Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Eighteen.A Black Business.“Be jabers, sor!” exclaimed the Irishman in his very broadest brogue and with a comical grin on his face that certainly must have eclipsed that of which he complained in the professor of his college who had caught him and his fellow-student trespassing on his medical preserves. “To till the truth an’ shame the divvle, colonel, the poor ould crayture, whose complaint we couldn’t underconstumble at all at all, sure, was sufferin’ from a fit of apoplexy—a thing aisy enough to recognise by any docther of experience, though, faith, it moight have been Grake to us!”We were all very much amused and had a good laugh at this naïve confession, even Colonel Vereker sharing in the general mirth, in spite of his profound melancholy and the pain he felt from his wounded leg, which made him wince every now and again, I noticed, during the narration of the story Garry O’Neil had thus told, with the utmost good humour, it must be confessed, at his own expense, as, indeed, he had made us understand beforehand that it would be.“By George!” cried the skipper, after having his laugh out, “you’ll be the death of me some day with your queer yarns if you can’t manage to do for me with your professional skill or by the aid of your drugs and lotions, poisons, most of ’em, and all your murderous-looking instruments, besides!”“No fear of that, cap’en; you’re too tough a customer,” rejoined the doctor with a knowing look in the direction of Mr Stokes, who had made himself purple in the face and was panting and puffing on his seat, trying to recover his breath. “Faith, though, sor, talkin’ of medical skill, the sooner I say afther that leg of our fri’nd here, the better, I’m thinkin’.”“With the best of wills,” assented the colonel, who had finished his luncheon by this time and certainly presented a much improved appearance to that he had worn when entering the saloon. “I am quite at your service, doctor, and promise to be as quiet as that first patient of yours of whom you’ve just told us!”“Belay that, colonel; none o’ your chaff about the ould leddy, if you love me, sure!” growled Garry, pretending to be indignant as he knelt down on the cabin floor and slit up the leg of the colonel’s trousers so as to inspect the wound. His nonsensical, quizzing manner changed instantly, however, on seeing the serious state of the injured limb, and he ejaculated in a subdued tone of voice, “Holy Moses!”“Why, sir,” said the patient quietly, “what’s the matter now?”“Ah, an’ ye are axin’ what’s the mather?” cried Garry in a still more astonished tone. “Faith, it’s wantin’ to know I am how the divvle you’ve iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that thing there. Look at it now, an’ till me what ye think of it yoursilf, me darlint. May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such a leg?”It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a small punctured orifice just above the knee.Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.“The fortune of war,” he explained. “One of those brutes shot me where that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there.”“Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin’!” cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. “A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can’t have much faling at all, at all, I’m thinkin’!”“Ah!” groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet near the spot the colonel had indicated. “Whew! that hurts at any rate, doctor!”“Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint,” said the other soothingly, exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to extract the leaden messenger. “An’ if ye can’t be aisy, faith, try an’ be as aisy as ye can!”In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.“Ah!” ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench his teeth with an audible snap.“Faith, you may say ‘ah’ now as much as you please,” said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. “For there’s the baste that did you all the damage, an’ we’ll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!”“Oh! dear me!” the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment to allay the swelling. “Would to God all the mischief could be as easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!”“Cheer up, colonel, cheer up,” whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O’Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. “We’re going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we’ll rescue your child, I’ll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you’re trying one of the Havanah’s, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. I should like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how those blacks came to board you.”“Certainly!” said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when Garry O’Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of the choice cigars the skipper offered him. “I will tell you willingly, captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad story of our thrice ill-fated voyage.”“Thrice ill-fated?” repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly logical turn of mind. “But how’s that, sir?”The colonel had his answer quite ready.“I said ‘thrice ill-fated’ advisedly, sir,” he replied, removing his cigar from his lips to emit a cloud of perfumed smoke, and then restoring the fragrant roll of tobacco to the mouth again. “In the first place, sir, from my having been unlucky enough ever to start upon the voyage at all. Secondly, from the fact of a calm delaying us when passing between Puerto Rico and San Domingo, thereby enabling those treacherous negro scoundrels to see our ship in time to put out for us from the shore; and thirdly, because Captain Alphonse would not take my advice and use strong measures when the mutiny originally broke out, which might have prevented the terrible events that afterwards occurred! But, sir, if you will allow me, I shall get along better by telling you what happened just in my own way!”“Certainly, sir,” immediately replied Mr Stokes, profuse in his apologies. “Pray pardon my interruption!”The colonel bowed in token of his forgiveness and then resumed his yarn.“Our ship, theSaint Pierre, of Marseilles, Jacques Alphonse master and part owner, sailed from La Guayra on October 25, barely a fortnight ago!” said he. “In addition to her captain, of course, she carried two mates and a crew of twenty-five hands all told, and she was bound for Liverpool, with a general cargo of cocoa, coffee and hides, besides a mixed assortment of indigo, orris root, sarsaparilla and other raw drugs for the English market.”“Were you and your little daughter the only passengers?”“No, Señor Applegarth,” replied the other. “There were also on board Monsieur and Madame Boisson, from Caracas, returning home to Europe after a lengthened residence in the Venezuelan capital, where they had carried on a large millinery business, supplying the duskyseñoritasof the hybrid Spanish and native republic with the latest Parisian modes; Don Miguel, the proprietor of an extensive estancia in the interior; and little Mr Johnson, a Britisher, of not much account in your country, I guess, not a gentleman—at all events, in my humble opinion. He was travelling for some mercantile house in London connected with the manufactory of chocolates or sweets, or something of that sort. I cannot say I cared much for the lot, as they were not people of my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson, who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar. Oh dear me! It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous voyage. It was unlucky from the very first!”“Faith!” interposed Garry O’Neil. “But how was that, sor?”“We were too late in reaching La Guayra in the first instance,” replied Colonel Vereker. “I had planned, my friend, to take the French steamer for Brest, but on arriving at the port I found she had already left, and while deliberating about what I should do under the circumstances—for there would not be another mail boat for a fortnight at least—I met Captain Alphonse. He was an old friend of mine, a friend of long standing, so, on his telling me that his vessel was going to sail on the following day and would probably convey me to Brest, where he said he would have to report himself prior to proceeding to Liverpool with his cargo, quite as soon as I should arrive if I waited for the next steamer, I made up my mind to accompany him.”“But, colonel,” suggested Captain Applegarth, “you might have gone direct to England by one of the West India mail steamers which touch at La Guayra on their route homeward from Colon.”“I know that, my friend,” said the other. “I could have caught one of them the following week. This would not have suited my purpose, however, sir. I wished to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school in the convent of L’enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up. It was a promise, my friend, to the dead.”“I see, colonel,” rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other; “I see, sir. Go on; I’m all attention.”“Well, then,” continued the colonel, “these preliminaries being all arranged, Elsie and I went aboard theSaint Pierre, a full-rigged sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty-eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship had been loading—abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea.”“Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel,” put in the skipper at this point, showing that he was following every detail. “I was in the Royal Mail Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company.”“I recollect the night we sailed,” resumed the other, paying no attention to Captain Applegarth’s remark, but speaking with his eyes fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he described. “The moon was shining brightly when we got under way, lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the background seem higher than they were from the deep shadows they cast over the town lying below. This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave. Heavens! It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that, sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and very probably ever shall know again!”“Faith, don’t say that now, sir,” cried out Garry at this. “You’ll have a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I’m no prophet. Begorrah, though, I niver was, so far as that goes!”The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel’s sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulness.“Ah, doctor, you do not know what grief and anguish are like!” he said mournfully. “But to go on with my story. I may tell you that, had our voyage progressed like our start, I should have nothing to deplore, for, the land breeze filling our sails, we bore away buoyantly from the Venezuelan coast, the ship shaping a course north by west towards the Mona passage, as the channel way is called, from a rock in its centre, lying between Hayti and Puerto Rico. This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, captain, very well know.”The skipper nodded his head.“You’re quite a sailor, colonel,” he said approvingly. “Where did you manage to pick up your knowledge of navigation and sea-faring matters, if I may ask the question, sir?”“In the many voyages I have made during a somewhat adventurous life,” replied the other. “I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open, captain. There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!”“Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground,” said the skipper, looking towards me. “Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!”“Yes, young sir,” added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. “That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. Had I not learnt something of the ways of your sailors, for instance, I might not have thought of lashing theSaint Pierre’shelm amidships on the breaking out of the mutiny, and so prevented all our going to the bottom subsequently, when it came on to blow; for all of us were then fighting for our lives and no one had time to attend to the ship, save in the way of letting go what ropes were handiest.”“Aye, that may be well enough, colonel,” observed the skipper in his dry fashion. “But your argument cuts both ways. If your helm hadn’t been lashed down, remember, the ship would have been yawing about and drifting in this direction and that, and we should probably have come across her long ago, like that boat from which we picked you up, instead of her bearing away right before the wind and our having to go in chase of her, sir, as we are now doing.”“It is true! I did not think of that!” returned the colonel impulsively, half-starting from his seat in his excitement. “We must be near her now, captain, though, surely. We must find them, and I must see my little girl again!”“Kape aisy, me darlint; kape aisy,” here interposed Garry O’Neil, before Captain Applegarth could answer the question. “Sure, Mr Fosset promised to give us the worrd whin she hove in sight, an’ you’re only distarbin’ yoursilf for nothing, colonel! More’s the pity, too, mabruchal, whin your leg is progressin’ so illigantly an’ the swillin’ goin’ down as swately as possible. Now kape aisy, if only to oblige me. Faith, colonel, me profissional reputation’s at shtake!”The Irishman all the time he was talking was carefully attending to the injured limb, loosening a bandage here, tightening another there, and keeping the lint dressing moist the while with a lotion which he applied gently to the surface by means of a sponge. So, impressed alike by his tender solicitude thus practically shown on his behalf as much as by his opportune admonition, the colonel was forced to remain quiet.“I wish he’d be quick about it!” he muttered to himself. “Well, doctor, as you will not let me move, I suppose you will let me go on with my tale; that is, if it interests you!”“Aye, aye; I want to hear everything,” said the skipper. “And fire away, colonel; there’s plenty of time for you to reel off your yarn before we overhaul the chase.”“All right,—then, I will proceed,” replied the other. “All went well with us on the voyage until the afternoon of the third day after sailing from La Guayra, when, unfortunately, the weather changed and the westerly wind, which had favoured us so far, suddenly failed us after wafting us through the Mona Passage, and we became becalmed off Cap San Engaño, to the northward of Hayti.”“Hayti!” exclaimed old Mr Stokes, waking up from a short nap he had been having on the sly, and pretending to be keenly alive to the conversation. “That’s the famous black republic, ain’t it?”“Famous black pandemonium, you mean!” retorted the colonel fiercely, his eyes flashing at once with fire. “Excuse me, sir, but I have seen so much of these negro brutes, who ape the airs of civilisation and yet after a century of freedom are more uncivilised in their habits and mode of life than the African slaves, their forefathers whom Toussaint-L’Overture, as he styled himself, their leader, freed from the yoke of their French masters a hundred years ago, that I feel the glorious name ‘republic’ to be dishonoured when associated with such vile wretches, wretches a thousand times worse than the Fantees of the West Coast from whom they originally sprang!”“My dear sir,” said Mr Stokes, aghast at the tempest he had raised by his innocent remark, “you surprise me!”“Heavens! you would be surprised, sir, if you knew these Haytians as I know them to be,” continued the colonel, his indignation still struggling for the mastery—“a race of devil worshippers and cannibals, who confound liberty with license, and have added all the vices of civilisation to the inherent savagery of their innate animal nature. Ah, sir, I should like to tell you a great deal more, but have not the time now. I am afraid I am forgetting myself. Where was I?”“Becalmed off Cape San Engaño,” promptly replied the skipper, sailor fashion—“at least, so you said, colonel; but I fancy you must have had a little rougher weather in that latitude than you mentioned at first!”“We had,” said Colonel Vereker meaningly. “Towards nightfall we drifted with the current more inshore, Captain Alphonse not dropping our anchor, as we expected the land breeze would spring up at sunset. This did not come for an hour later, however, for already darkness had begun to surround us and we could see the fireflies illuminating the brush beyond the beach. But this wasn’t all observed, sir. Just as our sails filled again and the ship slowly drew out into the offing, we heard the splash of oars in the water astern. It was a boat coming after us, propelled by a dozen oars at least, pulling as hard as those handling them knew how, a shot or two from the shore and the sound of musket balls ripping the water explaining, in some way, the reason for their anxiety to get beyond the range of the firing, on which account they sought the shelter of theSaint Pierre, of course—at least, so we thought!“‘Who goes there?’ shouted out Captain Alphonse, who was standing alone with me, close to the taffrail. ‘Poor devils! there is probably another insurrection at Port au Prince, and President Salomon up or down again. He is always one or the other every year or so, and these poor fellows may be flying to save their miserable necks. Who goes there? Who goes there?’ But, whether wanting all their energy for their oars or for some other reason known to themselves, those in the boat made no reply to our hail, and the next moment, ere the ship gathered way sufficient to gain on them, they were alongside, their long unwieldy craft grating against the ship’s timbers beneath her counter.“‘Look-out there, forrads!’ cried Captain Alphonse, seeing the boat making apparently for our bows, but before a hand could be raised to prevent them, without asking permission in any way or offering the slightest apology or excuse in advance for their conduct, a number of negroes jumped out of her and began climbing aboard theSaint Pierre.“Heavens! gentlemen, clad in little beyond Nature’s own covering, as the majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take possession of our unfortunate ship—as indeed they were. Oh dear me!”

