[170]CHAPTER VII

[170]CHAPTER VIIWhatwould be the character, the fate of this infant British nation, so strangely inaugurated, so wondrously, providentially, even, cast forth upon the shore of an almost unknown continent?The exiles came to strive with hostile natives and an unfamiliar climate. They found, day by day, birds and beasts, plants and seasons, alike foreign to all previous experience. Yet, so far, how amazingly has prospered the daring experiment in colonisation!This founding of empires was undertaken with the splendid British contempt for obstacles and dangers, which, if often giving encouragement to apparently imprudent enterprises, has always ennobled the race. Not only was it such, but initiated almost in the throes of a conflict which imperilled Britain’s national existence,—a war, under the ablest generals, directed by the subtlest organising intellect in the then known world, aiming not so much at European conquest as the subjugation of the Mistress of the Seas!But the haughty Spaniard—in the sixteenth century—who had planned to humble, to discrown,[171]was doomed, like the world-absorbing Corsican, to ruin and defeat—his ‘invincible Armada,’ tempest-driven on the rocks of a hostile coast, his grandest towering ‘tall Amiral,’ shot-shattered, burned, sunk, and destroyed by the unconquered naval heroes of ‘the spacious times of Great Elizabeth.’ What men the times bred!—captains by land and sea: soldiers, whether privates or officers, who, trained to obey to the death, stood unflinching or advanced resistless; sailors who walked above the blood-stained decks, cool as on a carpet, or swarmed over the enemy’s battleship to the maddening sound of ‘Boarders away,’ where every third man fell dead or wounded.Have we such sailors, such soldiers still?Yes! a thousand times, yes! and from this very land of the distant South. Was it not abundantly proved in the South African War, when the half-disciplined or wholly untrained colonial troops, whether Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, or Tasmanians, excited the wonder and admiration of all competent critics?—their initiative, their endurance, their intelligence proved on many a hard-fought field; not less also the stubborn valour which gloried in scorning to surrender, while the last man and the last horse lay dying, side by side!From the weird, carelessly culled British crowd, flung as exiles on the shores of the far unknown South land, labourers and lawgivers, criminals and clerks—what a people has been evolved! The Briton has justified his constant boast, that, given the nucleus of a British community, with free soil,[172]free law, and his inherent right to appeal to it for relief against wrong and injustice, the community will develop the race-characteristics of the ancestral isle. From the oppressed band of Puritans, content to face the rock-bound coast, the storm-tossed ocean, the crafty, ruthless savage, if only they might enjoy religious freedom—from the men and women of their own creed and colour, crowded in unwholesome vessels—sold, yes, sold into slavery on arrival—from every kind of absconder and Adullamite, a newer, greater Britain confronts the world: in arms, a fearless rival; in peace or war, the strongest, the best educated, the most successful nation, this day, beneath the sun. Leavened by the virtue, the intellect, the heroism of the Pilgrim Band, the colossal American republic stands to-day, ready to face the universe in honourable contest: in contest for commercial success—for the triumphs of Art—for intellectual pre-eminence—for scientific progress.What other human hive throws off such swarms as Britain the Unconquered—collectors from generation to generation of all things rich and precious in the eyes of men? Strong to defend also the treasure-cells; to punish, with fierce and deadly sting, the spoiler and the freebooter,—in material success rivalling, if not surpassing, the ancestral Briton.The vast, impressive Dominion of Canada, about to take rank as the world’s granary, has shown her devoted loyalty to the British Empire in the recent war, and but for the mistaken policy[173]of the British Government—in the days of Lord North—the Great Republic of the United States might have been as firmly joined to the Mother Isle as the daughter States of Australia and New Zealand—forming a colossal bulwark against anarchy, socialism, and unnecessary interference with the world’s peace. That the rupture between Britain and her greatest oversea possession was suffered to take place, owing to the obstinacy of a mistaken King and a feeble Cabinet, was deplored by contemporary intellects of distinction. It has been even more deeply regretted by all thoughtful Britons, whether colonists or home-born, even unto this present day..       