt you and this young
lady? It ain’t for inquisitiveness that I ask. She has my secret, sir;’
and he drew himself erect.

‘We were fellow-passengers,’ I answered with a side-look at the girl,
whose expression was one of disgust and distress.

‘There’s nothing close in that,’ said he: ‘I counted upon ye as being
sweethearts—that you was keeping company with her, and to be married
when the chance came, when I told you there was no objection to your
reporting my secret to her.’

‘We are sweethearts,’ I replied, smiling, and taking the girl’s hand;
‘and _when_ the chance comes along,’ I added, faintly accentuating the
‘when’ for _her_ ear only, ‘we shall be married, captain, and I shall
hope to see you dancing at our wedding and heartily enjoying the
entertainment, which, it will not need all my third share to furnish
forth.’

Miss Temple could not contain herself; she uttered a short hysteric
laugh.

‘Pity ye couldn’t have told me this at once,’ exclaimed the captain,
regarding me sternly; ‘but,’ he went on whilst his countenance slightly
relaxed, ‘there’s always sensitiveness in love-making whilst it keeps
young. I’m obliged to you, mem, for your visit.’

I opened the door and followed Miss Temple out.

‘I am of opinion that he is not so mad as he appears,’ said I.

She averted her flushed face somewhat haughtily. No matter, thought I;
it is a subject that will keep.

We got under the short awning on the poop and lounged away the morning
there. Her good breeding speedily came to her rescue, and our chat was
as easy, in a sense, as ever it could have been aboard the
Indiaman—easier, i’ faith, by a long chalk! though it concerned troubles
and anxieties which never could have occurred to us in the _Countess
Ida_. I observed that Mr. Lush frequently directed his eyes at me as he
paced the weather deck. To my accost he had satisfied himself with
returning a surly ‘marning,’ and we spoke no more. He seemed unable to
view me attentively enough to satisfy himself without growing offensive
by staring.

‘I hope that fellow,’ I whispered to Miss Temple, ‘may not thwart my Rio
programme. Yet I don’t see how he could do so. The barque wants a
chiefmate, so the captain contends. It is no falsehood; the need would
by all sailors be regarded as an imperative one. Still, I hate that
surly fellow without exactly knowing why.’

‘Do you notice how those men yonder are constantly looking this way?’

‘Yes. As I have explained to you, Master Eavesdropper Wilkins has
reported all he heard; and the Jacks understanding at last that their
skipper is a madman, are wondering what on earth is going to happen
next. They’ll be glad, you’ll find, to learn that we’re heading for Rio
when the course is changed. They’ll report the skipper as insane, and
end our difficulties out of hand for us.’

‘I hope so indeed!’ she sighed.

Well, for the rest of the day nothing happened worth relating. I took an
observation with the captain, worked it out in his cabin, and made
draughts of the two extraordinary documents. When we had calculated our
situation, he went on deck, and by a tell-tale compass in his cabin I
perceived that he had changed the barque’s course. Simultaneously with
this, I heard the men bracing the yards more forward, and the heel of
the barque slightly sharpened to the increased lateral pressure of the
fresh breeze upon her canvas. I hastened on deck when I had done my
copying to observe the crew’s deportment; but in the manner of the few
men who were about I witnessed nothing to lead me to suppose that they
made anything of this sudden change of course.

When I told Miss Temple that we were now heading as close as the wind
would let us lie for the South American port she instantly grew
animated; her eyes brightened, a look of hope and pleasure entered her
face, and her voice was full of cheerfulness. The captain, on the other
hand, grew gloomier as the day advanced. During his watch on deck from
twelve to four he paced the planks without any intermission that I was
sensible of, walking nearly always in the same posture, with his hands
clasped behind him and his head bowed; and with his long black hair,
yellow face, and blue gills he needed nothing but the dress of a monk to
look one, rehearsing his part for the cloisters.

Some dinner was taken to him on deck; but I saw Wilkins afterwards carry
the dishes forward, and the food appeared to me untouched. At the supper
hour he came to the table, but neither ate nor drank. During the greater
part of the sitting he kept turning his eyes first on one and then on
the other of us with a dim sort of strained interrogative expression in
his stare, as though he was struggling with some degree of suffering to
dislodge an imagination or idea out of a remote secret cell of his brain
and bring it forward into the clear light of his understanding. He
seemed to find Miss Temple’s presence a restraint. Sometimes, after
eyeing me he’d start as if about to speak, but instantly check himself
with a glance at the girl, whilst his face would darken to some mood of
irritation and impatience.

Another gloriously fine night followed sunset that day, with a brighter
and longerliving moon, and a gushing of breeze that melted through, and
through one with the delicious coolness that it brushed off the waters
and gathered from the dew. The sea throbbed in flashings of foam, which
shone with the radiance of moon-touched snow mingled with spangles of
the gold and emerald light of the phosphor. There was a pleasant roaring
and hissing noise off the weather bow, with merry whistlings aloft,
where the fullthroated canvas soaring to the main-topgallant yard leaned
in pale spaces against the stars, with frequent sweeps of the mastheads
to the frisky plungings of the clipper hull upon the head seas.

The carpenter was in charge of the deck. He was standing at the rail
abreast of the wheel, when it occurred to me to accost him, that I might
gather from his replies what notions had been put into his head by the
captain having changed the course. I had Miss Temple on my arm, for the
deck was hardly safe for her without some such support. We went to the
binnacle, and I took a peep at the card, then crossed over to the
carpenter.

‘Good-evening, Mr. Lush. A rattling breeze this! Since Rio is our
destination, such a draught as this should put us in the way of making
it smartly, off her course as the barque is.’

‘I suppose you know what we’re a-going there for?’ he answered in a
gruff tone of voice, that left me in doubt as to whether he intended a
question or not.

‘You are second mate, and of course are in the captain’s confidence.
What should I know that you don’t?’

‘Ah, what?’ he exclaimed, in a voice like a dog’s growl.

Miss Temple slightly pressed my arm, as though she would have me walk
away.

‘A vessel like this wants a chief mate,’ said I, ‘some one who knows
what to do with the sun and stars.’

‘Oh, then, you’re acquainted with the reason why we’re going to Rio?’
said he in a tone of such impudent sarcasm, that without another word I
rounded on my heel and led Miss Temple forward.

‘The brute!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I am rightly served. I have no business
to address the surly illiterate baboon.’

‘You know that _he_ knows you have learnt the captain’s motives, if it
be true, as you suppose, that Wilkins has repeated to the men what he
overheard; why, then, do you feign an ignorance that can only excite the
creature’s suspicions?’

‘Suspicions of what?’

‘That you are acting a double part: with the captain for the sake of his
buried money, and with the crew for the sake of your safety.’

‘You put it shrewdly, and I am fairly hit,’ said I. ‘I wanted to get at
the fellow’s mind, if he has any; it did not occur to me for the moment
that he would know through Wilkins of what had passed in the cabin. That
is to say if he _does_ know; for after all, Wilkins may not have
overheard everything, and for aught we can tell he may not have repeated
a syllable of the little that he managed to collect through that
bulkhead. No matter, Miss Temple. A fortnight more, please God, and we
shall be able to write the word finis to this passage of our
adventures.’

‘I shall scarcely know myself again,’ she exclaimed cheerfully, whilst
she extended her disengaged white hand to the sheen in the air flowing
from the stars and scar of moon, ‘when I put my rings on once more. What
an experience! How improbable, and how consistently possible and
horribly absolute!’

And then she asked me how far it was from Rio to London; and we went on
chatting and pacing, sometimes coming to a stand at the side to watch
some sweep of foaming water roaring off from the blow of the lee bow
into the weltering gloom until five bells were struck—half-past ten. She
then said she felt chilly, and I took her below. It was a little early
for bed, however; besides, the excitement of the day still lingered—the
signing and witnessing of the queer documents: the captain’s insane
dream of a treasure-quest, mad, as we deemed it, at all events: the
sense of our speeding now towards a port whence we should be able to
take ship and proceed comfortably to England.

I went to the cuddy door and called for Wilkins, and on his arrival told
him to put a bottle of the wine that had been brought from the wreck on
the table along with some biscuit, and thus furnished, Miss Temple and I
managed to kill very nearly another hour. She removed her hat; the
lamplight streamed fair upon the marble-like beauty of her face, upon
her large, dark, soft, and glowing eyes, upon her rich neglected
abundant hair.

‘Do you remember that night,’ I said, ‘in the English Channel, when
after the collision with the Frenchman you came to where I stood and
asked me to explain what had happened?’

‘I would rather not remember anything that passed between us on board
the Indiaman, Mr. Dugdale,’ she replied with a droop of her long lashes
as she spoke.

I gazed at her earnestly; a single glance would have enabled her to
witness something of passion in my regard at that instant: I bit my lip
to check what my instincts assured me would then have been said all too
soon, and looking at my watch exclaimed: ‘Hard upon half-past eleven.’

She rose, and together we descended to our inhospitable steerage
quarters.




                             CHAPTER XXXII
                               A TRAGEDY


How long it was before I fell asleep I cannot say. The humming of the
wake racing away close outside was noisy; the light cargo in the
steerage creaked and strained, and the thump of the rudder was frequent,
and sometimes startling. I was aroused by a continuous knocking on the
bulkhead. It was pitch-dark, despite a small sliding dance of stars in
the porthole glass. I thought the knocking was upon my door, and cried
out, ‘What is it?’ It did not cease; and gathering by this time that it
proceeded from the bulkhead that divided the cabins, I jumped out of my
bunk and beat upon the boards to let Miss Temple know I heard her.

I called; but though I caught her voice, I could not distinguish her
utterance. I had turned in partially clothed, and groping my way to the
door, stepped forth and knocked upon her cabin. The handle was touched
and I was sensible that the girl’s door was ajar.

‘Are you there, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Yes. What is the matter?’

‘Did not you hear a pistol-shot?’

‘No,’ I cried.

‘I am certain a firearm has been discharged,’ she exclaimed.

‘Stay a bit,’ said I. ‘I will see if anything is wrong, and let you
know.’

After some groping, I succeeded in lighting the candle in my lantern;
and then slipping on my shoes, I made for the hatch ladder, which I was
able to see by leaving my cabin door open. I entered the cuddy and
listened. The lamp had been extinguished; but a sort of spectral
illumination of stars and white water came sifting through the skylight
and the port-holes and the little windows in the cuddy front, and I was
able to determine the outline of objects. All was right in this
interior, so far as I could tell. I listened; but not so much as a
footfall sounded upon the upper deck, not a note of human voice or
movement of men forward. The barque was sweeping through the seas
bravely, and the atmosphere of the cuddy was vibratory with the resonant
cries of the wind up aloft.

I made for the cuddy door and looked out; nothing stirred on the
quarter-deck that ran pallid into the impenetrable shadow past the
waist. I returned to the companion steps, which I mounted, and stood in
the hatch a moment or two. There was nobody on the poop saving the man
at the helm. I stepped over to him and said, ‘Where’s the captain?’

‘He’s gone below,’ he answered; ‘he told me he wouldn’t be long.’

‘When did he leave the deck?’

‘Seven or eight minutes ago, belike.’

‘Did you hear a noise just now that resembled a pistol-shot?’ I
inquired.

‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘But who’s to hear anything atop of this here
shindy of wind and water?’

‘That’s true,’ I exclaimed. ‘I doubt if the noise will have meant more
than a fall of something below. It is the lady who heard the sound, and
I’ve just stepped up to see what it might mean. It’s to be hoped the
captain won’t linger. This is not a breeze in which to leave a ship in
charge of her helmsman only.’

And indeed the little craft wanted too much watching on the part of the
fellow to suffer him to talk or to permit of my calling off his
attention from his duty. I resolved to wait, that there might be some
sort of lookout kept whilst the captain stayed below. The breeze had
freshened, I thought, since I left the deck; there was a dim windy look,
moreover, all away out to starboard; and the barque close hauled was
making the wind to come as hard again as it was blowing, in fact,
through her thrusting, plunging, nimble manner of looking up into it.
The mainsail is too much for her, thought I; it should be furled. There
is a staysail or two too many, also; and that top-gallant sail will have
to come in anon, if the look of the sky out yonder means what it
threatens.

Five minutes passed, but the captain did not make his appearance. The
sound that Miss Temple had heard was beginning to work an ugly fancy in
my mind. I stepped aft to the wheel.

‘Did the captain tell you why he was going below?’

‘No, sir,’ was the answer. ‘He’d been standing for about a quarter of an
hour stock still; then he comes soddenly in a sort o’ run to the
binnacle, takes a look at the card, and says: “Keep her as she goes;
nothing off: see to it! I shan’t be long.” That was all.’

At that instant the wind breezed up in a gust that came in a long howl
over the weather rail, and the little vessel bowed down to it till the
smother alongside looked to be up to the covering-board.

‘No use waiting for the captain,’ said I, made irritable by anxiety; ‘we
shall have the masts out of her if we don’t mind our eye;’ and running
forward, I shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Lay aft and haul up the
mainsail!’

In a moment the watch came tumbling out of the darkness forward. Their
manner of rushing gave me to know that they had been standing by for the
order to shorten sail, and were wondering why it had not been delivered
sooner.

‘Furl it, lads,’ I shouted, ‘when you’ve hauled it up; but first get
your maintopgallant staysail hauled down. I must find out what has
become of the captain.’

Without losing another moment, I ran into the cuddy and knocked upon the
door of the captain’s cabin. No answer was returned. I knocked again,
thundering with my fist; then tried the handle, and found the door
locked. ‘Good God!’ thought I, ‘the man has shot himself. _That_ will be
the meaning of the sound Miss Temple heard.’ As I turned for a moment,
utterly at a loss how to act, the girl rose through the hatch close to
where I stood. She held in her hand the lantern I had left alight in my
berth.

‘What has happened?’ she cried.

‘I have no notion as yet,’ I responded; ‘but I fear the captain has shot
himself. Let me take that lantern from you.’

I swiftly hitched it by its laniard to a hook in a stanchion, noticing
as I did so that she had completely dressed herself.

‘Remain here for the present, will you?’ I went on. ‘I must go on
deck—there is no one to give orders to the men.’

I ran up the steps, and perceived the shadowy shapes of the seamen
ascending the shrouds to lay out upon the main yard.

‘Who is that there?’ I called, observing a dark figure standing near the
main hatch.

‘Me—Wilkins, sir.’

‘Jump forward, Wilkins,’ I shouted, ‘and call Mr. Lush. Tell him I want
him aft—that I’m afraid something serious has happened; in fact, rout up
all hands. We shall be having to reef down shortly.’

The fellow sped forwards. It had been no passing gust that had bowed the
barque down, but a real increase in the weight of wind; and by this
time, knowing fairly well how the gear led, I let go the maintopgallant
halliards, and then ran aft to the mizzen topmast staysail halliards,
and was dragging with my single pair of hands upon the downhaul, when
the carpenter came up to me, followed by the rest of the watch below.

‘What’s gone wrong?’ he said.

‘I believe the captain has shot himself. His cabin door is locked, and
we have yet to discover that he has committed suicide. The wind
freshens, the ship wants watching, and there is nobody to see to her.
Will you take charge? I’ll wait for you in the cabin.’

What expression a light cast upon his countenance might have shown my
news produced in it I know not; there was a pause in him, as of sulky
astonishment, but he said nothing. He mounted the poop ladder; and I
entered the cuddy, catching the sound as I did so of the men on the main
yard chorusing as they triced up the bunt of the sail, along with a
sudden roar from the carpenter to clew up the main-topgallant-sail and
furl it. The candle end burning in the lantern made but a wretched
light, as you will suppose. Close beside it, in such radiance as it
emitted, stood Miss Temple, white as stone, and her eyes wide and
luminous with alarm.

‘Is the vessel in danger?’ she asked.

‘Oh dear, no,’ I replied; ‘the breeze has freshened considerably, and
the men are shortening sail. But this light is truly abominable. We
shall require to be able to see clearly presently.’ And with that I took
out the candle and lighted the cabin lamp with it.

‘I have been every moment expecting to see that door open, and _his_
figure creep out!’ said Miss Temple, pointing with a shudder, and
without looking, towards the captain’s berth. ‘Do you believe he has
shot himself?’

‘Not a doubt of it. Why should his door be locked? I should know he has
destroyed himself without being able to make a guess at his method of
doing so, but for your saying that you heard the report of a pistol.’

‘I assuredly heard it, Mr. Dugdale. I was awake. I have not slept since
I lay down. The sound was like the crack of a whip over my head.’

Just then the carpenter roared out some fresh orders. The barque,
relieved of her mainsail and topgallant-sail, had recovered from her
perilous heel, and was thrashing through it with what seemed a stubborn
erectness of spar after the recent wild slope of her masts. The sea was
rising, and the vessel was beginning to pitch with some spite in the
chopping and smiting shear of her clipper bows, from which the surge
recoiled in thunder, washing aft in boiling spume with a sound like the
fall of the hail and rain of an electric storm. I could tell without
needing to look that Mr. Lush’s latest order concerned the reefing of
the foretopsail. At all events, he had his little ship well in hand, and
the whole of the vessel’s small crew were on deck to run about to his
directions, and there was some comfort to be got out of knowing this.

To satisfy a small doubt that had arisen, I stepped once again over to
the captain’s cabin and hammered loud and long upon the door, shouting
out his name, and then trying the handle; but to no purpose.

‘For what new horrors are we reserved?’ cried Miss Temple. ‘Shall we
ever escape with our lives? How much has been compressed within the last
few days: the dead body on the wreck—the drowning of the poor
lieutenant—the loss, perhaps, of Mr. Colledge and the sailors in the
man-of-war’s boat—and now this!’ she cried, bringing her hands to her
face with a sudden convulsive, tearless sob; then looking at me she
said: ‘If Captain Braine has killed himself, what is to follow?’

‘Rio,’ I answered. ‘I shall carry the ship there straight. Thank God for
such knowledge of navigation as I possess! I trust the captain may not
have killed himself; but if he has done so, it will make for our good.
He was a madman, and it was impossible from hour to hour to be sure of
his intentions.’

‘But, Mr. Dugdale, there will be no head to the ship if the captain be
dead. Who, then, is to control the crew—this crew of convicts and
mutineers and—and?’——

‘It was a madman who drew that picture,’ said I. ‘I suspect he is as
correct in his description of his crew as in his description of his
treasure. The men are without a navigator; they can do nothing without
me. If they are true Jacks, they are already sick of the voyage, and
will be glad to have a port under their lee, with the promise of a jaunt
ashore and fresh articles to sign on another ship’s capstan.’

We continued talking thus; presently I heard the seamen chorusing at the
foretopsail halliards, and later on the carpenter Lush entered the cabin
by the cuddy door.

‘She’ll be snug at this,’ he exclaimed in his gruff voice; ‘there’s no
more weight of wind, and the whole main-topsail won’t be too much for
her if it don’t freshen yet. What’s this about the capt’n, sir?’

As he spoke, I observed the glimmering faces of the crew, the whole body
of them, saving the fellow at the wheel, crowding to take a peep through
the cuddy windows and doorway. I saw Miss Temple glance with terror
towards them; but there was nothing more natural than that the fellows
should desire to obtain all news of an event that concerned them so
closely as the suicide of their captain. I repeated what little I knew
to the carpenter, who at once stalked to the captain’s door and tried
the handle for himself, shaking it viciously.

‘I suppose it’ll have to be broke open?’ he exclaimed, looking round.

‘Certainly,’ I answered, ‘and the sooner the better. This suspense is
intolerable.’

‘I’ll go forrards and get some tools,’ he said.

He returned after a few minutes, and two seamen accompanied him, one of
them being Joe Wetherly. The others, heedless of all custom, in their
devouring curiosity came shouldering one another into the cuddy,
thrusting inch by inch to the centre of it, where they stood staring—a
wild and rugged group, indeed, in that light; hairy breasts, naked,
weather-darkened nervous arms liberally scored with blue devices, bare
feet, gleaming eyes, sheath-knives on their hips—I could scarcely wonder
that Miss Temple shrank from them, and clung to my side with her hand in
my arm! They did not need the character the captain had given them to
make her do that!

Lush forced the door of the berth; it flew open to a heavy blow, and I
advanced to take a view of the interior, Miss Temple letting go of my
arm with an exclamation, rather choosing to remain alone near the
sailors than take a peep at the horror her imagination bodied forth. A
small bracket lamp was burning brightly. In the centre of the deck of
the cabin lay the body of Captain Braine. He was on his breast, his arms
were outstretched, one leg was crooked, as though broken under the
other. A pistol of a pattern somewhat similar to the one I had
discovered in Mr. Chicken’s locker lay beside his right hand. These
details we immediately witnessed; but we had to look a little before we
could distinguish the great stain of blood upon the square of drugget
under the cheek of the poor creature, and showing in a black line from a
hole on a level with his eye.

‘He has shot himself, as you said,’ exclaimed the carpenter in a hoarse
note, and backing half a pace to the right.

‘Turn him over, Bill,’ said Wetherly to the other sailor.

‘Not me! Handle him yourself, Joe.’

Wetherly fell upon a knee, and got the corpse on its back. After my
experience with the body on the wreck, I should have deemed myself equal
to any sort of ghastly sight-seeing; but that dead captain’s face was
more than I could bear, and I was forced to look away and to keep my
gaze averted, to rally my nerves from the shock the spectacle had given
them.

The crew had come shoving right to the very cabin door, and stood in a
crowd, staring open-mouthed with a sort of groaning of exclamations
breaking out from amongst them.

‘A bad job this, sir,’ said Wetherly, looking round to me.

‘He’ll be stone-dead, I suppose?’ said the carpenter.

‘O God, yes!’ I exclaimed.

The carpenter seemed to wait, as if he expected me to give directions.

‘Better get the body into the bunk, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and cover it up
for to-night.’

‘Ay, hide it as soon as ye will, Joe,’ exclaimed the carpenter; and as
he said these words, I observed that he rolled his eyes with an
expression in them of keen and thirsty scrutiny over the cabin.

Wetherly and the other man who had entered with him lifted the body,
placed it in the bunk, and threw a blanket over it. We then quitted the
cabin, leaving the lamp burning, though, I fancy, nobody noticed that
but myself; and the carpenter put a little wedge of wood under the door
to keep it shut. The sailors slowly walked away out on to the
quarter-deck, casting inquisitive glances around them, and at Miss
Temple, as they withdrew. The carpenter came to a stand at the table,
and turning his surly face upon me, exclaimed in his deep-sea,
bad-tempered voice: ‘What’s to be done now?’

‘There’s nothing for it,’ I answered, ‘but to make for the nearest port,
and Rio will be that.’

‘Ay; but that ain’t the question just at present,’ he exclaimed. ‘What I
mean is, what’s the discipline agoing to be?’

‘Why, of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘I must render all the assistance I
possibly can. If the crew consent, I shall be happy to keep watch and
watch with you. In any case, I’ll navigate the ship. Very fortunately, I
can do so.’

‘It’ll be a matter for the crew,’ said he, talking with his eyes upon
the deck and speaking after a pause. ‘To-morrow morning will be time
enough to settle what’s to be done. I kep’ a lookout from eight to
twelve to-night; and if you’ll stand this here middle watch, I’ll be a
relieving of ye at four; and arter breakfast, giving you time to get
some sleep, I’ll call the crew aft, and we’ll see what they’ve got to
say, now there ain’t neither mate nor capt’n left.’

‘But you are the mate; the acting second mate,’ I cried, sensible of an
indefinable misgiving that grew rapidly into an emotion of cold and
heart-sickening consternation.

‘I tell ye _no_, sir!’ he shouted; ‘I’m no second mate. I signed on as
ship’s carpenter, and I’ve told ye so. Since Mr. Chicken died, I’ve been
treated by that man there’—he pointed with a square forefinger to the
cabin door—‘worse than any mongrel dog that e’er a blunderbuss was
brought to bear on. _Me_ a second mate?’ He struck his breast in a sort
of frenzy with his clenched fist and grinned in my face.

‘Very well,’ said I, forcing a note of composure into my voice; ‘it is a
mere detail of routine, which we can settle to-morrow, as you say.’

‘All right,’ he exclaimed; and pulling his skin cap down over his head,
he trudged on his rounded legs out of the cuddy.

‘I must go on deck, Miss Temple,’ said I.

She was eyeing me, as though bereft of speech, when I addressed her.

‘I will accompany you,’ she exclaimed.

‘No! It is out of the question.’

‘Why?’ she cried imperiously, with the irritability of dismay and dread
in her manner.

‘I shall be on deck till four. Such a spell of exposure it will be
needless for you to undergo. You are perfectly safe in your cabin.’

‘How _dare_ you ask me to return to that horrible lonely part of the
ship?’ she cried, with wrath and alarm brilliant in her eyes.

‘Then take some rest upon that locker there.’

‘You ask me to remain here _alone_ with the dead body close to in that
cabin?’

‘Miss Temple,’ said I firmly, ‘if you decline to return to your cabin,
you will at least oblige me by staying in this cuddy. I have no time to
reason with you. You must obey me, if you please. Give me your hand.’
She extended it, and I conducted her to the sofa locker, on which I
gently but resolutely compelled her to seat herself. ‘You can rest here
with perfect safety,’ I went on. ‘I am astonished that a woman of your
spirit should find anything to render you uneasy, in the face of the
real difficulties which confront us, in the neighbourhood of a harmless
corpse. I can command a view of you and of this interior through that
skylight. But you must not come on deck.’

She watched me in a motionless posture with an air of haughty resentment
upon her lips, to which a kind of awe in her gaze gave the lie. I left
her, and had my foot upon the companion steps, when a thought occurred
to me. Going to the door of the captain’s berth, I withdrew the wedge,
and entered and picked up the pistol that lay upon the deck. It was a
heavy single-barrelled concern, but a firearm all the same, and I thrust
it into my breast. I perceived no materials for loading it; but I had
what was necessary in that way below; and now I was possessed, as I did
not doubt, of the only two pistols in the ship.

I extinguished the lamp, wedged the door afresh, and responding to Miss
Temple’s appealing stare with a smile, I went on deck. The night was a
clear dusk, with a great plenty of shining stars, over which many small
clouds were driving swiftly; and the wind still continued to blow
strong, though it had not gained in force since sail had last been
shortened, and the sea was now running steadily on the bow in regular
heaps of dark waters melting at their heads, so that the motion of the
barque, by being rhythmic, was comparatively easy. I gained the weather
deck; and after a peep at the compass and a glance at the
indistinguishable face of the figure at the wheel, I started off on the
traditionary pendulum walk of the sea-watch, to and fro, to and fro,
from the wheel to the break of the poop, constantly directing looks to
windward or up aloft, and frequently at Miss Temple, as she showed,
seated as I had left her, visible to me through the glass of the
skylight. It was out of the question that she should pace the deck with
me throughout that long watch. The pouring wind came with an edge of
cold damp that made itself felt after a brief term of exposure to it.
Then, again, it was not to be thought of that the sailors should find
the lady on deck throughout this night watch, as though we were both in
mortal fear, and kept together to hearten each other. Now that it had
come to there being no head to the ship, it was of vital importance that
Miss Temple should remain as private as possible, but little seen by the
men. I had clear ideas as to the extraordinary situation in which we
were placed; and as I glanced at her through the skylight window, I made
up my mind to subdue her to my views, to conquer the insolence of her
spirit, even should it come to my having to act in a manner that might
be deemed brutal, never to humour her by giving her reasons, but to
peremptorily insist in such a fashion as to make her perceive that
whilst we were thus together, I was her master, and she must instantly
acquiesce in my decisions; for unless this was to be managed, her
temper, her want of tact, her pettish character as that of a person
whose nature had been injured by admiration and indulgence, might end in
the destruction of us both.

What a midnight watch was that! I was sick at heart, and miserable with
misgiving. My distrust of the carpenter, a feeling that had all along
possessed me, was strong even to a conviction that he was equal to the
acting of a hellish part, and that being free, and at the head, so to
speak, of a gang of men, of whom one only—I mean Wetherly—seemed worthy
of confidence, he might be presently hatching some plot of deadly menace
to Miss Temple and me. I asked myself what form could such a plot take?
I knew not: I could but forebode: I could only keep before me the
circumstance of a little ship afloat on a wide sea without captain or
mates, full to the hatches with commodities of value, a handsome fabric
of herself, virtually in the possession of an irresponsible body of men,
into whose keeping she had come through the merest effect of fortune,
without the least stroke of rascality on their part. I say I had only to
consider this, and then to think of the character of the crew as it had
been represented to me by Captain Braine, to forebode some action on
their part that might extinguish my project of reaching Rio—with so much
to follow that I durst not give my mind to speculating upon it.

Shocking as had been the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the
captain’s suicide, the thing sat lightly as a horror upon my
imagination, so profoundly agitated was I by the indeterminable fears
that had been raised in me by the few words the carpenter had let fall.
I could not be sure; but it seemed to me, by the haze of light which
hung about the forecastle hatch, called the forescuttle, and by an
occasional stirring of shadows amidst it, as though to the movements of
the men below, or to figures coming on deck and descending again, that
all hands were awake forward. There should have been nothing to
particularly disturb me in this suspicion, for enough lay in the
captain’s death to account for the men keeping awake and talking; still,
the belief that the sailors were conversing in their gloomy little sea
parlour, with Lush’s growling tongue sulkily active amongst them,
greatly increased my uneasiness.

I continued to pace the deck, keeping a close eye upon the ship, with
watchful regard also of the compass, for every hour of this sailing was
bringing us by so many miles nearer to the South American seaboard.
Shortly before two o’clock, on looking through the skylight, I observed
Miss Temple lying back upon the cushion of the locker in a sound sleep.
Her hat was upon her knees, her cheek was pillowed upon her arm; thus
she rested in sideways posture. Whilst I stood looking at her, as at a
picture of a beautiful sleeping woman framed in the square of the
skylight, and touched with the soft illumination of the oil-lamp
swinging hard by her couch, a man struck four bells on the forecastle,
and a minute or two later the dark figure of a seaman came along to
leeward to relieve the wheel. I waited a little, and then stepped to the
binnacle under pretence of inspecting the card.

‘Are the watch below up forward?’ said I.

‘All hands are awake,’ he answered, and I recognised him by his voice,
though I could not discern his features. He was a young sailor named
Forrest, a fellow I had often taken notice of for the elastic suppleness
of his body, the peculiar swing of his walk, an amazing agility aloft,
and an air of mutinous impudence in his manner of going about any job he
might be put to.

‘I suppose they have been talking about the captain’s death?’ said I.

‘They’ve been talking of a many things,’ he responded with a sort of
chuckle in his voice, as though he had been drinking.

‘Is Mr. Lush among them?’

‘Oh, ay.’

‘Well, keep your luff,’ said I; ‘she’s a couple of points off her course
as it is.’

‘Her course for where?’ said the man.