“Be jabers, sor!” exclaimed the Irishman in his very broadest brogue and with a comical grin on his face that certainly must have eclipsed that of which he complained in the professor of his college who had caught him and his fellow-student trespassing on his medical preserves. “To till the truth an’ shame the divvle, colonel, the poor ould crayture, whose complaint we couldn’t underconstumble at all at all, sure, was sufferin’ from a fit of apoplexy—a thing aisy enough to recognise by any docther of experience, though, faith, it moight have been Grake to us!”

We were all very much amused and had a good laugh at this naïve confession, even Colonel Vereker sharing in the general mirth, in spite of his profound melancholy and the pain he felt from his wounded leg, which made him wince every now and again, I noticed, during the narration of the story Garry O’Neil had thus told, with the utmost good humour, it must be confessed, at his own expense, as, indeed, he had made us understand beforehand that it would be.

“By George!” cried the skipper, after having his laugh out, “you’ll be the death of me some day with your queer yarns if you can’t manage to do for me with your professional skill or by the aid of your drugs and lotions, poisons, most of ’em, and all your murderous-looking instruments, besides!”

“No fear of that, cap’en; you’re too tough a customer,” rejoined the doctor with a knowing look in the direction of Mr Stokes, who had made himself purple in the face and was panting and puffing on his seat, trying to recover his breath. “Faith, though, sor, talkin’ of medical skill, the sooner I say afther that leg of our fri’nd here, the better, I’m thinkin’.”

“With the best of wills,” assented the colonel, who had finished his luncheon by this time and certainly presented a much improved appearance to that he had worn when entering the saloon. “I am quite at your service, doctor, and promise to be as quiet as that first patient of yours of whom you’ve just told us!”

“Belay that, colonel; none o’ your chaff about the ould leddy, if you love me, sure!” growled Garry, pretending to be indignant as he knelt down on the cabin floor and slit up the leg of the colonel’s trousers so as to inspect the wound. His nonsensical, quizzing manner changed instantly, however, on seeing the serious state of the injured limb, and he ejaculated in a subdued tone of voice, “Holy Moses!”

“Why, sir,” said the patient quietly, “what’s the matter now?”

“Ah, an’ ye are axin’ what’s the mather?” cried Garry in a still more astonished tone. “Faith, it’s wantin’ to know I am how the divvle you’ve iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that thing there. Look at it now, an’ till me what ye think of it yoursilf, me darlint. May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such a leg?”

It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a small punctured orifice just above the knee.

Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“The fortune of war,” he explained. “One of those brutes shot me where that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there.”

“Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin’!” cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. “A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can’t have much faling at all, at all, I’m thinkin’!”

“Ah!” groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet near the spot the colonel had indicated. “Whew! that hurts at any rate, doctor!”

“Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint,” said the other soothingly, exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to extract the leaden messenger. “An’ if ye can’t be aisy, faith, try an’ be as aisy as ye can!”

In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.

“Ah!” ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench his teeth with an audible snap.

“Faith, you may say ‘ah’ now as much as you please,” said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. “For there’s the baste that did you all the damage, an’ we’ll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!”

“Oh! dear me!” the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment to allay the swelling. “Would to God all the mischief could be as easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!”

“Cheer up, colonel, cheer up,” whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O’Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. “We’re going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we’ll rescue your child, I’ll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you’re trying one of the Havanah’s, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. I should like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how those blacks came to board you.”

“Certainly!” said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when Garry O’Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of the choice cigars the skipper offered him. “I will tell you willingly, captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad story of our thrice ill-fated voyage.”

“Thrice ill-fated?” repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly logical turn of mind. “But how’s that, sir?”

The colonel had his answer quite ready.

“I said ‘thrice ill-fated’ advisedly, sir,” he replied, removing his cigar from his lips to emit a cloud of perfumed smoke, and then restoring the fragrant roll of tobacco to the mouth again. “In the first place, sir, from my having been unlucky enough ever to start upon the voyage at all. Secondly, from the fact of a calm delaying us when passing between Puerto Rico and San Domingo, thereby enabling those treacherous negro scoundrels to see our ship in time to put out for us from the shore; and thirdly, because Captain Alphonse would not take my advice and use strong measures when the mutiny originally broke out, which might have prevented the terrible events that afterwards occurred! But, sir, if you will allow me, I shall get along better by telling you what happened just in my own way!”

“Certainly, sir,” immediately replied Mr Stokes, profuse in his apologies. “Pray pardon my interruption!”

The colonel bowed in token of his forgiveness and then resumed his yarn.

“Our ship, theSaint Pierre, of Marseilles, Jacques Alphonse master and part owner, sailed from La Guayra on October 25, barely a fortnight ago!” said he. “In addition to her captain, of course, she carried two mates and a crew of twenty-five hands all told, and she was bound for Liverpool, with a general cargo of cocoa, coffee and hides, besides a mixed assortment of indigo, orris root, sarsaparilla and other raw drugs for the English market.”

“Were you and your little daughter the only passengers?”

“No, Señor Applegarth,” replied the other. “There were also on board Monsieur and Madame Boisson, from Caracas, returning home to Europe after a lengthened residence in the Venezuelan capital, where they had carried on a large millinery business, supplying the duskyseñoritasof the hybrid Spanish and native republic with the latest Parisian modes; Don Miguel, the proprietor of an extensive estancia in the interior; and little Mr Johnson, a Britisher, of not much account in your country, I guess, not a gentleman—at all events, in my humble opinion. He was travelling for some mercantile house in London connected with the manufactory of chocolates or sweets, or something of that sort. I cannot say I cared much for the lot, as they were not people of my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson, who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar. Oh dear me! It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous voyage. It was unlucky from the very first!”