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .On a certain Saturday morning the mail steamer arrived from the east, bearing such passengers for Fremantle and Perth as desired to behold the world-famed goldfields of which they had heard so much.Newspapers from Europe and America were then attainable. What long, luxurious Sunday morning lounges for the happy possessors of the latest news did these precious ‘home papers’ and letters represent! The younger son, roughly garbed, toil-worn, it may well be ragged even, smiled in his abundant beard as the post-mark of the village near the ancestral hall met his eager eyes. What tidings would the closely guarded sheets furnish? The death of the ailing sister—of the fond mother, the aged father, to whom he had vowed, with the careless confidence of youth, to return laden with gold, or bearing in other[174]form the imprint of success and distinction. How he rejoiced audibly to find that all was well! The Squire, hearty and hale, as of old—looking forward to the hunting season, or the annual ‘shoot’ over his preserves, with unabated confidence; the younger brother had taken his degree at Oxford, or Cambridge, and was safe for a curacy—there was a living in the family.‘Thank God! Nothing wrong this time. Perhaps this time next year I may see my way.’ Then comes the sigh of hope deferred. Besides newspapers came people. Not so many as in the earlier days of the rich yields and the big ‘rushes.’ Mining, of course, not so sensational. Up-to-date appliances, improved machinery, with a steadier monthly output, and so on.A close watch was, however, kept on the passenger list, as there was no knowing who might not turn up, or from whence. The men working now in the big mines as metallurgists, ‘shift bosses,’ or mine managers, chiefly well-born, often highly cultured and gently nurtured, had travelled far amid the older lands and cities,—historically famous,—as well as amid these newly found desert wastes: this arid, solitary, trackless wilderness so recently exploited by civilised man, with his absorbing needs. When, therefore, Gore Chesterfield threw down the paper containing the passenger list of the P. & O. linerAden, with an exclamation denoting surprise and satisfaction, the deduction was easy that a comrade of earlier years had arrived, with whom it would be a relief and a luxury to exchange confidences. ‘By Jove!’[175]he exclaimed, ‘this is a rum start!—who would ever have thought of Lytton Carteret of Guy’s, of all people in the world, turning up here? Why, he was with me in that expedition of Herman Paul’s on the pre-Phœnician “placers,”worrying through the ruins left by these rum chaps. Did they find gold? Yes, and plenty of it, judging by what we saw. But they went about it in a scientific manner—not like our burrowings and scratchings, living under canvas, and roasting our souls and bodies under canvas—like lunatics, as Eastern people consider all Englishmen to be.’‘Well, what did they do that gave them such a “break” over us?’ inquired his Australian-born mate, belonging to a pioneer family founded by a retired military officer who had fought under Wellington through the long blood-stained Peninsular War from Ciudad Rodrigo to Waterloo, and who had turned his sword into a ploughshare after marrying one of the daughters of the land.‘Do? What we don’t seem to manage so well in these latter days of civilisation about which we brag so unnecessarily. Built walled cities, or something near akin; put pressure on the Kaffirs and Zulus, tribesmen of the day (of course not these very fellows); but they made them work, whoever they were. First of all, built stone forts, inside which they could defy the heathen artillery of the period, cross-bows and arrows, with lances, maces, javelins, and so forth, for close fighting. They had pots and crucibles, smelted ore, and the rest of it. Oh! they were pretty well up to date, I can tell you.’[176]‘Sounds well,’ said his comrade, who was scientific as well as practical—had taken two firsts, and two second scholarships at an Australian University for Civil Engineering. ‘Why did you and he come away from such a jolly interesting place?’‘H—m! the death-rate was high, water bad, climate awful, steamy and airless; besides, to tell the truth, I suspected the working director of looking upon us much as Bismarck did the rank and file of the Prussian army—not perhaps exactly as “Kanonenfutter,” but to be expended (“gastados,” as the Spanish idiom is) primarily in the cause of science, chiefly for the glorification and renown of Sigismund Paulsen, botanist, member of the Society of Explorers, etc. etc.; you can’t beat a German leader for that. He is everything and everybody; the rest are nothing and nobody. So Carteret and I cleared.’‘Where did he go?’‘Restless and dissatisfied as usual—capital operations not sufficiently numerous to compensate for loss of time—thought he’d try the South Sea Islands.’‘Any gold there?’‘None so far; but human life little regarded—obscure diseases, and a possible discovery, his absorbing life-long quest for a cure ofthemost terrible, insidious, so-called incurable disease, Leprosy!’‘Horrible to think of! Why did he pick the most hopeless evil in the whole world—the most loathsome?’‘Just because itwasso. He had lost a friend[177]by it, or rather, he had seen him deported to Molokai, the leper island, where Father Damien lived and died—himself a martyr-victim. The South Sea law is, that when the incipient symptom shows itself—the white circular mark never known to indicate falsely—the patient is carried off, and landed on the Island of the Lost, whence he or she can never return to civilisation.’