CHAPTER IV
THE GUN IN THE GREAT FOG
Politely though he had contrived his departure, the Commandant left Mrs. Fossell's whist-party to something like dismay. A passing indisposition—no excuse could be more reasonable. Still, nothing of the kind had ever interrupted these gatherings within Mrs. Fossell's recollection, and she could not help taking a serious view of it.
"A passing indisposition," was Mr. Fossell's phrase, and he kept repeating it—with an occasional "Nonsense, my dear"—in answer to his wife's gloomy forebodings.
"But I shall send round, the first thing in the morning, to inquire," she insisted.
"Do so, my dear."
"It can't be serious, ma'am," Mr. Rogers assured her jollily. "You heard him decline my arm when I offered to see him home."
"In my opinion," said Miss Gabriel, "the man is breaking up." She touched her forehead lightly with the tip of her forefinger.
"Breaking up?" echoed her host and Mrs. Pope, incredulous. "My dear Elizabeth!" began Mrs. Fossell.
"Breaking up," Miss Gabriel repeated with a very positive nod of her head. "He has not been the same man since the Lord Proprietor took over the presidency of the Court and he refused, upon pique, to be elected an ordinary member. Say what you like, a man cannot be virtual Governor of the Islands one day and the next a mere nobody without its preying upon him."
"He made light of it at the time," observed Mr. Fossell, who (it goes without saying) was councillor; "although I ventured to remonstrate with him."
"And I," said Mr. Pope, who (it also goes without saying) was another. "In the friendliest possible way you understand. I pointed out that the Lord Proprietor was, after all, the Lord Proprietor, and, as such, did not understand being thwarted. Very naturally, as you will all admit."
"It's human nature, when you come to think of it," put in the Steward's wife (she preferred the title of Steward to that of agent, and was gradually accustoming society to the sound, even as in earlier years, when a young married woman, she had taught it to substitute "agent" for "factor"). If, during the interval when her husband's dismissal seemed inevitable, she had lost no opportunity of prophesying evil of the new Lord Proprietor, she made up for it now by justifying his every action.
"If that's the ground you're going on," spoke up Mr. Rogers, who, with all his faults was nothing of a snob, "it's human nature for Vigoureux to feel sore. As for the magistracy, he's not the man to value it one pin. It's the neglect; and to meet the old fellow mooning around his batteries as I did this very afternoon—I tell you it makes a man sorry."
If this speech did Mr. Rogers credit he cancelled it presently by his atrocious behaviour at cards. The symmetry of the party being broken, Miss Gabriel announced that she had enjoyed enough whist for the evening, and that nothing in the world would give her greater pleasure than half-an-hour's quiet talk, with the Vicar—that was, if Mrs. Fossell and he would not mind cutting out and surrendering their seats to Mr. Fossell and Mr. Rogers. In saying this she outrageously flattered the Vicar, with whom it was impossible to hold conversation in any tone below that of shouting. She meant that she was prepared to listen; and she knew that no flattery was too outrageous for him to swallow. She knew also that Mrs. Fossell in her heart of hearts abhorred cards, and would be only too grateful for release, to look after the preparations for supper and scold the parlour-maid outside. So the Vicar and Mrs. Fossell cut out, and Mr. Fossell and Mr. Rogers replaced them as partners against Mr. and Mrs. Pope.
Mr. and Mrs. Pope always played together. No one knew why, but it had come to be an understood thing. Of "calls" and "echoes" the play of Mr. and Mrs. Pope was innocent; but when Mrs. Pope, being second hand, hesitated whether to trump her opponent's card or pass it, Mr. Pope had an unconscious habit of saying, "Now dearest," when he desired her to trump; and another unconscious habit, when Mrs. Pope had the lead and he wanted trumps, of murmuring, "Your turn, darling." These two habits Mr. Rogers had noted; and being in merry pin to-night over winning his half-crown, at a moment when Mr. Fossell, having the lead, appeared to hesitate (but the hesitation was only a part of Mr. Fossell's deliberate play), he leaned over and playfully suggested, "Your turn, darling!"
Mr. Fossell stared in the act of putting down a trump. For a moment he appeared to think that Mr. Rogers had gone mad; then, in spite of himself, the lines of his mouth relaxed.
"I do not think," said Mr. Pope, heavily—and the lines of Mr. Fossell's mouth at once grew rigid again—"I do not think you two ought to signal for trumps in that fashion."
His partner looked up innocently. In the slow pause Mr. Rogers was growing purple in the face, when again the Vicar's voice broke across the silence. "The Lord Proprietor's power in former days—I speak only of former days—may well have warranted the Government in stationing a military officer here to keep some check on him. For instance, he shared all ordinary wrecks with the Lord High Admiral, but a wreck became his sole property by law, if none of the crew remained alive; a dangerous reservation, ma'am, in times when justice travelled slowly, and much might happen in the Islands and never a word of it reach London."
Miss Gabriel put up both hands—they were encased in mittens, and the mittens decorated with steel beads—as if to close her ears.
"We must be thankful, indeed," she began, and paused in dismay as the floor of Mrs. Fossell's drawing-room trembled under her, and at the same moment the window sashes rattled violently throughout the house.
"Good Heavens!"
"What was that?"
The players dropped their cards. All listened.
"Upon my word," suggested the Vicar, who had heard nothing, but felt the concussion, "if it weren't positively known to be empty one would say the powder magazine at the Garrison——"
"Oh, Richard! Richard!"—here Mrs. Fossell came running in from the dining-room with a dish of trifle in her hands—"Is it an earthquake?"