‘For Rio,’ I answered.

He made no answer, and I resumed my pacing of the planks.




                             CHAPTER XXXIII
                     THE CARPENTER CALLS A COUNCIL


At four o’clock the carpenter came aft to relieve me. He asked me in a
short off-hand way how the weather had been; and the wide-awake note in
his voice satisfied me that whether or not he had slept during his watch
below, he had certainly not now come fresh from his bunk or hammock.
When I had answered him, he went abruptly to the compass, and I
descended the poop ladder and entered the cuddy.

Miss Temple was still asleep. It was more like some issue of the sorcery
of the imagination than the reality to come out of the windy dusk of the
night and an association, momentary it might be, with the carpenter, to
the spectacle of the slumbering beautiful girl breathing deep and
restfully, with the gleam of her white teeth showing through her parted
lips, and the lashes of her closed lids resting in a shadow of
surprising loveliness upon her colourless cheeks. But rest was
imperative to me; there was not another locker to use; and I would not
leave the girl alone. I lightly touched her hand; she smiled, but slept
on; I touched her again, and she sprang erect with an affrighted air,
staring at me with the meaningless gaze of the newly awakened.

‘Ah!’ she cried with a violent shudder, ‘I thought it was the dead
captain who touched me! How cold your hand is.’

‘I am going to my berth to seek some rest,’ said I; ‘and would not leave
you alone here.’

‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed; ‘I will go with you.’

‘You have been sleeping for above two hours,’ said I. ‘I am very glad.
Slumber is strength; nay, it is life. You have been safe, and you will
now tell me that I was in the right in entreating you to remain here.’

‘In _commanding_ me, you mean,’ she answered with a faint smile. ‘But
how miserable I was alone until I fell asleep—constantly imagining that
that door was being cautiously opened’—another strong shudder swept
through her while she motioned towards the captain’s cabin, holding her
face averted.

I unhooked the lantern belonging to my berth, lighted the candle in it,
and, taking her by the hand, conducted her to the hatch. When we had
entered the steerage, I lifted her hand to my lips in the old-fashioned
salute and said: ‘Miss Temple, if I appear to _command_, it is with the
hope of being useful as a protector to a companion whose claims upon me
must needs deepen as we continue together and as the outlook darkens.’

I held open her cabin door for her, gave her my lantern; and then going
to my own berth, groped my way to the bunk, and was speedily in a sound
sleep.

It was eight o’clock by my watch when I awoke. I at once sprang out of
bed, and, having carefully secreted the pistol I had brought with me
from the captain’s cabin, I hastily sluiced my face with some salt
water, and stepped to Miss Temple’s cabin door, on which I knocked. She
answered me. I told her that she would find me on deck. ‘It is eight
o’clock,’ I said, ‘and my turn to keep watch has come round.’ With that
I ascended the steps. Wilkins was in the cuddy, as I must needs call the
little living-room, though, after the Indiaman’s saloon, it seemed a big
name to give to so small an interior. I said: ‘The lady will be here
shortly. Get breakfast ready for us, d’ye hear? We will eat it on deck,
unless there is somebody to keep my lookout whilst I come below for the
meal.’ He answered, civilly enough, that he would carry it on deck to us
on my letting him know when we were ready for it.

I found the carpenter on the poop talking to a couple of seamen; but on
seeing me, the two fellows went forward in a sort of sheepish way. It
was a fine morning, lively with flying sunshine, and the seas were
running in foaming dark-blue hills, which shouldered the reflection of
the sun into incessant flashings of fire as dazzling as the beams darted
down by the luminary himself betwixt the edges of the streaming clouds.
I sent a swift look round; there was nothing in sight. The barque was
under the same canvas I had left upon her when I went below; but my
first step carrying me to the compass, I perceived that she was making a
more southerly course by two points than she had been heading when I
left the deck; and, indeed, when I directed my eyes aloft for a second
time, I perceived that the yards had been slightly braced in, and that,
in short, Mr. Lush was making a fair wind of what was a foul one for
Rio. I was greatly startled, but controlled my face, for the man’s eyes
were upon me.

‘I presume, Mr. Lush,’ said I, crossing over to him and feigning a
certain carelessness of behaviour whilst I looked with a manner of
indifference past him at the weather horizon, ‘that you are aware the
barque is needlessly off her course, seeing that she’ll easily look up
another two or two and a half points?’

‘A ship’s course depends upon where she’s a going,’ he answered, running
his eyes over my figure; ‘and nothen’s settled yet so far as we’re
consarned.’

‘Oho! Is it so, indeed!’ said I, after venting myself in a short
whistle. ‘What is the objection to Rio, Mr. Lush?’

‘I’ll be calling the crew aft presently,’ he exclaimed; ‘it’s a question
for all hands, not for me nor you only, sir.’

‘I trust,’ said I, my feigned air of carelessness vanishing before the
real consternation that was now active in me, ‘that the sailors will not
obstruct my earnest desire for the lady’s sake, as well as for my own,
to make for Rio as promptly as possible. Miss Temple and I have met with
some cruel experiences, and we are as badly off even now, aboard this
smart little barque, as we were in the wreck from which you rescued us.
In God’s name, Mr. Lush, let there be no unreasonable hindrance to our
speedy arrival at a port whence we may take shipping for home.’

‘I have said,’ he responded in his sulkiest manner, ‘that it ain’t a
question for one man nor for two men, but for all hands.’

I witnessed stubbornness that was to be easily developed into insolence
strong in the ruffian’s face, and bit my lip to silence my tongue. After
a short pause I said: ‘I observe that the decks have not been washed
down.’

‘No; that’s right. They han’t been washed down.’

‘When is the body of the captain to be buried?’

‘He is buried,’ he answered; and then went on, as though perceiving that
some explanation was necessary: ‘No good in keeping a human corpse
aboard ship. ‘Tain’t lucky. ‘Tain’t lucky, even if so be as it’s the
human corpse of a good man; but when it comes to the body of the likes
of _him_‘—— He spat over the rail. ‘He was rolled up in canvas and
dropped overboard two hours since.’

‘A dog’s funeral!’ said I, betwixt my teeth.

‘A dog’s funeral’s all that the best sailor must expect; the treatment
of a dog when he’s alive, and a mongrel’s burial when he’s dead.’

‘Well, I’m here to relieve you,’ said I. ‘Wilkins will bring my
breakfast on deck.’

‘All right,’ he answered. ‘Suppose we call it nine o’clock for the
council that’s to be held?’

I turned from him, assenting with a gesture, and walked aft, miserably
sick at heart, to receive Miss Temple, who at that moment appeared in
the companion way. She instantly perceived by my face that there was
something gravely wrong with us, and fixed a look of nervous passionate
inquiry upon me. There was no purpose to be served by concealing my
fears from her—fears which, shapeless as they might now be, were, I did
not question, to be converted presently into bitter convictions. I took
her hand and conducted her to the skylight, where we were out of earshot
of the helmsman.

‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘that the death of Captain Braine has thickened
the problem of this adventure for us.’

‘What has happened?’ she demanded.

‘When I went below at four o’clock this morning,’ I replied, ‘the _Lady
Blanche_ was looking up for the port of Rio as closely as the wind
permitted her. Since then, Mr. Lush has taken it upon himself to alter
the vessel’s course, and we need but another point or two of southing to
be sailing straight away—down the South Atlantic Ocean.’

‘But the ship is _now_ being steered for Rio?’

‘No.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘Why do you not order the man to direct her according
to your wishes?’ And she sent one of her flashing glances at the hairy
face of the sailor who grasped the spokes.

‘The crew are coming aft presently to settle the question of our
destination. I can do nothing. If they have made up their minds to a
course, they are not going to suffer me to get in the road of it.’

‘But what course? What resolution are they likely to form?’ she
exclaimed, clasping her hands with a gesture of despair, and gazing
forwards with an expression of terror at a group of fellows who stood at
the galley door talking.

‘I know nothing, and can tell you nothing,’ I replied. ‘It is to signify
another tax upon our patience, and we must wait. Some destination they
are bound to hit upon; it will not be Rio, I believe. We shall see. They
cannot do without me—that is, I alone am capable of navigating the
vessel—and in that may lie our security. But one thing you must help me
to achieve, Miss Temple: I mean a behaviour of coolness, good temper,
and tact. I believe the devil himself is lodged in the hide of that
round-backed brute of a carpenter, and the crew may not be wanting in
some of the highest flavoured of his agreeable qualities. Help me, then,
to the most inoffensive and patient of attitudes, and say nothing
yourself—nay, _look_ nothing! for those dark eyes of yours have a hot
eloquence of their own, and a man need not hear your rich voice to know
what is passing in your mind.’

She forced a calmness upon herself, and spoke in a low voice: ‘If the
crew insist upon sailing the ship to some distant part, is there nothing
that we can do to induce them to transfer us to another vessel, or to
run into the land close enough to set us ashore in any town on the
coast?’

‘First, let them come to a resolution.’

‘This is a shocking situation to be in! Your old energy seems to be
leaving you. You give me dreadful news in a lifeless way, and talk
spiritlessly of suffering the crew to do as they please.’ She said this,
still preserving her forced composure; but there was ire in her gaze and
temper and despair in her respiration, in the twitching of the nostril,
in the curl of her lip, when she had spoken.

I looked at her steadily, but in silence, weighing down upon her gaze,
as it were, with my own until her eyes fell. ‘Not spiritless yet,’ said
I. ‘Nor shall I suffer you to make me so, Miss Temple.’

She hung her head, and beat with her fingers upon her knuckles, as
though she needed some exercise of that sort to enable her to suppress
her emotions or her tears. Wilkins came under the skylight to ask if I
was ready for breakfast. I bade him bring it to us; and he arrived with
some coffee and cold meat and biscuit. I could not induce the girl to
eat. Even when she took a sip of coffee she scarcely seemed able to
swallow it. Her misery was wretched to see. Sometimes she would start
and send a wild sweeping look round the horizon; often she would moan. I
tried to put some heart into her; but I could find little to say,
ignorant as I then was of what the crew meant to do. Most of them seemed
to be in or about the galley. A few stood in the doorway, and their
behaviour suggested that there were others inside to whose utterance,
whatever form it took, they listened with attention, sometimes glancing
aft at us. Shortly before nine o’clock I said to Miss Temple that the
crew were coming aft at that hour, and requested her to go to her own
cabin that she might be out of sight of them.

‘Cannot I remain on deck?’ she exclaimed. ‘My suspense will be a
torment. You are banishing me to an underground cell.’

‘You will withdraw to your cabin, if you please, Miss Temple. We are
here dealing with a crew of men who are now without a head, and whose
temper may grow lawless whenever they shall realise that they are their
own masters.’

‘You will come to me the moment you are at liberty, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Most assuredly.’

I accompanied her to the companion, and watched her as she descended the
steps. She halted at the bottom of the ladder to look up at me with eyes
of appealing grief. How close she had come to my heart I might not have
been able to successfully guess till that moment. I longed to take her
in my arms, to entreat her forgiveness for any act or speech of
sternness or harshness, to soothe her with all bright and comforting
hopes that it was in my power to utter. A step carried her out of my
sight, but for some minutes after, the memory of her beautiful appealing
eyes dominated all other thoughts, and I could think of nothing but her
noble figure, the grief of her colourless high-bred face, the suggestion
I found in her attitude of her yearning for my presence and
protection—profoundly touching to me who loved her, spite of not knowing
that the motive of her longing was to be found in no other sentiment
than that of her fear.

Presently the carpenter came out of the galley knocking the ashes out of
his pipe, and advanced slowly to the poop, followed by most of the crew,
who halted opposite the cuddy front.

‘The cabin’ll be the place to talk in,’ said he; ‘there’ll be no hearing
of one another up here. There’s Joe Wetherly’ll keep a lookout whilst
you and me are below.’

‘I am ready,’ I answered.

He called to Wetherly, who was standing in the waist, forward of the
others. The man touched his cap to me as he ascended the poop ladder,
and looked at me meaningly through the minute holes in which his eyes
lay deep buried. I entered the cuddy with the carpenter, who turned
round as he passed through the door to sing out, ‘Step in, lads.’ Nine
fellows in all followed. Most of them carried a sort of grinning,
wondering expression on their faces; but here and there I took note of a
determined countenance.

‘Mr. Lush,’ I exclaimed, ‘the ordering of this business is in your
hands. I will leave you to settle whatever ceremonies we are to pass
through.’

‘Mr. Lush’ll take the cheer,’ said one of the men.

The carpenter at once seated himself in the captain’s chair at the after
end of the little table. The sailors sat down upon the benches. Lush
exclaimed: ‘Mr. Dugdale, you sit alongside o’ me here. Mates, ease
yourselves down, and make room for the gent.’

I took the place he indicated, and waited with as resolved a face as I
could screw my features into for what was to follow. There was a pause
whilst the carpenter, rolling his eyes over the seamen, seemed to be
hunting in his mind for words in which to express himself. The men
stared from him to me with an occasional glance round, especially in the
direction of the tumbler-rack, at which they would cast thirsty looks.
In this brief spell of silence I sought to interpret their intentions
from their postures; but there was little to reassure me in their
bearing. There was a kind of defiance in it that instantly made itself
felt. They were clad for the most part in shirts and duck or dungaree
breeches; their breasts were bare, with the sight here and there of some
ink and gunpowder device straggling amidst the hair; they leaned upon
their naked muscular arms or sat with them folded looking at me or the
carpenter. There was no hint of such diffidence as one might expect to
find in forecastle hands occupying the saloon or cabin of a ship.

‘We’ve been a-tarning over,’ began the carpenter, speaking slowly and
viewing me out of the corners of his eyes, ‘the condition we’re put in
by the sooicide of Capt’n Braine. All hands is agreed, saving one, who
says that he dorn’t much care how it goes.’

‘Who is that one?’ I asked.

‘Joe Wetherly,’ he answered.

I waited, but he seemed to require me to question him.

‘You are all agreed, you say, Mr. Lush—upon what?’

He coughed, thrust his fingers into his neckcloth to ease his throat,
and then said: ‘Well, now, I’ll tell ye exactly how it stands. Wilkins
there was next door to the capt’n’s cabin when he told you of that
matter of two hundred thousand pound lying stowed away in a South Sea
island. He comes forward and tells us all about it.’ He paused, then
said with a tone of impatience: ‘Of course, ye can guess now what we’ve
settled on?’

‘Pray, explain,’ said I, understanding but too thoroughly, and feeling
the blood forsaking my cheek.

‘Why,’ said the carpenter with a short laugh, ‘what we’ve resolved on is
to sail to that there island and get the money.’

‘No good in leaving all that money to lie there for the savages to dig
up,’ exclaimed one of the men.

‘Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘I am a stranger in this ship, and have but one
desire, and that is, to leave her along with the young lady who was my
fellow-passenger aboard the Indiaman. You will of course do what you
will with the vessel. The action of the crew can make no part of my
business. All that I ask is that you will signal the first vessel we
fall in with, let her be heading as she will, and tranship us.’

A growling ‘No!’ ran amongst the men. The carpenter echoed it with a
blow of his fist upon the table. ‘No, sir! we can’t spare you. It’ll be
_you_, Mr. Dugdale, that’ll carry us to that island.’

My consternation was too visible to be missed even by the ignorant eyes
which were bent upon me.

‘You’ll be treated fairly, sir,’ said one of the men, with an air and
tone of conciliation. ‘We’ve allowed for you being a gent as’ll be
carried away from the parts he wants to git to, Mr. Lush and us men have
talked it well over, and the share of the money ye choose to name is the
share you shall have for the time and trouble this bit of navigation’ll
cost you.’

A murmur of assent followed this speech, several heads nodding so
vehemently that their hair danced about their eyes.

‘But, men,’ I cried, turning upon and addressing them in a body, ‘you
are surely not going to persuade me that you _believe_ in this yarn of
the captain?’

‘Don’t you?’ inquired the carpenter with a sarcastic sneer.

‘It was the imagination of a madman,’ I continued—‘a crazy fancy, men!
Surely there is no sailor here but knew that the captain was insane. Did
not his actions, his talk, his very looks, prove him mad? And what more
convincing proof of his insanity could you desire than the last act of
his life?’

Two or three of the fellows grumbled out something, but I did not catch
the words. ‘Mad, was he?’ exclaimed the carpenter in a voice of coarse,
morose sarcasm; ‘ye didn’t think that when you stood out for a share.’

‘How do you know,’ I cried, ‘that I stood out for a share?’

‘By God, then,’ he roared, ‘we know everything! Did ye or did ye not
sign an agreement for a share?’

‘I did,’ I answered, ‘but merely to humour the man’s madness. I should
have left the ship at Rio.’

‘There’s no use in talking,’ he exclaimed, smoothing down his voice a
trifle; ‘the compact between ye was overheard. Me and the others here
was to be got rid of at Rio. Then a crew of Kanakas was to be shipped
off the Sandwich Islands. Then, with the gold aboard hidden out of
sight, you and him was to ship fresh hands. Mad?’ he cried in an
indescribably sneering way; ‘no, no, that worn’t do. Ye didn’t think him
mad, then, when you made him provide that if the law laid hold of him
for a-running away with his ship, you was to be guaranteed free o’ peril
by what you or him tarmed a hinstrument. Ye didn’t think him mad then,
and ye don’t think him mad now.’

‘Wilkins,’ I exclaimed to the young fellow who sat at the corner end of
the table, ‘you overheard that conversation, and your ears were sharp
enough to gather in every syllable of it. Were they not sharp enough, my
lad, to judge by the tone of my voice that I assented to the madman’s
humour merely to induce him to make for the near port of Rio, that I and
the lady might quickly get away from this vessel?’

The veal-faced fellow stirred uneasily to the many eyes which were
turned upon him; but he answered nevertheless with resolution and
emphasis: ‘You stipulated for tarms, specially for a share, and you
spoke as if you was in airnest.’

‘Mr. Lush,’ I cried, ‘I am a gentleman. Believe me, on my honour as one,
when I swear to you that I accepted the captain’s story as a madman’s
fabrication, and seemed to agree with him only that I might get away
from his ship the sooner.’

‘What was the dawcument you signed, sir?’ inquired one of the sailors.

‘Ah, that’s it,’ cried another; ‘let’s see the hinstrument, as Mr. Lush
tarms it.’

I had them both in my pocket-book, intending to preserve them as
curiosities and as illustrations of my adventure with Miss Temple. I
could not refuse to produce them, nor would I stoop to a falsehood; but
I was sensible as I drew out the pocket-book, intently watched by the
seamen, that the mere circumstance of my carrying the papers about with
me as though I deemed them too precious to be laid aside in a drawer,
told heavily against the assurance I had made to the men. The carpenter
picked the documents up.

‘Who can read here?’ said he, looking round. There was no reply. ‘Will
you recite ’em, sir?’ he continued, turning his surly eyes upon me.

‘There’s Joe as can read,’ broke in a voice.

‘Ay, call Joe,’ exclaimed another man.

This signified that I was not to be trusted. They might suppose I would
invent instead of reading, and there was no man present able to spell a
word to disprove what I chose to deliver. The lee lid of the skylight
lay open. The carpenter roared through it for Joe Wetherly, who promptly
stepped below.

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking round upon his mates.

‘Here, Joe,’ said the carpenter, ‘you’re the one scholard aboard us.
Tarn to, will ‘ee, and let’s hear what’s wrote down upon these papers.’

The man glanced at me with an expression of sympathy and bashfulness. ‘I
hope there’s nothen private and agin your wish in this, sir? ‘he
exclaimed. ‘I’m for standin’ neutral in this here job.’

‘Pray read,’ said I.

He did so, backing and filling in his postures in true sailor fashion as
he struggled through the writing, reciting the words slowly, with
considerable pauses between, which furnished his hearers with time to
digest what he delivered. He then put the papers down, but with an air
of astonishment, as I noticed with grief and anxiety, as if having been
before incredulous of the captain’s story, he was beginning to regard it
as a fact now in the face of such documentary evidence as he had read.

‘All right, Joe; thank ye,’ said the carpenter gruffly; ‘you can go on
deck agin.’ The man went up the ladder slowly, as though lost in
thought. ‘Lads,’ exclaimed Lush, ‘ye’ll agree with me there’s no need
for further arguefication after what ye’ve just heard.’

‘The money’s right enough, and we’ll git it,’ said one of the men.

‘Where’s the chart of the island as Wilkins said the captain talked
about?’ inquired the limber bold-faced young seaman with whom I had
spoken at the wheel when I found the barque off her course.

All eyes were at once turned upon me. ‘You’ll find it in the drawer of
the table of the captain’s cabin,’ said I.

The fellow coolly entered the berth, and presently returned with a
handful of papers. ‘Which’ll it be, sir?’ he exclaimed, placing them
before me. I picked up the parchment chart, and gave it to the
carpenter, who spread it out before him, and instantly all the men came
round to his chair, and stood in a heap of shouldering figures mowing
and mopping over his shoulders to catch a view, tossing the hair with
jerks of their heads out of their eyes, and breathing hard with
excitement.

‘I suppose you’re capable of explaining the meaning of these here
marks?’ exclaimed the carpenter, pressing a shovel-shaped thumb upon the
outline of the island.

‘You shall have the yarn as the captain gave it me,’ said I, speaking
with a throat dry with mortification and sickness at heart; for it was
only too certain now that my agreements with the captain coupled with
this chart had hardened the men’s conviction into an immovable
resolution. They listened with breathless interest as I told them that
the barb of the arrow indicated the situation of the buried money; that
the treasure lay hidden so many paces away from the wash of the water of
the lagoon; that the blot in the centre of the bight was meant to
express a coral pillar that served as a mark to obtain the bearings of
the gold by; and so on. I see their feverish eyes as I write coming and
going from my face to the chart, and the various expressions of
exultation, eager determination, amazement, and delight on the mob of
countenances over the carpenter’s shoulders.

‘You now have what the captain explained to me,’ said I; ‘but he was a
madman, men; and I take God to witness that though this island may be
real, the money is the coinage of a diseased mind.’

‘Yet ye would not stir till you had made him agree to give you a share,’
said the carpenter. ‘Boys, back to your places whilst I delivers the
resolution we have all of us made up our minds to.’

The sailors hurriedly resumed their seats. The carpenter gazed slowly
round, then addressed me with his eyes in the corner of their sockets
whilst his face pointed straight down the table.

‘We’re here without a capt’n,’ he began, ‘and though this barque ain’t
ourn, we mean to use her. We don’t intend no act of piracy. When we’ve
got the gold, we’ll deliver up the ship and her cargo, which we shan’t
meddle with. We’re all of us working men, and the money in that there
island fairly distributed’ll make all hands of us independent for life.
There’s no more inwolved than the job of fetching it, and that’s to be
easily managed.’ The men nodded emphatically. ‘You’re a navigator, Mr.
Dugdale, and we can’t do without ye. There’s no good in talking of
shipping another man in your place, because, d’ ye see, that ‘ud oblige
us either to communicate with a passing vessel or to put into some port,
neither of which is to be hentertained, seeing the nature of the secret
which is ourn, and which we mean to keep ourn. We’re agreeable to
con-sider any tarms ye may think proper to propose. As has bin said, the
share ye name is the share ye’ll have. Ye shall be capt’n, and treated
as capt’n. You and the lady shall live in this here part of the ship
without mollystation, as the saying is; and ye’ll find us a perlite and
willing crew, who’ll stick to our side of the compact as _you_ stick to
yourn. The money ye’ll get by this job, gent as ye are, will repay both
you and the lady for loss o’ time and for work done. This here barque
knows how to sail, and neither me nor you’ll spare her; for we’re now in
a hurry and this voyage can’t end too quickly to please us all. Them’s
our tarms, which ye can put into writing if you please, and we’ll write
our marks agin it. There must be no communicating with ships; and _ye’ve
got to be honest_!’ He said this with a sudden frown, looking full at
me. ‘Is that your mind, men?’

There was a hurricane response of ‘Ay, ay! That’s right; that’s right.’

‘Give me a little while to consider,’ said I, observing that the
carpenter had come to an end.

‘By when will we have your answer?’ he demanded.

‘By noon.’

‘Agreed,’ he exclaimed. ‘Here’s your two documents. I’ll take charge of
this here chart.’

A few minutes later I was alone.




                             CHAPTER XXXIV
                                I ASSENT


I sat as the sailors had left me at that table, lost in thought, bending
all the energies of my mind to full realisation of my situation, that my
judgment might soundly advise me. I daresay I remained thus for above
twenty minutes as motionless as ever was the dead figure that we had met
with in the deck-house of the wreck. Then slowly rising, I went to one
of the cabin windows and stood mechanically staring at the piebald sky
that would come with a sweep, as the vessel rolled to windward, to the
throbbing line of the frothing horizon; and thus I continued, still
thinking, weighing one consideration and then another, forming
resolutions which the next effort of thought rendered helplessly idle,
until I had arrived at a determination; when, starting from my deep and
painful reverie, I descended into the steerage and knocked on Miss
Temple’s cabin door. She immediately opened it.

‘At last!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, what have you to tell me now?’

‘Let us go to the cabin,’ I answered; ‘we shall be alone there. The
gloom of these quarters is horribly depressing.’

My manner caused her to regard me for a moment or two with a feverish
eagerness of scrutiny; she then mounted the steps, and I followed her.

‘I wish I had news to give that might comfort you,’ said I, seating
myself at her side. ‘The men left me half an hour ago. I have been
thinking my hardest since, and will tell you now how matters stand, and
how I believe I must act.’

She breathed quickly, but said nothing. Her eyes devoured me, so
passionate was her curiosity and fear.

‘The captain’s conversation with me,’ I began, ‘was, as you know,
overheard by the rogue Wilkins, who waits upon us. He must have
hearkened thirstily; not a syllable did he lose, and every sentence he
carried forward to the crew. They are fully convinced of the truth of
the crazy story; they are firmly persuaded that there are some two
hundred thousand pounds’ worth of golden coin buried in that South Sea
island; they were also made aware by that scoundrel listener that I had
insisted upon having an agreement signed and witnessed; which of course
confirmed them in their opinion that I myself believe in the captain’s
story up to the hilt. Their demand, then, is, that I should navigate the
ship to the island, that they may dig up the money hidden in it.’

She listened with silent horror.

‘They laugh at my assurance that the captain was mad,’ I went on, ‘and
they see nothing in his suicide to cause them to doubt that his story is
absolutely true.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

‘That I must have time to think, and will give them an answer by noon.’

‘What _do_ you think?’ she demanded, searching my gaze with her proud
eyes.

‘I see nothing for it but to undertake to sail the ship to the South
Pacific.’

‘Are you mad?’ she almost shrieked. ‘To the South Pacific! Did you not
say to them that you will insist upon their stopping the first ship that
passes, and putting you and me on board of her?’

‘They are not to be reasoned with,’ I answered gently; ‘the dream of
this gold has raised an appetite in them that might easily convert them
into wild beasts, if I refuse to help them to satisfy their hunger. They
will not suffer communication with any passing vessel; they will not
permit me to make for any port. Their proposal is that I shall be
captain, and have, with you, the exclusive use of this end of the ship,
and they promise me handsome usage. But underlying the terms they desire
me to agree to is a menace that I should be blind not to see. I must do
what they want, or what that villain Lush has contrived that they shall
want, or God alone knows what the issue may be for you as well as for
myself.’

She sat viewing me like one paralysed.

‘My intention,’ I went on, ‘is to inform the carpenter at noon that I
assent to the wishes of the crew.’

She was about to speak; I held up my hand.

‘I entreat you to let me have my way. Do not reason. You can offer no
remedy for this situation saving that of haughty demand, which, unless
you can back it, as a theory of escape, by a gang of men capable of
pistolling the fellows forward, will be of no more use to you or to me
than a feather to a drowning man. My resolution is, to consent to
navigate this vessel to that South Sea island. The island may be an
imaginary one; the crew’s disappointment may force us into a hunt; they
will then certainly believe that the captain’s story was the fancy of a
madman, and will ask me to carry them to some near port. This will be
the issue of the adventure, supposing it is all smooth sailing till
then. But what may happen meanwhile? A storm to cripple us, and force us
to seek assistance? The sea abounds in the unexpected. We must wait upon
fortune. Nothing shall tempt me to endeavour to force her hand by any
sort of demeanour that is not one of tact, good temper, and secret,
iron-hard resolution to snatch at the first chance that may come along.
Why, is not such a policy as this your due, Miss Temple? Compared to
what _might_ happen if I did not deal with these men as a combustible
not on any account whatever to be approached with matter that could give
fire to them, this existence, this unendurable existence which we are
now passing through might be looked back upon as a veritable paradise. I
am one to twelve, and you have no protector but me. Think of it! Bear
with my judgment then; help me by striving to witness wisdom in my
determination; and above all keep up your heart, which is an
Englishwoman’s, whose pulse should grow stronger as the road grows
darker.’

She had put her hands to her face, and so sat listening to me, slightly
rocking herself. Presently she looked up.

‘I wish I had the spirit you ask me to show,’ she said in a low voice.
‘You may have resolved rightly—but this long alienation from home—the
misery of this existence—the peril we are in, which every day, which
every hour, seems to increase—oh, it is hard to bear! I will endeavour
to school myself—I will strive to see with your eyes’—she broke off with
a sob.

‘All will come right,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is entirely a question of
waiting. Have you patience? Yes—and your patience will keep you hopeful.
Trust to me and to my judgment.’

I took her hand in both mine and pressed it. She did not offer to
withdraw it. Indeed, it seemed as though she found comfort in the clasp;
her hard expression of consternation softened, and her fine eyes took
the same air of appeal I had noticed in them when she went below to her
cabin.

‘There is yet the chance,’ I said, ‘of my being able to persuade the
crew to transfer you to a passing ship. I might indeed,’ I went on,
warming up to the fancy, ‘insist upon this as a part of my agreement
with them.’

She slightly shook her head and her glance fell.

‘How long will it take us to reach this island?’ she asked, keeping her
gaze bent down.

‘Ten or twelve weeks, perhaps.’

She bit her lip to enable her to speak steadily, and said: ‘Supposing
there is no gold, what will be done?’

‘I cannot tell,’ I answered; ‘we may be quite certain that there is no
gold. It yet remains to be seen whether even the poor wretch’s island is
real.’

‘If there should be no island, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Well, as I just now said, the men will at first suppose me wrong in my
navigation, and oblige me to keep on hunting about for a bit. But such a
quest will not take long to tire them, and they will probably ask me to
carry them on to the coast.’

‘To what part?’

‘Valparaiso, probably. That will be a near port in those seas.’

‘At that rate,’ she exclaimed with an expression of impatience and
dismay, ‘we shall be sailing about for five or six months without the
least opportunity of my getting on shore, of my returning home, of my
being able to obtain a change of dress.’