“Faith!” interposed Garry O’Neil. “But how was that, sor?”

“We were too late in reaching La Guayra in the first instance,” replied Colonel Vereker. “I had planned, my friend, to take the French steamer for Brest, but on arriving at the port I found she had already left, and while deliberating about what I should do under the circumstances—for there would not be another mail boat for a fortnight at least—I met Captain Alphonse. He was an old friend of mine, a friend of long standing, so, on his telling me that his vessel was going to sail on the following day and would probably convey me to Brest, where he said he would have to report himself prior to proceeding to Liverpool with his cargo, quite as soon as I should arrive if I waited for the next steamer, I made up my mind to accompany him.”

“But, colonel,” suggested Captain Applegarth, “you might have gone direct to England by one of the West India mail steamers which touch at La Guayra on their route homeward from Colon.”

“I know that, my friend,” said the other. “I could have caught one of them the following week. This would not have suited my purpose, however, sir. I wished to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school in the convent of L’enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up. It was a promise, my friend, to the dead.”

“I see, colonel,” rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other; “I see, sir. Go on; I’m all attention.”

“Well, then,” continued the colonel, “these preliminaries being all arranged, Elsie and I went aboard theSaint Pierre, a full-rigged sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty-eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship had been loading—abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea.”

“Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel,” put in the skipper at this point, showing that he was following every detail. “I was in the Royal Mail Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company.”

“I recollect the night we sailed,” resumed the other, paying no attention to Captain Applegarth’s remark, but speaking with his eyes fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he described. “The moon was shining brightly when we got under way, lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the background seem higher than they were from the deep shadows they cast over the town lying below. This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave. Heavens! It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that, sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and very probably ever shall know again!”

“Faith, don’t say that now, sir,” cried out Garry at this. “You’ll have a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I’m no prophet. Begorrah, though, I niver was, so far as that goes!”

The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel’s sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulness.

“Ah, doctor, you do not know what grief and anguish are like!” he said mournfully. “But to go on with my story. I may tell you that, had our voyage progressed like our start, I should have nothing to deplore, for, the land breeze filling our sails, we bore away buoyantly from the Venezuelan coast, the ship shaping a course north by west towards the Mona passage, as the channel way is called, from a rock in its centre, lying between Hayti and Puerto Rico. This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, captain, very well know.”

The skipper nodded his head.

“You’re quite a sailor, colonel,” he said approvingly. “Where did you manage to pick up your knowledge of navigation and sea-faring matters, if I may ask the question, sir?”

“In the many voyages I have made during a somewhat adventurous life,” replied the other. “I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open, captain. There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!”

“Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground,” said the skipper, looking towards me. “Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!”

“Yes, young sir,” added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. “That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. Had I not learnt something of the ways of your sailors, for instance, I might not have thought of lashing theSaint Pierre’shelm amidships on the breaking out of the mutiny, and so prevented all our going to the bottom subsequently, when it came on to blow; for all of us were then fighting for our lives and no one had time to attend to the ship, save in the way of letting go what ropes were handiest.”

“Aye, that may be well enough, colonel,” observed the skipper in his dry fashion. “But your argument cuts both ways. If your helm hadn’t been lashed down, remember, the ship would have been yawing about and drifting in this direction and that, and we should probably have come across her long ago, like that boat from which we picked you up, instead of her bearing away right before the wind and our having to go in chase of her, sir, as we are now doing.”

“It is true! I did not think of that!” returned the colonel impulsively, half-starting from his seat in his excitement. “We must be near her now, captain, though, surely. We must find them, and I must see my little girl again!”

“Kape aisy, me darlint; kape aisy,” here interposed Garry O’Neil, before Captain Applegarth could answer the question. “Sure, Mr Fosset promised to give us the worrd whin she hove in sight, an’ you’re only distarbin’ yoursilf for nothing, colonel! More’s the pity, too, mabruchal, whin your leg is progressin’ so illigantly an’ the swillin’ goin’ down as swately as possible. Now kape aisy, if only to oblige me. Faith, colonel, me profissional reputation’s at shtake!”

The Irishman all the time he was talking was carefully attending to the injured limb, loosening a bandage here, tightening another there, and keeping the lint dressing moist the while with a lotion which he applied gently to the surface by means of a sponge. So, impressed alike by his tender solicitude thus practically shown on his behalf as much as by his opportune admonition, the colonel was forced to remain quiet.

“I wish he’d be quick about it!” he muttered to himself. “Well, doctor, as you will not let me move, I suppose you will let me go on with my tale; that is, if it interests you!”

“Aye, aye; I want to hear everything,” said the skipper. “And fire away, colonel; there’s plenty of time for you to reel off your yarn before we overhaul the chase.”

“All right,—then, I will proceed,” replied the other. “All went well with us on the voyage until the afternoon of the third day after sailing from La Guayra, when, unfortunately, the weather changed and the westerly wind, which had favoured us so far, suddenly failed us after wafting us through the Mona Passage, and we became becalmed off Cap San Engaño, to the northward of Hayti.”

“Hayti!” exclaimed old Mr Stokes, waking up from a short nap he had been having on the sly, and pretending to be keenly alive to the conversation. “That’s the famous black republic, ain’t it?”

“Famous black pandemonium, you mean!” retorted the colonel fiercely, his eyes flashing at once with fire. “Excuse me, sir, but I have seen so much of these negro brutes, who ape the airs of civilisation and yet after a century of freedom are more uncivilised in their habits and mode of life than the African slaves, their forefathers whom Toussaint-L’Overture, as he styled himself, their leader, freed from the yoke of their French masters a hundred years ago, that I feel the glorious name ‘republic’ to be dishonoured when associated with such vile wretches, wretches a thousand times worse than the Fantees of the West Coast from whom they originally sprang!”

“My dear sir,” said Mr Stokes, aghast at the tempest he had raised by his innocent remark, “you surprise me!”

“Heavens! you would be surprised, sir, if you knew these Haytians as I know them to be,” continued the colonel, his indignation still struggling for the mastery—“a race of devil worshippers and cannibals, who confound liberty with license, and have added all the vices of civilisation to the inherent savagery of their innate animal nature. Ah, sir, I should like to tell you a great deal more, but have not the time now. I am afraid I am forgetting myself. Where was I?”

“Becalmed off Cape San Engaño,” promptly replied the skipper, sailor fashion—“at least, so you said, colonel; but I fancy you must have had a little rougher weather in that latitude than you mentioned at first!”

“We had,” said Colonel Vereker meaningly. “Towards nightfall we drifted with the current more inshore, Captain Alphonse not dropping our anchor, as we expected the land breeze would spring up at sunset. This did not come for an hour later, however, for already darkness had begun to surround us and we could see the fireflies illuminating the brush beyond the beach. But this wasn’t all observed, sir. Just as our sails filled again and the ship slowly drew out into the offing, we heard the splash of oars in the water astern. It was a boat coming after us, propelled by a dozen oars at least, pulling as hard as those handling them knew how, a shot or two from the shore and the sound of musket balls ripping the water explaining, in some way, the reason for their anxiety to get beyond the range of the firing, on which account they sought the shelter of theSaint Pierre, of course—at least, so we thought!

“‘Who goes there?’ shouted out Captain Alphonse, who was standing alone with me, close to the taffrail. ‘Poor devils! there is probably another insurrection at Port au Prince, and President Salomon up or down again. He is always one or the other every year or so, and these poor fellows may be flying to save their miserable necks. Who goes there? Who goes there?’ But, whether wanting all their energy for their oars or for some other reason known to themselves, those in the boat made no reply to our hail, and the next moment, ere the ship gathered way sufficient to gain on them, they were alongside, their long unwieldy craft grating against the ship’s timbers beneath her counter.

“‘Look-out there, forrads!’ cried Captain Alphonse, seeing the boat making apparently for our bows, but before a hand could be raised to prevent them, without asking permission in any way or offering the slightest apology or excuse in advance for their conduct, a number of negroes jumped out of her and began climbing aboard theSaint Pierre.

“Heavens! gentlemen, clad in little beyond Nature’s own covering, as the majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take possession of our unfortunate ship—as indeed they were. Oh dear me!”