"I—I rather think not, my dear!"
"At any rate it can't be the end of the world?" She turned and appealed to the Vicar, and from the Vicar again to her husband. "And if it is not, I wish you would come to Selina, for she has dropped the cold shape all over the floor and is having hysterics in the better of the two armchairs!"
Indeed, Selina's hysterics could be heard.
"Earthquake? Fiddlesticks, ma'am!" said Mr. Rogers, buttoning his pea-jacket and turning up its collar. "What you heard was a gun. There is a vessel in distress somewhere, and we shall have my men here in a moment with news of her."
"But there was no sound," objected Mrs. Pope.
"Fog, ma'am—fog; sound don't travel in a fog, and ships oughtn't to. There has been a nasty bank of it to the south'ard ever since morning, and you may bet that's the mischief."
He went into the hall for his lantern, brought it back, lit it, and carried it out to the front door.
"Whe—ew!" he whistled, as he opened the door and stood, with lantern lifted high, staring into the night.
The guests behind him wondered; for all was quiet outside—too quiet, to ears accustomed to the wind which forever sings across the islands, even on summer days, mingling its whispers and soft murmurings with the hum of the distant tide-races. But while they wondered, Mr. Rogers's figure grew vague and amorphous in a cloud of fog that drifted past him into the passage. The light in his lantern had turned to a weak flame of yellow, and seemed on the point of dying out.
"Ahoy, there! Is that Mr. Rogers?" called a thin voice out of the night.
"Ahoy! Mr. Rogers, it is. What's wrong?"
"Thank God I've found you!" The voice sounded suddenly quite close at hand, and a man blundered against the doorstep.
"Eh?"—the others saw Mr. Rogers give back in astonishment—"The Lord Proprietor?"
"Safe and sound, too, by Heaven's mercy," said the Lord Proprietor, plucking off his peaked cap and shaking the water from it. He carried a lantern, and his jacket and loose trousers of yellow oilskin shone with the wet like a suit of mail. "All the way from Inniscaw I've come, in the gig. Peter Hicks and old Abe pulled me, and the Lord knows where we made land or what has become of them. Man, there's a vessel ashore—a liner, they say! Didn't you hear the gun a minute since?"
"Yes, yes; but where is she?"
"That's more than I know. Somewhere among the Off Islands; on the Terrier, maybe, or the Hell-meadows. All I can tell you is that old Abe brought the news to the Priory, almost three hours ago: his son-in-law, young Ashbran, had seen her in a lift of the fog—a powerful steamship with two funnels and a broad white band upon each. She hadn't struck when he saw her; but she was nosing into an infernal mess of rocks, and the light closing down fast. I didn't see Ashbran himself; Abe believed he had put across to warn your men. But as the old man couldn't swear to it I told him to get out the gig and fetch Peter Hicks, and so we started."
"I'm wondering why those men of mine haven't brought me warning. Ashbran can't have reached them."
"He started late, belike, and lost his way in the fog; or it's even possible—though you won't believe it—that your men started to find you and have lost themselves. My good sir, you never knew such a fog!"
"Yet I left word with the chief boatman," mused Mr. Rogers. "He knows perfectly well where I am."
"Does he?" said the Lord Proprietor. "Then it's more than I do. What house is this?"
"Why, Fossell's. Good Lord! didn't you know?"
"My dear Sir Cæsar—" Mr. Fossel stepped forward solicitously.
"Eh? So it is.... Good evening, Mr. Fossell! That picture of the Waterloo Banquet seemed familiar, somehow." The Lord Proprietor nodded towards a framed engraving on the wall. "Yes, to be sure—and Landseer's 'Twa Dogs.' But this is worse than the Arabian Nights! We must have missed the harbour by miles!"
"You came ashore at Cam Point, most probably," Mr. Fossell suggested. "The tide sets that way, and from Cam Point it is but a step."
"A step, is it? Man, I've been wandering in blank darkness for a full hour. Twice I've found myself on the edge of a cliff. I've followed walls only to be led into open fields. I've struck across open fields, only to tumble against troughs, midden heaps, pig-styes. I walked straight up against this house, supposing myself somewhere near the batteries on Garrison Hill—though how I had managed to miss the town was more than I could explain."
"The wonder is you ever fetched across from Inniscaw."
"It's my belief we had never done it, but for the tide. The night was black as your hat when we started, but fairly clear. We kept sight of the lamp on the pier-head until half-way across. Then the fog came down; and then——!"
"Well, it's good hard causeway between this and St. Hugh's," said Mr. Rogers. "We can't miss it. Afterwards.... However, you'll step along with me to the Guard-house, Sir Cæsar, and as soon as the weather lifts at all one of my men shall put you back to Inniscaw."
"On the contrary, my good sir, I go with you."
Mr. Rogers looked at him, as he buttoned up his pea-jacket.
"We won't argue it here," he said. "You don't guess what it means, though, searching for a wreck among the Off Islands on a night like this. Not to mention that there's a sea running...."