‘Providing nothing happens. And even assuming that you are forced to see
this adventure out to the bitter end, the worst that befalls you is a
disagreeably long divorce from your home, together with such discomforts
as you should laugh at when you think of them side by side with the
tragedy that this ramble is easily to be worked into.’

However, spite of her little effort to look the difficulty in the face,
she seemed stunned. She would start sometimes whilst I talked to her,
and send a wild sweeping look round the cabin, as though she could not
realise her situation and sought to persuade herself that she was in a
dream. I was grieved for her beyond words, yet I would not exhibit too
much sympathy either, lest I should unduly accentuate the significance
of our condition, and make her suppose that I believed it darker and
more perilous than it really was. She had been buoyed up with a hope of
escaping into another ship, or of shortly landing at Rio, and sailing
home from there; and the disappointment coming on top of the perception
that our adventure, harsh and soul-subduing as it had already been in
some particulars, was only in reality just beginning, seemed to break
her down. I did my utmost to make light of the business: said that but
for my anxiety for her, I should enter upon the affair with positive
relish, accepting it as a wild romance of the sea, which could seldom
happen to a man in his life, and which he ought to live through and see
out, if only for the sake of the memory of a stirring picturesque
passage that at the longest would yet be brief.

‘As to wearing-apparel,’ I said, ‘there are needles and thread forward,
and I don’t doubt that when you are put to it you will be able to
manage. And then, suppose this story of the captain’s should prove true!
suppose we should actually find buried in the spot he indicated a mass
of gold which, when equally divided amongst us, would yield every man
several thousands of pounds!’

She searched my face with her glowing eyes. ‘You do not believe this?’
she cried.

‘Certainly I do not,’ I answered. ‘I am only supposing.’

‘I wish I could read your heart; I wish I could be sure that your
determination to assent to the men’s wishes is not owing to sympathy
with their own ideas.’

I burst into a loud laugh. ‘Of how many sins do you think me capable?’ I
exclaimed. ‘How many enormous follies am I equal to? I believe you
already secretly regard me as a pirate. Oh, Miss Temple, no man could
ever feel ill-tempered in conversing with you, say what you will. But
you are a little trying, though, now and again. Why do you wish to read
my heart? You might discover sentiments which would render me detestable
to you.’

‘I do not understand you,’ she exclaimed, looking somewhat frightened.

‘Admiration for you, in a person whom you dislike, would make you abhor
him.’

‘Mr. Dugdale, is this a time for such feeble small-talk as would
scarcely be endurable amidst safety and comfort? I should not be so
utterly unhappy as I am if I felt that my mother knew where I was, that
she was conscious of all that has happened to me, and that we should
meet again.’

‘It will all come right,’ said I, looking at my watch. ‘I must make
ready now for taking sights, and letting the carpenter know the
determination I have arrived at. Back me, Miss Temple, in my efforts by
the utmost exertion of your tact. And now, come on deck with me, will
you? There is life in the fresh and frothing scene outside, and you will
find courage in the mere sight of the wide horizon, with thoughts of
what lies behind it, and how time will work all things to your wishes.’

I entered the captain’s cabin to fetch a sextant, and then, with Miss
Temple, went on deck. Lush was marching up and down the weather side of
the poop. The sailors were sprawling about forward in whatever
shadowings of the canvas they could find, most of them smoking, their
faces red as powder-flags with the heat. Hot it was, with the sun
shining nearly over our mastheads, with a sting like to some fierce bite
in every flashing launch of his radiance betwixt the wool-white clouds
blowing transversely athwart his path, spite of the strong sweep of the
wind as it came splitting in long whistlings upon our rigging from a
little forward of the beam, the rush of it feeling almost damp to the
flesh to the view of the foaming waters melting into yeast out of the
long blue lines of the Atlantic surge. The barque, making a fair breeze
of it, was storming through the seas in noble style, shouldering off
vast masses of throbbing white from her weather bow with a wake twisting
away astern of her of twice her beam in width, a broad path of
glittering, leaping, blowing crystals and foam-flakes and creaming
eddies rising and falling for a mile astern into the windy blue there,
full of fire and snow as it looked with the spume of breaking waves and
the splendour of the darting sunlight.

The carpenter came to a stand when I arrived. I went up to him at once,
Miss Temple at my side.

‘I have thought the matter over,’ I said, ‘and accept the men’s terms.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ he answered, with a slow smile breaking sulkily
through his surly countenance. ‘If you care about a written
hundertaking’——

‘No,’ I interrupted contemptuously; ‘my agreement is based on yours. If
you do not hold piously to every article of it, I drop my part.’

He viewed me with his head slightly on one side, but without any
appearance of resentment at my peremptory tone. Coarse and unlettered as
the fellow was, he had discernment enough to witness what he would
regard as sincerity of purpose in my very outspokenness.

‘All you’ve got to do,’ said he, ‘is to carry us to that there island.
You do your bit, and you’ll have no occasion to grumble at us for not
doing ourn. But—you’ll _do_ it. You onderstand me, Mr. Dugdale? So long
as you’re honest, you’ll find _us_ honest.’

The ugly significance he imparted to these words by the look that
accompanied them, I could not hope to express. Miss Temple, whose hand
was on my arm, shrank at my side. It pleased me that she should have
witnessed that look and heard the words, for they would go further to
persuade her that the only road to choose in this matter was the one I
had taken, than any amount of reasoning on my part.

‘Your threats are perfectly indifferent to me,’ I exclaimed, eyeing him
coolly and fixedly. ‘I believe I know your character, and don’t question
your capacity to act up again to the part your captain told me you had
already played.’

‘What was that?’ he growled, but with no other change of face than such
as temper might produce. I seemed to find even in this little thing that
the captain had told me a lie when he charged the fellow with murder,
and my mind felt easier on a sudden as to a conviction of the truth of a
matter less dark than I had dared believe.

‘That is my business,’ I responded, preserving my cool almost
contemptuous manner. ‘You need be at no pains to threaten me. You’ll
achieve nothing by your forecastle menaces. I have been a sailor in my
time and quite know what you and such as you are. If you or any of your
mates disappoint me in a single particular of the understanding between
us, I will throw this sextant,’ said I, flourishing it under his nose,
‘overboard, and you may grope your way round the Horn as best you can.
That agreement is this:’ I elevated my forefinger. ‘First we are to have
the exclusive use of this end of the ship; you alone coming aft to stand
your watch.’ He nodded. I erected another finger. ‘Next: the captain’s
cabin and the one adjoining are to be occupied by this lady and myself.’
He nodded again. I raised a third finger, thrusting it close to his
face. ‘Next: Wilkins continues to wait upon us as heretofore; we are to
be fed with care and punctuality; it is distinctly to be understood—and
this _you_ will see to—that no liquor aboard is broached outside a tot
or two per man per day; for,’ said I, speaking with the most emphatic
deliberateness I could contrive, ‘if there should be a single exhibition
of drunkenness amongst the crew, I shall pitch this sextant overboard.’

‘I’ve got nothen to say agin that,’ he exclaimed, speaking with
something of sullen respect, as though impressed by my energy and
language.

‘Next,’ I proceeded, ‘I am to be captain, and what I say must be law,
and what I do must be done.’

‘Saving this,’ said he, elevating two square fingers in imitation of my
gesture: ‘Fust, you ain’t going to order us to speak a ship, and next
you ain’t going to get us to obey ye if you should take it into your
head to steer for a port.’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘that is a part of my agreement. Yet there is this to
be said: it is mere idle cruelty to carry this young lady away round
Cape Horn into the Pacific. She is without any other wearing apparel
than what you see; she is destitute of almost every convenience; her
mother is in bad health, and she wishes to return as speedily as
possible, that no news about us may reach England that is not perfectly
true. The crew, therefore, will not object to speak a ship that we may
transfer this lady to her.’

‘No!’ he roared.

‘Her going will render me easy in my mind as to her safety,’ I
continued, ‘and I shall be able to serve you the better by knowing that
she is on her way home.’

‘No!’ he roared again; ‘she’s quite safe aboard us. There must be no
speaking with ships. ‘Sides,’ he added, falling back a step with a round
flourish of his arm, ‘the lady knows all about the gold and where it is
and how it’s to be come at.’

‘I can keep a secret, Mr. Lush,’ she exclaimed.

‘No,’ he repeated with a stamp of his foot; ‘sorry for it, lady, but
here ye are, and here ye must stop. I know what the crew ‘ud say. I’m
but expressing of their minds. Here ye stop, lady. Mr. Dugdale, that was
a part of the bargain, as we onderstood it this marning. Besides, lady,’
he added with an indescribable leer, ‘ye wouldn’t care to be separated
from him _now_, would ‘ee?’

She moved so as to bring him between me and her.

‘That will do, Mr. Lush,’ said I. ‘I am acquainted with your wishes, and
you know now my resolution;’ and so saying, I walked to a part of the
deck where I could command the sun, and went to work with my sextant,
talking to Miss Temple in a low voice as I ogled the luminary.

‘You see now how it is? If I refused my assent to the crew’s wishes,
they might have sent me adrift in a boat—alone.’ I added significantly.

‘He is a most dreadful creature. You spoke to him bravely. But is that
manner what you call tact?’

‘Yes. The man must not imagine that I am afraid of him. I would that I
could choke him with his own threats.’

‘I believe he would not shrink from murdering both of us.’

‘They have made up their minds to sail to the island, and they mean that
I shall carry them there. That resolve was strong in them when they
entered the cabin. If I had refused—— But no matter! It may yet come to
my being able to induce them to speak a ship.’

She made no response. There was a short silence between us.

‘Make eight bells!’ I shouted, and the chimes floated sharp upon the
rushing wind as I walked aft to the companion, Miss Temple always at my
side.

I went straight to the captain’s cabin, and there worked out my
observation, and fixed the correct position of the barque on the chart.
The course she was steering happened to be the true direction she needed
to take, and there was nothing to mend in that way. Miss Temple came to
the table and watched me as I made my calculations. When I had come to
an end, I asked her to remain where she was, and returned with the chart
on deck. I beckoned to the carpenter, who was standing at the break of
the poop, as though waiting for me to arrive that he might go forward to
his dinner.

‘Here’s our situation to-day,’ I exclaimed pointing to the chart—it was
a tract-chart of the world—‘and here’s Cape Horn. Our course then is as
we’re steering.’

He stared at the chart with the blind and stupid look of a man who
cannot read, and after a bit said: ‘Let’s see: here’s south, and here’s
west, ain’t it? And here’s Cape Horn, as you say. Ay, our course is
about right for it, I allow.’

Whilst I rolled the chart up, I exclaimed: ‘It is inconvenient to be
without a stand-by for a third relief. You and I both want to dine at
once, and there is nobody to keep a lookout in the place of one of us.
The man who had charge this morning whilst we were below appeared to be
a very respectable steady sailor. Suppose now, calling me captain, and
you chief officer, we appoint him, with the sanction of the crew of
course, second mate.’

‘I dunno as I should do that,’ he answered; ‘best not have too many
masters aboard. _I’m_ no chief officer, and there’ll be no convartin’ of
Joe Wetherly into a second mate. We’re all jest _men_. But I tell ‘ee
what; if the crew’s willing, Joe might be selected to relieve you or me
whensoever it comes about as the pair of us wants to be below at the
same time, as now.’

‘Very well,’ I exclaimed, in the sort of peremptory yet half-careless
way which I had made up my mind to employ when speaking to this man;
‘work it out in your own fashion. You can send him aft to relieve me
when he’s done dinner. I shall feel obliged by your seeing that Wilkins
turns to and prepares the table for us at once.’

I was about to leave him, when he exclaimed: ‘One question, Mr. Dugdale.
Nothen was said between us men and you as to the share ye expect.’

‘Never mind about that now,’ I answered.

‘The agreement betwixt you and the captain was for a third, I think,’
said he; ‘you won’t expect that, now there’s a dozen of us in the
consarn?’

‘Oh no, oh no! Send Joe Wetherly aft as soon as he’s done.’

‘It’s onderstood,’ said he, ‘that the lady won’t take no share?’

‘Yes, you may understand that,’ I exclaimed. ‘As for my portion,’ I
continued, anxious to get rid of him, ‘give me what you think I shall
have fairly earned, and you’ll satisfy me.’

‘Right!’ he exclaimed with alacrity, seeking clumsily to conceal an
emotion of sulky exultation. ‘Just another word, Mr. Dugdale. What sort
of character might that ha’ been which the captain gave me?’

‘Oh, damn it! go and send Joe Wetherly aft,’ I cried, feigning a fit of
temper; and I marched away to the binnacle, leaving him to trudge
forward.

A few minutes later, on looking through the skylight, I perceived
Wilkins preparing the table. Presently, Wetherly arrived on the poop. I
went forward to meet him, that I might be out of ear-shot of the fellow
at the wheel, and at once said: ‘Wetherly, how is it with you in this
truly infernal business?’

‘Truly infarnal it is, sir,’ he instantly replied; ‘but you’ve got the
most raw-headed lot of men to deal with that ever slung hammocks in a
ship’s forecastle. After they went forward last night, they fell
a-debating, all hands of them, and settled for this ship to fetch away
that there gold, you commanding. I was agin it till I see how hot they
talked, and then I thinks says I to myself, what do it sinnify? Whether
I’m bound away to the Isle o’ France or to a loonatic’s island in the
South Pacific, is all the same. If there’s money there, so much the
better. If there ain’t, it can’t be helped. One agin ten’s not going to
do much aboard a ship; so, when I was asked for an opinion, I just says,
I’m neutral, lads. Do as ye like. I’ll be with ye; but never none of ye
go and ask if I’m _of_ ye.’

‘You don’t surely believe in Captain Braine’s crazy fancy?’

‘Well, I own, Mr. Dugdale, that that there agreement ’twixt you and him
a bit nonplushed me this mornin’ after I had read it out. It did look
oncommonly like as though you yourself genu-inely believed in the yarn.’

He viewed me critically, though respectfully, as he spoke, with his mere
pins’-heads of eyes.

‘Oh, man, I agreed—I pretended to fully credit—wholly with the idea of
coaxing the madman to Rio, where the lady and myself would have left the
barque. Can’t you see _that_, Wetherly?’

‘Why, yes,’ he answered quickly, though speaking, nevertheless, as
though his mind was not quite made up. ‘It’s a bad job for you and the
lady, sir. The men are terribly in airnest. They’ll allow no speaking
with ships, for fear of your blowing the gaff, as the saying goes. I may
tell you you’ve acted wisely in falling in with their wishes. I may be
more open by and by. I’m with you and the lady, sir; but I’ve got to be
very careful.’

‘I thank you sincerely.’

I saw him restlessly glance aft at the helmsman, and took the hint. His
goodwill was of the utmost importance to me, and it would not do to
imperil my relations with him by any sort of behaviour that might excite
the suspicions of the crew as to our intimacy.




                              CHAPTER XXXV
                              MY CAPTAINCY


I am arrived now at a passage of this singular adventure that will admit
only of brief indications of certain features of it. To write down all
the incidents of the time which followed could but run me into several
volumes of very insipid matter. I own that when I look back upon this
experience, it offers itself as something so amazing, something so
beside the most astonishing romantic incidents of sea-life which my
memory carries, that, though I was the chief actor in it, I often at
this hour find myself pausing as in doubt of the actuality of the events
I have related and have yet to narrate.

Sometimes I wonder whether I might not have brought this kidnapping
business—for thus it may fairly be called so far as Miss Temple and I
were concerned—to a speedy end by peremptory refusal to navigate the
ship to Captain Braine’s island. But I have only to close my eyes and
recall the faces and recollect the behaviour of the men who formed that
barque’s crew, to know better; I have only to repeople that now timeworn
canvas with the countenances of those seamen, to witness afresh the
looks and bearing of the carpenter, to recollect my defencelessness, the
helplessness of my companion, whose life and whose more than life were
absolutely dependent upon my judgment; to think of the wild greed raised
in the men by their dream of thousands, their resolution to get the
money, the sense of lawlessness that would increase upon them with the
growing perception of their irresponsibility as a crew deprived of their
officers by no crime of their own: I have only to recall all this along
with my own thoughts and fears and bitter nerve-sapping anxieties, to
understand that the course I adopted was the only practicable one open
to me, and that what I did no other man situated as I then was but must
have also done. But enough of this.

That afternoon, when the carpenter relieved me at four o’clock, I went
below and superintended the preparation of the two cabins at the
extremity of the cuddy for our reception. The berth adjoining the
captain’s was a fresh, bright, airy little apartment, and every
convenience that Braine’s cabin yielded was put into it for Miss
Temple’s use. This change of apartment seemed to tranquillise her a bit.
Such was her dislike and fear of our steerage quarters, that I believe
she would have thought the deck-house of the wreck endurable compared to
them. Instead of a little ‘tweendeck shrouded in gloom and lumbered with
cargo, we had the whole breezy, sun-lit cuddy before us when we opened
our doors. The berths were also well lighted, with something of taste in
their equipment of panel, bulkhead mouldings, and the like. I was very
careful to bring up Mr. Chicken’s pistol and ammunition, and when I was
alone with Miss Temple, I said: ‘You are not afraid to handle a firearm,
I think?’

‘Oh dear, no.’

‘You shot very well, I remember, with Mr. Colledge at a bottle. Who hit
the bottle?’

‘I did.’

‘So I might have thought by your manner of aiming at it. Your figure
showed nobly, Miss Temple, in your posture as markswoman. I remember the
sparkle of your eyes as you glanced along the barrel. I should not have
cared to be hated by you and in front of you at that moment.’

‘I wish I had the courage you feign I have,’ said she.

‘Well,’ I exclaimed, pulling the captain’s pistol out of my breast,
‘here is a friend that will do more than bark for you, if you should
find yourself in want of such help as it can give. I have a
double-barrelled concern of a like build in the next room, so that
between us we are able to muster three muzzles; artillery enough to fit
us to stand a siege, I can assure you, with the ammunition we possess.’

She took the clumsy weapon in her small delicate white hand and toyed
with it, levelling and examining it, and so forth. I bade her mind, as
it was loaded. She smiled, and going to her bunk, hid the pistol between
the mattress and the bulkhead.

‘I shall certainly feel easier for having it,’ said she. ‘You will not
always now be next door, Mr. Dugdale. You will be for four hours at a
time on deck, when you keep your watch.’

‘Ay,’ said I; ‘but there is a skylight; and I’ll take care that the
cabin lamp be kept burning; and I have a keen ear, too, that when I am
away from you will not be blunted by my thoughts always being here.’

My own cabin I found comfortable enough. I was not so choice as to be
above using what I found in it. The unhappy captain had left behind him
sufficient clothes to provide me with several changes; and a couple of
his coats fitted me very well—being made, I suppose, to allow for a
sailor’s underclothing in cold weather—though I was much broader in the
shoulders than he had been. I overhauled his papers, but found nothing
of interest. What I met with I carefully put away in a drawer along with
some money, and one or two objects of some small value, for I remembered
that the unfortunate creature had left a widow behind him, who might be
thankful for his poor effects, should the little ship ever live to carry
his goods and his tragic story to a civilised place.

Wilkins waited upon us with punctuality and civility. He would ask me
what I wished for breakfast and dinner and supper, bringing little
suggestions from the cook as to sea-pies and ship-board hashes and
currant dumplings and other heavy dishes, for the due digestion of which
a man needs to have bowels of brass and the triple rows of the shark’s
fangs. Indeed, the _Lady Blanche’s_ larder was a poor one, and the
genius of the first cook in the world must have come to a halt in the
face of such a Mother Hubbard of a cupboard. Aft, there was little more
to eat than the forecastle stores: salt beef and salt pork, peas,
currants for duff days, biscuit, coffee and tea, and a few other items.
However, the dead captain had laid in a good stock of bottled beer.
There were also a few gallons of brandy and gin, both of them a very
good spirit; and the forecastle stores, supplemented by cheese and hams
and some tins of preserved stuff bearing the name of soup and
bouilli—pronounced by sailors soup and bully, or soap and
bullion—supplied us with dishes enough to enable us to support life and
even health, helped out as they were by occasional little relishes from
the cook, feeble attempts indeed, and briny to a degree, yet in their
way welcome to people who were as good as beggars in food, and without
choice.

Lush faithfully kept to his end of the ship. He never offered to enter
the cabin except to my invitation, when perhaps I would have something
in navigation to tell him about. He seemed anxious to keep us at a
distance, and picked up the ship’s routine, when his watch came round,
as I let it fall, with an air of morose reserve. I made several efforts
with an assumption of cheerfulness and heartiness of manner to break
through his sullenness, with the dream of finding something like a human
being of sensibilities behind it, whom I should be able to influence
into getting the crew to consent to speak a passing ship, that Miss
Temple might be transferred to her; but he was like a hedgehog; his
quills regularly rose to my least approach. He would watch me with a
sulky, cursing expression in his eye, or view me with a sour, askant
regard, and to my civillest speech respond in some ragged, scurvy
sentence.

But I did not play an obliging part with him very long. Having come to
the conclusion that he was a ruffian of immovable qualities, I recurred
to my earlier behaviour, addressed him only to give him instructions in
a peremptory manner, or to point out the ship’s place on the chart; so,
as you will suppose, very little passed between us; yet my putting on
the airs of a captain and treating him as the mere forecastle hand which
he claimed to be, influenced his bearing, and rendered him even
respectful.

Nevertheless, I knew that he and his mates never had their eyes off me,
so to speak; that, having learnt the course to Cape Horn was so-and-so,
the compass was watched with restless assiduity, every man as he was
relieved at the wheel reporting the direction of the ship’s head to his
companions forward, and how she had been steering during his trick; that
my behaviour on deck was critically followed by eyes in the fore-part of
the ship; that I could never give an order to trim sail during my watch
but that it was duly reported to Lush, and weighed and considered by the
crew in the frequent councils they held in the caboose. All this I was
secretly informed of by Wetherly.

Yet I had nothing to complain of in the behaviour of the men. They
sprang to my bidding, and their ‘Ay, ay, sirs,’ and responses to my
orders had as lively and hearty a ring as anyone could hope to hear in
the mouth of a crew. They sang out briskly when they pulled and hauled,
with enjoyment of the sound of their own voices, and a marked
willingness in their demeanour to contribute their utmost to the
navigation of the vessel. This, indeed, was to be expected. It was
rather a Jack’s jaunt now with them, than a voyage; they were sailing,
as they believed, to an island full of gold; their fortunes were
assured; they gazed into a future radiant with visions of dancing,
drinking, marine jinks of all sorts; they knew that the fulfilment of
their fine lookout must depend upon their willingness to work the ship
now, so that everything they did they did without a growl; without the
least hint of the mutinous disposition that would have shown strong and
deadly in them, had their wishes been delayed or obstructed.

But outside the actual, essential routine of the ship, nothing was done.
The decks were washed down at very long intervals only; there was no
sail-making or repairing; the spunyarn winch was mute; the chafing gear
was left to rot off as it would; the carpenter indeed saw to the
rigging, took care that everything should be sound, for neither he nor
his mates had a mind to lose a mast. But there was very little of
sweeping or polishing, of swabbing or cleaning.

The rum was kept down in the steerage; every day Wilkins drew as much as
sufficed to furnish the men with two glasses apiece. After drawing the
stuff, he regularly presented himself with it to Lush or me, according
as the one or the other of us was on deck, that it might be seen he had
drawn the allowance only. The men seemed fully satisfied. There was
never any demand for more grog than what was given to them, and I do not
recall a single instance of intoxication: which I attributed to my
determined and oft-repeated declaration that should there be any
exhibition of drunkenness on board the barque, I would abandon my
undertaking, and leave the carpenter to navigate her. Dread of the
consequences of drink amongst a mob of such ungoverned men as those
fellows, rendered me extraordinarily impressive and emphatic in this
threat; and I knew that the carpenter was convinced in his own mind that
I would prove as good as my word. Indeed, I had only to look at Miss
Temple to shrink from the mere thought of drunkenness amongst the
sailors. All other risks that might attend a drinking bout forward were
as naught compared to the peril _she_ would stand in. The least insult
offered her I should resent with the muzzle of my pistol: and if it ever
came to _that_, then God alone could foresee the character of the
tragedy that must follow.

But, as I have said, they showed themselves satisfied with their two
glasses a day. The sense of festivity never carried them further than an
occasional dance on the forecastle head of a fine dog watch, when they
would diversify their caper-cutting with songs and yarns—all as harmless
as child’s play, so unsuggestive of the errand that we were upon, so
dumb as indications of the smouldering fires which were to be blown into
a blaze by want of judgment on my part, that any one viewing us from the
deck of a ship close at hand would have supposed the _Lady Blanche_ the
very peacefullest of traders, worked by the happiest and most liberally
paid of crews, and bound on a voyage that was scarcely more than one of
pleasure from port to port.

I was as eager as any man aboard to make an end of the voyage—to arrive,
at all events, in the South Sea, where, let the problem of the island
prove what it might, we should have come to the end of our expectations,
and be able to see our way to the near future, that might signify a
return home for me and Miss Temple; and, consequently, I never spared
the barque’s canvas, but, on the contrary, would hold on every rag to
the very last, leaving the white clipper hull to sweep through it at the
pace of a comet. The carpenter used the little ship in the same way, and
between us both, our runs in the twenty-four hours would again and again
rise to figures that might have been deemed almost miraculous in those
days of round bows and kettle bottoms, of apple sides, and a beam but a
third less than the length. To be sure, when I was at sea
professionally, I was never in a position to give an order, nor were the
midshipmen, of whom I was one, regarded as much better than inconvenient
ornaments, though we were well grounded in navigation; yet this command
that had been forced upon me caused me no uneasiness; I would find
myself walking the weather side of the poop as though I had been master
of a ship for years; I knew, or thought I knew, exactly what to do, and
the men sprang to my orders, and the little ship could not have been
managed better had she been handsomely officered by men grown grey in
the profession, instead of commanded by a young fellow who had only
passed two years at sea a long while earlier, whose chief mate was a
surly and sinister old rascal, so illiterate as to be unable to read his
own name when written by another, and as incapable of handling a sextant
as of expressing himself in correct English.

It came into my head once that we might run short of fresh water before
we should arrive at that spot on the chart where the captain’s gold was
supposed to be buried, and I earnestly hoped that this might happen,
since a threat of thirst must infallibly drive us for help to the first
port we could manage to reach. I asked the carpenter if he knew what
stock of water there was aboard. He said no, but promised to find out,
and later in the day came to tell me that there were so many casks,
making in all so many gallons—I cannot recollect the figures. To satisfy
myself, I went into the hold with him, and discovered that he was right,
and then entered into a calculation, which, to my secret mortification
and disappointment, expressed a sufficient quantity of water aboard to
last all hands of us at a liberal supply per diem for at least six
months.

Now that I had assured myself as to the posture of the crew, and was
profoundly satisfied in my own mind that their consuming eagerness to
arrive at the island would guarantee a uniformly proper behaviour in
them, unless they addressed themselves to the rum casks, or unless I
gave them cause to turn upon me, I had no misgiving in suffering Miss
Temple to be seen by them. She was therefore constantly with me on deck
when my lookout came round, and all the hours I could spare from sleep I
dedicated to her society; so that it would be impossible to imagine any
young unmarried couple passing the time in an association more intimate
and incessant. At the beginning of this run to the South Pacific she
showed a spirit that afterwards temporarily failed her. It was two days
after I had consented to navigate the vessel that I observed a certain
air of determination in her, as though she had been earnestly
contemplating our situation, and had formed her resolution to encounter
what might come with courage and patience. Then, after awhile, her pluck
seemed to fail her again; I would find her sitting motionless in the
cabin with her eyes fixed on the deck, and an expression of misery in
her face, as though her heart were broken. I could not induce her to
eat; though, God knows, there was little or nothing to tempt her with.
She could not sleep, she told me; and the glow faded out of her deep and
beautiful eyes. Pale she always was, but now her face took a character
of haggardness, which her whiteness, that was a loveliness in her when
in health, accentuated to a degree that was presently shocking to me.
When on deck, she would take my arm and walk listlessly, almost
lifelessly, by my side, briefly replying to me in low tones, which
trembled with excess of grief.

Secretly loving her as I did, though not as yet had a syllable, nay, as
I believe, had a look of my passion escaped me, I began to dread the
influence of her misery upon my behaviour to the men. She was a constant
appeal to me, so to speak, to call the fellows aft, and tell them that
the girl was pining her heart away, that she must be put ashore or
conveyed aboard another ship this side Cape Horn, though it came to our
backing our maintopsail to wait for one, or that I would throw up my
command of the vessel and refuse to sail her another mile. I say I lived
in mortal fear of my being forced into this by sentiment and sympathy;
for I was advised by every secret instinct, by every glance I levelled
at the crew, by every look I directed at the carpenter, that the certain
issue of such a resolution as that must involve my life!

I do not exaggerate in this; the nimbleness and sleekness of the crew
were the qualities of the tiger; the ferocity of the wild beast was in
them too, and for the girl’s sake I recoiled in terror from the mere
fancy of arousing their passions. How they might serve me if I showed
myself stubborn in proposals which they declined to accept, I could not
foresee; they might send me adrift in a boat; they might more mercifully
knock me over the head in the dark, and toss what their weapons left of
me overboard. I was unalterably convinced, at all events, that if I
ceased to be of use to them, then, as the possessor of the secret of the
island, I should be made away with. But Miss Temple they would keep with
them! Of that I had no shadow of a doubt either; and hence I say I was
in terror lest the spectacle of her misery should impel me to some act
that, even whilst it was doing, my reason would pronounce madness.

I said everything I could imagine that I thought might reassure her, and
one afternoon spent two hours in earnest talk with her. I told her that
her grief was influencing me, and that it might come to my not being
able to control myself in my relations with the crew; and I went on to
point out what must follow if I suffered my sorrow for her to betray me
into any other attitude towards the men than that I now wore. I had
never been very candid in this way with her before, not choosing to
excite her alarm and distress, and now I succeeded in thoroughly
frightening her. It was enough that I should indicate the probability of
her being left alone among the crew to fill her with horror. I need not
give you the substance of my talk with her. So much remains to be told
that I can only refer to it. But it achieved the end I had hoped to
witness.

When next day came, I found some spirit in her voice and manner. Whilst
we sat at breakfast alone, as we invariably were whether in the cuddy or
on deck, she exclaimed, viewing me with an earnestness which there was
nothing in the faint smile that accompanied it to diminish:

‘I have taken your lecture to heart, Mr. Dugdale, and I mean to reform.
I have shown myself a sad coward; but you shall have no further reason
to complain of me for that. I am ashamed of myself. I wonder that I have
confidence enough to look at you when I compare my behaviour with yours.
You have thought only of me, and I have thought only of myself; and that
is the difference between us.’