‘And do you mean to tell me that a man’s wife, or his child, can be legally torn from him and cast into hell—as such an accursed spot must be—compelled to live out the remainder of life there? What a fate—what a mockery of civilisation!’‘This law, like others, was made for the preservation of society in the mass; better that the few should suffer than that the many be infected. So Carteret was compelled to see his friend torn from his wife, to witness his despair. They had only been married a few months. None knew, of course, how the infection was taken, nor did it matter. He was landed on that awful strand—is there now—where at a certain time in the evening the cries and groans of the patients in the more advanced stages can be plainly heard. Carteret is hardly sane on the subject, and from that hour resolved to devote his life to the discovery of a cure. To this end he made an exhaustive study of the disease in all its manifestations and stages of development. Worn with study, lowered in health and spirits, he turned to the as yet practically untrodden fields of research in the east of Asia, resolved to test the boundless, half-mythical[178]solitudes on the northern frontier of India. These he traversed, cheerfully risking health, freedom, life itself, if but the end could be obtained—the salvation of his friend, the happiness of Lilburne’s peerless wife. She was his cousin, and they had been boy and girl lovers.’‘And has no cure ever been found for the disease?’ asked Leslie Bournefield. ‘So many physical evils have been attacked successfully of late years—X-rays, and what’s that other boon to mankind—Radium?’‘Reports of cures, of course, but rarely authenticated,’ replied Chesterfield. ‘One feels doubtful, but nothing will discourage Carteret. He will go on searching till he dies, or Mrs. Lilburne does. Then, unless he elects to serve humanity in general for her sake—“in memoriam”—I fear his interest in the question will cease. His last remaining hope was in a nostrum said to be the property of the monks of Vatopede.’‘Where in the world is that?’‘It is the largest of the monasteries of Mount Athos, in the Levant. The richest, too, they say—built by the Emperor Constantine the Great. That worthy monarch, like Naaman the Syrian, was afflicted with leprosy. He thereupon ordered a number of children to be killed, a bath of innocent blood being the favourite remedy of the day! While they were selecting them, it was revealed to him in a vision that if he became a baptized Christian the leprosy would depart from him. He did so; he was immediately restored to health, and the children were set free. The legend is[179]related by Moses Chorensis, whose veracity is undoubted. One miraculous cure having occurred in their monastery, the good monks were not minded to let the fame thereof die out.’‘What did they do to that end?’‘It must be remembered that all monasteries of importance numbered among the brethren some who specially devoted themselves to the study and practice of medicine. To heal the sick was a part, an important part of the charity to which all members of monastic orders were vowed. As in the case of the nuns of certain convents, these institutions held specifics warranted to alleviate the more virulent diseases. Pilgrims from all parts of the civilised world resorted to the more famous monasteries. Many reached their homes professing to be cured. If not wholly restored to health, the undoubting religious faith of the mediæval period completed the process. Even in this age of analysis and positivism, do not the professors of the Christian Science cult work nearly on similar lines? And what quasi-miracles do they not allege? It must be remembered also that the monastic student, undisturbed by the distractions of a later age, safe within the massive convent walls, had enviable opportunities for perfecting his empirical remedies. Small wonder, then, that in course of time the priceless potion distilled from herbs grown only in the garden of Vatopede, mysteriously connected with the cure of Constantine the Great, came to be accepted as the sovereign remedy for the disease, alike terrible and insidious, which, since the dawn of history, had smitten with fatal power the[180]peasant in his cabin, the noble in his castle, the king upon his throne.’‘All this is very instructive, of course,’ said Bournefield, ‘but I can’t say I’ve taken much interest in the medical aspect of this curse of mankind; without meaning to be frivolous, I always thought it principally concerned the people of old Biblical times, and that it was practically unknown in these modern days.’‘But you’ve heard of the Little Bay Leper Hospital in Sydney?’‘I’ve seen reference from time to time in the papers. Half-a-dozen Chinamen there, are there not?’‘Double the number, at least. But would you be surprised to hear that within the last few years two European ladies—rich, cultured, travelled, possessed of everything necessary for comfort and happiness—had been confined there?’‘Surely not! Impossible! Is your information trustworthy?’‘I was told of it by a Government official—an old family friend, a man of the highest reputation for truth and probity, with access to all such institutions by right of position.’