And yet, apart from the fog, there was nothing in the weather to suggest shipwreck and horrors. For a fortnight the Islands had lain steeped in the sunshine of Indian summer; a fortnight of still starry nights and days almost without a cloud. As a rule, such weather breaks up in a gale, of which the glass gives timely warning. But the mercury in Mr. Fossell's barometer indicated no depression—or the merest trifle. The drenched night air was warm: to Miss Gabriel, inhaling it in the passage by the drawing-room door, it seemed to be laden with the scents of summer, and Miss Gabriel had not lived all her life in Garland Town without learning the subtle aromas of the wind, to distinguish those that were harmless or beneficent from those that warned, those that threatened, those that were morose, savage, malignant, those that piped a note of madness and meant a hurricane. Nor did the fog in itself appear to her very formidable. To be sure, she had never known a thicker one; but the Lord Proprietor (saving his presence) had probably exaggerated its terror. He was—let this excuse be made for him—a landsman, comparatively new to the Islands.
Probably Mr. Fossell and Mr. Pope and the Vicar took the same view. The news of the wreck had excited them, and they were offering to accompany Sir Cæsar and Mr. Rogers to St. Hugh's Town, on the chance of some information.
"And we had best go with them, my dear," suggested Miss Gabriel to Mrs. Pope. (Their houses stood side by side and contiguous, on a gentle rise at the foot of Garrison Hill, where the peninsular of New Town broadens out and New Town itself melts into St. Hugh's.)
Mrs. Fossel begged them to wait and keep her company until the gentlemen returned. "It is impossible," she urged as an inducement, "that Selina can go on making this noise forever."
But Miss Gabriel had taken her decision, and from a decision Miss Gabriel was not easily turned.
"My dear," said she, reaching for her cloak, "the gentlemen may not return until goodness knows when, and I have a prejudice against late hours."
They started in a body. The fog, to be sure, was a deal worse than ever Miss Gabriel could have credited. Still, the gentlemen using their lanterns and tapping to right and left with their sticks, they found the hard causeway, and blundered along it towards St. Hugh's, the ladies with their shawls drawn over their heads and their heads held down against the drifting wall of moisture.
They had made their way thus for about four hundred yards—that is to say, about a third of the length of the causeway—when suddenly the fog ahead of them became luminous, and they perceived torches waving.
"Mr. Rogers! Is that Mr. Rogers?" called a voice.
"Ay, ay, men!" Mr. Rogers hailed in answer, recognising his coastguard. "I am coming—fast as I can," he added, having at that moment run into a wall.
"A wreck, sir!"
"Ay! Where is it?"
"Somewhere beyond St. Ann's, sir, as we make it—out towards the Monk. There was a gun fired, and Dick, here, thinks as he saw the lighthouse send up a signal; but lights there's none that the rest of us can make out——"
"Hark!"
Again the fog shook with the concussion of a gun.
"Due west, as I make it out," said Mr. Rogers. "Are the boats ready?"
"Aye, sir; the jolly-boat manned and off, and the gig launched and lying by the slip."
"Then run, men!"
"Why, they've left us!" gasped Mrs. Pope, as the glare of the torches melted into the fog.
"It doesn't matter," Miss Gabriel assured her bravely. "We have only to keep straight on."
CHAPTER V
THE S.S. MILO
Major Vigoureux fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. He owed this habit originally to a clear conscience, and although (as the reader knows) his conscience was no longer quite clear, the habit had not forsaken him.
He dreamed that he was presenting himself at Mr. Fossell's bank, and giving Mr. Fossell across the counter a number of plausible reasons why his pay should be handed to him as usual. He knew all the while that his arguments were sophistical and radically unsound; but he trusted that he was making them cogent. (Why is it that in dreams we feel no remorse for our sins, but only a terror lest we be found out? I cannot tell; but the best men and women of my acquaintance agree that it is so.) Mr. Fossell preserved an impassive, inscrutable face; but every time the Commandant ventured a new argument Mr. Fossell's high, bald head twinkled and suddenly changed colour like a chameleon. It was green, it was violet, it was bathed in a soft roseate glow like an Alpine peak at sunset; and still while he argued the Commandant was forced to dodge his body about lest Mr. Fossell should catch sight of a mirror fixed in the opposite wall, and perceive how strangely his scalp was behaving. Finally, Mr. Fossell turned as if convinced, walked away to an inner room, and came back bearing a bag of money, round and distended—so tightly distended, indeed, that the Commandant called out to him to be careful of the contents. But the cry came a moment too late; for the bag, as it touched the counter, exploded with a dull report, collapsed, and flattened itself out into a playing-card—the queen of hearts!
At this point the Commandant excusably found himself awake, and sat up blinking at Sergeant Archelaus, who stood in a haze of fog by his bedside with a lighted candle.
"You heard it?" asked Sergeant Archelaus.
"Heard it?" echoed the Commandant, trembling, not yet in full possession of his senses. "Of course, I heard it. The Bank—." Here he checked himself and rubbed his eyes.
"You're dreaming; that's what's the matter with you," said Sergeant Archelaus, using the familiarity of an old servant. "There's a ship on the rocks."
"A ship? Where?"
The Sergeant, candle in hand, stepped to the casement, which the Commandant, following his custom, had opened a little way before getting into bed.
"Lord knows where she be by this time, if St. Ann's pilots ha'n't found her. The gun sounded from west'ard, down by the Monk."
"Fog, is it?" asked the Commandant, staring about him and remembering.
"Fog it is," answered Sergeant Archelaus, and added, "Poor souls!"
"Thick?" By this time the Commandant had flung back the bed-clothes and was thrusting his feet into his worn slippers.
"I never seen a thicker in my born days."