‘It puts a new pulse into my heart to hear you talk so,’ said I. ‘I want
to conduct you home to your mother’s side out of this wild adventure,
with the same beauty and health that you brought away from England with
you. It grieved me to the soul to see you refusing food, to watch your
face growing hollow, to hear of your sleepless nights, and to witness in
your eyes the misery that was consuming you. Pray keep this steadfastly
in mind—that every day shortens our run to the South Pacific, and that
every day this horrible experience is lessened by twenty-four hours.
Whether there be gold in the island or not, whether the island have
existence or not, the crew must still be dependent upon me to carry them
to a port, and the port that is good for them will be good for us; for
it will be strange if from it we are unable to proceed straight home.
All along I have said it is but a question of patience and waiting, and
God alone can tell how grateful I shall be to you if you will enable me
to play the part that I know _must_ be played if our safety is to be
worth a rushlight.’

From this time she showed herself a thoroughly resolved woman. She
ceased to tease me with regrets, to distress me with inquiries which I
could not answer, to imply by her silence or her sighs or looks of
reproach that I had it in my power by some other sort of policy than
what I was pursuing, to get her safely away out of the barque. With this
new mind in her came a subtle but appreciable change in her manner
towards me. Heretofore her behaviour had been uniformly haunted by some
small flavour more or less defined of her treatment of me, and indeed of
all others, saving Mr. Colledge, aboard the Indiaman. She had suggested,
though perhaps without intending it, a sort of condescension in our
quiet hours, with a deal of haughtiness and almost contemptuous command
in moments when she was wrought up by alarm and despair. I now found a
kind of yielding in her, a compliance, a complaisance that was almost
tender, a subdued form of expression, no matter what the mood might be
which our conversation happened to excite in her. At times I would
observe her watching me with an expression of sweetness in her fine
eyes, though these sudden discoveries never betrayed her into the least
air of confusion or embarrassment upon which I might found a hope that I
was slowly making my way to her heart.

However, I consoled myself by thinking that our situation hung in too
black a shadow over her mind to enable her to guess at what might be
going on in it. Besides, never a word had I let fall that she could
construe into a revelation of my passion for her. Had I loved her a
thousandfold more than I did, my honour must have held my emotions dumb.
It was not only that my pride determined me to keep silent until I might
have good reason to believe that my love would not be declined by this
high and mighty young lady of the _Countess Ida_, with hidden wonder at
my impertinence in offering it; I also was sensible that I should be
acting the meanest part in the world to let her guess my feelings—by my
language, at least; my face I might not be always able to control—whilst
she continued in this miserable condition, utterly dependent upon me for
protection, and too helpless to avow any resentment, which she would be
desperately quick to express and let me feel under other circumstances.

We should be entering the bitter climate of the Horn presently, and she
was without warm apparel. Her dress, as you know, was the light tropical
costume in which she had attired herself to visit the corvette. What was
to be done?

‘You cannot face the weather of the Horn in that garb,’ said I on one
occasion, lightly glancing at her dress, to which her noble and
faultless figure communicated a grace that the wear and tear and soiling
of the many days she had worn it could not rob it of. ‘Needs must, you
know, when Old Nick drives. There is but one expedient; I hope you will
not make a grimace at it.’

‘Tell it to me?’

‘There is a good, warm, long pilot coat in my cabin. I will borrow
needles and thread, and you must go to work to make it fit you.’

She laughed with a slight blush. ‘I fear I shall not be able to manage
it.’

‘Try. If you fail, fifty to one but that there is some man forward who
will contrive it for you. Most sailors can sew and cut out after a
fashion. But I would rather you should try your hand at it alone. If I
employ a fellow forward he will have to come aft and measure you, and so
on; all of which I don’t want.’

‘Nor I,’ she cried eagerly. ‘I will try the coat on now, Mr. Dugdale. I
daresay I shall be able to fashion it into some sort of jacket,’ she
added with another laugh that trembled with a sigh.

I procured the coat, and helped her to put it on. It had been built for
an overcoat, and designed to wrap up more than the narrow shoulders for
which it had been fashioned, and it buttoned easily over the girl’s
swelling figure.

‘Come, we shan’t want a tailor after all,’ said I, backing a step to
admire her in this new, queer apparel.

‘It will keep me warm,’ said she, turning about to take a view of
herself.

‘And now,’ said I, ‘for a hat. That elegant straw of yours will not do
for Cape Horn.’

I overhauled the captain’s wardrobe, and unearthed three hats of
different kinds—one of them a wideawake; another, a cap of some kind of
skin, very good to keep a night-watch in in dirty weather; and the
third, an old-fashioned tarpaulin glazed hat—the sire of the sou’-wester
of our own times, though, to be sure, sou’-wester caps, as they were
called, were in use at the beginning of the century. This example of
head-gear I returned to the locker in which I had found it, but the
other two Miss Temple thought she could make serviceable. She tried them
on, stealing glances almost coquettish at me as she peered at herself in
the looking-glass which I brought from her cabin.

There had been a time when nothing, I am persuaded, could have induced
her to touch those hats. She would have shrunk from them with the
aversion and disgust she had exhibited at Captain Braine’s suggestions
about the furnishing of her cabin in the steerage. Assuredly, old ocean
was working a mighty change in her character. Life real, stern,
uncompromising, was busy with her; and just as Byron says of his
shipwrecked people, that the mothers of them would not have known their
own sons, so was I assured of my shipmate Louise that if it pleased God
we should escape from the perils of this adventure, she would emerge a
changed woman in every characteristic that had been displeasing in her
before.




                             CHAPTER XXXVI
                        I CONVERSE WITH WETHERLY


Not to dwell too long on a detail of insignificance, it will suffice to
say that by dint of rummaging the wardrobes of Captain Braine and Mr.
Chicken I obtained several useful articles, and Miss Temple went to work
to convert them into wearing-apparel for herself, with the help of a
pair of scissors which I borrowed from the carpenter, and needles and
thread procured from amongst the men by Wetherly. The occupation was
useful to her in other ways; it killed the tedious, the insufferably
tedious time, and it gave her something to think of, and even something
to look forward to, so blank had been the hours.

I remember coming out of my cabin after a spell of sleep to take sights
shortly before noon, and finding her seated at the table with some
flannel or fine blanket stuff before her, at which she was
stitching—ripped up and violated vestments of either Braine or Chicken,
but brand-new, or she would scarcely have meddled with them. She
received me with a smile and a few words, and then went on sewing with
an air as of gratification in her that I should have found her at work.

I halted, and stood looking on, feigning to watch her busy fingers,
whilst in reality I gazed at her face with a lover’s delight. It was
hard to believe that what was passing was something more than a dream,
astonishingly vivid and logical. Again and again, when in the company of
this girl, a sense of the unreality of our association had possessed me
to such a degree at times that had the feeling continued, I might
honestly have feared for my head. But never before this moment had that
sense been so strong upon me. I forgot her beauty in my wonder. It was
sheer bewilderment to recall her as she was on board the Indiaman; her
haughtiness, her disdain, her contemptuous insensibility to all
presences save that of my Lord Sandown’s son, the cold glance of
scornful surprise that would instantly cause me to avert mine—to recall
this and how much more? and behold her now pensively bending her lovely
head and face of high-bred charms over that sordid need of rough
sailor’s clothes, occasionally stealing a peep at me of mingled
sweetness and a sort of wistful amusement, as though she grieved while
she smiled at the necessity that had brought her to such a pass. Yet
there was no repining; if she sighed, it was under her breath; forced as
her light air of cheerfulness might be, it proved a growing resolution
of spirit, a development of heroic forces, latent in her till recently.

Secretly, however, I was worried by keen anxiety. What was to be the
issue of this voyage? I merely feigned a manner of confidence when
talking with her about the result of this amazing ramble, as I chose to
figure it. In reality, I could not think of the time when we should have
arrived upon the spot where the dead captain had declared his island to
be without dread. Suppose there were no island! What next step would the
men take? The disappointment that must follow their long dream of gold
might determine them upon plundering the barque—put them upon some wild
scheme of converting her and her cargo into money. Or suppose—though I
never seriously considered the matter thus—suppose, I would ask myself,
that the island proved real, that the treasure proved real, that the men
should dig and actually find the gold! What then? Was I to conceive that
a body of ignorant, reckless, lawless sailors, led by a man who was at
heart the completest imaginable copy of a sea-villain, would peaceably
divide the treasure amongst them, pay me over my share—which, God knows,
I should have been willing to attach to Mr. Lush’s feet on condition of
the others throwing him overboard—and suffer me to quietly navigate the
barque to an adjacent port, conscious that I owed them a bitter grudge
for the outrage they had committed in forcing me and the lady to
accompany them?

At long intervals I would exchange a few sentences with Joe Wetherly.
Unfortunately, he was in the carpenter’s watch, and my opportunities,
therefore, for speaking with him were few. It was only now and again,
when he was required to keep a lookout for Lush or myself, that I
contrived to gather what was going forward amongst the men by engaging
him in a brief chat before he quitted the poop. I was so sensible of
being keenly observed by all hands, that I was obliged to exercise the
utmost caution in speaking to this man. On the poop there was always the
fellow at the helm to observe me; and the quarter-deck was within the
easy reach of men stirring about the galley, or leaving or entering the
forecastle.

However, it happened one dog-watch that Wetherly came aft instead of the
carpenter to relieve me. Mr. Lush, he told me, felt unwell, and had
asked him to stand his watch from eight to twelve. It was a clear night,
but dark, the south-east trade-wind strong off the port beam, and the
weather dry and cold, with a frosty glitter in the trembling of the
stars which enriched the heavens with such a multitude of white and
green lights that the firmament seemed to hover over our mastheads like
some vast sheet of black velvet gloriously spangled with brilliants and
emeralds and dust of diamonds and tender miracles of delicate prisms.

Miss Temple had left me some twenty minutes or so, and was now in the
cabin, seated at the table under the lamp, with a pencil in her hand,
with which she drew outlines upon a sheet of paper with an air of
profound absent-mindedness. She wore over her dress a knitted waistcoat
that had belonged to the captain; it stretched to her figure, and it was
already a need even in the day-time with the sun shining brightly, for
we were penetrating well to the southwards, and every score of miles
which the nimble keel of the barque could measure made a sensible
difference in the temperature of even the shelter in the cabin. It was
too dark to distinguish Wetherly until he was close. On hearing that he
was to keep the deck until twelve, I determined to have a long chat with
him, to get with some thoroughness at his views, which, to a certain
extent, I had found a bit puzzling, and to gather what information I
could from him touching the behaviour I might expect in the crew if
there should be no gold, or, which was the same, no island.

The fellow who had come to the wheel at eight bells was Forrest, the
supple, piratic-looking young sailor, whose walk, as he rolled along the
lee-deck, his figure swinging against the stars over the rail, had told
me who he was without need of my going to the binnacle to make sure.
Whilst Wetherly talked about the carpenter feeling unwell, I drew him
aft, that we might be within earshot of Forrest, and said, as I turned
to the companion hatch: ‘I’ll bring my pipe on deck, Wetherly, for a
smoke after I’ve had a bite below. I wish to keep an eye upon the
weather till two bells. Those green stars to wind’ard may signify more
than a mere atmospheric effect.’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered in a voice that made me see that he took my
words in their most literal meaning.

I remained below until half-past eight, talking with Miss Temple, eating
a little supper, and so on. I then fetched my pipe, and told her that I
should be down again at nine, and that I did not ask her to accompany
me, as I wished to have a talk with Wetherly. She fixed her dark eyes
upon me with an expression of inquiry, but asked no questions. There had
been a time when she would have opened the full battery of her alarm and
anxiety upon me, but silence was now become a habit with her. It was her
confession of faith in my judgment, an admission that she expected no
other information than such as I chose to give her. I cannot express how
this new behaviour was emphasised by the eloquence of her beauty, in
which I could witness the curiosity and the apprehension which she had
disciplined her tongue to suppress.

I left her, and went on deck. I first walked to the binnacle, into which
I peered, and then in the sheen of it gazed very earnestly to windward
and around, as though I was a little uneasy. The floating figure of
Forrest swayed at the wheel, and I observed that he cast several glances
to windward also. Muttering to myself, as though thinking aloud, ‘Those
green stars show uncommonly bright!’ I went abruptly to the break of the
poop, where the dark form of Wetherly was pacing, as though my mind were
full of the weather.

‘What’s wrong with them stars, sir, d’ye think?’ said he.

‘Oh, nothing in the world,’ I answered. ‘They are very honest trade-wind
stars. I wanted an excuse for a chat, Wetherly. Forrest has the ears of
a prairie hunter. I’m not here to talk to you about the weather. You are
the only man on board in whom I can confide. As we approach the Horn, my
anxieties gain upon me. How is this voyage to end? By this time you
pretty well understand the disposition of the crew. If there should be
no island, what then, Wetherly?’

I noticed a cautious pause in him.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘I’m heartily consarned for you, and for the
lady too, and I may say particularly for the lady, who seems to me to be
a born princess, a sight too good for such quarters as them’—he pointed
to the skylight with a shadowy hand—‘with naught but a dead man’s
clothes to keep her warm. If I could be of sarvice to ye, I would; but
I’ve got to be as careful as you. Mr. Lush has such a hold upon the
minds of the crew that there’s nothen he couldn’t get ’em to do, I
believe; and if he should come to suspect that there’s anything ’twixt
you and me, any sort of confidence that aint direct in the interests of
the fo’c’sle, it ‘ud go as hard with me as I may tell ‘ee it certainly
would with you if _you_ was to play ’em false.’

This speech he delivered in a low key, with frequent glances aft and at
the quarter-deck below. I listened with patience, though he told me
nothing that I was not fully aware of.

‘But what course, Wetherly, do you think these men will adopt if on our
arrival at the latitude and longitude named by that unhappy madman as
the spot where his treasure lies, there should be no island?’

‘Well, sir,’ he responded, preserving his cautious tone, ‘I can answer
that question, for it’s formed a part of the consultations the crew is
agin and agin a-holding. They’ll think ye’ve dished ’em, and that o’
purpose you han’t steered a true course.’

‘Ha!’ I exclaimed; ‘and what then?’

‘You’ll have to find the island, sir.’

‘But, my God, Wetherly, if it be not there! There is no rock marked on
the chart in the place that was named by Captain Braine.’

‘They’ll keep ye a-hunting for it,’ said he grimly.

‘And if we don’t find it?’

‘Well, I can’t tell ‘ee _what_ they’ll do. All they’ve said is, “If it
ain’t there, it’ll be because he don’t mean it shall be.” But I’ve heard
no threats—no talk of what ‘ud follow.’

‘If there should be no gold, no island,’ said I, ‘my opinion is that
they will seize upon the ship and cargo, and compel me to navigate her
to some port where they will find a market for their plunder.’

‘And where will that be?’ he asked.

‘Impossible to say. Lush will probably know. He has the airs and
appearance of a man to whom a performance of the kind I suggest would be
no novelty. I may tell you now, Wetherly, and, indeed, I might have done
so long ago, that it was the carpenter whom Captain Braine charged with
murder.’

‘Well, sir, you’ll excuse me. I’m not for believing that, Mr. Dugdale.
That Lush has been a rare old sinner, ye need only watch him by daylight
and hear him talk in his sleep at night, to know; but, as I said afore,
when ye mentioned it—murder’—I saw him wag his head by the
starlight—‘I’d choose to make sure afore believing it on the evidence of
a madman.’

‘But don’t you think the carpenter and, let me add, most of the crew
equal to the commission of any crime?’

‘Well, I won’t say no to that now with this here glittering temptation
of money getting into their souls, to work everything that may be evil
in ’em out through their skins. I wouldn’t trust ’em, and so I tell ‘ee,
Mr. Dugdale; and if this here barque was any other ship than the _Lady
Blanche_, and my mates any other men but what they are, I’d be content
to pawn for sixpence all that I’ve got in my chest.’

I came to a stand with him for a while at the weather rail in feigned
contemplation of the weather.

‘Wetherly,’ said I quietly, as we resumed our crosswise walk, ‘my
position is a frightful one. Were it not for the cursed lunatic fancy
that that shambling villain Wilkins overheard—the completest lie that
ever took shape in a madman’s brain—I might hope to be able to tempt the
crew with a handsome reward to allow me to sail this ship to a port
whence the lady and I could get home. But what could I offer, with
honest intention to pay, that should approach the thousands which those
fools yonder dream about day and night?’

He made no answer.

‘Supposing, Wetherly,’ I continued, ‘I should determine, in a mood of
desperation, to drop my command here, and refuse to navigate the vessel
another league unless Miss Temple and I are put ashore?’

‘You know what ‘ud happen,’ he cried; ‘ye’ve said it o’er and o’er agin,
hitting upon what’s most likely. For God’s sake, sir, clear your mind o’
that scheme, if it’s only for the lady’s sake!’

‘But what’s to follow upon our arrival in the Pacific?’ I exclaimed with
an emotion of despair.

‘There’s nothen to be done but to wait,’ he answered gloomily.

‘Do you believe that every mother’s son forward believes in the
existence of the treasure?’

‘Every mother’s son of ’em, sir. The belief mightn’t have been so
general, I daresay, if it hadn’t been for them documents you signed.
Ignorant as the men are, they know how to git four out of two and two.
First, there’s the drawing on that there bit of parchment; then there
was the capt’n’s yarn of how he come by the gold, as ship-shape to the
minds of the men as if they’d seen him fetch it out of the Bank of
England; then comes the plot of getting rid of ’em at Rio, with a crew
of Kanakas to follow; and then a company of beachcombers atop of them,
to carry the barque on. Here alone’s a thought-out scheme proper to
convince an atheist. But then follows them documents o’ yourn to prove
that you, a born gent of eddication and first-class intelligence, don’t
doubt the truth o’ what ye hear, and, to make sure, provide for your
share when the gold’s come at and for your security, if so be as the law
should lay hold on the capt’n for a-deviating.’

‘It’s all very true,’ I exclaimed, staggered myself by the consistency
of the wretched business, and forced to mentally admit the
reasonableness of the illiterate creatures in the forecastle accepting
it all as indisputable. ‘But you know my motive in acting as I did?’

‘Well, I _do_, sir. As I told ye, I was a bit nonplushed at first; but
it’s a madman’s yarn—ne’er a doubt of it. And I’m as wishful, Mr.
Dugdale, as ever ye can be to be quit of the whole blooming job.’

Again I came to a pause at the weather rail, as though I lingered on
deck only to observe the weather.

‘Now, Wetherly, listen to me,’ said I. ‘You know you are the only man in
the ship that I would dream of opening my lips to. You have my full
confidence; I believe you to be sound to the core. If you will give me
your word I shall be perfectly satisfied that you will not betray me.’

‘Whatever ye may tell me, Mr. Dugdale,’ he responded in a voice slightly
agitated, ‘I swear to keep locked up in my bosom; but afore I can give
ye my word, I must know what I’ve got to take my oath on.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ I exclaimed; ‘I desire no oath. Simply assure me
that should a time ever come when I may see my way to escape, you will
stand my friend; you will actively assist me if you can—you will not be
neutral; I mean, merely my well-wisher; simply tell me this, and I shall
know that when an opportunity arises, I will have you to count upon.’

‘Have you a scheme, first of all, Mr. Dugdale?’ he inquired. ‘There’s no
good in my consenting to anything that’s agoing to end in getting our
throats cut.’

‘No; I have no scheme. What plan could I form? I must grasp the first,
the best chance that offers, and then it may be that I will want you.
There are others besides myself whom you would find grateful. Miss
Temple’s mother is a lady of title, and a rich woman’——

‘Excuse me, Mr. Dugdale,’ he interrupted; ‘I don’t want no bribe to
bring me into a proper way of acting, if so be as that proper way ain’t
a-going to cost too much. I’ll say downright, now, that if I can help
you and the lady to get out of this job and put ye both in the road of
getting home, ye may depend upon my doing my best. More’n that there’d
be no use in saying, seeing that it ain’t possible to consart a scheme,
and that we must wait until something tarns up. If there be an island,
and we bring up off it, the sort of opportunity you want may come, and
you’ll find all of me there. If the island be a delusion, then something
else’ll have to be waited for. But I tell you as man to man that I’m
with you and the lady, that I don’t like Mr. Lush nor the business he’s
brought the vessel’s crew into but that I’ve got to be as cautious as
you; which now means, sir—and I beg that you’ll onderstand me as
speaking respectfully—that that there Forrest has seen us together long
enough.’

‘Right,’ I exclaimed, grasping his hand; ‘I thank you from my heart for
your assurance; and Miss Temple shall thank you herself.’

With which I went aft, gazing steadfastly to windward as I walked, and
after a final peep into the binnacle and a slow look round, I stepped
below.

There was little to comfort me in this chat with Wetherly; it was worth
knowing, however, that he regarded the captain’s yarn as a mere emission
of craziness; for heretofore, in the few conversations I had had with
him, his hesitation, his cautious inquiries, his manner, that in a
superior person would to a certain extent have suggested irony, had
caused me to see that his mind was by no means made up on the subject.
This, then, was to the good, and it was satisfactory to be informed by
him that he would befriend us if an opportunity occurred, providing his
assistance should not jeopardise his life. I was grateful for this
promise, but scarcely comforted by it. I carried a clouded face into the
cabin; Miss Temple, who awaited my return to the cabin, fixed an anxious
gaze upon me, but asked no questions.

‘How good you are to suppress your curiosity!’ I exclaimed, standing by
her side, and looking into her upturned face; ‘you incalculably lighten
my burthen by your forbearance.’

‘You have taught me my lesson,’ she answered quietly; ‘and as a pupil I
should be proud of the commendations of my master.’ She pronounced the
word ‘master’ with a glance of her proud eyes through the droop of the
lashes, and a smile at once sweet and haughty played upon her lips.

‘It will comfort you to know that Wetherly is our friend,’ said I.

‘I have always regarded him as so,’ she responded.

‘Yes; but he has now consented to aid me in any effort I may by-and-by
make to escape with you from this barque.’

She was silent, but her face was eloquent with nervous eager
questioning.

‘Moreover,’ I proceeded, ‘Wetherly is now convinced that Captain
Braine’s gold was a dream of that man’s madness. A dream of course it
is. But do you know I am extremely anxious that we should find an island
in that latitude and longitude of waters to which I shall be presently
heading this ship.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘Because I think—mind, I do but think—that I may see a way to escape
with you and Wetherly alone in this barque.’ She breathed quickly, and
watched me with impassioned attention. ‘In fact,’ I continued, ‘even as
I stand here, looking at you, Miss Temple, a resolution grows in me to
create an island for Captain Braine’s gold, should the bearings he gave
me prove barren of land.’

‘Create?’ she exclaimed musingly.

‘Yes. The South Sea is full of rocks. I’ll find the men a reef, and that
reef must provide me with my chance. But,’ I exclaimed, breaking off and
looking at my watch, ‘it is time for me to seek some rest. I shall have
to be on deck again at twelve.’

‘I shall go to bed also,’ she exclaimed; ‘it is dull—and there are many
weeks before us yet.’ She smiled with a quivering lip, as though she
would have me know that she rebuked herself for complaining. ‘I believe
you would tell me more if you had the least faith in my judgment.’

‘At present, I have nothing to tell; but an hour may come when I shall
have to depend very largely upon your judgment and your spirit also.’

She met my eyes with a firm, full, glowing gaze. ‘No matter what task
you assign to me,’ she cried with vehemence, ‘you will find me equal to
it. This life is insupportable; and I would choose at this instant the
chance of death side by side with the chance of escape, sooner than
continue as I am in this horrible condition of uncertainty, banishment,
and misery.’

‘That may be the spirit I shall want to evoke,’ I said, smiling, whilst
I held open her cabin door. ‘Good-night, Miss Temple.’

She held my hand a moment or two before relinquishing it. ‘I hope I have
said nothing to vex you, Mr. Dugdale?’ she exclaimed, slightly inclining
her fine head into a posture that might make one think of a princess
expressing an apology.

‘What have _I_ said that you should think so?’ I answered.

‘Your manner is a little hard,’ she exclaimed in a low voice.

‘God forgive me if it be so,’ said I. ‘Not to you, Miss Temple, would I
be hard.’

My voice trembled as I pronounced these words, and abruptly I caught up
her hand and pressed her fingers to my lips, and bowing, closed the door
upon her and entered my own berth.




                             CHAPTER XXXVII
                               CAPE HORN


It was on one of the closing days of the month of December that my
longitude being then some three leagues east of the easternmost of the
Falkland Islands, and my latitude some fifty-five degrees south, that I
brought the barque’s head to a west-south-west course for the rounding
of Cape Horn. It was happily the summer season in those parts—their
midsummer, indeed—and I was glad to believe that the horrors of this
passage would be mitigated by a sun that in the month of June shines for
scarcely six hours in the day over the ice-laden surge of this, the most
inhospitable, the most bitterly dreary tract of waters upon the face of
the world.

Down to the latitude of the Falkland Islands we had sighted, from the
hour of my taking command of the barque, but four sail, so vast is the
ocean, and so minute a speck does a ship make upon it. But whilst the
loom of the land about Berkeley Sound was hanging in a blue and windy
shadow, with a gleam as of snow upon it away out upon our starboard
beam, we fell in with a whaler, a vessel rigged as ours was; a
round-bowed, motherly old craft, jogging along under a load of boats
suspended over her sides from the extremities of thick wooden davits.
There was a long Atlantic swell running, and as she rose and rolled to
it, she showed a line of green sheathing dark with moss and barnacles
and lines of trailing weeds.

She had been visible at daybreak right ahead, and she was clear upon the
sea over our bow, when I came on deck shortly after eight bells to
relieve Lush, who had had the watch since four o’clock.

‘What have we there?’ said I, bringing Braine’s old leather telescope
out of the companion and putting my eye to it. ‘A squab old whaler, as I
may suppose by her boats; Cape Horn topgallant-masts; a sawed-off square
sea-wagon after the true Nantucket pattern.’

‘I’ve been a-waiting for you to come on deck,’ said the carpenter. ‘We
don’t want to run her down. We’ve got nothen to say to her, and so ‘ud
better keep out of hail. Shift the course, will you, sir?’

There was nothing in the _sir_ to qualify the offensive tone of command
with which he addressed me. I looked at him fixedly, taking care,
however, to keep a good grip on my temper.

‘What are you afraid of?’ I asked. ‘Are any of the crew likely to hail
her if we pass within speaking distance?’

‘I’d like to know what man there is amongst us as ‘ud have the courage
to do it,’ he exclaimed, his face darkening to the thought, and his eyes
travelling up and down my body, as though in search of some part on
which to settle.

‘Why do you wait for me to shift the helm, man?’ said I.

‘The navigation’s in your hands,’ he answered sullenly; ‘if your
calculations don’t turn out correct, it musn’t be because of any man
a-meddling with the course whilst you was below.’

Miss Temple at this moment arrived on deck and joined me.

‘A pity to run away,’ said I; ‘we’re sailing three feet to that chap’s
one, and will be passing him like smoke. There’s been nothing to look at
for a long time. It’ll be a treat to our shore-going eyes to see a
strange face, though we catch but a glimpse. You don’t think _I’ll_ hail
her, I hope?’

‘_I_ hope!’ he responded with a coarse ironical sneer and a rude stare
of suspicion.

‘By God, then!’ said I, with an effusion of temper I instantly
regretted, ‘since you have forced this command upon me, I’ll take what
privileges it confers, and be hanged to it! My orders are to keep the
ship as she goes. If you disobey me, I’ll call the crew aft, and charge
them to observe that any miscalculations in my navigation will be owing
to your interference.’

The fellow scowled, and looked ahead at the vessel, and then at a knot
of sailors who were standing at the galley, and I could see that he was
at a loss; in fact, a minute after, never having spoken a word, during
which time he frequently sent his gaze at the craft over the bow, he
abruptly crossed to the lee side of the deck and fell to patrolling,
coming now and again to a stand to leeward of the sailor at the helm,
with whom he would exchange a few words, whilst he swayed on his rounded
shanks, with his arms folded upon his breast, occasionally stooping to
obtain a view of the whaler under the curve of the fore-course.

It was his watch below, and at another time he would have promptly gone
forward. His remaining on deck signified an insulting menace, an
impudent threat to watch me, and to guard his own and the crew’s
interests against me. But I was resolved not to seem to notice his
behaviour, nor even to appear conscious of his presence. We were
carrying a grand sailing wind out of the south, and under a main
top-gallant sail and a boarded main tack, the barque was sweeping nobly
over the powerful heave of the long Pacific swell, and through the tall
surges which were breaking in foam far as the eye could reach, with deep
blue lines between. At intervals, some great hill of waters sparkling to
the flying sunshine would flash into foam to the buoyant rise of the
glittering metalled forefoot of the speeding, milk-white fabric, and
cloud her forecastle in a storm of snow. The wind sang in the rigging
with a frosty note, but the shrewd air was dry, without any sting of
ice, though there was no warmth whatever in the white splendour of the
leaping sun.

The men observing that Lush kept the deck, came out of the galley and
forecastle, and with abrupt shifting motions gradually drew aft to the
line of the quarter-deck rail, which they overhung, feigning to watch
the ship we were overtaking, though nothing could be more obvious than
their real motive in drawing aft in this fashion. Wetherly alone kept
forward. He stood leaning in the galley door, smoking a short pipe in as
careless and unconcerned a posture as you would look to see in a
lounging fellow sailing up the river Thames.

‘The brutes are terribly in earnest,’ said I to Miss Temple, as we stood
together under the lee of the weather quarter-boat for the shelter of
it. ‘If ever I had had a doubt of the wisdom of my conduct in this
business, the presence of that group yonder would extinguish it for good
and all.’

‘Forgive me,’ she exclaimed; ‘but were you well advised in not altering
the course of this vessel?’

‘The fellows must not know that I am afraid of them, or believe me to be
without some resolution of character.’

‘What would happen were you to attempt to hail that ship there?’ she
asked, with her eyes enlarging to the fear that accompanied the
question, and her lips quivering as they closed to a blast of wind
sweeping in a long howl betwixt the rail and the keel of the boat.

‘I do not intend to hail her,’ I replied; ‘and we will not, therefore,
distract our minds with conjectures. Let us rather wonder,’ I went on,
forcing a light air of cheerfulness upon me, ‘what those whalemen will
think of you when they catch a sight of your figure? Will they take you
to be captain or chief mate?’

She smiled, and slightly coloured. Indeed, at a little distance, with
the rail to hide her dress, she would very well have passed for a young
man, habited as she was in Captain Braine’s long pilot coat and his
wide-awake, which entirely hid her hair to the level of her ears, and
which she kept seated on her head by means of a piece of black tape
passed under her chin. But shall I tell you that her beauty borrowed a
new and fascinating freshness of grace from the very oddity of her
attire? For my part, I found her more admirable in the perfections of
her face and form, grotesquely clothed as she was, than had she come to
my side but now from the hands of the most fashionable dressmaker and
the most modish of hairdressers and milliners.