Chapter Nineteen.The “Marquis de Pomme-Rose.”“A pretty kettle of fish that!” exclaimed the skipper, pitching the butt-end of his cigar through one of the stern ports as he got up from his seat and began to pace up and down the saloon in his usual quarter-deck fashion. “You must have been mad, colonel, to let them come aboard so quietly and in such a manner, too!”“Stay, you have not heard all,” said the other. “As the black rascals tumbled over the side, one of them called out something in the French tongue. This, sir, at once disarmed Captain Alphonse, who had prevented me from teaching them good manners, which I otherwise should have done, for I had my six-shooter ready, with the barrels all loaded, being always prepared for any such little unpleasantness by my experiences in Venezuela, where a man often carries his life in his own hands!“But Captain Alphonse would not let me fire, though, by heavens! I would have accounted for half a dozen of them, I know, before they had advanced beyond the precincts of the ship!“‘No, no, be quiet!’ cried he, knocking my arm up to prevent my taking aim at the leader of the gang, whom I had spotted dead in the eye. ‘These are my countrymen!’“It was no use my talking after that, sir. The sound of the French tongue, which these blacks of Hayti speak with a better accent than the gamins of Paris, gained over Captain Alphonse; while Madame Boisson declared the whole episode truly charming, her fat husband, who was entirely under her thumb, shrugging his shoulders and giving them both encouragement and a welcome.“These charming compatriots of theirs, therefore, being allowed to take us by storm without let or hindrance, now advanced aft, when their ringleader, a plausible scoundrel who described himself as the ‘Marquis de Pomme-Rose,’ or some other similar shoddy title belonging to the black peerage of Hayti, to which I did not give heed at the time, beyond in my own mind thinking it ridiculous and that it was probably a name made up for the occasion, this man came up to Captain Alphonse with a smile on his black face and told a wonderful story which he had calculated would excite our pity while allaying our fears.“There had been another revolution at Port au Prince, he said, as Captain Alphonse had surmised. A band of patriots, of whom he, the speaker, had the honour to be the chief, had attempted to depose the reigning despot Salomon from his post of president, but that that astute gentleman got wind of the conspiracy in time, and as he had a very efficacious mode of quickly dealing with those opposed to him in political matters, the nigger marquis and his fellow-plotters thought it best to seek refuge in flight.“Salomon, of course, at once despatched his myrmidons after them, but having a few hours’ start of the pursuers the runaway revolutionists contrived to clear off from Port au Prince, concealing themselves in the mountain fastnesses at the eastern end of the island.“Here, while in hiding, they saw theSaint Pierrerounding Cape San Engaño. Subsequently observing that she was becalmed, they waited for nightfall, when they stole a boat that lay on the shore and pulled out towards our ship, just avoiding capture in the nick of time; the regiment of black soldiers Salomon had sent after them having hit upon their trail and being so close up behind that they were able to open fire on them ere the boat got into deep water, two of the fugitive patriots being struck by the bullets that came whistling in their rear.“The ‘marquis’ was of the belief that we were bound for Cuba, so he declared at all events at the moment, and he asked Captain Alphonse with the utmost indifference to give him and his companions a passage thither, assuring him that he would be handsomely rewarded for so doing by some of their friends belonging to the Haytian revolutionary party, who had established their headquarters at Havana.“In reply to this request Captain Alphonse declared he was ‘desolated,’ but that, unfortunately, theSaint Pierrewas bound for Europe and not to the greater Antilles; but, strange to say, for I was watching him keenly the while, our friend the ‘marquis’ did not appear either surprised or dismayed at his supposition as to our destination turning out to be so erroneous, as he would have been, so I thought, had he been speaking the truth in his original narrative and acting in good faith towards us!“From that moment, sir, something in my mind seemed to warn me against the black villain, though I had been previously rather prepossessed in his favour by his manner and bearing, in spite of a strong antipathy to republicans of his complexion!”“Ah, colonel,” whispered the skipper. “I suppose it comes from living amongst them too much, but I see you don’t like negroes.”“No; you mistake my meaning greatly if you think that, Señor Applegarth. Black, white or yellow, the colour makes no difference to me, providing the individual I may have to deal with be a man in the true sense of the word! In the old days, before our war, I had a good deal to do with niggers, for my father and his father before him owned a large plantation in Louisiana, and long before President Lincoln issued his proclamation of emancipation every hand on our estate was a free man; so, you see, sir, I do not advocate slavery at all events. But between slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Señor Applegarth, a wide margin; and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor even as my equal in any way!”The skipper laughed.“‘What’s bred in the bone,’ colonel—you know the rest!” said he. “Your old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race.”“Pardon me,” rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, “I don’t dislike them at all. On the contrary, I have found some negroes more faithful than any white man of my acquaintance, being true to the death; and I know that if I came across, to-morrow, any of the old hands on our Louisianian plantation whom my father made free, I should be as glad to see them as they would be to meet me. But, sir, at the same time, allowing all this, I cannot admit the negro to be on an equality with the white races. They are inferior, I am certain, alike in intelligence, disposition and nature, and I hold him as little qualified for self-government on the European system as a child is fit to be entrusted with a case of razors for playthings. Hayti is an illustration of this, sir!”“All right, my dear sir,” said the skipper good-humouredly, glad to see the colonel taken out of himself and forgetting his grief about his little daughter for the moment in the discussion. “Carry on; we’re listening to you!”His enthusiasm, however, did not last very long.“Heavens! Señor Applegarth, and you, too, gentlemen,” he went on in a changed tone. “I have cause to love those Haytian scoundrels well, I tell you! Well, sirs, to proceed with my story, the terrible end of which I have nearly reached, this dog of a black rascal, the so-called marquis, seemed quite content, much to my surprise, when Captain Alphonse told him we were not bound for Cuba, but for Liverpool.“It was all the same to him, he said, and as they were going the longer voyage, perhaps Captain Alphonse would allow him and his companions to work out their passage by assisting the crew in the navigation of the ship.“Captain Alphonse was delighted at this, for we had only half a dozen good seamen on board, the rest of the hands being a lot of half-bred mulattoes and niggers—some of the scourings of South America whom he had picked up at La Guayra, most of whom knew how to handle a cutlass better than a rope—so the proposed addition to the strength of our ship’s company was a very acceptable one, particularly as the ‘Marquis’ pointed out two of his companions as being expert sailors and qualified pilots and navigators.”“Ha! You kept your eye on those gentry, colonel, I bet you did?”“Yes, sir. They were the first I spotted when the row began; but I’m anticipating matters.”“The divvle a bit, sor,” interposed Garry O’Neil. “Let me jist change the dressin’ of your leg, an’ ye can polish off the rist of the rascals as soon as ye plaize.”“A thousand thanks,” returned the other, shifting his position to allow his leg to be attended to. “They did not disclose their purpose, though, or ‘show their hand,’ as they say at the game of monte, all at once; for, moved by their voluntary offer to help work the ship, Captain Alphonse promised the ‘marquis,’ who when making this offer had urged a request to that effect, calculating on the captain’s generosity to put in and leave the lot at Bermuda, should they make a fair passage up to the parallel of that island, but in the event of their being delayed by foul winds or the voyage appearing as if it must be a long one, the Haytians must be contented to cross the ocean.“The bargain was struck at once, this proviso being accepted with alacrity as it just suited their purpose, and never saw I men work as those Haytians worked in the way of tumbling up at all hours and pulling and hauling, shaking out reefs and setting fresh sail, the next day or two when the weather was contrary, and we had to tack about a good deal to windward in getting out into the open Atlantic.“Heavens! How they exerted themselves; so much so that I quite shared Captain Alphonse’s admiration for them, but, unlike him, I watched them and I noticed that they and the coloured men of our crew who had been picked up at La Guayra seemed on a more friendly footing than was altogether warranted by the short time they had been on board. Captain Alphonse and the other passengers, however, would not see this.“But, sir, I had an old negro servant on board with me, who had followed my fortunes from the States to Venezuela after the war, Louisiana then being no longer a fit place for a white man to live in. Poor old Cato; he was the most faithful soul the Almighty ever put breath into!“Him I acquainted with my suspicions, and sent amongst the blacks, to gather what information he could of their designs, for I was confident, sirs, they had not boarded us for nothing, and were hatching some deep plot with a view, very probably, of getting possession of our ship in order the better to further the interests of the revolutionary party to which they belonged that was opposed to Salomon, the president in power.“Whatever their object might be, however, I distrusted them in every way, believing them, indeed, actuated by other motives than such as might be prompted by their political aspirations, my suspicions being confirmed by the looks and bearing of the gang, who seemed capable of any atrocity, judging them by their villainous faces and generally hang-dog appearance, besides which they were continually whispering together amongst themselves and consorting and confabbing with the mulattoes and other coloured men belonging to the crew.“In addition to that, Señor Applegarth, and you too, gentlemen, I noticed that our friend ‘the marquis,’ although he gave himself great airs on account of the aristocratic blood and descent to which he lay claim, pretending to think himself much superior in position to both Captain Alphonse and myself, and regarding poor Cato, my servant, as mere dirt under his feet, albeit the faithful negro was of a like colour to himself—did not esteem it beneath his high dignity to associate with the scum of the forecastle and bandy ribald obscenities, when he believed himself unobserved, with his fellow scoundrels.“Aye, I watched my gentleman carefully, and so, too, did my poor faithful Cato!”

“A pretty kettle of fish that!” exclaimed the skipper, pitching the butt-end of his cigar through one of the stern ports as he got up from his seat and began to pace up and down the saloon in his usual quarter-deck fashion. “You must have been mad, colonel, to let them come aboard so quietly and in such a manner, too!”

“Stay, you have not heard all,” said the other. “As the black rascals tumbled over the side, one of them called out something in the French tongue. This, sir, at once disarmed Captain Alphonse, who had prevented me from teaching them good manners, which I otherwise should have done, for I had my six-shooter ready, with the barrels all loaded, being always prepared for any such little unpleasantness by my experiences in Venezuela, where a man often carries his life in his own hands!

“But Captain Alphonse would not let me fire, though, by heavens! I would have accounted for half a dozen of them, I know, before they had advanced beyond the precincts of the ship!

“‘No, no, be quiet!’ cried he, knocking my arm up to prevent my taking aim at the leader of the gang, whom I had spotted dead in the eye. ‘These are my countrymen!’

“It was no use my talking after that, sir. The sound of the French tongue, which these blacks of Hayti speak with a better accent than the gamins of Paris, gained over Captain Alphonse; while Madame Boisson declared the whole episode truly charming, her fat husband, who was entirely under her thumb, shrugging his shoulders and giving them both encouragement and a welcome.