"If we had a gun——"
"Ah—if," agreed Sergeant Archelaus, curtly, and turning, let his voice rise in a sudden passion. "Why did I wake ye? Set it down to habit. I've known the time when the sound of a gun would have fetched forty men out of the Barracks to save life or to take it; and a gun within thirty seconds to alarm all the Islands. But we! What's the use of us?"
"Get on your coat," said the Commandant, sharply, putting on his trousers. "Get on your coat and run to the bell—that is, if Treacher——"
But at this moment the muffled note of a bell began to sound through the fog, vindicating Treacher's vigilance. Treacher, however, was not the ringer. The Commandant had scarcely slipped on his fatigue jacket, and begun to search in the wardrobe for his overcoat, when Treacher's voice sounded up the staircase, demanding to know if the garrison was awake.
"Awake?" called back Archelaus. "Of course we be, and coming before you can sound th' alarm. Reach down the bugle, man—from the rock behind th' door, there—and sound it."
Treacher sounded. He was out of breath, and the two high notes quavered broken-windedly; but the Commandant's chest swelled with something of old pride. The alarm would reach the town, and the town would know that the garrison had not been caught napping. He snatched at the candle from the candlestick in Sergeant Archelaus' hand and rammed it into the socket of a horn lantern he had unhooked from the cupboard.
"Come along, men! Keep sounding, Treacher—keep sounding!"
Even so he had called once—a many years ago—in the trenches under the Redan. Treacher sounded obediently, and down the hill all three staggered—past the garrison gates, with a call to Mrs. Treacher to pull for all she was worth—and still forward among the ruts and loose stones, all so familiar that relying on tread alone (as in fact they did) they could not miss their way. Below them, along the quay, and on the causeway at the head of it—voices were calling and lights moving; but the fog reduced the shouts to a twitter, as of birds, and the torches and lantern to mere glow-worm sparks. The coastguards were embarking and the Lord Proprietor, just arrived upon the scene, was running about—as Sergeant Archelaus put it afterwards, "like a paper man in a cyclone"—calling out the names of volunteers for the lifeboat.
If Sergeant Archelaus ever afterwards spoke disparagingly of the Lord Proprietor's activities that night, something may be forgiven him; as something may be forgiven the Lord Proprietor—for on such occasions men blurt out what rises to their lips.
The fog had found its way into Treacher's bugle before our three heroes reached the quay; but he continued to blow his best; and there, at the end of the causeway, Sir Cæsar ran into them—ran straight into the Commandant, almost knocking out his breath—calling, as he ran, for someone to take bow oar in the lifeboat.
"Will I do?" asked Sergeant Archelaus, coolly, as became a soldier.
"You?" The Lord Proprietor thrust his torch close. "Oh, get out of my way—this is work to-night, work for men! And you"—catching sight of the Commandant—"how much do you think you are helping us with this tom-fool noise?"
The Commandant drew himself erect, but before he could answer, the Lord Proprietor had gone his way, waving his torch and still shouting for someone to man the bow thwart.
There was a slow pause.
"Can you get to our boat, Archelaus?" asked the Commandant. The two sergeants heard his voice drag on the question. They could not see his face.
"She's afloat, sir," answered Sergeant Archelaus.
"Find the frap then, and pull her in."
"Is it our boat you're meaning, sir?" asked Archelaus, hesitating.
"Certainly."
"There's a certain amount of sea running, sir, out beyond the point."
"I observed as much this evening."
"Very good, sir." Something in the Commandant's voice forbade further argument.
They were afloat almost as soon as the coastguard, and a full five minutes before the life-boat. Sergeant Archelaus pulled stroke, and Sergeant Treacher bow. The Commandant steered, his lantern and pocket compass beside him in the stern sheets.
The boat—she had once been a yacht's cutter—measured sixteen feet over all. She was fitted with a small centre-plate, and carried a lug sail (but this they left behind; it was in store, and would have been worse than useless). They pulled out into a fog so thick that only by intervals could the Commandant catch sight of Sergeant Treacher's face, and Sergeant Treacher's eyebrows and sandy moustache glistering with beads of mist.
They had left the pier but a short two hundred strokes behind them when the little tug belonging to the Islands came panting out of the harbour with the lifeboat in tow, and passed on, blowing her whistle, to overtake and pick up the coastguard galley. So unexpectedly her lights sprang upon them, and so close astern that Treacher, with a sharp cry of warning—for the Commandant's gaze was fastened forward—had barely time to jerk the boat's head round and avoid being cut down. Then, dropping his paddle, he made a grab at the painter and flung it, calling out to the lifeboat's crew to catch and make fast. But either he was a moment too late in flinging, or the lifeboatmen, themselves bawling instructions to the tug's crew, were preoccupied and did not hear. The rope struck against something—the lifeboat's gunwale doubtless—but no one caught it, and next moment the tug had slipped away into darkness and into a silence which swallowed up the shouts and the throb of her engines as though she had dropped into a pit.
"Darn your skin, Sam Treacher!" swore Sergeant Archelaus. "There goes a couple of hours' pulling you might have saved us!"
"Then why couldn't you have given warning?" retorted Treacher. "Pretty pair of eyes you keep in that old head of yours!"
"Be quiet, you two!" the Commandant ordered. "They'd have caught the painter if they wanted us."