The name of the old whaler lifted clear in long white letters to the
heave of her square stern off the spread of froth that raced from under
her counter: _Maria Jane Taylor_ was her title, and I remember it now as
I can remember very much smaller matters which entered into that
abominable time. The green and weedy and rust-stained fabric, heeling to
the pressure of the wind, and making prodigious weather of the Pacific
surge as she crushed into the violet hollow with a commotion of foam
such as no whale which ever her boats had made fast to could have raised
in its death-agony, swarmed and staggered along with frequent wild
slantings of her spars, upon which her ill-patched sails pulled in
disorderly spaces. A whole mob of people, black, orange-coloured, and
white, stared at us from under all kinds of singular headgear over her
weather rail, and a man swinging off in the mizzen shrouds, apparently
waited for us to come abreast to hail us. As our clipper keel swept in
thunder to her quarter, scarcely more water than a pistol-shot could
measure dividing us, Lush came up from to leeward and stood beside me,
but without speaking, simply holding himself in readiness—as I might
witness in the sulky determined expression in the villain’s face—to
silence me if I should attempt to hail. I glanced at him askant, running
my eye down his round-backed muscular figure, and then put on a
behaviour of perfect insensibility to his presence.

‘How touching is the sight of a strange face,’ said I to Miss Temple,
‘encountered in the heart of such a waste as this! Rough as those
fellows are, how could one take them by the hand! with what pleasure
could one listen to their voices! Would to God we were aboard of her!’
And I brought my foot with a stamp of momentary poignant impatience to
the deck.

Our own crew staring at the whaler over the quarter-deck bulwarks were
incessantly bringing their eyes away from her to fix them upon me with a
manner of angry suspicion that it was impossible to mistake. The noise
of the roaring of the wind in her canvas was loud in the pouring air;
the blue waters foamed viciously to her tall catheads, and her green and
rusty bends showed raggedly amid the frothing, foaming, and seething
curves of the boiling smother rushing past her; here and there aft was
the muddy glint of a disc of begrimed window amid the line of her seams,
out of which all the caulking appeared to have dropped. We were passing
her as a roll of smoke might.

‘Barque ahoy!’ bawled the long slabsided man in the mizzen rigging in
the nasal accents of the ‘longshore Yankee.

Lush at my side stood grimly staring. Several of the crew on the
quarter-deck were now watching me continuously.

‘What barque air you?’ came in a hurricane note out of the whaler’s
mizzen shrouds.

There was no reply from us.

‘Barque ahoy, I say!’ yelled the man with a frantic gesture of
astonishment; ‘where air you bound, and what ship might you be?’

The _Lady Blanche_ rushed on; nevertheless, we were yet so close to the
whaler even when we had her on our quarter that I could easily
distinguish the features of the man who had hailed us as he hung
motionless, as though withered by some blast from the skies, in the
mizzen rigging, with his mouth wide open, whilst an expression of
inimitable amazement was visible in the rows of faces along the bulwark
rail, white and coloured alternately, like the keys of a pianoforte.

On a sudden the man sprang out of the mizzen shrouds on to the deck; his
legs were immensely long, and he was habited in a short monkey jacket.
He started to run for the forecastle, and his prodigious strides made
one think of a pair of tongs put into motion by some electrical power.
He gained the forecastle head, where for one moment he stood surveying
us, then bringing his hands to his face, he made what is known to
schoolboys as a ‘long-nose’ at us, turning a little sideways, that we
might clearly observe the humiliating derisiveness of his posture. In
this attitude he remained whilst a man might have counted twenty, then
turning his back upon us, he smote himself with a gesture of utmost
scorn upon a part of his body which the short skirts of his monkey
jacket left partially exposed; after which, with the air of a person
whose mind has been relieved, he leisurely made his way aft, thrice, as
he walked, turning his profile, that we might observe him lift his thumb
and fingers again to his nose. A little while later the old whaler was
plunging amid the white throbbings of her own churning a long mile
astern; and in half an hour she looked to be scarcely more than a gleam
out in the cold blue air, where there seemed a dimness in the atmosphere
as of the blowing of crystals off the melting heads of the high seas.

It was not till then that Lush left the deck.

This little incident was as stern a warrant of the disposition of the
crew as they could have desired to make me understand. It proved their
possession of a quality of suspicion, of a character so ungovernably
insolent and daring, that I might well believe, were it transformed into
passion by disappointment or insincerity on my part, there was no infamy
it would not render them equal to. I often wonder in recalling this time
that I should have found strength to bear up under my anxieties. The
future lay absolutely in blackness. I had some hope, some vague fancy,
rather, let me call it, of lighting upon an island, should Braine’s
prove the chimera I feared it was, that might enable me to contrive a
stratagem to effect our deliverance from this unspeakable situation. But
there was nothing in such an imagination as this to cast the faintest
light upon the gloom ahead. I would cudgel my brains in my lonely
watches at night with vehement struggles in search of any idea that
might be shaped into a method of escape. At intervals I would secretly
and warily converse with Wetherly; but he had no other proposals to make
than the souldepressing one of patience, with regular assurances,
indeed, that he would stand by me if his help could be safely ventured.

In these despairful considerations I even went to the length of fixing
my thoughts upon the boats. When we should have rounded the Horn and
entered the mild parallels of the Pacific, sparkling nights of
tranquillity were sure to descend upon us, and furnish me with an
opportunity of leaving the barque with Miss Temple; an opportunity, I
say, so far as the weather and the peace of the sea might be concerned;
but how with my single pair of hands was I to lower a boat, provide that
Miss Temple should be in her, provide also that the little fabric should
be stored with food and water, then unhook her, and slide away into the
gloom, all so privily, all so noiselessly as to elude the vigilance of
the man at the helm and of the seamen in my own watch sprawling about
the decks forward?

It was not to be done. I did not even suggest this method of deliverance
to Wetherly, feeling perfectly convinced that he would not entertain it.
And suppose I should be able to successfully get away with the girl in
this manner, how dreadful would be our outlook! with oars, indeed, but
without masts or sails, lying exposed for God alone could tell how long
a time in the heart of one of old ocean’s mightiest deserts, not
traversed then, as in these days; scarcely penetrated, indeed, save at
long times between, by such a whaler as we had passed, or by some vessel
trading to the Polynesian groups from the western South American
seaboard.

I do not know that I considered myself very fortunate because of the
fine weather which attended the barque in her passage of the Horn. Far
better, I sometimes thought, than the strong southerly breeze, the
flying skies of dark winter blue, the brilliant rolling and foaming of
long arrays of billows brimming in cream to the ivory white sides of the
little ship, and aiding her headlong flight with floating buoyant
liftings and fallings that timed the measures of her nimble sea-dance
with her waving mastheads as the batôn of a band conductor keeps the
elbows of his fiddlers quivering in unison—far better might it have been
for us, I would often think, had the month been the mid-winter of the
Horn, with heavy westerly gales to oppose our entrance into the Pacific
Ocean, and fields of ice to hinder us yet, with some disaster on top to
force us to bear away as the wind might permit for the nearest port.

The rounding of this iron headland was absolutely uneventful; the wind
blew almost continuously from the southward, and throughout was a strong
and steady breeze, that enabled me to show whole topsails and a
maintopgallant-sail to it. Once only did we sight ice, a distant spot of
a luminous crystalline whiteness upon the throbbing limits of the sea.
Day and night the water in white clouds poured in thunder from either
bow of the rushing barque; the clouds soaring from out the Antarctic
solitudes down behind the ocean line, swept in smoke athwart our trucks;
by day the small white sun danced amongst these fleeting shadows in the
north, and flashed up the sea into a very dazzle at each blinding launch
of his beams, so multitudinous were the peaks of froth which glanced
back the sparkling emissions of the luminary; by night the dark skies
were filled with stars of a frosty brilliance, amid which burned the
jewels of the Southern Cross with the Magellanic clouds beyond dim as
curls of vapour. A fire was lighted in the little stove in the cabin,
and by it, during my watch below, Miss Temple and I would sit exchanging
our hopes and fears, speculating upon the future, endeavouring to
animate each other with representations of our feelings when we should
have arrived home, and amid safety and comfort look back upon the
unutterable experiences into which we had been plunged by so trifling a
circumstance as a visit to a wreck.

Thus passed the time. Every day I obtained a clear sight of the sun, and
then striking the meridian of 76° West, I headed the barque on a
north-north-west course for Captain Braine’s island, the declared
situation of which I calculated would occupy us about three weeks to
reach.

It was on the afternoon of the day on which I had shifted the barque’s
helm, that Wilkins came to me as I sat at dinner with Miss Temple with a
message from the carpenter to the effect that he would be glad of a word
with me. I answered that I was at Mr. Lush’s disposal when I had dined,
but not before. This did not occupy another ten minutes in
accomplishing; my companion then withdrew to her cabin, having with much
eagerness expressed a number of conjectures as to the carpenter’s motive
in soliciting an interview.

The man came off the poop by way of the quarter-deck and entered the
cabin with his skin cap in hand.

‘I obsarve,’ said he, ‘that you’ve altered the vessel’s course.’

‘That is so,’ I rejoined. ‘Wetherly was on deck when I left my cabin
after working out my sights, and I believed he would have reported the
change of course to you.’

‘No; it was Woodward [one of the sailors] that was at the hellum. He
calls me over and points into the binnacle and says: “Ye see what’s
happened?” The men ‘ud be glad to know if it’s all right?’

‘If what is all right?’

‘Why, if this here course is true for the island? They’ll feel obliged
if ye’ll let ’em in here and show ’em the chart and ‘splain the distance
and the course and the likes of that to ’em yourself.’

I hardly required him to inform me of their wishes, for I had but to
direct my glance at the cabin door to observe them assembled on the
quarter-deck awaiting the invitation the carpenter had come to demand;
all hands of them, saving Wetherly and the fellow that was steering,
called Woodward by Lush.

‘Certainly: let them enter,’ said I; and at once fetched my chart, which
I placed upon the table, and went to the other side, ruler in hand,
ready to point and to explain.

The body of rough men, a few of them with their mahogany lineaments
scarcely visible amidst the whiskers, eyebrows, and falls of front hair
which obscured their countenances, stood looking upon the chart with
Lush in the thick of them, and Forrest’s mutinous, daredevil, rolling
face conspicuous over the carpenter’s shoulder.

‘Now, men, what is it you want to know?’ said I.

‘We’re a steering by the compass up above nor’-nor’-west,’ answered
Lush; ‘will ye be pleased to tell us how ye make that right?’

I had to fetch a pair of parallel rulers to render my answer
intelligible to the illiterate creatures who stood gaping at me with an
expression of dull struggling perception that would come and go in a
manner that must have moved me to laughter at another time.

‘What part of this here paper is the island wrote down upon?’ demanded
Forrest.

I pointed with my ruler, and the whole knot of faces came together as
they stooped with a sound as of a general snore arising from their
vigorous breathing.

‘How far is it off from where we are?’ inquired one of the men. I told
him. Several questions of a like kind were put to me; a growling ran
amongst them as they hummed their comments into one another’s ears.
Meanwhile, I stood inspecting them with mingled inquisitiveness and
disgust. What a miserable pass had the wretches brought the girl and me
to! What bitter anxieties had they overwhelmed us with! What was to be
our future so far as they should have a share in the creation of it? I
sought in vain amidst their various countenances, composed of hair and
warts and beards, of leathery skins, of moist eyes dim with weather, of
the smooth cheeks of two or three of the younger fellows—I sought in
vain, I say, for a single expression to assure me of the existence of
qualities upon whose generous response I might depend, should it ever
come to my having to entreat them. Yet they presented, as I long ago
said, just such exteriors as you would expect to meet with in the
sailors of a humble trader like the _Lady Blanche_.

‘Well, men,’ exclaimed the carpenter, ‘there ain’t no doubt to my mind.
It’s all right; and I’m bound to say stan’ing here, that con-sidering
that Mr. Dugdale guv’ up the sea a good bit ago, he’s managed oncommonly
well down to this here time.’

There was a murmur of assent. I thought I would take advantage of this
momentary posture in them of appreciation, perhaps of concession.

‘Since you are all before me,’ said I, ‘two excepted, let me ask you a
question. You are aware, of course, that from the very beginning of this
business I have regarded your whole scheme as the effect of a madman’s
dream.’

Lush stared at me with an iron face; Forrest, with an impudent grin,
shook his head; two or three of the fellows smiled incredulously. I
proceeded, eyeing them deliberately one after the other, and speaking in
the most collected tones I could command.

‘I want to know this: If Captain Braine’s island should have no
existence in fact, what do you men propose to do?’

‘No use putting it in that way!’ exclaimed the carpenter, after a brief
pause, and a slow, sour wagging of his head; ‘the island’s there.
‘Tain’t no dream. Ye’ll find it right enough, I’ll warrant.’

‘It was described to me,’ I went on, ‘as little more than a reef. This
is a big sea, men. A reef is easily missed in such an ocean as this.’

‘You have its bearings,’ exclaimed Forrest defiantly; ‘if you put the
barque in the place on the chart where the captain said the island is,
how are we agoing to miss it, unless all hands turns puppies, and keeps
a lookout with their eyes shut?’

‘But,’ said I, preserving my temper, ‘may not this hope of obtaining a
large treasure have rendered you all very considerably overconfident?
Suppose there is no island. Reason with me on that supposition. Imagine
that we have arrived, and that there is nothing but clear water.
Imagine, if you will, that we have been sweeping those seas for a month
without heaving into sight your late captain’s reef. What then, I ask?
What next steps have you in your minds to take? I have a right to an
answer, even though I should address you only in the name of the young
lady whose protector I am.’

The fellows glanced at one another. Their low, suspicious intelligence
manifestly witnessed some strategic fancy underlying my question.

‘Look here, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the carpenter, ‘there’s no use in
your a-putting it in any other way than the way we want, and the way we
mean to have.’ He accompanied this with a violent nod of the head.
‘Though we’re plain men without e’er a stroke of book-learning amongst
us, we ain’t to be made fools of. The island’s where ‘ee can find it, if
ye choose, and to that there island we’re bound, sir;’ and he bestowed
another emphatic, malevolent nod upon me.

I gazed at the fellows in silence. One glance at the array of mulish
countenances should have satisfied me that there was nothing in anything
I could say to induce in them other views than those they held, or to
render endurable to them a discussion that must be based upon a
probability of their being disappointed.

‘We’ve stuck to our side of the bargain, sir,’ said one of them.

‘Ay,’ cried the carpenter; ‘I allow that let the gent strive as he may,
there’s nothen he can find in the treatment him and the lady’s met with
from us men to complain of.’

‘I do not complain,’ I exclaimed; ‘have you on your side any reason to
complain?’

‘No, sir, and we don’t want none,’ the fellow responded with a look that
rendered his words indescribably significant.

‘You are satisfied, I hope,’ said I, ‘with the explanation I have given
you as to the situation and course of the barque?’

‘Yes,’ answered the carpenter, with a look round.

‘Then there is nothing more to be said,’ I exclaimed, and picking up the
chart, I carried it into my cabin.




                            CHAPTER XXXVIII
                                 LAND!


Our progress was slow. For some while we carried strong winds, which
swept us onwards into the softer climates of the Pacific; they then
failed us, and were followed by a succession of light airs, as often
ahead as astern. I was astonished, however, by the yacht-like qualities
of motion of the little barque. Through weather that had scarcely weight
enough in it to have stirred the _Countess Ida_, the _Lady Blanche_
would sneak over a surface of water that was often glass-like, ripples
fine as wire breaking away from her keen stem, and a short wake scoring
the liquid smoothness under her counter; her topsails and courses
motionless, save but for their soft swaying to the long and gentle
respiration of the swell; a faint lifting, however, perceptible in the
light cloths of the loftier sails, which were doing the work of the
rest, and communicating to the little fabric out of the delicate
softness of the blue Pacific heavens, so to speak, an impulse of
vitality, the recollection of which would move me to amazement when I
found that our progress in the twenty-four hours had been as
considerable as the Indiaman would have got out of a pleasant breeze.

But not to linger upon this time—though I could tell much of my
incessant intimate association with Miss Temple—dwell with delight,
untinctured by recollection of the miseries and anxieties of this
passage, upon the memory of the soft and lovely nights of those
delicious parallels, the clear dusk radiant with the glistening of stars
from sea-line to sea-line, the mild atmosphere, sweet with dew, the hush
upon the slumbering leagues of the deep, soothing as a benediction to
the perturbed spirit, the play of delicate fires in the water, the
stirring of canvas in the still gloom aloft, as of the brushing of the
pinions of hovering creatures: then the wide blue sparkling scene of
day, the barque clothed in the ivory whiteness of her canvas striking a
prismatic shadow of pearl from her white sides and silken heights into
the opalescent profound, on which she would rest as on a bed of glass,
some distant fountain and curve of wet black body denoting the rising of
a leviathan from the depths—ah! had all been well with us, this would
have made a noble time for the memory to muse on—but my story draws me
to its conclusion.

It was February the 18th, as very well indeed do I remember. From the
hour of our having sighted the whaler off Cape Horn, we had met with
nothing, not even of the bigness of the tip of the wing of a sea-fowl,
to break the continuity of the sea-line, no shadow of low-lying land, no
vision of star-like space of water indicating the froth of the submerged
reef. On this day at noon, having worked out my calculations, I
discovered that the distance to Braine’s island, as I may call it, from
the then situation of the barque, was to be traversed, if the light air
held as it was, in about twelve hours; so that it would be proper to
keep a lookout for it at about midnight.

I gave Mr. Lush this piece of news; he received it with a flush of
excitement that almost humanised the insipid coarseness of his dull,
wooden, leather-bound, weather-hardened visage.

‘Ye may calculate upon our keeping a bright lookout, sir,’ said he with
a grin that disclosed his tobacco-coloured fangs, and that might fairly
be called sardonic, since the eyes bore no part in this disagreeable
expression of satisfaction.

I watched him walk forwards to convey the information to the men. They
went in a whole body on to the forecastle, and stood staring about them,
as though the ocean wore a new countenance to their gaze, now that they
believed Braine’s island to be a short distance past the slope of it.
The carpenter pointed, and was full of talk; there was much lighting of
pipes, expectoration, puffing of great clouds indicative of emotion,
uneasy, impatient, flitting movements amongst the men, some of whom
presently broke up into couples and fell to pacing the forecastle like
marines on sentry; talking, as I did not doubt, of the money they were
going to dig up, what they would do with it when they had it, and so on;
the expressions on their faces varying at every instant, one emotion
suppressing another in a manner that to a contemplative and leisurely
eye would have provided a study at once ludicrous and informing.

I had the watch that afternoon; and when Miss Temple and I had eaten our
little midday meal, I drew chairs into the shadow of the short awning,
and we sat together, I, pipe in mouth, occasionally quitting her side to
take a look outside the edge of our canvas roof, along with a brief
stare ahead, for I could not be sure of Captain Braine’s chronometer,
nor of the exactness of my own calculations, and if the madman’s island
was where he had declared it to be, it might heave into view off either
bow or right ahead at any moment, for all I could tell.

Miss Temple stood in no need now of Captain Braine’s overcoat. She was
habited in the costume of the _Countess Ida_; somewhat soiled it was,
yet the perfect fit of it continued to atone for its shipwrecked airs.
Her dark eyes glowed under the shadow of the straw hat she had had on
when she left the Indiaman. She needed but her jewelry, the flash and
decoration of her trinkets, to show very nearly as finely as she had on
that day. There was but little alteration visible in her. For my part I
could detect no more than that her face was a trifle thinner than when
we had first entered on this wild adventure. The eye of close and
constant association would not indeed witness changes which might
instantly be perceptible to one encountered after an absence. Still, I
had the image of her brilliant on my mind as she was on board the
Indiaman, and viewing her now, as I say, I could perceive no other
change than what I have mentioned. Intellectually, however, there was an
alteration, defined to a degree to my sight. Her gaze was softened, and
was often sweet. The characteristic firmness of her lips had lost its
air of haughtiness. There was no longer any manner of command in her
looks, nor of exaction in her fixed regard; there was nothing to hint
that her spirit was broken—merely that it had been bowed to an average
human level by the rough usage of the sea, and by the amazing
experiences with which her months of lonely association with me had been
surcharged.

Heretofore, that is to say for some weeks past, she had exhibited a
resigned, calm, resolved behaviour, as of one who was constantly
schooling herself to prepare for an issue of life or death. She had long
ceased to utter a complaint; she would even detect a sigh in herself
with a glance of contrition and self-reproach. Again and again had I
complimented her upon the heroic qualities which her sufferings of mind
and body had fructified in her; but this afternoon she was feverishly
impatient and restless. The old fires of her spirit when alarmed were in
her eyes. I would observe her struggling in vain to appear composed. As
we sat together, she exclaimed, as she brought her eyes to my face from
a nervous sweeping gaze at the horizon over the bows: ‘By this time
to-morrow we shall know our fate.’

‘Perhaps not. Yet I pray it may be so. If I were sentenced to be hanged,
I would wish the hour come. But what is to be our fate? Nothing in this
life is so bad or so good as our fears or our hopes would have us think.
If there should be no island—— Well, those villains will find me on the
alert for what may come along in the shape of chance, and you must be
ready.’

‘I am ready,’ she exclaimed; ‘only tell me what to do. But this
expectation——’ Her lips trembled, and her white fingers clenched to the
agitation that possessed her. ‘The misery is, Mr. Dugdale, you have no
scheme.’

‘That will come,’ I exclaimed; ‘be calm, and remain hopeful. I might, in
the language of the heroes of novels, hope to reassure you by promising
that if we are to perish we will perish together. I am not a hero, and I
talk with the desire and the intention of living. There may be a few
more adventures yet before us; but your hand is in mine, and I shall not
relinquish it until I conduct you to your mother’s side.’

Of course I talked only to cheer her; yet I hoped even as I spoke, and
my hope gave a tone of conviction to my words that seemed to animate
her, and she smiled whilst her wistful eyes sank, as though to a sudden
reverie.

During the rest of the day the crew were ceaselessly on the move,
passing in and out of the galley and in and out of the forecastle,
pacing the planks with impatience strong in their rolling gait; one or
another of them from time to time springing on to the head rail to peer
thirstily and steadfastly under the shelter of his hand; one or another
again at long intervals ascending to the height of the foreroyal yard,
there to linger, whilst the fellows below gazed up with expectant faces,
and ears greedy for a cry from that lofty summit. The sturdy figure of
the carpenter was conspicuous amongst them. When he came aft, he would
look as though willing to converse with me, but I walked away abruptly
on his approach, and if I chanced to leave the cabin when he was on
deck, I kept to the lee side, contriving an air that even to his
unintelligent gaze must have conveyed the assurance that I wished to
have nothing to do with him.

The breeze was light, just forward enough on the beam to allow of the
foretopmast studding-sail remaining abroad. So weak was the air, that
the barque crept along with erect spars, and the red fly of the dogvane
scarcely flickered to the soft breathings at the royal mast head. I
feared that it would fall a dead calm at sun-down, but greatly to my
satisfaction, there was a small freshening in the breeze whilst the
scarlet yet lay gloriously upon the cloudless countenance of the west.
Indeed, my own almost crazy anxieties and expectation made the mere
fancy of a spell of stagnation abhorrent to me. Supposing the
chronometer below to be correct, I was in little doubt of the accuracy
of my computations, and my desire to verify or disprove the madman’s
assurance was consuming and insupportable.

When the night descended it was moonless, and through the pleasant
blowing of the wind, of a singular sweetness and freshness such as I
could not imagine of darkness in any other ocean. The water was now
streaming in a line of whiteness along either side, and the murmur under
the counter was as constant as the voice of a running brook heard amid
the stillness of a summer night. The carpenter had the watch from eight
to twelve; but for my part I could not find it in me to go to my cabin.
Such was my feverishly restless condition, that I knew I should close my
eyes in vain, and that the inactivity of a recumbent posture would
speedily grow irksome and intolerable. Miss Temple entreated me to lie
down upon the locker in the cabin. I answered that I should be unable to
sleep, and that without sleep the mere resting of my limbs would be of
no service to me.

‘But you will have to watch from twelve to four,’ she exclaimed, ‘and at
this rate you will get no sleep to-night.’

I smiled, and answered that Braine and the carpenter between them had
murdered sleep; and then took her on deck, where we walked and conversed
till the hour of eleven—six bells. I then returned with her to the
cabin. She declined to enter her berth; she begged me, and her eyes
pleaded with her voice, to suffer her to remain at my side throughout
the night. But this I would not hear of; I told her that such a vigil
would exhaust her, that her utmost strength might have to be taxed
sooner than either of us could imagine; that she must endeavour to
obtain some repose upon the locker, and that if anything resembling land
showed during my watch, I would call her. I saw a look of reproachful
remonstrance in her face; but compliance was now a habit with her, and
in silence she allowed me to arrange a pillow and to throw a light
blanket, that I fetched from her bed, over her feet. I sat near her at
the table, leaning my cheek on my elbow, and from time to time exchanged
a few words with her. There was hardly any movement in the sea. The wind
held the canvas motionless. The seething alongside was too delicate to
penetrate, and the silence in the little cuddy was unbroken save by the
ticking of a small brass clock under the skylight, and by the measured
tramp of the carpenter overhead.

A little before twelve I looked at my companion, and perceived that she
was asleep. On the eve, as I believed we were, of God alone knew what
sort of events, the spectacle of the slumbering unconscious girl, whose
beauty was never so affecting as when softened, and I may say
spiritualised by the expression of placid repose, moved me to the heart.
What a strange association had been ours! How intimate had we become!
what confidences had our common suffering caused us to exchange! what
condition of shoregoing life was there that could have brought this girl
and me together as we had been and still were? How I loved her, I was
now knowing; I could dwell upon my passion with delight as I looked at
her, though on the threshold of a future that might prove terrible and
destructive to us both. What was the secret of her heart, so far as I
was concerned? I gazed at her lips with some unintelligible hope of
witnessing them shape the syllables of my name; then the clear chimes of
eight bells floated aft. With a sigh and a prayer, I dimmed the cabin
lamp and went softly to the companion steps.

On my emerging, the carpenter came up to me.

‘It’s been blowing a steady air o’ wind,’ said he; ‘allowing for this
here improvement in our pace, what time d’ye reckon the island’ll take
to show itself?’

‘If it exists,’ I answered, ‘it might be in sight now. The captain’s
description showed that there was no height of side to make a loom of.
If you’re going forward, see that a couple of hands are stationed on the
forecastle, and tell them to keep a bright lookout. We don’t want to run
the reef down, if it’s there.’

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he exclaimed in the rough off-hand voice of a sailor
receiving an order, and left the poop.

The time crept away. There was a light burning in the galley; and the
shapes that flitted in and out through the open door, throwing giant
shadows upon the hazy square of illumination on the bulwark abreast of
the galley entrance, satisfied me that most if not all of the men were
awake and on the lookout. Several figures, never less than two, paced
against the stars over the bows with the regular tread of sentinels,
clear on the forecastle under the forecourse by the spaces of the
spangled sky they blotted out as they moved. The breeze continued a
pleasant air, and all about the gliding barque were the summer tinkling
sounds of water gently broken. Occasionally, I would go forward, and
taking my stand on the rise of the cathead where it sloped to the rail,
strain my eyes into the elusive starry dusk where sea and sky seemed to
melt into liquid gloom. No one accosted me as I passed to and fro. Once
I heard the tones of the carpenter in the galley warm in argument. The
fellows pacing the forecastle would come to a halt whenever I went
forward, and stand looking at me in silence, full of expectation, no
doubt, of my being able to see more than they. The very barque herself
seemed to participate in the emotions, the breathless curiosity, the
avid yearnings of the men who awaited the appearance of the island with
restless motions and voices subdued into low growling notes: the ship
herself, I say, seemed governed by the impassioned expectation of the
hour, so tremulously breathless was she aloft, so still and subtle was
her movement through the water, so hearkening the aspect of her forward,
as though the stirless curve of her jibs were ears which she eagerly
projected that she might catch the first sound of the wash of surf.

All this while Miss Temple lay soundly sleeping below.

It was wanting about ten minutes to four when the quarter-deck was
suddenly hailed from the forecastle. The voice rang loud and startlingly
upon the ear used to the continued stillness of the night.

‘Hallo!’ I cried.

‘There’s something dark right ahead,’ came back the answer.

I whipped the glass out of the companion, and walked swiftly forwards
where all the crew had run to the first cry, and where I found them
standing in a huddle of shadowy shapes at the rail, some pointing, and
all looking in one direction.

‘Where away is the object reported?’ I exclaimed.

‘Yonder,’ cried the carpenter, stepping out of the little crowd and
projecting his arm almost on a line with the jib-boom end.

I instantly perceived it! It was just a streak of shadow, low-lying,
like a line of cloud beheld by night lifting a few fathoms of its brow
above the sea-line. I pointed the telescope; and the lenses without
revealing features, resolved the length of airy obscurity into the firm
proportions of land.

‘Is it the island, sir?’ demanded the carpenter in a voice hoarse with
excitement.

My own astonishment—the wonder raised in me by yonder prompt settlement
of the incredulity that had possessed me from the first minute of
hearing the captain’s story—the conflict of emotions which followed on
my considering that the land ahead must inevitably be Braine’s island,
since the chart showed clear water to the distance of the latitude of
Easter Island, which the low stretch over the bows most assuredly was
not, the loom being little more than that of a reef—rendered my ear deaf
to the carpenter’s inquiry. He repeated his question.

‘If not, then I know not what other land it can be,’ said I. ‘How far
distant will it be, think you?’

The men gathered about us to hear what was said.

‘Three mile about,’ he answered.

‘More like five,’ grumbled out a seaman.

‘Five in your eye!’ cried another—‘more like _tew_. If ye’ll stay your
breathing, you’ll hear the wash o’ the surf.’

‘Better shorten sail and wait for daylight, Mr. Lush,’ said I.

‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered; ‘that’ll be the proper thing to do;’ and
instantly fell to bellowing out orders.

The uproar of the excited crew clewing up and hauling down, yelling as
they pulled at the ropes, and springing about with an alacrity that made
their darting figures resemble those of madmen, awakened Miss Temple. I
stood alone on the poop, endeavouring to obtain a view of the land by
leaning over the rail, when she came up to me.

‘What is it, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Land!’ I exclaimed, instantly turning to her.

‘The island?’ she cried, suppressing astonishment until she should have
received my answer.

‘I have no doubt of it. The shadow indicates that it is little more than
a reef. Its bearings, according to my computation, accurately correspond
with those given by Captain Braine.’

She projected her head over the rail, but was some time before she could
distinguish the mere dash of gloom that the land made upon the horizon.

‘If it should be the island!’ she cried. ‘That you should have steered
this ship straight as an arrow for it, and that it should be there—no
madman’s dream, as we have both believed it! If one part of the story be
true, the other part should be so.’