“These charming compatriots of theirs, therefore, being allowed to take us by storm without let or hindrance, now advanced aft, when their ringleader, a plausible scoundrel who described himself as the ‘Marquis de Pomme-Rose,’ or some other similar shoddy title belonging to the black peerage of Hayti, to which I did not give heed at the time, beyond in my own mind thinking it ridiculous and that it was probably a name made up for the occasion, this man came up to Captain Alphonse with a smile on his black face and told a wonderful story which he had calculated would excite our pity while allaying our fears.

“There had been another revolution at Port au Prince, he said, as Captain Alphonse had surmised. A band of patriots, of whom he, the speaker, had the honour to be the chief, had attempted to depose the reigning despot Salomon from his post of president, but that that astute gentleman got wind of the conspiracy in time, and as he had a very efficacious mode of quickly dealing with those opposed to him in political matters, the nigger marquis and his fellow-plotters thought it best to seek refuge in flight.

“Salomon, of course, at once despatched his myrmidons after them, but having a few hours’ start of the pursuers the runaway revolutionists contrived to clear off from Port au Prince, concealing themselves in the mountain fastnesses at the eastern end of the island.

“Here, while in hiding, they saw theSaint Pierrerounding Cape San Engaño. Subsequently observing that she was becalmed, they waited for nightfall, when they stole a boat that lay on the shore and pulled out towards our ship, just avoiding capture in the nick of time; the regiment of black soldiers Salomon had sent after them having hit upon their trail and being so close up behind that they were able to open fire on them ere the boat got into deep water, two of the fugitive patriots being struck by the bullets that came whistling in their rear.

“The ‘marquis’ was of the belief that we were bound for Cuba, so he declared at all events at the moment, and he asked Captain Alphonse with the utmost indifference to give him and his companions a passage thither, assuring him that he would be handsomely rewarded for so doing by some of their friends belonging to the Haytian revolutionary party, who had established their headquarters at Havana.

“In reply to this request Captain Alphonse declared he was ‘desolated,’ but that, unfortunately, theSaint Pierrewas bound for Europe and not to the greater Antilles; but, strange to say, for I was watching him keenly the while, our friend the ‘marquis’ did not appear either surprised or dismayed at his supposition as to our destination turning out to be so erroneous, as he would have been, so I thought, had he been speaking the truth in his original narrative and acting in good faith towards us!

“From that moment, sir, something in my mind seemed to warn me against the black villain, though I had been previously rather prepossessed in his favour by his manner and bearing, in spite of a strong antipathy to republicans of his complexion!”

“Ah, colonel,” whispered the skipper. “I suppose it comes from living amongst them too much, but I see you don’t like negroes.”

“No; you mistake my meaning greatly if you think that, Señor Applegarth. Black, white or yellow, the colour makes no difference to me, providing the individual I may have to deal with be a man in the true sense of the word! In the old days, before our war, I had a good deal to do with niggers, for my father and his father before him owned a large plantation in Louisiana, and long before President Lincoln issued his proclamation of emancipation every hand on our estate was a free man; so, you see, sir, I do not advocate slavery at all events. But between slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Señor Applegarth, a wide margin; and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor even as my equal in any way!”

The skipper laughed.

“‘What’s bred in the bone,’ colonel—you know the rest!” said he. “Your old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race.”

“Pardon me,” rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, “I don’t dislike them at all. On the contrary, I have found some negroes more faithful than any white man of my acquaintance, being true to the death; and I know that if I came across, to-morrow, any of the old hands on our Louisianian plantation whom my father made free, I should be as glad to see them as they would be to meet me. But, sir, at the same time, allowing all this, I cannot admit the negro to be on an equality with the white races. They are inferior, I am certain, alike in intelligence, disposition and nature, and I hold him as little qualified for self-government on the European system as a child is fit to be entrusted with a case of razors for playthings. Hayti is an illustration of this, sir!”

“All right, my dear sir,” said the skipper good-humouredly, glad to see the colonel taken out of himself and forgetting his grief about his little daughter for the moment in the discussion. “Carry on; we’re listening to you!”

His enthusiasm, however, did not last very long.

“Heavens! Señor Applegarth, and you, too, gentlemen,” he went on in a changed tone. “I have cause to love those Haytian scoundrels well, I tell you! Well, sirs, to proceed with my story, the terrible end of which I have nearly reached, this dog of a black rascal, the so-called marquis, seemed quite content, much to my surprise, when Captain Alphonse told him we were not bound for Cuba, but for Liverpool.

“It was all the same to him, he said, and as they were going the longer voyage, perhaps Captain Alphonse would allow him and his companions to work out their passage by assisting the crew in the navigation of the ship.

“Captain Alphonse was delighted at this, for we had only half a dozen good seamen on board, the rest of the hands being a lot of half-bred mulattoes and niggers—some of the scourings of South America whom he had picked up at La Guayra, most of whom knew how to handle a cutlass better than a rope—so the proposed addition to the strength of our ship’s company was a very acceptable one, particularly as the ‘Marquis’ pointed out two of his companions as being expert sailors and qualified pilots and navigators.”

“Ha! You kept your eye on those gentry, colonel, I bet you did?”

“Yes, sir. They were the first I spotted when the row began; but I’m anticipating matters.”

“The divvle a bit, sor,” interposed Garry O’Neil. “Let me jist change the dressin’ of your leg, an’ ye can polish off the rist of the rascals as soon as ye plaize.”

“A thousand thanks,” returned the other, shifting his position to allow his leg to be attended to. “They did not disclose their purpose, though, or ‘show their hand,’ as they say at the game of monte, all at once; for, moved by their voluntary offer to help work the ship, Captain Alphonse promised the ‘marquis,’ who when making this offer had urged a request to that effect, calculating on the captain’s generosity to put in and leave the lot at Bermuda, should they make a fair passage up to the parallel of that island, but in the event of their being delayed by foul winds or the voyage appearing as if it must be a long one, the Haytians must be contented to cross the ocean.

“The bargain was struck at once, this proviso being accepted with alacrity as it just suited their purpose, and never saw I men work as those Haytians worked in the way of tumbling up at all hours and pulling and hauling, shaking out reefs and setting fresh sail, the next day or two when the weather was contrary, and we had to tack about a good deal to windward in getting out into the open Atlantic.

“Heavens! How they exerted themselves; so much so that I quite shared Captain Alphonse’s admiration for them, but, unlike him, I watched them and I noticed that they and the coloured men of our crew who had been picked up at La Guayra seemed on a more friendly footing than was altogether warranted by the short time they had been on board. Captain Alphonse and the other passengers, however, would not see this.

“But, sir, I had an old negro servant on board with me, who had followed my fortunes from the States to Venezuela after the war, Louisiana then being no longer a fit place for a white man to live in. Poor old Cato; he was the most faithful soul the Almighty ever put breath into!

“Him I acquainted with my suspicions, and sent amongst the blacks, to gather what information he could of their designs, for I was confident, sirs, they had not boarded us for nothing, and were hatching some deep plot with a view, very probably, of getting possession of our ship in order the better to further the interests of the revolutionary party to which they belonged that was opposed to Salomon, the president in power.

“Whatever their object might be, however, I distrusted them in every way, believing them, indeed, actuated by other motives than such as might be prompted by their political aspirations, my suspicions being confirmed by the looks and bearing of the gang, who seemed capable of any atrocity, judging them by their villainous faces and generally hang-dog appearance, besides which they were continually whispering together amongst themselves and consorting and confabbing with the mulattoes and other coloured men belonging to the crew.

“In addition to that, Señor Applegarth, and you too, gentlemen, I noticed that our friend ‘the marquis,’ although he gave himself great airs on account of the aristocratic blood and descent to which he lay claim, pretending to think himself much superior in position to both Captain Alphonse and myself, and regarding poor Cato, my servant, as mere dirt under his feet, albeit the faithful negro was of a like colour to himself—did not esteem it beneath his high dignity to associate with the scum of the forecastle and bandy ribald obscenities, when he believed himself unobserved, with his fellow scoundrels.

“Aye, I watched my gentleman carefully, and so, too, did my poor faithful Cato!”