He fell silent, bending his head to study the compass in the lantern's ray. "Not wanted"—"not wanted"—the paddles took up the burden and beat it into a sort of tune to the creak of the thole-pins. As a young officer he had started with high notions of duty; nor, looking back on the wasted years could he tax himself that he had ever declined its call; only the call which in youth had always carried a promise with it, definitely clear and shining, of enterprise and reward, of adventure, achievement, fame, had sunk by degrees to a dull repetition calling him from sleep to perform the spiritless daily round. He did not sigh that the definite vision had faded; it happened so, may be, to most men, though not to all. To most men, it might be, their fate played the crimp; they followed the marsh-fires out into just such a blind waste as this through which he and his men were groping—darkness above and below; darkness before, behind, to right, to left; darkness of birth, of death, and only the palpable fog between. He did not sigh for this. What irked him was the thought that while he had followed the mill-round of duty, strength had been ebbing away and had left him useless.
Yes, there lay the sting. Twenty years ago how like a schoolboy he would have dashed into this fog, careless of consequence, eager only to find where men needed his help! He might have found, or missed; but twenty years ago men would have hailed his will to help. Now he was useless, negligible. In an ordinary way these neighbours of his might disguise their knowledge, through politeness or pity; but at a crisis like this the truth came out. The Lord Proprietor had treated him as a pantaloon, and these lifeboatmen—so little they valued him—could not be at the pains of catching a rope.
He steered, as nearly as he could calculate, west-by-south, allowing at a guess for the set of the tide. The wall of fog, which let pass no true sound, itself seemed full of voices—hissing of spent waves, sucking of water under weed-covered ledges, little puffs and moanings of the wind. He had reckoned that he was bending around shore to the south of the roadstead, heading gradually for St. Lide's Sound and giving the rocks on his port hand a wide berth; when of a sudden Archelaus called out, and he spied a grey line of breaking water—luckily the sea was full of briming to-night—at the base of the fog, quite close at hand. It scared them so that they headed off almost at right angles. This adventure not only proved his reckoning to be wrong, but complicated it hopelessly.
They were in open water again, still making—or at any rate the boat so pointed—west-by-south. The short scare had shaken him out of his brooding thoughts. He saw now, minute after minute, but the sea beyond the edge of the boat's gunwale, heaving up and sliding astern as it caught the shine of the lantern. The lantern shone also against the knees of Archelaus, and lit up the check-board pattern of the eleemosynary trousers. It was a provocative pattern, but the Commandant heeded it not....
He looked up from Sergeant Archelaus' knees to Sergeant Archelaus' face, and past it to the face of Sergeant Treacher, now a little more distinct. The two men had been pulling for an hour, and the Commandant saw that they were tired—tired and very old. He recognised it at first with a touch of anger. He felt an instant's impulse to curse and bid them row harder. But on the instant came gentle understanding, and restrained him.
"Archelaus," he said, "you are the older; take the tiller here and give me the oar for a spell."
Archelaus was not unwilling. Besides, was it not his commanding officer who gave the order? He relinquished his paddle with a grunt of exhaustion, and the Commandant stood up to take it, laying both hands on it while Archelaus stumbled past to the stern-sheets.... And at that moment a miracle befell.
The fog must have been thinning. The Commandant, standing with both hands on the paddle and his face to the bows, saw or felt it part suddenly, and through the parting lights shone and voices sounded, with the heavy throb of a vessel's screw.
Clank! clank! and it was on them, almost before Sergeant Archelaus could let out a cry—the stem, the grey-painted bows of a vast steamship, ghostly, towering up into night. A bell rang. High on the bridge—but the bridge soared into heaven—a pilot's voice called out in the Island tongue. As the great bows glided by, missing the boat by a few yards, the three men stared aloft until they had almost cricked their necks; and aloft there, as Archelaus raised his lantern, the Commandant read the vessel's name—"Milo"—glimmering in tall gilt letters.
Faces looked down from her rail, faces from the shadow of the hurricane' deck; a line of faces and all looking down upon the little Island tug that had fallen alongside and drifted close under the liner's flank, a short way abaft her red port-light. A murmur of talk went with the faces, as it were a stream rippling by, and mingled with the splash of water pouring over-side from the pumps. It sounded cheerfully, and from the voices on board the tug and in the lifeboat and galley towing astern our Commandant gathered that the danger was over. Again Sergeant Treacher hailed and flung a rope; this time the lifeboat's crew caught it and made fast.
"Reub Hicks is aboard," said a voice, naming one of the St. Ann's pilots. "He picked her up not twenty furlongs from Hell-deeps after she had missed the Little Meadows by the skin of her teeth."
"How in the name of good Providence she got near enough to miss it, being where she was, is the marvel to me," said another.
"She did, anyway," said the coxswain; "for Reub himself called down the news to me in so many words."
The Commandant gazed up at the gray shadow reaching aloft into darkness. He knew those outer reefs of which the men spoke. A touch of them would have split the plates of this tall fabric like a house of cards. He and Archelaus had witnessed one such wreck, eight years ago; had waited in broad daylight, helpless, resting on their oars, unable to approach within a cable's length of the rocks, upon which in ten minutes a steel-built five-master, of 1,200 tons, had melted to nothing before their eyes—"the rivets," as Archelaus put it, "flying out of her like shirt buttons." But that had happened on one of the outermost reefs, beyond the Off Islands, far down by the Monk Light. How theMilo, no matter from what quarter approaching, had threaded her way by the Hell-deeps was to him a mystery of mysteries. She was groping it yet, her engines working dead slow; but the fog during the past hour had sensibly lightened and Reub Hicks held open water between him and the Roads, though he still kept the lead going. At the entrance of the Roads he sent the tug forward to help the steerage, and so brought her in and rounded her up as accurately as though she had been a little schooner of two hundred tons.