‘I suppose he told you more. How, in Heaven’s name, did it come to pass?’‘It seems that these ladies were, in a literary sense, exploiting the South Sea Islands world, with which earthly paradise, as it appeared to them, they were charmed—one may even say intoxicated, as were many before them. The younger one (they were aunt and niece) took photographs[181]and kept a diary—she purposed to write a book when they reached “home.” Poor girl! how little she thought where that home was to be!’‘And so?’‘Yes, indeed!—gruesome, mysterious, hardly credible; but true, or it would not be life. They left Honolulu for Sydney in the San Francisco boat after touching at Ponapé. For a week all went well. Then they kept their cabins. The stewardess, the doctor, when appealed to, would say nothing beyond that the lady passengers were ill—very ill; fever perhaps; people often got it in these latitudes. But by and by dark rumours began to emanate from the forecastle—the crew knew what sort offeverwas occasionally spoken of with bated breath by island passengers. Captain and mate knewnothing—bluffed off all inquiry. But the Health Officer came on board directly the Heads were passed. It was early morning. The doctor was interviewed, and a very strict examination made of passengers and crew. After which the two lady passengers, muffled up to the eyes, were carried off in the doctor’s own boat. They were transferred without loss of time to the Little Bay Hospital.Leprosy, of course! Poor things! it was never known how they contracted it, but the fact was indisputable.’‘Was it known before they came on board?’‘Not suspected for an instant. But within a week after leaving they began (the stewardess said) to suffer from great depression and strange, unaccountable sensations. Dull pains, accompanied by semi-delirious conditions, supervened, gradually[182]becoming more acute and distressing. The doctor prescribed medicines which gave temporary relief, but did not explain his suspicions, and advised confinement to their cabins; occasionally, as the boat neared Sydney, sobs and wailing cries were heard by the attendants. As little as possible was said, and the facts of the case did not find their way into the papers.’‘I never heard of anything so dreadful in my life,’ said the listener; ‘I feel like a man in a dream. But what became of them?’‘The elder lady died, mercifully, within the year, after which the younger became insane, and was taken to an asylum, where she may be lingering yet for all I know. Better dead, perhaps.’‘Of course the seizures are one in a thousand compared with the ratio of people killed by typhoid fever or smallpox—but what an awful possibility! One shudders at the thought not only of pain unceasing—almost unendurable, but of becoming loathsome to one’s fellow-creatures, even to one’s nearest and dearest. Why such a sacrifice of all things held dear to humanity should be permitted, shakes one’s belief in the Divine interposition in mundane affairs.’‘Which leads into the domain of the unknowable, where the paths are dubious. Thank Heaven at least for the power of action!Thatat least is left to us. “So to bed,” as the late Mr. Pepys hath it.’Carteret left for the coast on the following day. His next letter was from Honolulu, whence he had formulated a plan, and taken the first steps towards[183]the fulfilment of a long-devised scheme of relief. The ‘hour had come,’ he wrote, and, what was of more importance, ‘the man.’Plentiful, and easy to be secured for adequate pay, as were the sailors of fortune on or around the beaches of Ponapé and Ocean Island, there were difficulties in the way.They were bold sea-rovers, brave to recklessness, seasoned to all manner of tragedies—mutinies, wrecks, ‘cuttings out’ by savage islanders, what not. But they were short of the wherewithal with which to begin a campaign. They had neither cash nor credit,—proverbially without the first requisite, while the second indispensable was absolutely nil.Throughout the wide ocean world of the South Pacific there was, however, one master mariner, owning the far-famed brigLeonora, and a name to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line Islands. This was the celebrated, perhaps more correctly termed notorious, William Henry Hayston, the dreaded captain of theLeonora—the smartest vessel of that strange fleet which the South Sea traffic bred and maintained. Half-traders, half-slavers, or wholly privateers, on occasion equally ready to play either part at a pinch, and wholly indifferent to flag, or maritime law, if the pay or prize-money were but adequate to the risk. It was freely asserted that there wasno adventurewhich this ‘pirate king’—so to speak—would not undertake on adequate remuneration. Lawless, dangerous, even desperate he might be, but he had rarely been known to fail[184]when perfect seamanship, dauntless courage, and contempt of all ordinary, even extraordinary, risks were indispensable. And whatever contract he elected to accept, he always commanded a crew fully prepared to stand by him to the death.Captain William Henry Hayston, formerly of the United States Navy, but now