Chapter Twenty.The Seventh of November.“My faithful negro, however,” continued the colonel, pausing at this point to puff out another cloud of smoke from his fragrant cigar,—“well, he was unable to learn anything of the Haytians, though he tried to make friends of them, for they always stopped their talk amongst themselves on his approach, and would only reply to his overtures in monosyllables expressive of distrust, accompanied by contemptuous gestures that angered poor Cato greatly, for as he considered that he belonged to me he felt the insult to be directed not only at himself but at the whole family.“‘Golly, massa!’ he said to me after a couple or so of attempts that proved fruitless to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the gang, ‘you just wait; I catch dem black raskils nappin’ by-an’-bye, you see, massa. You see, “speshly dat tarn markiss!”’“He managed this sooner than he thought, and pretty smartly too, for the very next day he caught the noble scoundrel, who was his particular aversion, walking off with a pair of pistols from Captain Alphonse’s cabin. On Cato coming up and stopping him in the very act, the ‘marquis’ put down the pistols quickly, saying in his off-hand manner that he was merely examining the locks, remarking how well they were made. ‘But,’ said Cato, ‘guess he no bamboozle dis chile!’“The following day, sirs, was the seventh of November, last Friday, that awful, that terrible day!“Cato, who had been away forward early in the morning to see about our breakfast, came back aft with a terrified face.“‘Yay, massa,’ said he, ‘guess dose tam niggars up to sumfin’! I’se hear um say dey smell de lan’ an’ de time was ’rive to settle de white trash, dat what dey say, an’ take ship. One ob de tam raskel see me come out of gully, an’ say cut um tongue out if I’se tell youse, massa!’“Of course on hearing this I put Captain Alphonse immediately on his guard, and we locked up all the spare arms and ammunition until we should require the same, excepting our own revolvers and three other pistols, which we served out to the two mates and the boatswain, all of whom were good men and brave Frenchmen. Monsieur Boisson, when he was asked if he would have one, shrugged his shoulders and said he was a simple passenger, he did not understand fighting—it was not his affair; while little Mr Johnson said he was an Englishman and preferred using his fists. Don Miguel had a pistol of his own.“Jingo! The emergency we dreaded came soon enough, sir; indeed, sooner than we expected, and it was fortunate we had been forewarned!“It was just after the noontide hour, I recollect that well, for Captain Alphonse had just taken the altitude of the sun to ascertain our position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to consult his chronometers and work out ‘the reckoning,’ as you sailors call it, that that black devil the ‘marquis’ mounted the poop with a simpering and fawning air.“‘Ah well, captain,’ said he, with a very polite bow, ‘where do you make us out to be, monsieur? Near the Bermudas yet?’“‘My word, yes,’ replied Captain Alphonse. ‘We are some ten leagues or so the westward of the islands, but we’re bearing up now, as you see, to reach them.’“‘And what time, monsieur,’ said the ‘marquis,’ speaking louder so that some of the other niggers who were on the deck below could hear what he said. ‘Do you think it will be possible for us to land? My companions and myself, monsieur, as you can well imagine, are most anxious to get ashore as soon as possible, so that we may procure a ship to take us on to Havana.’“‘But, yes, your anxiety is natural enough,’ responded poor Captain Alphonse, suspecting nothing from this. ‘I hope to approach near enough to Port Saint George to put you ashore some time in the afternoon.’“‘Ohe, below there!’ cried out the Haytian in reply to this, addressing his companions in the waist, who, I noticed, were gradually edging themselves more and more aft. ‘Do you hear that, my brave boys? We are going to land at last. Get the boat ready!’“This was evidently a signal, for he shouted out the last words in a still higher key than that in which he had been speaking.“‘You need not hurry, my friend!’ said the captain, surprised at this order and smiling at the Haytian’s impulsiveness, as he thought it. ‘There will be plenty of time for lowering the boat when we come in sight of land.’“‘I think differently, monsieur,’ rejoined the other, scowling and assuming an arrogant tone for the first time. ‘I say the time isNow!’“This he yelled out at the top of his voice.“Instantly the gang of blacks made a rush at the poop on both sides at once, and Captain Alphonse clutched at his revolver, which he had in his pocket, but was unable to get it out in time.“Mine, however, was in my hand and ready cocked.”“Houly Moses!” ejaculated Garry O’Neil, his Irish blood making him all attention now at the mere mention of fighting. “I hope ye let ’em have it hot, sor!“Guess I did!” replied Colonel Vereker grimly, dropping unconsciously into his native vernacular, which up to now he had almost seemed to have forgotten from his long residence amongst a Spanish-speaking race. “You may bet your bottom dollar on that, sir! I aimed at that scoundrel the ‘marquis,’ but he jumped backward in his fright and his foot catching in one of the ringbolts, he tumbled right over the poop-rail on to the deck below; the shot I had intended for him dropping the black pilot, his constant companion, and who was invariably behind him.Hedropped down as dead as a herring!“Don Miguel, who luckily had just come up from the saloon, being handy with his revolver from the rough times he had experienced, like myself, in Venezuela, settled another darkie; while little Johnson, the Englishman, caught up a long hand-spike, bigger than himself, and with it knocked down two of the Haytians to his own cheek.“Madame Boisson, meanwhile, was screaming for her husband, her brave Hercules, to come to the rescue; but the ‘brave Hercules’ had locked himself in his cabin, as my little Elsie told me afterwards; for fortunately the poor child was not feeling well and I had desired her to remain below during the hot noontide heat of the sun; and, she also said, she could hear him crying and sobbing and calling down imprecations on everybody, including ‘my wife’ and himself for both being in such a position, Madame Boisson hammering at the door all the time, and, after finding he would not reopen to her appeal for help, apostrophising him as a coward! a pig!“During this time we were pretty busy on deck, the second mate, Basseterre, and another French seaman, who was with him in the crossjack yard, having come down from aloft to our assistance. Captain Alphonse got his revolver out, when he and Don Miguel and I giving them a volley altogether, and the others supporting us with what weapons they had, we rushed the rascals off the poop quicker than they came up, the lot returning to the forecastle along with the ‘marquis,’ who, I was very glad to see, had cut his face considerably by his tumble.“Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi, his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward, to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak, while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the ‘marquis,’ that devil, giving the signal!”“Ah, my poor fellows!” cried Captain Alphonse. “That, then, means there are only ourselves left. Good heavens! What shall we do?”“Why, hoist a signal of distress,” I suggested at once. “We are near Bermuda, on the cruising ground of the English men-of-war; and as these scoundrels have no friends or assistance, I daresay we’ll be able to hold out here until some vessel bears up to our aid!”“‘Good, my friend,’ replied Captain Alphonse, who with Basseterre, the second mate, and Don Miguel, remained to keep guard with their revolvers, both seated on top of the skylight hatchway, which commanded the approaches to the poop by way of the ladders, while I, with the last of the white sailors, ran aft. Then I called out, ‘Hoist the French flag!’“I knew that the locker with the flags was in the wheel-house, close to the taffrail, and there being no one to interfere with us, the negro who had been attending the helm having bolted the moment I pulled out my revolver at the first alarm, the traitor flying to join the other mutineers, my sailor and I soon ferretted out an old ensign, the Tricolour; when, binding it on to the signal halliards, we hoisted it about half-way up the peak of our spanker, whence it could best be seen by a passing ship.”“Did you know what that signal meant, colonel?” said Captain Applegarth in an inquiring tone, “that you had a death aboard, eh?”“Si, señor. Oh yes, of course,” repeated the colonel, correcting himself almost as soon as he spoke for his lapse again into the Spanish tongue. “There were half a dozen dead Haytians there, whom, by the way, Captain Alphonse and I presently pitched over the side! But, beyond that, sir, I believe all sailors regard a flag hoisted in that way, ‘half-mast high,’ as it is termed, to be a signal of distress!“Without doubt, sir,” answered the skipper. “I was only testing your nautical experience, that’s all!”“I am glad then, I did not make a blunder about it, as I thought I had done from your question,” returned Colonel Vereker, quite seriously, not noticing that the skipper was only poking fun at him in his way and did not mean anything beyond a bit of chaff. “Well, sir, after hoisting the flag the French sailor and I seized the opportunity to lash the helm amidships so as to keep theSaint Pierreon her course, for we could not spare him to do the steering, and Captain Alphonse and Don Miguel, with the plucky little Englishman and myself, had all our work to do watching the mutineers with our revolvers!“After a time, as the rascals kept pretty quiet in their part of the ship, and as my poor little daughter Elsie had been a long time now shut up below, I thought she might come up on the poop to get a breath of fresh air while it was still light; there being no fear of the blacks assailing us again so long as they knew we could see to shoot straight and had our weapons handy!“So I sent Cato down to fetch her on deck, and she came up the next moment, all full of curiosity and alarm, as you may imagine, the little one wanting to know what had occurred; for the reports of my revolver and the subsequent stillness had occasioned her great fright, Madame Boisson and her husband, the ‘brave Hercules,’ being but poor comforters.“All at once, while I was explaining to her about the flag, telling her that we had hoisted it in order to summon any passing ship to our assistance, she suddenly went to the side and looked over the bulwarks towards the north.“The next moment she gave vent to a cry of joy.“‘Oh, my father,’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘You have only just hoisted the flag in time. There’s a big steamer! Look, look! there it is, and coming up to help us!’“‘Where? where? Where is it? I cannot see it. Nonsense, Elsie; you are dreaming, my child!’ I said, looking out eagerly to where she pointed, but could see nothing. ‘There’s no ship there, little one!’ and I felt angry at the false alarm.“‘But, my father, you are wrong,’ still insisted the child, as positive as you please. ‘I can see the vessel there in the distance quite plainly. See how the black smoke comes puffing out of the chimneys.’“I laughed at this.“‘Little darling,’ said I, ‘there was no ship, and there are no “chimneys” on board ships at sea. Sailors call them funnels, my dearest one.’“She pretended to pout on my thus catching her tripping in her talk.“‘Well, my father,’ said she, with a shrug of her shoulders, as is her habit sometimes, ‘I may be wrong about the chimneys, but I am not wrong about seeing a ship. Why, my father, there she is now, coming closer and closer, and quite near; so near that I can see—yes, I can see—I am quite sure—a big boy there. Look, look, father, dear! There he is in front of the smoke. He has quite a pleasant face.’“Elsie turned in my direction as she spoke, and, though I was still gazing all the while, I could see nothing, and I was vexed, very vexed with my little girl for her persistency in the matter.“‘Why, it has gone—quite disappeared!’ she cried out the instant after, on rushing to the side and looking over. ‘What does it mean? Why did she not come and help if she saw the flag?’“‘You have dreamt it, little one,’ I replied shortly, as I had done before. ‘It’s a freak of the imagination, and you fancied it, you funny little woman.’“But it was a curious incident, though, sir, was it not, at such a time, with our hearts all full of expectancy and hope?”Captain Applegarth was greatly excited by the narrative, and so, it may readily be believed, was I.He asked abruptly, “When did this happen? Tell me, colonel, at once. It is strange—very so!”The other looked up with surprise, while Mr Stokes stared at him with wonder, and the Irishman opened his big blue eyes wide to the full.“I have already told you, sir,” replied Colonel Vereker very quickly. “As I told you before, it was the seventh of November—last Friday.”“Yes; but I mean what time of the day, sir?”“Oh, I should think about five o’clock in the afternoon. Perhaps a little later, as the sun was going down, I recollect, at the time.”I could not restrain my astonishment at this.“It must be the very ship I saw!” I thought to myself.“Is the young lady slight in figure, and has she long golden-coloured hair hanging loose about her head, sir?” I eagerly asked, almost breathless in my excitement. “And, tell me too, did she have a large black Newfoundland or retriever dog by her side that same evening, sir?”Colonel Vereker seemed even more astonished by this question of mine than I had been by his reply to Captain Applegarth the moment before.“My brave young sir,” said he, using this somewhat grandiloquent form of addressing me, I suppose, in remembrance of the slight service I had done him by swimming with the line to the drifting boat when we picked up him and his companion. “My little Elsie is tall and slight for her age, and her hair is assuredly of a golden hue, ah, yes! like liquid sunshine; though, how you, my good young gentleman, who, to my knowledge, canneverhave seen her face to face in this life, can know the colour of her hair or what she is like, I must confess that passes my comprehension!”“But the dog, sir?”“That is stranger still,” remarked Colonel Vereker. “I had forgotten to mention that I brought with me on board theSaint Pierrefrom my old home at Caracas a splendid Russian wolf-hound, as faithful a creature as my poor negro servant Cato. His name is Ivan, and he is now, I sincerely hope and trust, guarding my little darling girl, as I would have done if I had remained with her, for not a living soul would dare to touch her with him there. Ivan would tear them limb from limb first. He is a large greyish-black dog, with a rough shaggy coat, and in reply to your enquiry, I must tell you hewason the poop of the ship, by the side of my child, at the very time that she declared she saw that steamer, which I, myself, could not see anywhere!”For the moment I was unable to speak. I was so overcome at this unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the boatswain, old Masters. Yes, yes; every one them imagined that I had dreamt of “the ghost-ship” as they called my vision, and that I had not seen it at all!But this statement from the colonel absolutely staggered the skipper, and he looked from me to the American and back again at me in the most bewildering manner possible; the old chief, Mr Stokes, and Garry O’Neil staring at the pair of us with equal amazement.“By George, the girl and the dog, the girl and the dog. Why, it’s the very same ship, as you say, Haldane; it must be so, and, by George, my boy, you were right after all! By George, you were!” at length exclaimed the skipper in a voice, the genuineness of whose astonishment could not be doubted. “Colonel Vereker, I would not have credited this had any one told it me and sworn to the truth of it on oath, but the proof is so strong that I cannot possibly disbelieve it, sir, though it is to my mind a downright impossibility according to every argument of common sense. It is certainly the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and the most wonderful thing that I have ever heard of since I have been at sea!”“Heavens!” cried the other. “But why? You surprise me, sir.”“Aye, colonel,” rejoined the skipper. “But I am going to surprise you more. Now don’t laugh at me, and don’t think me an idiot and gone off my head, sir, when I tell you that this lad, Dick Haldane, here, whether by reason of some mirage or other I cannot tell, for it’s beyond my understanding altogether, distinctly saw your ship with her signal of distress, and says he saw your little daughter with the dog by her side, aboard her, last Friday night at sunset. More than that, sir, he described to me at the time, exactly as you have done now, colonel, everything he saw, even to the very hue of the young girl’s hair and the colour and texture of the dog’s coat! It is altogether marvellous and, indeed, incredible!”“Well, but—” said Colonel Vereker slowly, and pausing between every word as if trying to comprehend it all. “Why, how is that, sir?”“Your ship, colonel, must have been more than five hundred miles away from ours at the time—that is all!”