As the great anchor dropped, and amid the deafening rattle of its chain in the hawse-pipe, the crew astern cast off and drew their boats alongside, eager to swarm aboard and hear news of the miracle. From his galley Mr. Rogers shouted up to the captain to lower his ladder. He and his chief boatman mounted first, with a little man named Pengelly, a custom's official, who happened to make one of the lifeboat's crew—for theMilohad come from foreign, and thus a show was made of complying with the Queen's regulations. But the whole crowd trooped up close at their heels, and with the crowd clambered Sergeant Archelaus and Sergeant Treacher.
The Commandant had given them permission. He would remain below, he said, and look after the boat, awaiting their report.
The crowd passed up and dispersed itself about the deck, congratulating all comers, and excitedly plying them with questions. The Islanders are a child-like race, and from his post at the foot of the deserted accommodation ladder the Commandant could hear them laughing, exclaiming, chattering with the passengers in high-pitched voices.
He stood with his boat-hook, holding on by the grating of the ladder's lowest step, and stared at the gray wall-sides of the liner. Yes, the ship was solid, and yet he could not believe but that she belonged to a dream; so mysteriously, against all chances, was she here, out of the deep and the night.
Someone had lashed a lantern at the head of the ladder. Lifting his eyes to it in the foggy darkness, the Commandant saw a solitary figure standing there in the gangway and looking down on him—a woman.
She lifted a hand as if to enjoin silence, and came swiftly down a step or two in the shadow of the vessel's side.
"You are Major Vigoureux?" she asked in a quick whisper, leaning forward over him.
"At your service, madam," he stammered, taken fairly aback.
"Ah! I am glad of that!" She ran down the remaining steps and set her foot lightly on the boat's gunwale. "You will row me ashore?"
"If you wish it, madam." He was more puzzled than ever. He saw that she wore a dark cloak of fur and was bare-headed. She spoke in a sort of musical whisper. Her face he could not see. "In a minute or two my men——"
"We will not wait for your men," she said, quietly, seating herself in the stern sheets. "They can easily be put ashore—can they not?—in one of the other boats."
From under her fur cloak she reached out an arm—a bare arm with two jewelled bracelets—and took the tiller. "I can steer you to the quay," she said, and leaning forward in the light of Sergeant Archelaus' lantern, she lifted her eyes to the Commandant.
The Commandant pushed off, shipped the paddles into the thole pins, and began to row, as in a dream.
CHAPTER VI
HOW VASHTI CAME TO THE ISLANDS
"You do not remember me, Major Vigoureux?"
The Commandant looked at her, across the lantern's ray. Something in her voice, vibrating like the rich, full note of a bell, touched his memory ... but only to elude it.
The face that challenged him was not girlish; the face, rather, of a beautiful woman of thirty; its shape a short oval, with a slight squareness at the point of the jaw to balance the broad forehead over which her hair (damp now, but rippled with a natural wave, defying the fog) lay parted in two heavy bands—the brow of a goddess. Her eyes, too, would have become a goddess, though just now they condescended to be merry.
Tall she was, for certain, and commanding. Her cloak hid the lines of her body, whether they were thin or ample; but, where the collar opened, her throat showed like a pillar, carrying her chin upon a truly noble poise. It was inconceivable (the Commandant said to himself) that he had met this woman before and forgotten her.
He came back to her eyes. They challenged him fearlessly. He could not have described their colour; but he saw amusement lurking deep in their glooms while she waited.
"I am sorry. It is unpardonable in me, of course——"
"And I, on the contrary, am glad," she interrupted, with a laugh that reminded him of the liquid chuckle in a thrush's song, or of water swirling down a deep pool; "for it tells me I have grown out of recognition, and that is just what I wanted."
This puzzled him, and he frowned a little.
"You know the Islands?" he asked. "This is not your first visit?"
"You shall judge if in this darkness I steer you straight for St. Lide's Quay; and I take you to witness—look over your shoulder—there is no lamp on the quay-head to guide me, or at least none visible." She laughed again, but on the instant grew serious. "Yes," she added, "I can find my way among the Islands, I thank God." And this puzzled him yet more.
"You know the Islands; you are glad to return to them?"
She nodded.
"Yet you do not wish to be recognised?"
She nodded again. "I came, you see, sooner than I intended. TheMilowas clean out of her course."
"That goes without saying," said he, gravely.
"She was bound for Plymouth. So, you see, this little misadventure has shortened my journey by days." She paused. "No; I ought not to speak of it flippantly. I shall be very thankful in my prayers to-night ... all those women and children...."
Again she paused.
"Is my hand trembling?" she asked, lifting it and laying it again on the tiller, where it rested firm as a rock. Only the jewels quivered on her rings and bracelets, and their beauty, arresting the Commandant's gaze, held him silent.
"To be frank with you," she went on, "I left the ship in a hurry, because I was afraid of being thanked. I don't like publicity—much; and just now it would have spoiled everything." This explanation enlightened the Commandant not at all. "Besides," she added with a practical air, "I left a note with my maid, to be given to the captain; so he won't imagine that I've tumbled overboard; and she can send my boxes ashore to-morrow, if you will be kind enough to fetch them before theMiloweighs."