unattached, owner and commander of the brigLeonora, may have had misunderstandings, more or less serious, with Her Britannic Majesty’s and other Governments in an earlier day, but if so, no one apparently cared to remind him of such trifles. As he walked up the principal thoroughfare with his supercargo, and first mate, a half-caste, well known (and feared also) throughout the island world, he did not give people the idea of a man to be lightly interfered with. Not that there was anything suggestive of unlawful callings or piratical ferocity about his manner or appearance. Perfectly dressed and appointed after the naval fashion of the day, his air was serene, his accent affable and courteous. Friends and acquaintances, official and otherwise, were greeted with the free speech and ready smile which had served him so well in many a close encounter with the myrmidons of the law.Marching up to the Consulate of France, he presented himself to that dread official, and transacted a short interview with easy assurance and consummate policy; sympathised with the official view of some later native troubles; and after mentioning Callao as the port he thought would be probably his destination, gracefully made adieu, leaving his interlocutor utterly in the[185]dark as to his movements, his business, or his intentions..       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .With a well-found steamer, hope in his heart, and joy irradiating his every sense, Carteret on board theMoranais now nearing Honolulu—which, if the breeze holds fair, will be reached to-morrow night. Here he is to meet Captain Hayston, of theLeonora, with whom he has already arranged terms and conditions, and who has signified his willingness to land a crew at Molokai, prepared to carry off the arch-fiend himself, or the Governor of the Straits Settlements, always provided that the sum mentioned between them should be ‘planked down,’ and that the cost of any prosecution on behalf of the Crown be repaid within a specified time.An unobtrusive entrance by theLeonorahad been made late at night, and in the morning it was announced that Captain Hayston had once more honoured their waters with his presence. The famous schooner had slipped in and taken up her anchorage without aid from pilot or other functionary, but she was no sooner discovered at dawnlight, placidly reposing like a strange waterfowl in a pond among the ducks and geese of a farmyard, amid the ships of all nations, than a distinct feeling of unrest, not unaccompanied by apprehension, began to manifest itself.‘Some darned villainy afloat, I guess,’ said a grizzled American whaleman, ‘when William H. Hayston, master mariner, drops his anchor. Sometimes it’s contraband o’ war—blackbirdin’—or[186]smuggled opium—but thar was always some game on hand afore he quit—which he did sudden-like.’‘Why, I thought they couldn’t bring anything agen him now?’ said one of thehabituésof the bar and beach—‘anyhow he spends his money free and pleasant—nothin’ mean ’boutthat!’‘Maybe yes! maybe no!’ quoth the man from ‘Martha’s Vineyard.’ ‘Anyhow, folks had better keep their eyes skinned, I reckon, as hev’ anythin’ to lose, if it’s only an extry wife. He’s tarnation deep, and so all-fired lucky, that old Nick himself’ll hev’ to mind his eye when he passes in his checks.’‘Pleased to meet you again, Captain Hayston,’ said Carteret. ‘I thought you were likely to be punctual when a business appointment like mine was on the cards. My name is Lytton Carteret.’‘Sir, I duly received your letter with accompanying directions—trust we shall do business in terms of your offer’; and here the light glowed in his blue eyes like the sparkle in a fire opal.‘Much obliged, Captain! We have met before. I saw you in the Bay of Islands in 18—. You were there when the crew of theJonathan Stubbsmutinied, and threw the captain overboard.’‘That is so, and we helped to arrest the darned villains, and send them to Sydney for trial, where they were hanged in due form.’‘Captain Hayston,’ said Carteret, ‘suppose we get to business. I’ve heard many things about[187]you, but I’m aware that you’re a man of your word.’ Hayston nodded. ‘I place the fullest confidence in your discretion. The affair, which I depend on your help to carry out, is, I am aware, of delicate, not to say dangerous nature. I wish to get away a friend of mine who is detained at Molokai.’‘It’s against island law—means fine and imprisonment on conviction. The damned place is closely watched. But it means yanking a soul out of hell, and I’ll risk it, if we agree.’‘And now, as to the terms?’‘I must have a thousand pounds. Five hundred down, and the balance when I land your friend at Norfolk Island. He can get a ship to any port in Australia after that.’‘Agreed! You shall have a draft on my Sydney agents, Towns and Co., to-night; I can find an endorser here, before we leave, for the second payment, which I shall have great pleasure in making.’‘That’s the way I like to do business,’ said Hayston, ‘but if you’ll give me the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening, on board theLeonora, we can talk everything fully over, and fix up the best way to carry this matter out.’