“My faithful negro, however,” continued the colonel, pausing at this point to puff out another cloud of smoke from his fragrant cigar,—“well, he was unable to learn anything of the Haytians, though he tried to make friends of them, for they always stopped their talk amongst themselves on his approach, and would only reply to his overtures in monosyllables expressive of distrust, accompanied by contemptuous gestures that angered poor Cato greatly, for as he considered that he belonged to me he felt the insult to be directed not only at himself but at the whole family.

“‘Golly, massa!’ he said to me after a couple or so of attempts that proved fruitless to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the gang, ‘you just wait; I catch dem black raskils nappin’ by-an’-bye, you see, massa. You see, “speshly dat tarn markiss!”’

“He managed this sooner than he thought, and pretty smartly too, for the very next day he caught the noble scoundrel, who was his particular aversion, walking off with a pair of pistols from Captain Alphonse’s cabin. On Cato coming up and stopping him in the very act, the ‘marquis’ put down the pistols quickly, saying in his off-hand manner that he was merely examining the locks, remarking how well they were made. ‘But,’ said Cato, ‘guess he no bamboozle dis chile!’

“The following day, sirs, was the seventh of November, last Friday, that awful, that terrible day!

“Cato, who had been away forward early in the morning to see about our breakfast, came back aft with a terrified face.

“‘Yay, massa,’ said he, ‘guess dose tam niggars up to sumfin’! I’se hear um say dey smell de lan’ an’ de time was ’rive to settle de white trash, dat what dey say, an’ take ship. One ob de tam raskel see me come out of gully, an’ say cut um tongue out if I’se tell youse, massa!’

“Of course on hearing this I put Captain Alphonse immediately on his guard, and we locked up all the spare arms and ammunition until we should require the same, excepting our own revolvers and three other pistols, which we served out to the two mates and the boatswain, all of whom were good men and brave Frenchmen. Monsieur Boisson, when he was asked if he would have one, shrugged his shoulders and said he was a simple passenger, he did not understand fighting—it was not his affair; while little Mr Johnson said he was an Englishman and preferred using his fists. Don Miguel had a pistol of his own.

“Jingo! The emergency we dreaded came soon enough, sir; indeed, sooner than we expected, and it was fortunate we had been forewarned!

“It was just after the noontide hour, I recollect that well, for Captain Alphonse had just taken the altitude of the sun to ascertain our position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to consult his chronometers and work out ‘the reckoning,’ as you sailors call it, that that black devil the ‘marquis’ mounted the poop with a simpering and fawning air.

“‘Ah well, captain,’ said he, with a very polite bow, ‘where do you make us out to be, monsieur? Near the Bermudas yet?’

“‘My word, yes,’ replied Captain Alphonse. ‘We are some ten leagues or so the westward of the islands, but we’re bearing up now, as you see, to reach them.’

“‘And what time, monsieur,’ said the ‘marquis,’ speaking louder so that some of the other niggers who were on the deck below could hear what he said. ‘Do you think it will be possible for us to land? My companions and myself, monsieur, as you can well imagine, are most anxious to get ashore as soon as possible, so that we may procure a ship to take us on to Havana.’

“‘But, yes, your anxiety is natural enough,’ responded poor Captain Alphonse, suspecting nothing from this. ‘I hope to approach near enough to Port Saint George to put you ashore some time in the afternoon.’

“‘Ohe, below there!’ cried out the Haytian in reply to this, addressing his companions in the waist, who, I noticed, were gradually edging themselves more and more aft. ‘Do you hear that, my brave boys? We are going to land at last. Get the boat ready!’

“This was evidently a signal, for he shouted out the last words in a still higher key than that in which he had been speaking.

“‘You need not hurry, my friend!’ said the captain, surprised at this order and smiling at the Haytian’s impulsiveness, as he thought it. ‘There will be plenty of time for lowering the boat when we come in sight of land.’

“‘I think differently, monsieur,’ rejoined the other, scowling and assuming an arrogant tone for the first time. ‘I say the time isNow!’

“This he yelled out at the top of his voice.

“Instantly the gang of blacks made a rush at the poop on both sides at once, and Captain Alphonse clutched at his revolver, which he had in his pocket, but was unable to get it out in time.

“Mine, however, was in my hand and ready cocked.”

“Houly Moses!” ejaculated Garry O’Neil, his Irish blood making him all attention now at the mere mention of fighting. “I hope ye let ’em have it hot, sor!

“Guess I did!” replied Colonel Vereker grimly, dropping unconsciously into his native vernacular, which up to now he had almost seemed to have forgotten from his long residence amongst a Spanish-speaking race. “You may bet your bottom dollar on that, sir! I aimed at that scoundrel the ‘marquis,’ but he jumped backward in his fright and his foot catching in one of the ringbolts, he tumbled right over the poop-rail on to the deck below; the shot I had intended for him dropping the black pilot, his constant companion, and who was invariably behind him.Hedropped down as dead as a herring!

“Don Miguel, who luckily had just come up from the saloon, being handy with his revolver from the rough times he had experienced, like myself, in Venezuela, settled another darkie; while little Johnson, the Englishman, caught up a long hand-spike, bigger than himself, and with it knocked down two of the Haytians to his own cheek.

“Madame Boisson, meanwhile, was screaming for her husband, her brave Hercules, to come to the rescue; but the ‘brave Hercules’ had locked himself in his cabin, as my little Elsie told me afterwards; for fortunately the poor child was not feeling well and I had desired her to remain below during the hot noontide heat of the sun; and, she also said, she could hear him crying and sobbing and calling down imprecations on everybody, including ‘my wife’ and himself for both being in such a position, Madame Boisson hammering at the door all the time, and, after finding he would not reopen to her appeal for help, apostrophising him as a coward! a pig!