I was too astounded to converse. I could do no more than ejaculate. To
be sure, as my companion had said, if the story of the island was true,
the story of the gold might be equally true. There would be the
treasure, then, for the men to possess themselves of! And afterwards?

My brains seemed to whirl like a teetotum in my skull.

Meanwhile, the sailors had reduced sail till the barque was now under
topsails only, the rest of the canvas hanging from the yards in the grip
of its gear. The carpenter arrived on the poop.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, in a rough, congratulatory voice, ‘you’ve
done wonderfully well, sir. By ——! but I don’t think there’s e’er a
navigator would have struck it true as a hair as ye have. Ye’ve got no
doubts now left, I allow?’ and I saw his face darken with the wrinkles
of the grin that overspread his countenance.

‘What’s to follow?’ I demanded, thinking to take advantage of his mood.

‘Why, the gold,’ he answered, ‘the money, sir; what we’ve been a-waiting
for; and what I suspects we’ll most of us know what to do with when we
gits it.’

‘And then?’

‘That’ll be a matter for consideration,’ he answered, drawing off and
going to the rail and staring ahead.

‘Back the topsail yard and bring the ship to a stand, Mr. Lush,’ said I,
‘and get a cast of the lead, will you?’

These orders were immediately obeyed. The lead ran out to the whole
scope of line without touching bottom. There was nothing now to be done
but to wait for daylight. A whole eternity seemed to pass before the
dawn broke. Then to the sifting of the dull gray faintness over the rim
of the eastern sea, the land came stealing out, till, to the sudden
soaring of the sun into the clear blue sky of the Pacific morning, it
flashed out into its full proportions and distinctive features not a
mile off our port beam as we then lay with our maintopsail aback.

The crew, neglecting all discipline and shipboard habit, were assembled
in a body on the poop; and thus we all stood looking, I a little
distance away from them with Miss Temple at my side. It was a small
coral island, apparently of the dimensions that Captain Braine had
named. To the northward the smooth water brimmed to a long shelf of
coral grit, lustrous as snow in the sparkle of the early sunshine. There
was a small rise, green with vegetation, in the centre of the island;
how far distant, I could not imagine. Almost abreast of us, the land
went in with a semicircular sweep like to a horseshoe, and was exactly
the lagoon that had been described by Captain Braine. In the centre of
it, just as he had marked the thing down upon his chart, rose a coral
formation of the appearance of a very thick pillar, and at the distance
from which we surveyed it, it might easily have passed for a monument of
white stone erected by human hands, the decorated summit of which had
been rudely broken off by a tempest or some volcanic shock. On a line
with this pillar, some little distance up the beach of the lagoon, were
several clumps of trees. There was a deal of a sort of stunted
vegetation going inland from the margin of the little bay, coarse grass,
as my telescope made out, tangles of bushes, and so on.

The carpenter in the midst of the men stood with the parchment chart in
his hand, pointing out how the outlines corresponded with those of the
land, amidst a hubbub of eager comments and exclamations of excitement.
For my part, I could not credit my senses; I disputed the evidence of my
own eyes; I brought them away from the island to fix them with an
emotion of profound bewilderment upon Miss Temple.

‘Can it be real?’ I cried. ‘After the weeks of conviction of the utter
madness of this quest, am I at last to be persuaded that the wretched
suicide was not mad, that his island is a fact, and his gold an absolute
reality too?’

I turned my back upon the crew to press my hands to my eyes to ease my
brow of an intolerable sense of swooning in it.

‘Three cheers for him, men!’ I heard the carpenter roar out. Volley
after volley of huzzas rang from the deep sea lungs of the sailors. They
were cheering me. I turned to find them all looking my way. They tossed
their caps and flourished their arms like madmen in the exuberance of
their delight.

‘Now, sir,’ sung out the carpenter, ‘hadn’t we better see to our ground
tackle?’

‘As you will,’ I answered; ‘there is your island; I have kept my word
with you; now, Mr. Lush, the crew will proceed as they think proper.
When you require my services again as a navigator I am ready;’ and so
saying I seated myself on the edge of the skylight, and with folded arms
continued to view the island with such astonishment and incredulity as
made me fear for my head.

‘Is it all for the best, do you think, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple,
who had seated herself beside me.

‘I cannot tell—it may be so. If they find the money, the wretches’
delight and good temper may render them willing to comply with my wishes
to make for the nearest port. I am in a dream. Give me a little time to
recover my amazement. You know it ought to be impossible that that
island should be there.’

She glanced at me anxiously, with something of alarm indeed, as though
there was even a greater strangeness in my manner than in my language.
Long hours of anxiety, long hours of sleeplessness, the continual
apprehension of what was to follow if this island was not discoverable,
these things and how much more had done their work with me; and now on
top was come the shock of the discovery of the truth of what I had all
along been convinced was the dream of a madman—the lie of a crazy head!
I felt a moisture in my eyes; my limbs trembled; my breathing grew thick
and difficult. In silence, Miss Temple hurried below and returned with a
tumbler of cold brandy grog. She put it into my hand, and I drank it
off; and I have very little doubt that the strong stimulant—such a dose
as might have made me boozy in an hour of ease!—rescued me from an
attack of hysterics, man as I am who tell this!

Meanwhile the seamen had gone forward, and were all hard at work with
the chain cables, connecting them with the anchors, affixing tackles,
hoisting the ponderous irons to the catheads, and filling the barque
with business and songs. They worked with desperate will and eagerness,
yet their progress was slow, and the sun had mounted many degrees before
all was ready forward for bringing up. They then went tumultuously to
breakfast, which they devoured upon deck, emptying their hook-pots down
their throats, and hastily eating their biscuit and meat, whilst they
jabbered away in voices of enthusiasm, one calling out a joke to another
amidst loud laughter.

The carpenter had now taken command. He came aft while Miss Temple and I
nibbled at some breakfast which Wilkins had brought us on deck, and
ordered the maintopsail to be swung, and stationed a hand with a
lead-line in each of the main-chains. The wind was about south, and
allowed the barque with her yards braced fore and aft to very nearly
look up for the lagoon. We crept slowly along; the lead on either hand
went in frequent flights towards the bow, but no bottom was reported.
This went on till the yawn of the lagoon was upon our starboard quarter,
with the trend of the land covered with bushes opening out as it ran
into the south-east, and then came a shout from the port main chains.
The water now shoaled rapidly; a man stood forward ready to let go the
anchor; down thundered the topsail yards to the cry of the carpenter to
let go the halliards; the barque lost way; the sharp clank of a hammer
rang through the vessel, followed by a mighty splash, and the roar of
iron links torn in fury through the hawse-pipes.

In a few moments the _Lady Blanche_ was at rest, with the western spur
of the lagoon within half a mile of her.




                             CHAPTER XXXIX
                               THE ISLAND


The men now went to work to get tackles on to the yards, in order to
hoist the long-boat over. This again ran into time, for the boat stood
in chocks, and was stoutly lashed to the deck; and before they could
remove her, they had to clear away the spare booms which were stowed on
top of her and clean her out. When they had her alongside, they passed
water and provisions and several gallons of rum into her, with other
matters of this sort, of which I hardly took notice. They also handed
down the shovels used for the little stock of coal that was carried in
the fore-peak, and several crows, handspikes, and whatever else they
could lay their hands upon that would enable many of them at a time to
dig up the soil.

Whilst all this was doing, I remained seated on the poop with Miss
Temple. I was now feeling better and stronger again, could think
rationally, and astonishment was worn out.

‘It is most unmistakably the island that Captain Braine named,’ I said
to the girl, speaking with my eye at the telescope. ‘I remember he spoke
of a clump of trees at the foot of which the treasure lies hidden.
Yonder are several clumps. Which one of them will it be, I wonder? and
will the money be there? What an astonishing romance will it prove,
should those sailors fall in with a booty of nearly two hundred thousand
pounds!’

‘What are they going to do, do you think, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘It looks to me as if the whole body of them were going ashore to dig.’

‘Are they not taking a deal of provisions with them?’

‘They may mean to make merry. After months of shipboard life, the touch
of the land will be grateful to the soles of their feet. Let them find
the gold! their transports will know no bounds; there will be some wild
skylarking amongst them before they come off, or I am greatly mistaken.
Would to God they would make themselves drunk, that I might run away
with the ship.’

‘Cannot that be done when they are on shore?’ she cried with an air of
exultant entreaty in her sudden leaning towards me as she spoke.

‘Yes, were an off-shore gale to come on to blow, I might contrive to
slip and let the barque storm out to sea before it. But in this weather!
They would be after me in a jiffy in their boat, and then God help me
when they got hold of me!’

A shade of paleness overspread her face, and she regarded me with a look
of consternation, as though violently affected by the fancies my simple
sentence had put before her. I sprang on the top of the hencoop to sweep
the sea-line with the telescope, but could nowhere discern the least
shadow of land. As I put down the glass, the carpenter came off the
quarter-deck, where, at the gangway, he had been busily shouting out
instructions and overseeing the work of preparing the boat, and
approached me. He held Captain Braine’s parchment chart, at which he
stopped to look for a moment when he was yet some paces distant.

‘Will ye tell me what’s your opinion of the weather, sir?’ he exclaimed,
in a voice whose natural gruffness and surliness were not to be
sweetened by the satisfaction that was merely visible in a small symptom
of respectfulness in his bearing.

‘I do not know, I am sure. This cloudless sky should be full of promise.
The mercury in the captain’s cabin promises fair weather.’

‘What do ‘ee think of letting them sails hang?’ said he, sending his
malevolent gaze aloft; ‘or shall we tarn to and roll ’em up afore we go
ashore?—though it’ll be a long job,’ he added, directing his eyes
thirstily at the island.

‘The ship is in your hands,’ said I.

‘Oh well,’ he exclaimed, as though gratified by my admission, and
sending a slow look round the sea; ‘we’ll let ’em be as they are for the
present. The anchor’s got a good grip, I allow; if so be as a breeze
should come along, we can send some of the men aboard to furl the
sails.’

_We!_ thought I, as I regarded him in silence.

‘My sight ain’t what it used to be,’ he continued; ‘yet I can see enough
of that there island’—and here he began to fumble with the chart he
held—‘to guess that this here’s a first-rate likeness of it. This,’ said
he, pointing with his square thumb at the mark in the middle of the
lagoon on the parchment, ‘is one of the bearings we’ve got to have in
mind to find out where we’re to begin to dig, ain’t it?’

‘I believe so,’ said I.

‘Didn’t ye put down the particulars of the spot in writing?’ he
inquired, looking up at me from the chart.

‘No,’ I answered shortly.

‘How many feet was the money hid away from the wash of the water?’ he
demanded.

‘It was in paces, I remember,’ I returned, ‘but the figure is entirely
gone out of my head. Wilkins should be able to recollect.’

He ran with a sort of dismay to the break of the poop and bawled for
Wilkins. The lad came half-way up the steps. The carpenter spoke to him
and then returned.

‘The young scowbanker don’t recall,’ he exclaimed. ‘He believes—a curse
on his believes!—that the captain spoke of four hundred feet. Was that
it, sir?’

‘I remember enough to make sure that it was not four hundred feet,’ I
answered.

He picked up the glass and levelled it at the island.

‘Which of them clumps of trees was it that the capt’n talked to ye
about?’ he asked whilst he looked.

‘He did not describe any particular clump. It was to be found by
measuring so many paces from the edge of the water of the lagoon yonder,
the pillar bearing something west, but what I can’t tell you. I treated
the story as a madman’s dream, and dismissed all the particulars of it
from my mind.’

‘We’ll have to try all them clumps, then, that’s all,’ said he, with a
hard face and a voice at once sharp and coarse with ill-subdued temper.
‘We’ll get the money, though it comes to having to dig up the whole
island. And now, sir, there’s nothen to stop us—the boat’s ready—if
you’ll be pleased to come along.’

‘I can be of no good to you,’ I exclaimed with an involuntary recoil;
‘you have hands enough to dig. I’ll stop here.’

‘No, if you please; we shall want you,’ he said, with a stare of dogged
determination.

‘I must not be left alone, Mr. Lush,’ cried Miss Temple, with a painful
expression of fear in her bloodless face. ‘If Mr. Dugdale goes, I must
accompany him.’

‘No, mem. You’re safe enough here. We must have Mr. Dugdale along with
us to show us what to do. For Lord’s sake, no arguments, sir! The
impatience of the men’ll be forcing them to taking you up in their arms
and lifting you over the side, if you keep ’em waiting.’

‘But am I to understand,’ I exclaimed, ‘that all hands of you intend to
quit the ship, leaving this lady alone on board?’

‘Joe Wetherly and Jim Simpson’ll remain,’ he replied; ‘they’ll keep a
lookout, and two’s enough with us men in hail of their voices. Now, sir,
if you please.’

The crew standing in the gangway were looking my way with signs of
irritation in their bearing. I merely needed to give one glance at the
carpenter’s face to satisfy me that temper, protest, appeal, would be
hopeless; that refusal must simply end in my being bodily laid hold of.
I was urged by every instinct in me to a policy of conciliation. To
irritate the fellows would be the height of folly; to provoke the
indignity of being seized and roughly thrust into the boat, the utmost
degree of madness. My resolution was at once formed.

‘I will accompany you, Mr. Lush,’ I said. ‘Get you gone on to the
quarter-deck whilst I say a few words to comfort my companion.’

He walked away to the gesture with which I accompanied this request.

‘Miss Temple, pray take heart. Wetherly is one of the two men who are to
be left. You will feel safe here with him on board until I return.’

‘Until you return!’ she cried, with her eyes full of misery and horror.
‘I shall never see you more!’

‘Oh no; do not believe such a thing. The men imagine I shall be of
service to them in lighting upon the spot where the gold is. They cannot
do without me as a navigator. They will bring me off with them when they
leave the island.’

‘I shall never see you again,’ she repeated in a voice of exquisite
distress. ‘Why could they not have left us together here?’

‘Now, Mr. Dugdale, if _you_ please,’ bawled the carpenter from the head
of the poop ladder.

I took and pressed her hand between mine, and then broke away from her.
What had I to say, what to offer, that she could convert into a hope? I
felt the danger of continuing to view her in her despair and
helplessness, for already it was producing in me a rage against the men
that must be suppressed at all costs. I turned to smile and to wave my
hand, and found her with her back upon me and her face buried.

Wetherly and the man who was to be left with him stood a little forward
of the main-hatch looking on. As I stepped to the gangway I called out:
‘Wetherly, and you, Simpson: I leave the lady behind me; she is alone.
You will see to her, men, I beg.’

Simpson gazed stolidly, as though not understanding me; indeed, there
was no countenance amongst the sailors from which all meaning appeared
to have been so entirely discharged as his. Wetherly smiled, and
flourished his hand with a significant glance. He would perfectly
comprehend that I had included Simpson as an excuse to appeal to him
only. Without another word I dropped into the main-chains and jumped
into the long-boat.

When the men had entered, there were ten of us in all. The boat was a
roomy, stoutly-built fabric, and her oars were almost as long as sweeps.
The barque’s quarter-boats would have been too small for this service;
for the ten of us made a body, and they had handsomely stowed her
besides with water and rum and provisions (as you are aware), not to
mention the sundries with which they proposed to dig the soil. I rather
wondered that they should have supplied themselves so hospitably, till I
recollected that Captain Braine had said there was no fresh water and
nothing to eat upon the island. The carpenter had no doubt remembered
this as a passage in the story which Wilkins had overheard and repeated.
It might be also that they intended to stay awhile on this island when
they had dug up the gold, to refresh themselves, with the substantiality
of land under their feet, for a day or two after their long months of
the heaving sea; in which case they would naturally convey what they
required at once, to spare themselves the trouble of a trip to the ship.

Their leaving Wetherly behind was due, I took it, to the indifference
and doubt he had exhibited from the commencement; possibly, they might
also have some notion, by requiring him to remain on board, to cheat him
of a portion of his share; and since they considered that two were
necessary to watch the barque, they would find a willingness to remain
in her only in the stupidest man amongst them, who, to be sure, was
Simpson. These were thoughts which hurriedly passed through my mind even
whilst the fellows were in the act of shoving off. There was neither
sail nor mast in the boat. Probably they considered that those things
would encumber the thwarts, whilst, in fact, there was no real need for
them, since the vessel lay within a very easy pull. Four fellows threw
their oars over, and the boat clumsily broke the smooth water to the
impulse of their blades.

When we were clear of the shadow of the barque’s side, I turned to look
for Miss Temple, and observed her seated in a posture of utter
despondency upon the skylight. I stood up and flourished my hat; but she
made no sort of response. She remained motionless, as though stupefied
and insensible. I resumed my seat, breathing hard with the wild mood
that possessed me; but I was not to be suffered to sit in silence. The
carpenter plied me with questions, which he only ceased that the others
might have a chance of making inquiries. Couldn’t I remember how many
paces it was that the captain had said? Would it be one hundred? Would
it be two hundred? Would I turn to and think a bit? A gent’s eddicated
memory was always better than plain men’s, who weren’t no scholards. If
the right number of paces wasn’t hit upon, it might take ’em a week to
find the spot. And what about the bearings? Couldn’t I recollect exactly
how the trees bore from that there pillar? Wherever the gold was, it
couldn’t lie deep hid, for there was but two men to bury it, and them
weak with shipwreck, and they wasn’t going all the way down to hell to
make sartin of a secret nook.

To all this I had to listen and reply as I best could. Yet it was talk
to put a fancy that had long haunted me—that had haunted me, I may say,
from the time of some of my earliest conversations with the
carpenter—into shape, out of which arose one instantly present keen
perception: that gold or no gold, they must be kept hunting for it!

It was a cloudless day; the sky a true Pacific blue, a mild breathing of
wind off the island; and the sun, that was already at his meridian,
flung a wide splendour upon the air that was without an insufferable
excess of heat. The long-boat floated into the lagoon, the bottom of
which showed like a pavement of white marble trembling through the blue,
glass-like translucency. I looked carefully about me, but could see no
signs of the hut which Captain Braine told me he had built, and out of
which he had crawled to find the Yankee surveying craft hove-to abreast
of the island. Neither were there any other relics of his shipwreck
visible: such as the bottles, casks, tins, and so on, which, according
to his account, he and his companion had landed from the brigantine. It
is true that a good many years had elapsed since the date of the wreck
as he had given it me, and in that time the island might have been
visited or swept by seas and hurricanes. The sailors did not appear to
heed the absence of all memorials of Captain Braine’s having landed
here.

‘The Spanish craft’ll have come ashore yonder,’ said the carpenter,
standing erect, referring to Braine’s story, and indicating by an eager
nod of the head the position of the stretch of lustrous beach that
looked northwards, but that was now invisible to us. ‘Where’ll be a good
place to land here?’

All hands were staring about them. The fellow named Forrest said:
‘There’s a bit of a tree there that’ll hold the boat secure. Better let
her lay afloat, Mr. Lush, ‘case of a change o’ weather and having to
shove off in a hurry.’

‘Ay, she’ll lie all right off that tree,’ exclaimed the carpenter. ‘In
oars, lads! Let her slide quietly stem on. I’ve heard of coral spikes
a-tearing of boats’ bottoms out.’

A few minutes later most of us were ashore, the boat lying quietly
secured by a line to a small but solidly rooted tree, and two or three
fellows in her handing out her freight of odds and ends to the others.

The feel of solid land under my feet was a singular sensation. I had now
been incessantly at sea for a time that was growing rapidly into six
months, and after those interminable weeks of heaving shipboard, the
immovability of this coral rock affected me as something in the greatest
degree novel. I sent a hurried glance around; but the eyes I had
strained from over the rail of the barque had acquainted me with every
material point of the island, and this closer survey yielded nothing
fresh. The margin of the beach of the lagoon went gently sloping up from
hard coral to a species of soil that appeared to possess some qualities
of fertility, for the tall coarse grass was very plentiful and of a most
vivid green. The few groups of trees were also richly clad, and the
bushes extraordinarily abundant. There were no signs of life of any sort
saving birds, of which a score or two were wheeling about in the air
over the northward fronting beach. The inland rise was a mere small
green acclivity probably not above thirty feet to the summit. All was
silent, desolate, lifeless; nothing to hear amid the brief intervals of
stillness among the men save the delicate noise of the soft wind amongst
the foliage, and the melancholy moaning of surf from the other side of
the island.

Everything was landed; the men seized hold of the various implements
they had brought with them to dig up the soil; the carpenter flourished
a shovel and called to me: ‘Mr. Dugdale, have ye no recollection of the
number of paces?’

‘None whatever,’ I responded.

‘What d’ye advise, sir?’

‘Measure a hundred paces, keeping yonder pillar on a line with that
clump of trees there, and then dig.’

‘Ay, but Wilkins overheard the capt’n say that the money was buried at
the foot of some trees,’ said Forrest. ‘A hundred paces ain’t going to
bring us near a tree.’

‘I remember nothing about the foot of some trees,’ I exclaimed.

‘What do _you_ recall?’ the carpenter shouted to Wilkins.

‘I thought I heerd something about the foot of trees,’ answered the
fellow, turning his pale meaningless countenance upon Lush. But Mr.
Dugdale’ll know best, of course.’

‘If the money be here at all,’ said I, ‘you may take it as lying hidden
somewhere in this space,’ and with pointing finger I indicated an oblong
surface one end of which went a little beyond the fourth group of trees,
whilst I defined the other as starting from about a hundred paces away
from the edge of the beach where the boat was.

Ten minutes were now expended in heated discussion. Where should they
begin? One or two were for leaving it to me and carrying out my
suggestions; others were for measuring two hundred paces and starting
there; whilst others were for digging at the roots of the clumps of
trees, taking them one after another.

‘See here, lads,’ cried the carpenter; ‘we han’t had anything to eat
yet. Better tarn to and get some dinner and grog. By that time we shall
ha’ settled what to do and be the fitter to go to work.’

This was a proposal which all hands found perfectly agreeable. They
flung down the implements they held, and in a very short time were
seated about the grass, sheath-knives in hand, making a hearty meal off
salt beef and biscuit and cheese, and tossing down pannikins of
rum-and-water. They invited me to join them, and treated me with all the
respect I could desire. Again and again, whilst we thus sat, I would
direct looks at the barque as she lay as it might seem almost within
musket-shot of us. The figure of a man paced the forecastle; but Miss
Temple was not to be seen. Once the carpenter, catching me looking,
exclaimed with a sort of enthusiasm in his voice: ‘Well, the little
hooker _is_ a beauty and no mistake. What a slaver she’d make!’
Commendation probably could not go higher in such a man. A beauty,
indeed, she looked; the reflection of her white sides floated under her
like a wavering sheet of silver; her canvas hanging in festoons showed
with the milk-white softness of streaks of clouds against the blue sky
past her; her rigging had the exquisite minuteness of hair. Would to
God, I thought to myself with a sudden heavy sinking of my heart, that I
were on board of her alone with Miss Temple, ay, with no other hands
than mine to work the ship! I should find the strength of half-a-dozen
seamen in me for her sake. Poor girl! and there arose before me a vision
of the Indiaman—a recollection of the proud Miss Temple scarcely
enduring to send a glance my way—— But this was a reverie that must be
speedily disturbed by the company I was in.

They had hoarsely debated until they had come to an agreement, and,
having concluded their meal, each man lighted his inch of sooty clay,
picked up his shovel or his crow, or whatever else had been brought off
from the barque, and marched to the nearest of the clump of trees, at
the foot of which they fell to digging. Every man was in motion: they
laboured with incredible activity, and with such faces of rapturous
expectation as again and again forced a smile from me, depressed,
anxious, miserable as I was. With my hands clasped behind me, I paced to
and fro, watching and waiting. Now that the island had proved an
absolute fact, I could no longer feel certain that the gold was a
madman’s fancy. Nay, I was now indeed imagining that it was all true,
and that Braine had fallen crazy through possession of his
incommunicable secret acting upon a mind congenitally tinctured with
insanity, and irremediably weakened yet by the horrible sufferings he
had undergone before he was cast away upon this spot. Yet never did I
glance at the barque without a prayer trembling from my heart to my lips
that the wretches might not find the gold. An old scheme, that this
unexpected lighting upon the island had quickened and given shape to,
was fast maturing in my mind, even while I paced that stretch of grass;
but the discovery of the money would render it abortive.

I watched the seamen with an interest as keen as their own, but with
hopes diametrically opposite. The soil was dry, stubborn, perhaps
through the intermingling of coral-grit and the coarse fibres of its
herbage. Yet there were many of them, and every man worked with
desperate energy, and presently they had dug up a good space to some
little depth. I awaited with a beating heart the exultant shout which I
might be sure the first man who turned up one of the yellow pieces would
raise. They continued to toil in silence. Presently the carpenter,
resting his chest upon his shovel, with the sweat falling in rain from
his crimson face, bawled out to me: ‘How fur down, d’ye think, we ought
to keep on a-digging?’

‘I would give up at two feet,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine and his friend
would not find strength to go much beyond two feet.’

One of the fellows plumbed with his crow, and, bringing it out, with his
thumb at the height of the level, cried: ‘It’s more’n two feet already.’

They dug a little longer, nevertheless; then a few curses ran among
them, and the carpenter, with a note of irritation in his voice, roared
out: ‘No good going on here. Try this clump.’ He walked over to it and
drove his shovel into the soil. The men gathered about him, and in a
trice were all in motion again.

This was a severity of toil that I knew must force them to break off
presently. Although I could not distinctly recollect the bearings of the
treasure as given by Captain Braine, I felt persuaded that he had named
the base of the group of trees which the fellows had just quitted as the
hiding-place of the money. If it were not there, then I might feel
perfectly satisfied it was nowhere else, and hope began to dawn in me
afresh. Their labour at the base of the second clump resulted in
nothing. They exposed a wide space, and went deep, but to no purpose.
The time had passed rapidly; I looked at my watch, and was astonished to
find it hard upon five o’clock.

All this while the sky had remained cloudless, and there was no hint
visible in any part of its countenance of a change in this softness and
tranquillity of weather. The light off-shore draught, however, had
shifted into the west, and at this hour there was a cool and pleasant
breeze, that brushed the breast of the sea into a surface of twinkling
ripples. The water of the lagoon trembled to it as it breathed laterally
athwart its face, and already the coral beach of this graceful
wide-mouthed inlet bore on the lee-side its stress of tiny breakers.

The sailors by this time were pretty well exhausted. The expressions
their faces wore, so far as they might be determinable amid the purple,
and perspiration, and hair of their dripping and fire-hot visages,
showed them full of irritability and disappointment. The carpenter
addressed them; I did not catch what he said, but as they came in a body
towards the part of the beach where I had been pacing or sitting whilst
they worked, I could hear them swearing and cursing, whilst they
grumbled and growled out their surmises as to where the money was
hidden, their eyes roving over the soil as they talked. Lush’s face was
hard with temper.

‘We’re agoing to send off some men to furl the lighter canvas,’ said he.
‘Ha’n’t got much opinion of this soil as holding-ground, and she’ll drag
with that weight of canvas loose, and blow away out of soundings, if we
don’t see to it.’

‘A very proper precaution,’ said I coolly. ‘You don’t mean to give up
digging yet, I suppose?’

‘Give up?’ he cried with his coarse sarcastic air, and frowning upon me
out of the rage my inquiry excited. ‘No; not if we has to dig the whole
island up, as I told ye.’

‘Very well. I’ll go aboard with the men in the boat. The money, if it is
hidden at all, will be hereabouts,’ said I, with a wave of my arm, ‘and
I can be of no further use to you.’

‘No, no; you’ll stop along with us, if you please,’ said the fellow.
‘Your recollection of the number of paces may come back to ye, and we
can’t do without you.’

I sent a look from him to the faces of the fellows who stood listening
near us, and without another word folded my arms, and with a spin of my
heel started off on a walk to and fro.




                               CHAPTER XL
                                I ESCAPE


If I had witnessed the idleness of protest and remonstrance and appeal
on board the barque, I must have held entreaty to be tenfold more
useless in the face of the mortification of the carpenter and his crew,
increased as their temper was by the irritation and the fatigue of hard
and useless work. I might at once be sure that they had no intention of
suffering me to leave the island until they quitted it themselves for
good. There would be also distrust; the fear that I might contrive to
run away with the ship. Yet I had still to find out what they meant to
do; what their plans were for the night. I knew what I wanted, and I
remember what I prayed for as I tramped solitarily backwards and
forwards upon the edge of the herbage where it came thin to the beach.

Seven men entered the long-boat and shoved off. The carpenter remained;
with him was the sailor named Woodward. They flung themselves down upon
the ground with an air of exhaustion, and so lay smoking their pipes.
After awhile, the carpenter called to me. I approached him leisurely. He
asked me if I remembered the number of paces from the beach, and eyed me
so surlily as he put the inquiry that I began to think he suspected I
could tell if I chose.

‘If Wilkins can’t remember,’ I exclaimed, ‘why should I be able to do
so—I, whose opinion of this business you well know? I do not recollect
the number of paces. I wish I did, for I am more anxious than ever you
can be that you should come at this gold, that we may sail away, and end
the most cursed adventure that ever a man was forced into.’

The heat and the evident sincerity with which I spoke these words
slightly subdued him, and his ugly face relaxed its threatening look.
Finding him silent I said: ‘What do you mean to do?’

‘Stop here all night,’ he answered shortly. ‘Stop here, I’ve told ye,
till we’ve found the money.’

‘You will leave some men aboard the ship to look after her?’

‘Two’ll be quite enough,’ he answered. ‘How much looking after do she
want in weather of this pattern? If we don’t meet with the gold afore
dark—and there’ll be no chance of _that_, I allow—we must all be at hand
to tarn to at daybreak.’

I asked no further questions; and the fellow sank into silence, both he
and the other sucking at their pipes, whilst they seemed to hunt with
their eyes over the ground as they lay with their heads propped on their
elbows.

I saw Miss Temple on the poop watching the approaching boat. Very well
could I imagine the feeling which would possess her when she perceived
that I was not among the occupants of the little craft! The boat
clumsily drove alongside, and the men sprang on board over a short rope
gangway ladder that had been dropped. They went to work at once, as
though in a hurry to get the furling job over, that they might return;
and with a swiftness that was surprising in fellows almost exhausted by
previous labour, they furled the mainsail, foresail, and lighter canvas,
leaving the topsails hanging, and the spanker loosely brailed in to the
mast. This done, they descended, and came to a pause at the gangway, as
though giving what news they had to the two seamen that had been left
behind. They then entered the boat afresh and leisurely made for the
island. As they jumped on to the beach, I noticed that the man Simpson
had taken the place of Forrest, who had been left to keep a lookout with
Wetherly. I felt instantly very uneasy on observing this. There was no
other man of all the crew whom I would not sooner have wished to be
Wetherly’s associate than that impudent, mutinous, bold-faced young
seaman. To think of Miss Temple alone with those two men! one to be
trusted, as I hoped and believed; but the other as insolent and defiant
a rascal as could be imagined of any forecastle blackguardly hand! I
gazed eagerly at the barque, and was glad to find that the girl had gone
below. I earnestly prayed that she would have the sense to keep in
hiding. There was the long night before her, and Wetherly might sleep.