"But, meanwhile?" he hazarded.
"Oh, meanwhile, I must manage somehow for the night. I slipped a few things into my hand-bag here." She drew her fur cloak a little aside, and displayed it—a small satchel hanging from her waist by a silver chain. The Commandant had a glimpse at the same moment of a skirt of rose-coloured silk, brocaded in a pattern of silver.
"And when we land," he asked, "where am I to take you?"
"I am in your hands."
He stared at her, dismayed. "But you have friends?"
"None who would remember me; not a soul, at least, in St. Lide's."
"There is the Plume of Feathers Inn, to be sure——"
"If you recommend it," she said, demurely, as he hesitated.
He almost lost his temper. "Recommend it? Of course I don't."
"Well, from what I remember of the Plume of Feathers—unless it has altered——"
"Wouldn't it be wiser to turn back?" he suggested, desperately, staring into the fog, in which the lights of theMilohad long since disappeared.
"What? When we have this moment opened the quay-light? There!... didn't I promise you that I knew my way among the Islands?"
In the basin of the harbour the fog lay thicker than in the roads, and they had scarcely made sure that this was indeed the quay-light before their boat grated against the landing-steps of the quay itself. The Commandant, after he had shipped his oars and checked the way on her, pressing both hands against the dripping wall, put up one of them and passed the back of it slowly across his forehead. He was considering; and, while he considered, his companion stepped lightly ashore. "Forgive me," he pleaded, recollecting himself. "At least, I should have offered you my hand."
"Thank you, I did not need it."
"But listen, please," he protested, scrambling out upon the steps, painter in hand, and groping for a ring-bolt. "You cannot possibly stay the night at the Plume of Feathers——"
He heard her laugh, as he stooped, having found the ring, to make fast the rope.
"Commandant, have you ever travelled across Wyoming—in winter, in a waggon? Very well, then; I have."
"Surely not in the clothes you are wearing?" The Commandant, as any one in the Council of Twelve could tell you, was no debater; yet sometimes he had been known to triumph even in debate, by sheer simplicity. "The only course that I can see," he continued, "is to seek some private house, and throw ourselves upon the—er—"
"Front door?" she suggested, mischievously.
"—hospitality—upon the hospitality of the inmates. To them, of course, I can explain the situation——"
"Can you?"
The Commandant stood for a moment peering at her, and rubbing the back of his head—a trick of his in perplexity. "Upon my word, now you come to mention it," he confessed, "I don't know that I can."
"Whom shall we try first? Miss Gabriel?" ("Now, how in the world," wondered the Commandant, "does she know anything of Miss Gabriel?") "Very well; we go together to Alma Cottage—she still lives at Alma Cottage?—and knock. The hour is two in the morning, or thereabouts. Miss Gabriel, overcoming her first fear of robbery or murder, will parley with us from her bedroom window. To her you introduce me, by the light of your lantern; a strange female in an evening frock; a female grossly overladen with jewels (that, I think, would be Miss Gabriel's way of putting it), but without a portmanteau."
"We might try the Popes, next door," suggested the Commandant flinching. "Mr. Pope is a man of the world."
"Is he?" she asked, after a pause, in which he felt that she struggled with some inward mirth. "But we cannot so describe Mrs. Pope, can we? Also we cannot knock up Mr. and Mrs. Pope without disturbing Miss Gabriel next door."
"Nor, for that matter, can we knock up Miss Gabriel without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Pope."
"Quite so; we may reckon that all three will be listening. Therefore, when Mr. Pope or Miss Gabriel (as the case may be) begins by demanding my name—which, by an oversight, you have forgotten to ask——"
"Pardon me," said the Commandant, simply, "I did not forget. I waited, supposing that if you wished me to know it, you would tell me."
"Ah!" she drew close to him, with a happy exclamation. "Then I was not mistaken: You are the man I have counted to find.... And you are a brave man, too. But we will not push bravery too far and disturb Miss Gabriel."
"If you can suggest a better plan——"
"A far better plan. I suggest that you offer me a room to-night at the garrison."
"My dear madam!" the Commandant gasped.
"It will be far better in every way," she went on composedly; that is, if you are willing. To begin with, you have rooms and to spare. Next, there will be no bother in introducing me, except to Mrs. Treacher."
"Ah, to be sure, there is Mrs. Treacher!" the Commandant murmured. "But, madam, all the rooms in the Castle are unfurnished, ruinous, and have been ruinous for fifty years. The Treachers occupy the only two in which it were possible to swing a cat."
"Then we must borrow Mrs. Treacher and take her along to the Barracks for chaperon. You may leave it to me to persuade her."
Without waiting for his answer she ran lightly up the steps, the heels of her rose-coloured satin shoes twinkling in the light of the Commandant's lantern as he blundered after her.
The pavement of the quay had not been laid for satin shoes. Much traffic had worn the surface into depressions, and these depressions were fast collecting water from the drenched air. But although the fog lay almost as thick here as at the foot of the steps, she picked her way among these pitfalls, avoiding them as though by instinct. Beyond the quay came a cobbled causeway; and beyond the causeway a narrow street wound up towards the garrison gate. Past rains, pouring down the hill, had worn a deep rut along this street, ploughing it here and there to the native rock, zig-zagging from centre to side of the roadway and back again obedient to the trend of the slope. But over the causeway, and up the channelled street she found her footing with the same confidence, steering far more cleverly than the Commandant, who followed as in a dream, amazed, oppressed with forebodings. It was all very well for her to talk lightly of persuading Mrs. Treacher. If she could, why then she must be possessed of a secret as yet unrevealed to Mrs. Treacher's husband after thirty-odd years of married life. The Commandant, too, knew something of Mrs. Treacher ... an obstinate woman, not to say pig-headed.