“During this time we were pretty busy on deck, the second mate, Basseterre, and another French seaman, who was with him in the crossjack yard, having come down from aloft to our assistance. Captain Alphonse got his revolver out, when he and Don Miguel and I giving them a volley altogether, and the others supporting us with what weapons they had, we rushed the rascals off the poop quicker than they came up, the lot returning to the forecastle along with the ‘marquis,’ who, I was very glad to see, had cut his face considerably by his tumble.

“Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi, his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward, to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak, while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the ‘marquis,’ that devil, giving the signal!”

“Ah, my poor fellows!” cried Captain Alphonse. “That, then, means there are only ourselves left. Good heavens! What shall we do?”

“Why, hoist a signal of distress,” I suggested at once. “We are near Bermuda, on the cruising ground of the English men-of-war; and as these scoundrels have no friends or assistance, I daresay we’ll be able to hold out here until some vessel bears up to our aid!”

“‘Good, my friend,’ replied Captain Alphonse, who with Basseterre, the second mate, and Don Miguel, remained to keep guard with their revolvers, both seated on top of the skylight hatchway, which commanded the approaches to the poop by way of the ladders, while I, with the last of the white sailors, ran aft. Then I called out, ‘Hoist the French flag!’

“I knew that the locker with the flags was in the wheel-house, close to the taffrail, and there being no one to interfere with us, the negro who had been attending the helm having bolted the moment I pulled out my revolver at the first alarm, the traitor flying to join the other mutineers, my sailor and I soon ferretted out an old ensign, the Tricolour; when, binding it on to the signal halliards, we hoisted it about half-way up the peak of our spanker, whence it could best be seen by a passing ship.”

“Did you know what that signal meant, colonel?” said Captain Applegarth in an inquiring tone, “that you had a death aboard, eh?”

“Si, señor. Oh yes, of course,” repeated the colonel, correcting himself almost as soon as he spoke for his lapse again into the Spanish tongue. “There were half a dozen dead Haytians there, whom, by the way, Captain Alphonse and I presently pitched over the side! But, beyond that, sir, I believe all sailors regard a flag hoisted in that way, ‘half-mast high,’ as it is termed, to be a signal of distress!

“Without doubt, sir,” answered the skipper. “I was only testing your nautical experience, that’s all!”

“I am glad then, I did not make a blunder about it, as I thought I had done from your question,” returned Colonel Vereker, quite seriously, not noticing that the skipper was only poking fun at him in his way and did not mean anything beyond a bit of chaff. “Well, sir, after hoisting the flag the French sailor and I seized the opportunity to lash the helm amidships so as to keep theSaint Pierreon her course, for we could not spare him to do the steering, and Captain Alphonse and Don Miguel, with the plucky little Englishman and myself, had all our work to do watching the mutineers with our revolvers!

“After a time, as the rascals kept pretty quiet in their part of the ship, and as my poor little daughter Elsie had been a long time now shut up below, I thought she might come up on the poop to get a breath of fresh air while it was still light; there being no fear of the blacks assailing us again so long as they knew we could see to shoot straight and had our weapons handy!

“So I sent Cato down to fetch her on deck, and she came up the next moment, all full of curiosity and alarm, as you may imagine, the little one wanting to know what had occurred; for the reports of my revolver and the subsequent stillness had occasioned her great fright, Madame Boisson and her husband, the ‘brave Hercules,’ being but poor comforters.

“All at once, while I was explaining to her about the flag, telling her that we had hoisted it in order to summon any passing ship to our assistance, she suddenly went to the side and looked over the bulwarks towards the north.

“The next moment she gave vent to a cry of joy.

“‘Oh, my father,’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘You have only just hoisted the flag in time. There’s a big steamer! Look, look! there it is, and coming up to help us!’

“‘Where? where? Where is it? I cannot see it. Nonsense, Elsie; you are dreaming, my child!’ I said, looking out eagerly to where she pointed, but could see nothing. ‘There’s no ship there, little one!’ and I felt angry at the false alarm.

“‘But, my father, you are wrong,’ still insisted the child, as positive as you please. ‘I can see the vessel there in the distance quite plainly. See how the black smoke comes puffing out of the chimneys.’

“I laughed at this.

“‘Little darling,’ said I, ‘there was no ship, and there are no “chimneys” on board ships at sea. Sailors call them funnels, my dearest one.’

“She pretended to pout on my thus catching her tripping in her talk.

“‘Well, my father,’ said she, with a shrug of her shoulders, as is her habit sometimes, ‘I may be wrong about the chimneys, but I am not wrong about seeing a ship. Why, my father, there she is now, coming closer and closer, and quite near; so near that I can see—yes, I can see—I am quite sure—a big boy there. Look, look, father, dear! There he is in front of the smoke. He has quite a pleasant face.’

“Elsie turned in my direction as she spoke, and, though I was still gazing all the while, I could see nothing, and I was vexed, very vexed with my little girl for her persistency in the matter.

“‘Why, it has gone—quite disappeared!’ she cried out the instant after, on rushing to the side and looking over. ‘What does it mean? Why did she not come and help if she saw the flag?’

“‘You have dreamt it, little one,’ I replied shortly, as I had done before. ‘It’s a freak of the imagination, and you fancied it, you funny little woman.’

“But it was a curious incident, though, sir, was it not, at such a time, with our hearts all full of expectancy and hope?”

Captain Applegarth was greatly excited by the narrative, and so, it may readily be believed, was I.

He asked abruptly, “When did this happen? Tell me, colonel, at once. It is strange—very so!”

The other looked up with surprise, while Mr Stokes stared at him with wonder, and the Irishman opened his big blue eyes wide to the full.

“I have already told you, sir,” replied Colonel Vereker very quickly. “As I told you before, it was the seventh of November—last Friday.”

“Yes; but I mean what time of the day, sir?”

“Oh, I should think about five o’clock in the afternoon. Perhaps a little later, as the sun was going down, I recollect, at the time.”

I could not restrain my astonishment at this.

“It must be the very ship I saw!” I thought to myself.

“Is the young lady slight in figure, and has she long golden-coloured hair hanging loose about her head, sir?” I eagerly asked, almost breathless in my excitement. “And, tell me too, did she have a large black Newfoundland or retriever dog by her side that same evening, sir?”

Colonel Vereker seemed even more astonished by this question of mine than I had been by his reply to Captain Applegarth the moment before.

“My brave young sir,” said he, using this somewhat grandiloquent form of addressing me, I suppose, in remembrance of the slight service I had done him by swimming with the line to the drifting boat when we picked up him and his companion. “My little Elsie is tall and slight for her age, and her hair is assuredly of a golden hue, ah, yes! like liquid sunshine; though, how you, my good young gentleman, who, to my knowledge, canneverhave seen her face to face in this life, can know the colour of her hair or what she is like, I must confess that passes my comprehension!”

“But the dog, sir?”

“That is stranger still,” remarked Colonel Vereker. “I had forgotten to mention that I brought with me on board theSaint Pierrefrom my old home at Caracas a splendid Russian wolf-hound, as faithful a creature as my poor negro servant Cato. His name is Ivan, and he is now, I sincerely hope and trust, guarding my little darling girl, as I would have done if I had remained with her, for not a living soul would dare to touch her with him there. Ivan would tear them limb from limb first. He is a large greyish-black dog, with a rough shaggy coat, and in reply to your enquiry, I must tell you hewason the poop of the ship, by the side of my child, at the very time that she declared she saw that steamer, which I, myself, could not see anywhere!”

For the moment I was unable to speak. I was so overcome at this unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the boatswain, old Masters. Yes, yes; every one them imagined that I had dreamt of “the ghost-ship” as they called my vision, and that I had not seen it at all!

But this statement from the colonel absolutely staggered the skipper, and he looked from me to the American and back again at me in the most bewildering manner possible; the old chief, Mr Stokes, and Garry O’Neil staring at the pair of us with equal amazement.

“By George, the girl and the dog, the girl and the dog. Why, it’s the very same ship, as you say, Haldane; it must be so, and, by George, my boy, you were right after all! By George, you were!” at length exclaimed the skipper in a voice, the genuineness of whose astonishment could not be doubted. “Colonel Vereker, I would not have credited this had any one told it me and sworn to the truth of it on oath, but the proof is so strong that I cannot possibly disbelieve it, sir, though it is to my mind a downright impossibility according to every argument of common sense. It is certainly the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and the most wonderful thing that I have ever heard of since I have been at sea!”

“Heavens!” cried the other. “But why? You surprise me, sir.”

“Aye, colonel,” rejoined the skipper. “But I am going to surprise you more. Now don’t laugh at me, and don’t think me an idiot and gone off my head, sir, when I tell you that this lad, Dick Haldane, here, whether by reason of some mirage or other I cannot tell, for it’s beyond my understanding altogether, distinctly saw your ship with her signal of distress, and says he saw your little daughter with the dog by her side, aboard her, last Friday night at sunset. More than that, sir, he described to me at the time, exactly as you have done now, colonel, everything he saw, even to the very hue of the young girl’s hair and the colour and texture of the dog’s coat! It is altogether marvellous and, indeed, incredible!”

“Well, but—” said Colonel Vereker slowly, and pausing between every word as if trying to comprehend it all. “Why, how is that, sir?”

“Your ship, colonel, must have been more than five hundred miles away from ours at the time—that is all!”

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