Never since the hour of our losing sight of the Indiaman had I felt half
so worried, half so distracted with fears and forebodings. I withdrew to
a distance from that part of the beach where I had been walking, that
the workings of my mind might not be seen in my face; and thankful was I
afterwards, when I had somewhat cooled down, that the carpenter did not
offer to approach or speak to me; for such was the passion my anxiety
for Miss Temple had raised, that I believe a single syllable of rudeness
would have caused me to fall upon him—with what result it would be
useless here to imagine.

There was about an hour and a half of daylight remaining. When the
sailors had secured their boat, they went to supper. In lieu of tea they
drank rum-and-water, and this pretty plentifully.

‘Won’t ye jine us, Mr. Dugdale?’ called out the carpenter. ‘No call to
eat along with us if you object to our company. Ye can have your food
separate; but you’ll be wanting to eat anyhow.’

‘He must be a poor sailor who is not good enough company for me,’ I
exclaimed, having by this time mastered myself; and forthwith I took my
seat amongst them and fell to upon a piece of salt beef, whilst I got a
stronger beat for my pulse out of the pannikin of grog that I drained.

The men’s talk was all about the gold. ‘If it ain’t under them trees,’
said one of them, ‘it’ll ha’ to come to doing what the gent told us;
starting at a hundred paces from the wash of the water there and digging
in a line till we strikes it.’

‘What’ll them as hid it have wrapped it up in?’ exclaimed another.

‘Canvas,’ answered the carpenter shortly.

‘Which’ll have rotted by this time, I allow, and the money’ll be lying
loose,’ said a sailor.

‘Who’ll get the first chink of it?’ cried Wilkins.

Exclamations of this sort I observed worked a general sense of elation
in them; and the rum helping their spirits, they began to crack jokes,
and their laughter was loud and frequent. The scene, to any one who
could have viewed it without distress, must have been thought admirable
for its character of soft romantic beauty. The western atmosphere was
brimful of the reddening light of the descending sun; under it, the
smooth ocean lay in dark gold that came sifting out into a cool azure,
which then ran with an ever-deepening tint of blue into the clear liquid
distance. The trembling of the sea to the breeze put a weak coming and
going of light and shadow into these dyes, and freshened the western
light upon the surface into a very glorious scintillation. The barque
floated like a shape of marble in the cerulean water that lay betwixt
the reflection of the sun and the darker tints of the east. Her rigging
resembled wires of gold, her masthead vane lay like a little flame
against the sky, her white shadow fluctuated in dissolving quicksilver
under her, and as she slightly leaned with the delicate heave of that
wide Pacific breast, stars of crimson flashed off her deck, and her
bright lower-masts showed as though they were on fire. The water in the
lagoon floated in a tender blue to the coral beach on which it rippled.
There was a subtle aroma as of sweet and secret inland vegetation upon
the atmosphere. The long grass stirred, and the silken brushing of the
leaves of the trees against one another produced the most refreshing
sound that could be imagined to ears which for months had received no
pleasanter noises than the straining of timbers, the flapping of sails,
and the sobbing and washing of the ocean surge. There was nothing in the
wildness and rugged looks of the fiery-faced recumbent seamen to impair
the tenderness of this picture. On the contrary, their roughness seemed
to accentuate its gentle beauty, as the silence of a calm midnight at
sea may be heightened by some gruff human voice speaking at a distance,
or by some rude sound that assists the hearing as a contrast.

The carpenter looked towards the sun.

‘Don’t let’s waste no more time,’ he cried; ‘let’s attack that third
clump there afore it falls dark.’

They sprang to their feet, seized their several tools, and in a few
moments were hard at it, digging, boring, but in silence, for their
efforts were too heavy for talk or for laughter. The sun went down
whilst they were still toiling. They had discovered nothing, and the
first to give up was the carpenter. He sent his shovel flying through
the air with a loud curse.

‘I’m done for to-night,’ he roared. ‘Where did them scowbankers hide it?
It’ll have to be as Mr. Dugdale says. ‘Morrow marning we’ll start at a
hundred paces from the beach. We’re not here to miss it, and we’ll have
it if we rip the guts of this island out of her forty fathom deep!’

He was furious with temper and exhaustion, and stepping to a kettle that
was full of rum and water, he half-filled a hook-pot and swallowed the
contents to the dregs, afterwards pitching the vessel from him with an
air of loathing and passion. The men, throwing their implements into a
heap, came slowly to where the rum and provisions were, cursing very
freely indeed, some of them groaning with weariness, smearing the sweat
off their foreheads along their naked arms, and stretching their
clenched fists above their heads in postures of yawning. Every man of
them took a long drink, and then they slowly fell to filling their pipes
whilst they continued to heap curses upon Captain Braine and his
companion for not having buried the money in a place where it might be
easily got at.

My heart was now beating quickly with anxiety. What was the next step
they meant to take? Would the carpenter change his mind and carry all
hands of us aboard? I observed him light his pipe, and take a look
around with as evil an expression on his face as ever I had witnessed in
it. He then trudged with a deep sea-roll in his walk down to the tree to
which the boat was attached, and having carefully examined the knot, as
though to make sure that the line was securely fastened, he stood gazing
awhile at the little craft, as though considering, afterwards sending
his eyes in another rolling stare round the horizon as far as it lay
visible. I watched him furtively, but with consuming anxiety.

‘Tell ye what, mates,’ he suddenly sung out, rounding upon the men and
approaching them, ‘there’s nothen to hurt in this weather, and the
barque’s going to lie as quiet as if she was laid up. We’ll just stop
where we are; but a lookout’ll ha’ to be kept, and the boat must be
watched. Better settle the order at once. The lookout will sit in the
boat, case’—he added with a sarcastic leer in my direction—‘there might
be savages about unbeknown to us with a settlement aback of that hill
amidships there. What d’ye say, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘I have no longer command,’ I answered; ‘it is for you to arrange as you
will. Why you desire to keep me here, I cannot imagine. Why not put me
aboard, that the young lady may have the comfort of my presence?’

‘She don’t want no comfort,’ he answered coarsely; ‘she’s all right. The
number of paces the capt’n talked of may come to ye by daybreak, and
we’re all at hand to tarn to.’

I made no answer.

The night came down dark and clear, with a noise of rippling waters in
the quiet steady wind. The barque faded into a phantasm, and inland it
was all black as ink, with the stars which rimmed the outline of the
central rise winking there like sentinel beacons burning upon some giant
mountain leagues distant. But where the boat lay the space of coral grit
showed pallid, of the hue of ordinary soil bathed in moonlight, and the
figure of the little fabric, with her nose pointing at the tree to which
the rope that secured her was fastened, blended shadowily with the
darkling surface of the water of the lagoon, over whose tiny ripples the
clear reflection of the larger stars were riding.

The men roamed about in twos and threes, but never very far. I believed
I could trace an uneasiness in their behaviour, as though they had
consented to sleep out of the ship in obedience only to the carpenter’s
wishes, and were now reconsidering their acquiescence with some
indecision of mind. I earnestly hoped that this might not prove so, and
watched and listened to them with my heart full of wretchedness. The
carpenter was seated with another man, and conversed with him in low
notes, which trembled to my ears like the subdued growling of a dog. I
strolled away to a distance, but was neither followed nor called to.

The time passed very slowly. The men grew weary of moving about, though
for some while the mere sensation of the hard soil was a delight to
them, now that the air was deliciously cool and they had no work to do
and could roam at will. They came in a body together and seated
themselves round about the carpenter and his companion, drinking by the
starlight, with the frequent glare of the lighting of pipes throwing out
the adjacent faces, till it was like looking into a camera obscura. They
talked much, but my attentive ear detected a drowsy note stealing into
the sound of grumbling that stood for their conversation.

It was drawing on to the half-hour past ten when I stepped leisurely up
to the huddle of shadows, and looking over them as they lay in all sorts
of postures, I exclaimed: ‘Which is the carpenter?’

‘Here he is,’ answered the voice of Lush.

‘Are the men going to make a bedroom of this spot?’ said I.

‘Ay,’ he answered. ‘Where else? Ye han’t surely come across a hotel in
your lonely rambles?’

These words he pronounced without intending offence, though such was the
coarseness of the ruffian that he could say little which was not
offensive. One or two of the fellows laughed.

‘I shall look out for comfortable quarters for myself,’ said I. ‘I have
no fancy for lying amidst all this high grass. There may be snakes
about.’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed one of the men; ‘there’s no snakes here, sir. I’ve
kept a bright lookout. There’s nothen to be afeerd of.’

‘Ye’ll find the grass a soft bed,’ exclaimed the carpenter.

‘Thank you,’ I answered; ‘but since I am detained here against my will,
allow me at least to choose my own mattress. Should you want me, you’ll
find me about eighty paces yonder, where there’s some clean sand betwixt
the bushes.’ I pointed to a spot a little distance past the curve of the
lagoon.

‘It don’t signify to us where ye sleep, sir, exclaimed Lush; ‘we shan’t
be wanting ye till the morning, by which time I hope you’ll have
recollected the distance Capt’n Braine named. If you should feel a-dry
in the night ye’ll find a kettle-full of rum-and-water alongside yon
breaker that’s standing upright.’

‘Thanks,’ said I; ‘good-night.’

There was a rumbling sleepy answer of ‘good-night’ from amongst them.

The spot I had chosen gave me a clear view of the lagoon, and by
consequence of the boat. There was no grass here, and the bushes were
small and stunted, as though starved by the sandy character of the soil.
Yet they furnished a dark surface, amid which I could crawl on my hands
and knees without risk of being seen from the place occupied by the men.
I sat down to wait and watch. Over the tops of the bushes alongside of
me I could just distinguish the figures of the sailors when one or
another of them rose apparently to obtain a drink from the kettle. After
I had been seated some twenty minutes or so, I spied one of them walking
towards the boat. His dark shape showed with tolerable distinctness when
he emerged from the comparative obscurity of the herbage into the dull
gleam of the stretch of coral foreshore. He entered the boat, and then I
lost sight of him, for the water past him lay in a trembling sheet of
gloom, and his outline was absorbed in it. From time to time I could
hear the voices of the seamen conversing; but shortly after eleven all
was silent amongst them, and then the indescribable hush of the great
ocean night settled down upon the lonely rock.

There was nothing in the stirring of the bushes to the wind, in the dim
and delicate seething in the lagoon, in the hollower note of surf
lightly tumbling at the back of the island, to vex this vast oppressive
stillness. I thanked God that there was no moon; yet could have
earnestly prayed for more wind and for a few clouds to obscure something
of the small fine spangling of the atmosphere by the stars. I could see
no light upon the barque; she lay in a little heap of faintness, what
with her white sides and hanging white topsails, out in the gloom.

Presently, when I had supposed that all hands saving the fellow in the
boat were sleeping, I saw a figure slowly coming my way. I gathered by
his posture, as I dimly discerned it, that he was staring among the
bushes as he advanced. He slightly lurched as he stepped, and it was not
until he was within twenty feet of me that I perceived he was the
carpenter. I pillowed my head on my arm, drew my feet up, and feigned to
be in a sound slumber. He arrived abreast of me, stood looking a little,
and then went slowly back to the others.

The scheme I had made up my mind to adventure was one of extraordinary
peril. Yet I was quite certain that the dreadful risk would provide me
with my last, indeed my only chance. I was now immovably convinced that
though Captain Braine’s story of the existence of the island was a fact,
his assurance of a large fortune in hidden gold was a madman’s fancy.
The men would be finding this out; what they would then do, I could not
conjecture; but the menace involved in their lawlessness, their rage of
disappointment, their determination (certain to follow) to find their
account in the barque and her cargo at all costs, was so heavy, so
fraught with deadly peril to Miss Temple and myself, that I was resolved
that night to make one prodigious dash for liberty, leaving the rest to
fate. Once during that day it had occurred to me to make a rush for the
boat and shove off, leaving the men without any means of pursuing me;
but a little consideration showed me that the risks of such an attempt
were all too fearfully against me. If I valued my life for my own as
well as for the girl’s sake, I must not fail; and yet failure seemed
almost certain. Before I could have liberated the line that secured the
boat, sprung into her, lifted one of her heavy oars to shove her off
with, the men, who had always been working within a hundred and fifty
yards of the beach, would have been upon me. Or supposing I had managed
to slide the boat a few fathoms away before they arrived, half of them
would have been probably able to swim faster than I could scull the
clumsy fabric, whilst my erect figure must have supplied an easy mark
for the stones which those remaining on shore would have hurled at me.
No! I had mused upon and then utterly dismissed that scheme, coming back
to my first resolution, which I now lay waiting for the right moment to
execute.

At half-past twelve by my watch, which the starlight enabled me to read,
the man who had first entered the boat came out of it, and was replaced
by another, whose figure I followed with my sight as he passed across
the beach and disappeared in the little structure. For another hour I
continued to watch, to wait, to hearken with every sense in me strained
to its acutest limit; during which time the island continued sunk in the
profoundest stillness of this midnight, saving always the noise of the
rippling of waters and of the breezy stirring of the bushes. Then with a
few words of appeal to God for courage and support, I started to crawl
round past the spot where the men were sleeping, that I might arrive at
the beach under cover of the tall grass, which would hinder them from
observing my form as I approached the tree to which the boat’s line was
secured.

The soil ran in a sandy trail through the bushes hereabouts, and I got
along pretty nimbly, crawling noiselessly, feeling ready to burst at
times, owing to the almost unconscious holding of my breath, forced upon
me by my apprehension lest I should be observed or overheard. Presently,
coming to the trees at whose base the men had dug, I stood up, not
fearing detection here, and very rapidly gained the growth of bushes
which darkened a space of land to the north, betwixt the place where the
men lay and the broad shelf of white beach where, as the fellows had
supposed, the Spanish brigantine had driven ashore. I now dropped on my
knees and hands again, and in this posture skirted the high herbage that
grew down to where the coral grit provided no soil for such vegetation,
until I came to the tree, close up against which I rose, that my shape
might appear as a part of the trunk. Then, with an eager, trembling
hand, I cast the line adrift, and sinking again on my knees and hands,
crawled upon the dark surface of the verdure to where it went nearest to
the northern horn of the lagoon, where, still crouching, I remained for
a little space watching.

In a few minutes the liberated boat, feeling the action of the wind,
slowly floated off.

At every instant I was prepared to hear a shout from the shore or from
the fellow who was supposed to be at watch in the boat. Yet it soon grew
plain that my utmost hopes were to be confirmed by the heavy
rum-influenced slumber that had overtaken the watchman, and that lay in
lead upon the closed lids of the wearied sailors upon the grass. My
heart was loud in my ears as I crouched watching. Presently the boat had
slipped to some considerable distance from the shore, and was sliding
seawards out to the wide yawn of the lagoon broadside to the ripples and
the breeze. Then, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, and shoes and
smallclothes, I crawled down on to the clear gleam of the beach, waded
into the water, and struck out for the barque.

I was a fairly good swimmer; of old the exercise had been one of delight
to me. The water was cool, but not chilling; I seemed to find a buoyancy
in me, too, as from excess of brine in the dark surface, through which I
gently pushed at first, lest I should raise a light of phosphorescence
about me. At intervals I would pause, faintly moving my arms that I
might keep myself afloat, and hearkening in a very agony of expectation.
But all continued silent ashore. Now and again I caught sight of the
boat as she went drifting seawards; but the shadow of the night lay
thick upon the breast of the sea, and the small structure was sunk in it
in a blending that eluded the gaze.

When I considered I had swum far enough to render any such sea-glow as
my movements would kindle about me invisible from the island, I put my
whole strength into my arms and legs and swam with a vigour that
speedily began to tell. The dim heap of faintness which the barque had
made grew definable with the stealing out of its proportions. The
outline of the hull shaped itself; then I could see the clear line of
the yards and spars ruling the starry sky with the vaporous-like folds
of the topsails hanging. I felt no fatigue, no cold; the silence on the
land filled me with a spirit of exultation, and the animation of that
emotion acted upon me like a cordial of enduring virtue. Gradually and
surely I neared the barque; the swim was but a short one in reality, and
I needed no rest, though rest I could easily have obtained by floating
on my back for a while. Within twenty minutes from my first cautious
taking of the water, my hand was upon the lowest rung of the rope
gangway ladder that lay over the side.

I held by it a little, to take breath and to listen. I had seen no
figures on the vessel as I approached: but I knew that Forrest was on
board, that the very piratical cast of the rogue’s character would
render him alert and perceptive; that the moment he spied me he would
guess a stratagem, and be upon me; and that it was my business to be
before him, or to be prepared for his first spring, armed, as I knew him
to be, with the sailor’s invariable weapon, the sheath-knife.




                              CHAPTER XLI
                              WE SAIL AWAY


It did not take me long to recover my breath. The swim had, indeed,
comparatively speaking, been a short one; there was no tide that I had
been in any degree sensible of; and I had lost nothing but breath,
thanks to my eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that had nerved
my limbs with steel and rendered me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up
the ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom lay heavy upon the
quarter-deck and waist, and objects were hard to distinguish. All was
motionless, however, there and on the forecastle; but I could now
discern two figures walking on the poop on the port side. The
spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the several fittings of skylight and
companion, and so on, had concealed them from my observation whilst I
swam, approaching the ship as I had on the starboard side. Their shapes
showed tolerably clear against the stars that sparkled over the rail and
betwixt the squares of the rigging, and I stood staring with no more of
me showing over the line of bulwarks than my head till they had come to
the rail that protected the break of the poop, and I then made out that
one of them was Miss Temple.

This convinced me that the other must be Wetherly, for it was not to be
imagined that the girl would seek refuge from even a more frightful
loneliness than hers was in the society of young Forrest.

At that instant I heard a long wild halloa dimly coming through the
steady breeze from the shore. The cry was followed by another and yet
another, and then it seemed to me that it was re-echoed from off the
water some distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound on to the deck, and
in a breath had armed myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if that
man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple was, I was ready for him! In a
moment I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had brought the pair to a
dead halt, and they stood listening. Now that I was on the poop I
perceived by the build of the figure of the man that it was Wetherly,
and rushed up to him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on seeing me,
as well she might; for, having partially undressed myself, I was clothed
from top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides, which moulded my
attire to my figure and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster of
Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if I had shaped myself out of the
air.

‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried.

‘Great God, mum, it’s Mr. Dugdale!’ he roared.

The girl uttered another shriek, came in a bound to me and flung her
arms round my neck.

Now the halloaing ashore was incessant, and the wild cries sounding
through the wind were as though the island had been suddenly invaded by
an army of frenzied cannibals.

‘My dearest!’ I cried, letting forth my heart in that moment of being
clasped and clung to by her whom I had long loved and was risking my
life to save, ‘it is I indeed! But release me now, my darling girl. We
must get the barque under weigh instantly. Wetherly, where is Forrest?’

‘Dead, sir.’

‘_Dead!_’ I cried.

‘Shot dead by Miss Temple’s hand, sir,’ he exclaimed.

The girl let fall her arms from my neck, essayed to speak, struggled a
little with her breath, and fell against me in a dead swoon.

‘Your coat, Wetherly,’ I shouted; ‘off with it, man, and make a pillow
for the lady’s head. Quick! If the long-boat sculls ashore and the crew
enter her before we can slip, we are both of us dead men.’

He instantly pulled off his jacket; and tenderly, but swiftly, I laid
the girl down, first freeing the collar of her dress and no more, for
there was time for no more.

‘Jump for the cabin lamp, Wetherly,’ I cried; ‘don’t stop to ask any
questions. We must knock out a shackle, and let the chain go overboard.
That is what is now to be done.’

He rushed off the poop, I in his wake. The lamp was dimly burning, but
it enabled us to find what we wanted in the carpenter’s chest: and
whilst I held the light to a shackle that was just forward of the
windlass barrel, he let drive, and the cable went with a roar through
the iron hawse-pipe.

‘We must now get the topsail on her and blow away,’ I cried.

The conviction that the men would view him as my confederate and have
his life if they got aboard, put an incredible activity into his limbs,
which were habitually slow of motion. My having swum to the ship made
his sailorly mind comprehend without a syllable of explanation from me
how I had contrived the matter. We fled to where the topsail clewlines
were belayed, and let them go, and then hand over hand dragged home the
sheets, which, being of chain, travelled through the sheave-holes very
readily. This done, I sped as fast as my feet would carry me to the
poop, and finding the helm amidships, waited to see how the wind sat
with regard to the position of the ship, meanwhile bawling at the top of
my lungs to Wetherly to let go the maintopsail clewlines and bring the
clews home as far as his strength would enable him.

The light breeze was off the starboard quarter. I at once starboarded
the helm, and, to my infinite delight, found the barque responsive to
the turn of the spokes, proving that, snail-like as might be her
progress, she at least had steerage way upon her. This brought the land
upon the starboard beam. I then steadied the helm, quite sure that the
craft would steer herself for a few minutes.

As I ran forward I witnessed Miss Temple in the act of sitting upright.
I sprang to her side and lifted her to her feet, and held her for
perhaps a minute with her face upon my shoulder until she should have
recovered her self.

‘Sit on this skylight,’ I exclaimed, ‘until you feel equal to assisting
us, and then come to our help, for we greatly need you.’

She understood me, but was too weak and dazed as yet to be of use. The
shouts from the shore were incessant. The men had heard the chain cable
as it rattled through the hawse-pipe, and I judged they were yelling to
the ship, as though hailing Forrest; but they were too far distant for
their syllables to reach us. I spent a breathless moment in sweeping the
sea towards the mouth of the lagoon, and on a sudden saw the boat like a
drop of ink on the star-touched shadow of the water; but I heard no
sounds of her being sculled—which would be the fellow’s only chance of
getting ashore—nor could I catch the least sign of his figure.

My immediate business now was to get the foretopsail mast-headed as best
we could. There was a little winch just abaft the mainmast. Shouting out
my intentions to Wetherly, I bent on the first length of rope I met with
to the hauling part of the topsail halliards and brought it to the
winch, where I took some turns with it. As I did this, Miss Temple
descended the poop ladder.

‘Have you strength to hold on to this rope?’ I cried to her.

‘Oh, yes,’ she answered.

I put it into her hand, bidding her do no more than keep a light strain
upon it, that it might not slip; and in a moment the little winch was
rattling with the chirruping of its pawls going straight up in the air
like an endless cocking of muskets to Wetherly’s and my vigorous arms.

By this means we contrived to hoist the foretopsail, though not, as will
be supposed, to a ‘taut leech,’ as sailors call it. Yet the cloths
showed a wide surface to the wind, and already the nimble frame of the
little barque, yielding to the summer pressure aloft, was sliding along
very nearly as fast as the men could have urged the heavy long-boat
through the water, supposing them to have recovered her and to be in
pursuit. Whilst Wetherly manœuvred with the maintopsail halliards in
readiness for hoisting the yard, I once again hurried aft to the wheel,
to make sure of the course of the barque. She was drifting dead before
the small breeze with her head at about east-by-north, and already had
brought the island veering upon the quarter, lying down there in a lump
of blackness in the starlit gloom, with just the gleam of the bit of
northern coral sea-board glancing off the dusk of the shelving reef.
From time to time I could hear the fellows shouting, but their voices
were now sounding thin, weak, and remote. The star-flakes in the black
water astern trembled to the mild passage of the wind; and sparks of the
sea-fire, like golden seed, churned up in our wake mingled with those
delicate crystal reflections. With an eager passionate prayer upon my
lip that this steady draught would hold, I regained the main-deck; and
all being ready, Wetherly and I revolved the winch, Miss Temple holding
on as before, and the yards slowly mounted till we could ‘heave and
pawl’ no further.

‘Now, Wetherly,’ I shouted, ‘jump aloft and loose that foresail. Pass
your knife through the gaskets. Don’t wait to cast them adrift.’

Then catching up the girl’s hand, which I pressed to my lips before
speaking, I asked her to accompany me to the wheel, that she might hold
the helm steady and keep the barque straight before the wind.

‘There is no time,’ I exclaimed as I hastened aft with her, ‘to utter
more than the few syllables necessary to effect our escape. We must heap
all the canvas we can manage to spread upon the ship. We must contrive
to blow away out of sight of that island before the breeze fails, or the
men will be giving chase in the long-boat.’

She grasped the spokes in silence. The binnacle lamp was unlighted, and
the card lay in gloom. I bade her take note of a star that stood like a
jewel at the extreme end of the starboard main-yard arm, and swiftly
directed her how to move the wheel, if that star swung from the end of
the spar, so as to bring it back again to its place. I then sprang to
the main-rigging, and climbed with the activity of one to whom the loss
of a minute may mean life or death, to the height of the topgallant
yard, the sail of which I loosed, and then came hand over hand down to
the deck by the stay. The barque was but a toy of a ship at the best,
and after the pyramidal heights reared by the Indiaman, her tops and
crosstrees looked but a leap from the deck. I had sheeted home the
topgallant-sail before Wetherly had let fall the foresail. I summoned
him to the halliards, and when the sail was set, we let go the fore clew
garnets and hauled the sheet aft. Then we hoisted the foretopmast
staysail and other light fore and aft sails; and in order to get as much
weight out of the wind as there blew in it, we braced the yards somewhat
forward, that the fore and aft canvas might draw. When this was done, I
raced aft to the wheel and put it down.

No sooner did the little barque feel the air off her beam than she
gently sloped her spars to it with a small spitting of froth at her
cutwater, and in a few minutes she was gliding along like a yacht,
reeling off a fair six knots with water smooth as ice to travel over,
small as was the amount of canvas we had made shift to spread. But I
could do no more. My strength had failed me, and I was incapable of
further exertions. It was not the fatigue of the swim merely, nor my
red-hot haste and maddened labours since I had boarded the barque; the
frightful hours of expectation, of anticipation, of hopes and fears, and
of waiting, that I had passed upon the accursed island since sundown
were now heavily telling upon me.

‘Hold the wheel, will you, Wetherly,’ said I. ‘I am pretty nearly spent.
I must rest a bit. Thanks be to God, we are safe now, I believe;’ and so
saying, I sunk wearily upon the stern gratings.

Miss Temple went hastily to the cabin, carrying with her the lamp with
which Wetherly had kindled the mesh in the binnacle. In a few minutes
she returned with a tumbler of brandy-and-water, which she put to my
lips. I swallowed the contents greedily, for I was not only parched with
thirst, but my nerves sorely needed the stimulant. I took her hand and
brought her to sit by my side, and continued to caress her hand,
scarcely equal for more just then than a few rapturous exclamations over
our deliverance, the delight I felt in being with her again, the joy in
believing that I should now be able to redeem my promise and restore her
in safety to her mother. Her replies were mere murmurs. Indeed, her own
emotions were overwhelming. I could hear her sobbing; then see her by
the starlight smiling; but she kept her eyes fixed on my face; soaked as
I still was to the skin with salt water, she leaned against me, as
though she needed the assurance of actual contact to convince her that I
was with her once more.

But by this time the island had melted into the scintillant dusk of the
sky. Nothing showed but the liquid sweep of the indigo line of horizon.
Another hour of such sailing as this would convey us out of all
possibility of reach of the long-boat, supposing the men should recover
her; for she was without mast or sail; the utmost exertion of the rowers
could scarcely get more than three or three and a half miles an hour out
of her; then again I had shifted the barque’s course, and would shift it
again presently.

‘Tell me now about Forrest?’ I exclaimed, breaking a silence of fatigue
and emotion that had lasted some few minutes.

I felt the shudder that ran through my companion in the clasp of her
hand.

‘Did I understand that you shot him?’

‘It is too dreadful to speak of,’ she said in a low voice.

‘It was like this, sir,’ exclaimed Wetherly. ‘Forrest and me had agreed
to keep a four hours’ lookout. He was to stand from eight to twelve. I
lay down on the fo’c’sle, believing the lady safe below, where she’d
been pretty nigh ever since you and the men went ashore. I was awoke by
a noise that sounded to me like the report of a gun. It was then about
six bells, sir. I thought I’d just walk aft to see if all was right with
the lady. Audacious as I knew that there fellow Forrest to be, speaking
of him as a fo’c’sle hand, and capable of any sort of hinsolence and
mutiny and the likes of that, I had no fear of him whilst he was left
alone to keep a lookout with the hentertainment of thinking about the
money him and his mates was to dig up. Well, as I reached the
quarter-deck the lady came out of the cabin. The light was burning dim,
just as you found it when you came aboard. She held a pistol in her
hand, and she says to me quite coolly: “A man came into my cabin just
now. I heard him trying the handle of my door, and I took up this
pistol, and when he walked in, I said: “Who are you? What do you want?”
he answered; and I pointed my pistol at him and fired. I believe I have
killed him. Will you go and see?” I thought she was walking in her
sleep, so quiet she talked. I went to her cabin, and saw Forrest lying
upon the deck. I turned him over, and he was stone dead; shot through
the heart, I reckon. I dragged his body into your cabin, where it’s
a-lying now. The lady then asked to keep company with me on the poop;
and so it was you found us a-walking together, sir.’

‘Brave Louise!’ I murmured, moved to the utterance of her Christian
name, though this was the first time I had ever given it her, close and
ceaseless as our association had been. Yet an instant’s reluctance,
regret, or bashfulness followed my pronunciation of it—even at such a
moment as that!—to the memory that arose in me with the velocity of
thought of the proud eyes, the haughty coldness of the lofty,
disdainful, elegant Miss Temple of the _Countess Ida_.

But what she had done was a thing not to be referred to again now. I
felt the piteousness of her distress, shame, and horror in her silence:
by-and-by she would be able to speak of it collectedly, if there were
need indeed to recur to it at all.

‘No fear of the boat overhauling us, now, I think, Wetherly?’ I
exclaimed.

‘Lord, no, sir; without e’er a sail to spread either. That swim of yourn
was a bold venture, Mr. Dugdale. Ye must ha’ managed the job in
first-rate style. Wasn’t no lookout kept?’

His questions led me into telling the story. Miss Temple listened
eagerly, our hands remaining locked; again and again she broke into an
exclamation with some cry of alarm, some ejaculation of sympathy. ‘You
called me brave just now,’ she said; ‘but how is your behaviour to be
expressed?’

‘D’ye think there’s any chance of the men recovering that boat?’
inquired Wetherly. ‘The chaps told me when they came aboard to furl the
canvas that there was nothen to eat or drink upon the island saving what
they’d taken. If they should lose the boat, it must go hard with them,
sir.’