Was she a witch—this stranger in silk and jewels who walked in darkness so confidently up the tortuous unpaved street?—this apparition who, coming out of the seas and the dumb fog, talked of the Islands and the Islanders as though she had known them all her life?
As if to prove she was a witch, she paused before the very cottage which once already to-night had given pause to his steps and to his thoughts. The fog had been thinning little by little as they mounted the hill, and at a few paces' distance he recognized the closed door, daubed over with that same staring paint which your true Islander uses for choice upon his boat.
"You remember this door?" she asked, pointing to it as he overtook her.
Witch she might be, but why should he give away to her this innocent small secret?
"Of course I remember it," he answered; "passing it as I do, half-a-dozen times a day."
"Yes," she said, almost as if speaking to herself; but her voice, for the first time since their meeting, seemed to be touched with a faint shade of dejection. "Naturally you would not remember it for any other reason."
He was silent.
"Yet," she went on, "you really ought to remember that door, Major Vigoureux, if only for old sake's sake; for it was, I believe, the first you entered when you came to the Islands. That was in the year——"
"Never mind the year," interrupted the Commandant, hastily. "I remember it well. I almost never pass the door without remembering it."
"Ah!" she cried, putting her jewelled hands together, and the Commandant took it for an exclamation of triumph at her cleverness. "But other tenants have the house. The man who was master of it is dead."
"You know everything, it seems to me. Yes; he was a widower, and late that evening at the fishing. It was an evening when he should not have been late; for the door stood open for him, and his daughters—he had two daughters—sat expecting him. It was the open door that drew me to ask my way." Here he paused.
"Go on, please."
"One of the girls was to leave the Islands next morning for the mainland, which she had never seen. She told me this. And she sat reading aloud to her sister, there by the fire."
"Go on."
"That is all. Yes, that is all—except that the book was Shakespeare, and the girl—" He paused again, staring at her between sudden enlightenment and stark incredulity. "You—you don't mean to tell meyouwere that girl!"
She nodded; and as, forgetting politeness, he held the lantern close to her face, he saw two large tears brim up, tremble, and hang for a second before they fell.
"You?" he murmured.
She nodded again. "I am Vashti—Vazzy Cara, they called me, Philip Cara's daughter. I daresay, though, you never heard my name? No, there is no reason why you should. And my sister, Ruth——"
"She is married and lives on Saaron Island. But you know this, of course? You who seem to know everything about us."
"My sister writes me all the news.... So now," she added smiling, "it is all explained, and there is no mystery about me after all. Are you so very much disappointed?"
But the Commandant continued to stare. No mystery? That the fisherman's daughter with the Island lilt in her voice—well he recalled it!—should have turned into this apparition of furs and jewels?... And yet the metamorphosis lay not in the furs and jewels, but in her careless air of command, of reliance upon her power, beauty, charm—whatever her woman's secret might be; an air of one accustomed to move in courts, maybe, or to control great audiences, or to live habitually with lofty thoughts; an air of one, above all, sure of herself. The poor Commandant had lived the better part of his life in exile, but by instinct of breeding he recognised this air at once. Vashti, however, seemed to mistake his astonishment, for she frowned.
"Well?" she asked, a trifle impatiently.
"Your sister never told us," he stammered. "At least—that is to say——"
"Do you suppose she was ashamed of me?"
"Ashamed?" he echoed, for indeed no such thought had occurred to him. If ever a man could have takenhoni soit qui mal y pensefor his motto, it was our Commandant.
"Ah, to be sure!" she said slowly, but less in indignation (it seemed) than in disappointment with him. "Naturally that would be the explanation to occur to you, living so long in such a place."
She turned on her heel, half contemptuously, and resumed her way, walking with a yet quicker step than before. The Commandant, aware that he had offended, but not in the least understanding how, toiled after her up the steep incline to the garrison gate.
They reached the door of the Barracks. To his surprise it was standing open, and from behind the ragged blind of his sitting-room—to the left of the entrance hall—a light shone feebly out upon the fog. He could not remember that he had lit the lamp there, nor that he had left the front door open.
Vashti paused upon the doorstep and turned to him:
"My good sir," she said curtly, "run and fetch Mrs. Treacher to me, for goodness' sake."
He hesitated, on the point of stepping past her to open the door of the lighted room. Her manner forbade him, and he stood still, there by the doorstep, gazing after her a moment as she disappeared into the dark hall. Then, as he heard the door latch rattle gently, he turned to hurry in search of Mrs. Treacher.
He had taken but a dozen steps, however, when her light footfall sounded again close behind him. She, too, had turned and was following him almost at a run.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she gasped.
He swung up his lantern. Her eyes were wide with a kind of horror; and yet she seemed to be laughing, or ready to laugh.
"Tell you?" he echoed.
"Oh, but it was unkind!"
"But—but, excuse me—what on earth——"
"Why, that you were entertaining ladies!"
"Ladies!"
She nodded, still round-eyed, reproachful. "Two of them—sitting on your sofa! And, I think—I rather think—one of them is Miss Gabriel!"