‘They will not lose their boat unless the fellow who was in charge of
her lay dead drunk in her bottom: an improbability; for I saw him walk
on steady legs to her. My one chance lay in his being asleep. Make your
mind easy: he was awakened long ago by the yells of the men, and by this
time the boat lies snug at the beach of the lagoon. But why should you
have any feeling for the brutes? They would have cut your throat had
they succeeded in boarding us. What happened when you were asleep should
be indication enough for you of the character of the ruffians, a pretty
good warrant of the sort of treatment we might have expected at their
hands later on, gold or no gold.’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘all I can say is I’m thankful to the Lord
to be where I am. I shall be desperate glad, I shall, when this here
woyage is over. I should only just like to see my way to getting enough
out of it to set up for myself ashore, for this here’s been a job as has
properly sickened me of the sea, and so I don’t mind telling ye, sir.’

‘There’ll be the salvage of this craft,’ said I; ‘you can have my share,
and I’m sure Miss Temple will give you hers.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ she exclaimed.

‘Then there’ll be your own share,’ I went on. ‘We have to carry the ship
in safety to a port first of all. If we can’t pick up hands as we go
along, we three will have to manage as best we can. I don’t doubt we
shall contrive it; and then you will easily see your way to a few
hundreds.’

I saw him grin broadly by the mingled light of the binnacle and
star-shine. It was proper to fill him with hope, and to present to his
limited understanding some thing definite to work upon. There had been
nothing in his behaviour to render me much obliged to him. He had chosen
neutral ground in this business, with a little inclination to the safer
side: and though he had ventured upon several promises, I had never
secretly regarded him as a man who would prove heroically useful at a
pinch. However, he was absolutely essential to our safety now, and it
was politic that I should seem grateful; though, to be sure, there was
always the instinct of self-preservation to keep him straight; by which
I mean that he was as eager to end this extraordinary ramble as I was.

He asked me several questions about the gold, and talked as if he
believed that the men might yet meet with it; but my answers seemed to
convince him after a little, and I saw him wagging his head whilst he
exclaimed: ‘It was at the foot of a clump of trees, I know; I clearly
recollect the yarn as Wilkins gave it, and his memory couldn’t have gone
wrong, for he arrived fresh with it from the cabin. If they’ve dug at
the roots of all the trees abreast of the beach, as you say, sir, and
the money ain’t there, then good-night! It’s the hallucination I always
said it was; and for my part give me two pound of honest salvage afore
two hundred thousand pound of lunatic dreamings.’

The breeze seemed to freshen as we drew away. The barque was now heeling
prettily, throwing the water in a white curl of sea off her weather bow,
and her wake ran far into the liquid gloom astern, into which I would
again and again send a glance, governed yet by an agitation of spirits
and an animation of alarm which my judgment pronounced ridiculous. I
cannot express the caressing character of Miss Temple’s manner as she
continued seated close beside me. The astonishment, the rapture, the
wildly contending sensations and emotions which had possessed her were
now giving way to a mood of happiness, of triumphant hope, that put an
indescribable note of tender elation and grateful, joyous sweetness into
her words. If I had yet to wonder whether she loved me, I might feel
sure that my return to her, that my presence, filled her with emotions
which came very near to the passion of love.

But I was wet through; and now that we were safe, the vessel sliding
with swiftness through the clear shadow of the night, and my shipmate
Louise tranquil in the full realisation of our sudden and complete
deliverance, I could find leisure to feel a little chilly. So, leaving
her with a promise that I should shortly return, and telling Wetherly to
keep the barque steady as she was going, I picked up the cabin lamp,
that was still feebly burning upon the deck, and descended the companion
steps. I paused to look around me upon the familiar interior in which
Miss Temple and I had passed so many hours of distress and wretchedness
with an exclamation of gratitude to God for his merciful preservation of
us, and then went to my cabin to habit myself in such dry garments as I
might find in Captain Braine’s locker. I opened the door, but recoiled
with an involuntary cry. I had forgotten Forrest! and there lay the dead
body of the man right in front of me. Twice, now, had that little square
of carpet been stained by human blood. I was horribly shocked by the
spectacle of the corpse; but it was necessary that I should change my
clothes, and I had to undergo the torture of being watched by those
half-closed ghastly eyes, to which twenty expressions of life were
imparted by the stirring of the dim flame in the lantern whilst I sought
for and attired myself in dry apparel. This done, I made a brighter
flame, and then held the light to the dead face, that I might be sure
the villain had no life in him. No gibbeted body that had been swinging
in chains for a month could be deader. I entered the cuddy, hung up the
lamp, and went on deck.

‘Miss Temple,’ I exclaimed, ‘will you kindly hold the wheel for a few
minutes?’

She rose and grasped the spokes. Wetherly understood me, and followed me
below in silence.

‘We must toss the body overboard,’ said I; ‘there can be no luck for the
ship with such an object as that as a part of her freight, and Miss
Temple must be helped to forget the horror of the night that’s going.’

Between us we picked up the corpse, very quickly conveyed it through the
companion hatch, went forward with it where the darkness lay heavy, and
dropped it over the bulwarks.

‘That’s how they would have served you, sir,’ said Wetherly.

‘And you,’ said I.

‘Yes, my God, I know it!’ he answered in a voice of agitation.

We returned to the wheel, which Wetherly took from Miss Temple, who
seated herself with me just behind it on the gratings, and there we held
a council. Our business must be to get to a port as soon as possible.
Should we head away for the Islands of the Low Archipelago, bearing
north-west with a chance of falling in with a vessel cruising amongst
them who would lend us two or three men to help us in navigating the
barque, or should we steer a due east course for Valparaiso, that lay
about two thousand six hundred miles distant?

Our resolution was rapidly formed. The islands might yield us no help;
there was also the risk of running ashore upon the hundred reefs of that
then little known navigation; abundance of the natives of the groups
were man-eaters, and we certainly had not delivered ourselves from the
perils we ran through enforced association with the carpenter and his
crew merely to ingloriously terminate our adventures by serving to
appease the appetite of a little population of blacks.

No; it must be Valparaiso. There we should find a city with every
species of convenience: a consul to advise and assist us; shops where
Miss Temple could make all necessary purchases; a choice of large ships
for the passage home. The ocean we were traversing was the Pacific, and
the time of year in it summer; there was nothing greatly to alarm us
then in the contemplation of the possibility of our having to work the
barque to the South American coast without more help than the three of
us could provide. It would be necessary to keep the vessel under easy
canvas, that we might always be equal to the occasion of a sudden change
of weather, and that, to be sure, would protract the run. But a few
weeks more or less of old ocean would be as nothing to us now that we
were masters of our lives and liberty, now that we should know every day
was bringing us something nearer to our distant home, that all the
horrors with which our future had but a few hours before been crowded
were gone. As we conversed, talking with exultation of our escape,
arranging for keeping watches, planning about the cooking of the food,
and concerting twenty other measures of a like sort, the day broke; the
stars died out in the east; the pale green of dawn went lifting like a
delicate smoke into the shadow of the zenith; the light broadened fast,
and the sun soared into a flashing day of cloudless heaven and of
dark-blue ocean wrinkled by the breeze. With a telescope in my hand I
sprang on to the grating and slowly circled the sea-line with the
lenses. The water brimmed bare to the sky on all sides.

‘We are alone,’ said I, dismounting and taking Miss Temple by the hand
whilst I looked fondly into her face. ‘When we were on the wreck, it was
our misery to hunt the ocean with our gaze and find ourselves alone; and
now, though we are still at sea, loneliness is delightful—for it is
escape, freedom, the promise of home.’

Her eyes filled with tears.




                              CHAPTER XLII
                               CONCLUSION


I have kept you long at sea. With my escape in the barque from Captain
Braine’s island in company with my shipmate Louise, the story of my
adventure—the narrative, indeed, of the romance of the wreck—virtually
ends. Yet you will wish to see Miss Temple safely home; you will desire
to know whether I married her or not; you will also want to hear the
latest news of the people of the _Countess Ida_, to learn the fate of
the Honourable Mr. Colledge, of the crew of the _Magicienne’s_ cutter,
and of the carpenter Lush and his merry gold-hunting men. All may be
told in the brief limits of a chapter.

For five days Wetherly and Miss Temple and myself navigated the barque
without assistance. We managed it thus: the girl took her turn in
steering the vessel, and after a very few trials steered with the
expertness of a trained hand. I can see her now as she stands at the
wheel: her fine figure clear cut against the soft Pacific blue over the
stern; her dark and shining eyes bent upon the compass card, or lifting
in the beauty of the shadow of their lashes to the white canvas; her
hands of ivory delicacy grasping the spokes, and always a smile of
sweetness and gladness and hope for me when our glances met. To think of
the haughty, aristocratic Miss Louise Temple reduced to it! But she did
a deal more than that: she helped us to pull and haul; she cooked for
us, she kept a lookout, walking the weather-deck whilst Wetherly steered
and I was resting. No complaint ever left her lips; she was gentle and
happy in all she did. The sea had dealt with her to some purpose; and
she was now as sweet, tender, compliant, as she was before self-willed,
insolent, and objectionable in all things but her beauty.

The struggle, indeed, would have been a desperate one for us but for the
weather. The small but steady sailing breeze that had blown us away from
the island continued with a shift of three points only in those five
days, and a trifling increase one night, so that we had never occasion
to start a sheet or let go a halliard; nothing more were we called upon
to do with the gear than to slacken away the braces.

It was on the afternoon of the fifth day that we fell in with a Peruvian
man-of-war brig. She backed her topsail and sent a boat. The young
officer in command spoke French very fluently, and Miss Temple and I
between us were able to make him understand our story. He returned to
his ship to report what I had said, and presently came back with a
couple of Irish seamen, to whose services to help us to carry the barque
to Valparaiso we were, he said, very welcome. This I considered an
extraordinary stroke of fortune, for in so slender a ship’s company as
we should still make it was of the utmost consequence that all orders
given should be perfectly and instantly intelligible. The Peruvian brig
was bound on a cruise amongst the islands, and I earnestly entreated the
officer to request his commander to head first of all for the reef upon
which I had left Lush and his men, that they might be taken off, if they
had not recovered their boat.

Down to this point, the three of us in one fashion and another had
managed so fairly well, that the acquisition of the two Irish seamen
communicated to me a sense of being in command of a very tolerable
ship’s company. Miss Temple and I could now enjoy some little leisure
apart from a routine that had been harassing with its vexations and
incessant demands upon our vigilance. Night after night descended upon
us in beauty; the warm wind blew moist with dew; the reflection of the
rich and trembling stars quivered in cones of an icy gleam amid the
ripples of the breeze-brushed sea; the curl of new moon shone in the
west in the wake of the glowing sun to rise nightly fuller and more
brilliant yet, till for awhile the barque sailed through an atmosphere
that was brimful of the greenish glory of the unclouded planet. There
was scarcely, indeed, a condition of this tender tropic passage to
Valparaiso that was not favourable to sentiment. Yet my pride rendered
it an obligation upon me that before I spoke my love I must make sure of
the girl’s own feelings towards me. I watched her with an impassioned
eye; I listened to every word that fell from her lips with an ear eager
to penetrate to the spirit of her meaning; a smile that seemed in the
least degree ambiguous would keep me musing for a whole watch together.
Then I would inquire whether I could in honour ask her to be my wife
until my protection and care for her had ceased, and she stood to me in
the position she had occupied when we had first met aboard the Indiaman.
But to this very fine question of conscience I would respond with the
consideration that if I did not ask her now, I must continue in a
distracting state of suspense and anxiety for many weeks, running,
indeed, into months—that is to say, until we should reach home; that she
might misconstrue my reserve, and attribute it to indifference; that to
make her understand why I did not speak would involve the declaration
that my honour was supposed to regard as objectionable.

But all this self-parleying simply signified that I was waiting to make
sure of her answer before addressing her. In one quarter of an hour one
fine night, with a high moon riding over the topsail yardarm and the
breeze bringing an elfin-like sound of delicate singing, out of the
rigging, it was settled! A glance from her, a moment of speaking
silence, brought my love to my lips, and standing with her hand in mine
in the shadow of a wing of sail curving past the main-rigging, with the
brook-like voice of running waters rising, I asked her to be my wife.

There was hesitation without reluctance, a manner of mingled doubt and
delight. I had won her heart; and her hand must follow; but her mother,
her dearest mother! Her consent must be obtained; and from what she said
in disjointed sentences, with earnest anxiety to say nothing that might
give me pain, with a voice that trembled with the emotions of gratitude
and affection, I gathered that Lady Temple’s matrimonial schemes for her
daughter soared very considerably above the degree of a commoner.

‘But Louise, I have your love?’

‘Yes, yes, yes! my love, my gratitude, and my admiration.’

‘And you need but your mother’s consent to marry me?’

‘Yes, and she will consent. This long association—this astonishing
adventure’——

‘Ay, but there is no obligation of marriage in _that_. I have your love,
and your mother will consent because you love me?’

She fixed her eyes on my face, and by the haze of moonlight floating off
the sand-white planks into the shadow in which we stood, I saw such
meaning in them that the sole sequel of my interpretation of it must be
to put my lips to hers.

‘My first kiss, Louise! My God! how little did I dream of this happiness
when I used to look at you and almost hate you aboard the _Countess
Ida_!’

But enough of this. It all happened so many years ago now, that I am
astonished by my memory that enables me to put down even so much of this
little passage of my experiences with Louise as I have written.

After days of delightful weather and prosperous winds, we came to an
anchor at Valparaiso. I at once waited upon the British consul, related
my story, delivered over the ship, and was treated by him with the
utmost courtesy, consideration, and hospitality. A large English vessel
was sailing for Liverpool eight days after the date of our arrival. I
inspected her, and promptly took berths for myself and Miss Temple; and
the rest of the time we spent in providing ourselves with the necessary
outfit for another long voyage. The consul informed me that the
deposition I made as to the _Lady Blanche_ would suffice in respect of
the legal manœuvring that would have to follow, and that I was at
liberty to sail whenever I chose. I empowered him to hand over any
salvage money that might come to me to Wetherly, whom I also requested
to call upon me when he should arrive in England, that I might suitably
reward him for the very honest discharge of his duties from the time of
our leaving the island in the barque.

I will not pretend that our passage home was uneventful. Out of it might
readily be spun another considerable narrative; but here I may but
glance at it. The ship was named the _Greyhound_. She was a tall, black,
softwood-built ship, of American birth, with a white figurehead, and
fine lines of planking, and three lofty skysail poles, and an almost
perpendicular bow, and she had, to use the old term, the sailing
qualities of a witch. There went with her a number of passengers,
Spanish and English, who, thanks, I suppose, to the gossip of the
British consul and his wife and family, were perfectly informed of every
article of our story, and in consequence made a very great deal of us—of
Miss Temple in particular. But how great had been the change wrought in
her character! No more supercilious airs, haughty looks, chilling
glances of contemptuous surprise. Her sweetness and cordiality rendered
her as completely a favourite as she had been before disliked and feared
by her fellow-passengers of the Indiaman.

It took her a long while, however, to recur without exquisite distress
to the man Forrest whom she had shot. But I was never weary of putting
the matter before her in its just light; and at last she suffered me to
persuade her that what she had done it had been her duty to do, that
every law of God and man was at the back of such a deed to justify and
even consecrate it, and that so far from suffering the recollection to
render her wretched, she should proudly honour herself for the instant’s
coolness, courage, and presence of mind she had exhibited at sight of
the scoundrel. Yet it was inevitably a memory to linger darkly with her
for some time.

Our being incessantly together from the hour of our sailing down to the
hour of our arrival strengthened her love for me, and her passion became
a pure and unaffected sentiment. This I could have by no means sworn it
was when I spoke my love to her in the Pacific. I was sure that she
liked me, that she even had a warm affection for me, inspired by
gratitude and by esteem for as much of my character as she could
understand in my behaviour to her. But I could not satisfy myself that
she loved me, or that, subject to her mother’s approval, she would have
consented to marry me, but for our extraordinary experiences, that had
coupled us together in an intimacy which most people might consider
matrimony must confirm for her sake if not for mine.

But if that had ever been her mood—she never would own it—it ripened
during this voyage into a love that the most wretchedly sensitive heart
could not have mistaken. And now it remained to be seen what reception
Lady Temple would accord me. She would be all gratitude, of course; she
would be transported with the sight and safety of her daughter; but
ambition might presently dominate all effusion of thankfulness, and she
would quite fail to see any particular obligation on her daughter’s part
to marry merely because we had been shipmates together in a series of
incredible adventures.

But all conjecture was abruptly ended on our arrival by the news of Lady
Temple’s death. A stroke of paralysis had carried her off. The attack
was charged to her fretting for her daughter, of whose abandonment upon
the wreck she had received the news from no less a person than the
Honourable Mr. Colledge. Let me briefly describe how this had come
about.

When the cutter containing Mr. Colledge and the men of the _Magicienne_
had lost sight of the wreck in the sudden vapour that had boiled down
over it, the fellows, having lost their lieutenant and being without a
head, hurriedly agreed to pull dead away before the wind in the
direction of the Indiaman, not doubting that she would be lying hove-to,
and that they must strike her situation near enough to disclose the huge
loom of her amidst the fog. They missed her, and then, not knowing what
else to do, they lashed their oars into a bundle and rode to it. It was
hard upon sunset when a great shadow came surging up out of the fog
close aboard of them. It was the corvette under reefed topsails. The
cutter was within an ace of being run down. Her crew roared at the top
of their pipes, and they were heard; but a few moments later the
_Magicienne_ had melted out again upon the flying thickness. The boat,
however, had been seen, and her bearings accurately taken; and twenty
minutes later, the corvette again came surging to the spot where the
cutter lay. Scores of eyes gazed over the ship-of-war’s head and
bulwarks in a thirsty, piercing lookout. The end of a line was flung,
the boat dragged alongside, and in a few minutes all were safe on board.
Colledge related the story of the adventure to his cousin—how the
lieutenant had fallen overboard and was drowned, as he believed; how
Miss Temple and I were left upon the wreck, and were yet there. But the
blackness of a densely foggy night was now upon the sea; it was also
blowing hard, and nothing could be done till the weather cleared and the
day broke.

That nothing was done, you know. When the horizon was penetrable, keen
eyes were despatched to the mastheads; but whether it was that the light
wreck had drifted to a degree entirely out of the calculations of Sir
Edward Panton, or that his own drift during the long, black, blowing
hours misled him, no sign of us rewarded his search. For two days he
gallantly stuck to those waters, then abandoned the hunt as a hopeless
one, and proceeded on his voyage to England.

Mr. Colledge on his arrival immediately thought it his duty to write
what he could tell of the fate of Miss Temple to Lady Temple’s brother,
General Ashmole. The General was a little in a hurry to communicate with
poor Lady Temple. His activity as a bearer of ill tidings might perhaps
have found additional animation in the knowledge that if Miss Temple
were dead, then the next of her kinsfolk to whom her ladyship must leave
the bulk of her property would be the General and his four charming
daughters. Be this as it will, the news proved fatal to Lady Temple. The
uncertainty of her daughter’s fate, doubt of the possibility of her
having been rescued from the wreck, fears of her having met with a slow,
miserable, most dreadful death, preyed upon such poor remains of health
as paralysis and a long term of motionless confinement had left her; and
her maid one morning on entering her room found her dead in her bed.

The shock was a terrible one to Louise. Again and again she had said to
me that if the news of her having been lost out of the Indiaman reached
her mother before she arrived home, it would kill her. And now she found
her prediction verified! I was a deal grieved for the girl’s sake; but
it was not a thing for me to take very seriously to heart. Indeed it was
not long before I got to hear that her ladyship had been an exceedingly
ambitious woman, with the highest possible notions of her own
importance, and of an insufferable condescension of manner; and I was
assured had she lived, I should have found her a formidable, perhaps an
immovable obstacle to my marriage. But had she been the most amiable of
women, the stroke of her death must have been considerably softened to
my mind by understanding that it made Louise the absolute mistress of a
mansion and large grounds and a clear income of three thousand five
hundred a year. This was very well, and quite worth being shipwrecked
and kidnapped for.

But if her ladyship’s death cleared the road for me in one way, it
temporarily blocked it for me in another by enforcing delay. Louise must
not now marry for a year. No; anything less than a year was out of the
question. It would be an insult to the memory of an adored parent even
to think of happiness under a twelvemonth. I resigned myself in silence
to the affliction of waiting, leaving it to time to unsettle her
resolution. She had many relatives, and she went from house to house;
but I was never very far off. I loved her too fondly to lose her. I had
won her, and I meant to have and hold the supreme title to her that had
come to me from old ocean. Not that I had a doubt of her own devotion; I
was afraid of her relatives. Some of them were titled people; they were
all of them social star-gazers, with their intellectual eyes rooted upon
objects that shone more splendidly than they and higher in life’s
atmosphere; and there was such an army of them in one shape or another,
such battalions of uncles and aunts, of cousins and connections
spreading out like the tendrils of creepers, that I feared their
influence if I did not take care to keep hovering close by to guard my
Louise’s heart against any relaxation of sentiment.

Indeed, I was uneasy till I got her down to my mother’s house, and I
could fill a volume in describing the manœuvring I was forced into to
accomplish so simple a matter against the devices and stratagems of her
superior connections. Already there was one young man dying of love for
her. He was the eldest son of a baronet, and his mother was one of the
most intriguing old wretches that ever perplexed the wishes or
confounded the respectable pleasures of her fellow-creatures.
Single-handed I had to fight the battle of my love against this young
man, who was dying of passion, and my lady his mother, both of them
backed by a large proportion of Louise’s relatives; and I say I scarcely
enjoyed an hour’s tranquillity of mind until I had her under my mother’s
roof.

By this time her grief had abated; the recollection of her past
sufferings lay lightly upon her mind. We were now once more together, as
we had been when at sea. She soon learned to love my gentle old mother,
and was so happy that after awhile her relatives ceased in despair to
attempt to coax her back to them. By that time little more than six
months had elapsed since our return, and, consequently, since she had
received the news of her mother’s death. But our being together in
constant close association from morning till night, almost as much alone
as ever we had been when on the wreck, what with delightful drives,
delicious hand-in-hand rambles, ended in rendering me mighty impatient,
and impatience is usually importunate. I grew pressing, and one day she
consented to our being married at the expiration of a fortnight.

It was much too plain a wedding for such a heroine as our adventures had
made Louise, but it was her own choosing. A few intimate friends of my
own family, two poor but exceedingly ladylike and well-bred cousins of
her own, the vicar who joined our hands, and his homely agreeable
wife—these formed the company. I sent an invitation to Mr. Colledge,
against the inclination of Louise, who associated him with all our
misfortunes, though for my part I could have strained him to my heart on
my marriage day as the involuntary promoter of all my happiness. He
neither wrote nor presented himself; but this was afterwards explained
by a letter dated from Palestine, in which country he was then
travelling, having made up his mind to trust himself and his fortunes as
little as possible to the ocean in his determination to see the world.
It was a stupid amiable letter, full of good-wishes and kindest regards,
with much rambling on in reference to the wreck and his own narrow
escape. I observed that he did not mention the name of Miss Fanny
Crawley.

An effusion of the local good-will and sympathy was visible in the
decoration of the church. Never stood any man before the altar more
proud of the girl of his heart’s choice than did I with Louise by my
side. Beautiful she had always shown to me from the first moment of my
gaze resting on her aboard the Indiaman, but never more beautiful in the
eyes of my passion than on that day. The sweetness that had come to her
from suffering was in every smile and look.

‘We have started on another voyage now,’ I whispered as we passed out of
the church.

‘There must be no wrecks in it,’ she answered.

And for years, I thank God, it was all summer sailing with us; but I am
old now, and alone.

In those times, the round voyage to India averaged a twelvemonth, and I
was unable to obtain news of the _Countess Ida_ until the August that
had followed the June of our arrival at Liverpool in the _Greyhound_. I
was in London when I heard of the Indiaman as having been reported off
Deal. In the course of a few days I despatched a note to old Keeling,
addressed to the East India Docks, asking him to come and dine with me,
that I might tell him of my adventures, and learn what efforts he had
made to recover us from the wreck. He arrived in full shore-going fig,
with the old familiar skewered look, in the long, tightly buttoned-up
coat, and the tall cravat and stiff collars, in which his sun-reddened
face rested like a ball in a cup.

He was heartily glad to see me, and continued to shake my hand until my
arm ached again. Of my story he had known nothing; for the first time he
was now hearing it from my lips. He listened with acute attention, with
a countenance over which expression chased expression; and when I had
done, seized my hand again, and shook it long and vehemently, whilst he
complimented me on my success in navigating the _Lady Blanche_ to the
island, and on the judgment I had shown in planning and effecting my
escape from Mr. Lush and his crew.

He had little to tell me, however, that was very interesting. He had
been blown away from the neighbourhood of the wreck; and though, when
the weather cleared, he had luffed up to the spot where he believed she
was to be found, he could see nothing of her. Mr. Prance was looking at
the hull through his glass when the smother came driving down upon her,
and saw the cutter shove off; and he believed that Miss Temple and I
were in her. He had no time to make sure, for the vapour swiftly blotted
the boat out of sight. But his conviction was—and Keeling owned himself
influenced by it—that if they fell in with the wreck they would not find
us aboard her. Poor old Mrs. Radcliffe nearly went crazy with grief and
distress; and to satisfy her mind, he cruised over the supposed
situation of the hull till the night fell; then satisfied that we had
either perished by the capsizal of the cutter, or been picked up by the
corvette, he trimmed sail for his course and proceeded.

The disaster that had befallen us, he said, had cast a heavy gloom over
the ship, and it was heightened by Mrs. Radcliffe’s serious illness, due
to the poignant wretchedness caused her by the loss of her niece.
Hemmeridge was entreated to prescribe for her, but he sullenly refused,
hoped that her illness might be epidemical, that more might suffer than
she, and could breathe nothing but threats of having the law of Keeling
on the ship’s arrival at Bombay. However, by the time the vessel was up
with the Cape, Mrs. Radcliffe had recovered; and when Keeling last saw
her, she seemed as hopeful as she was before despairful of her niece
being yet accounted for.

Abreast of the Cape also, the spirits of the passengers had sufficiently
lightened to enable some love-making to proceed briskly amongst them.

‘Much about twenty degrees of south latitude,’ said old Keeling in his
dry voice, ‘young Mr. Fairthorne, the fellow that lisped, you remember,
Mr. Dugdale, succeeded in tempting that nice young lady, Constance
Hudson, to accept his hand and heart. Old Mrs. Hudson was very well
pleased, sir. About the latitude of the Chagos Archipelago, Mr. Emmett
induced Miss Helen Trevor to betroth herself to him. And off the
Laccadive Islands, Peter Hemskirk, to the astonishment of all hands,
deposited his person and his fortune at the feet of Miss Mary Joliffe.’

‘I had thought Mr. Emmett was a married man,’ I said.

‘Apparently not, sir,’ he answered.

‘And your friend Hemmeridge?’

He replied that the surgeon consulted a solicitor at Bombay, and had no
doubt been advised to take certain proceedings; but three weeks after
the arrival of the ship the doctor had been thrown from a horse, and so
injured in the spine and head, that he died within a fortnight.

‘What he could have done I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the
old fellow. ‘I believe I was within my rights. Yet he might have given
me trouble, and I hate law. The two fellows, Crabb and Willett, I handed
over to the police. Mr. Saunders got the drug the scoundrel had used
carefully analysed, and it turned out that he was right: it proved to be
what he’d termed it; and I afterwards heard the stuff was not unknown in
India, where it’s used for some religious purposes; but in what way I
don’t know.’

This was all the news that old Keeling had to give me.

When I left Lush and the sailors of the _Lady Blanche_ upon the reef, I
had little thought of ever hearing of them again. I knew the nature of
sailors. If they came off with their lives, I might be sure they would
disperse and utterly vanish. Great was my surprise, then, one morning
some months after my marriage, to find, on opening my morning newspaper,
a column-long account of the trial of a seaman named Lush for the murder
of a man named Woodward. The evidence was substantially my story with a
sequel to it. The witnesses against Lush were three of the seamen of the
_Lady Blanche_. The counsel for the prosecution related the adventures
of the barque down to the time of my swimming off to her and sailing
away with her. The boat had been in charge of the man Woodward when I
detached the line to let her slip away. He had fallen into a deep sleep,
overcome by fatigue and drink. The yells and roaring of the crew, one of
whom had started up and observed the boat drifting out, had aroused the
sleeper after the uproar had been some time continued. He was thick and
stupid, went clumsily to work to scull the heavy boat ashore, and was a
long time in doing it. The carpenter dragged him on to the beach and
asked him if he had fallen asleep. The unfortunate wretch answered yes;
the carpenter struck him fiercely; Woodward returned the blow; and, mad
with rage, Lush whipped out his sheath-knife and stabbed the man to the
heart.

By this time the barque had almost faded out in the gloom of the night.
Pursuit was not to be thought of. They waited till daylight; but instead
of putting their remaining provisions and water in the boat and heading
away in search of land or a passing ship, the fools fell to dicing
afresh; and it was not until their little stock of water was almost gone
that, being satisfied that there was no gold in that part of the shore
where Captain Braine had said it lay hidden, they put to sea.

They were several days afloat before they, or at least the survivors,
were rescued. Their sufferings were not to be expressed. They had been
five days without water when picked up. Four of them had died, and one
of the bodies had been preserved for a use that cannot be dwelt on. They
were fallen in with by an English brig bound home, to the captain of
which one of the sailors, who had been an old ‘chum’ of Woodward, told
the story of the murder of that man by Lush. The skipper, not choosing
to have such a ruffian as the carpenter at large in his little ship,
clapped him in irons, and kept him under hatches until the arrival of
the vessel in the Thames, when he was handed over to the police. I
hardly wished the scoundrel hanged, richly as he deserved making such an
ending; and it was with something of relief that I read when he was
brought to the Old Bailey that the jury had found a verdict of
manslaughter, and that he was sentenced to ten years’ transportation.

To this hour I am puzzled by Captain Braine and his island. My wife
uniformly believed that the gold was there, and that the poor lunatic
had mistaken the bearings of the spot where it lay. My own fancy,
however, always inclined to this: that from the circumstance of his
having rightly described the island, which he situated on a part of the
sea where no reef or land of any sort was laid down on the charts, he
had actually been wrecked upon it, and suffered as he had related to me;
that by long dwelling upon his terrific experience he had imported
certain insane fancies into it out of his unsuspected madness when it
grew upon him; until the hallucination of the gold hardened in his poor
soul into a conviction. Yet I may be wrong; and, if so, then there must
at this hour be upwards of a hundred and eighty thousand pounds’ worth
of gold coins lying concealed somewhere in the reef whose latitude and
longitude you have.


                                THE END




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

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Spelling errors were left uncorrected.
 2. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.







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