‘The arrangement will suit me very well. We shall be quite private, I know; and there is much to be said and settled before the start.’After making the round of the chief places of business in the town, and posting letters of more or less importance, Carteret walked down to the beach with Hayston, and was pulled out to the[188]Leonora, graceful craft that she was! They were received at the gangway in true man-o’-war fashion, and as the Captain glanced round, with the quick, trained eye of the seaman born to command, Carteret noted that every man was at his place, and the vessel, generally, in exquisite order. The crew, with few exceptions, were islanders, some were half-castes, a few negroes, but all a muscular, daring, resolute lot—the discipline had evidently been strict and unrelaxing.Going below, the stewards—one a light mulatto, the other a Japanese dressed in his native costume—were apparently just preparing to bring in the dinner. Carteret and the Captain entered a smaller cabin, under a heavy gold-embroidered curtain. This cabin was used as a smoke-room and private audience-chamber. The ornaments and curios suggested many climes and not less desperate adventures. Pistols with silver hilts—Malay krises—swords and daggers—evil-looking spears—South Sea dresses were in evidence, in number almost sufficient to cover the sides of the cabin.‘I suppose,’ said Carteret, ‘there are stories about some of these weapons, Captain Hayston?’‘Well! Yes! indeed—about nearly all of them,’ replied Hayston. ‘That krise was nearly making an end of me. I was looking at another man, when the devil of a Malay got close up in themêlée—it was a pirate junk affair—I was in the Navy of the United States then—(here he sighed). The Malay had just killed a midshipman, poor boy! and was fighting like ten devils, as all Malays do[189]when they’re “amok,” when a quartermaster cut him down, and the krise grazed my side.‘That old silver casket with two handles was full of Spanish doubloons when I first came across it. It belonged to the captain of a slaver—a fellow that had eluded us and the smartest frigates of the British Navy. I was a youngster at the time, and thought the affair great fun. The slaver captain was a Spaniard, accused of enormous cruelties—throwing sick men overboard and all kinds of devilry. We found prisoners chained in the hold, officers and passengers from a merchant ship.’

Whatwould be the character, the fate of this infant British nation, so strangely inaugurated, so wondrously, providentially, even, cast forth upon the shore of an almost unknown continent?

The exiles came to strive with hostile natives and an unfamiliar climate. They found, day by day, birds and beasts, plants and seasons, alike foreign to all previous experience. Yet, so far, how amazingly has prospered the daring experiment in colonisation!

This founding of empires was undertaken with the splendid British contempt for obstacles and dangers, which, if often giving encouragement to apparently imprudent enterprises, has always ennobled the race. Not only was it such, but initiated almost in the throes of a conflict which imperilled Britain’s national existence,—a war, under the ablest generals, directed by the subtlest organising intellect in the then known world, aiming not so much at European conquest as the subjugation of the Mistress of the Seas!

But the haughty Spaniard—in the sixteenth century—who had planned to humble, to discrown,[171]was doomed, like the world-absorbing Corsican, to ruin and defeat—his ‘invincible Armada,’ tempest-driven on the rocks of a hostile coast, his grandest towering ‘tall Amiral,’ shot-shattered, burned, sunk, and destroyed by the unconquered naval heroes of ‘the spacious times of Great Elizabeth.’ What men the times bred!—captains by land and sea: soldiers, whether privates or officers, who, trained to obey to the death, stood unflinching or advanced resistless; sailors who walked above the blood-stained decks, cool as on a carpet, or swarmed over the enemy’s battleship to the maddening sound of ‘Boarders away,’ where every third man fell dead or wounded.

Have we such sailors, such soldiers still?

Yes! a thousand times, yes! and from this very land of the distant South. Was it not abundantly proved in the South African War, when the half-disciplined or wholly untrained colonial troops, whether Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, or Tasmanians, excited the wonder and admiration of all competent critics?—their initiative, their endurance, their intelligence proved on many a hard-fought field; not less also the stubborn valour which gloried in scorning to surrender, while the last man and the last horse lay dying, side by side!

From the weird, carelessly culled British crowd, flung as exiles on the shores of the far unknown South land, labourers and lawgivers, criminals and clerks—what a people has been evolved! The Briton has justified his constant boast, that, given the nucleus of a British community, with free soil,[172]free law, and his inherent right to appeal to it for relief against wrong and injustice, the community will develop the race-characteristics of the ancestral isle. From the oppressed band of Puritans, content to face the rock-bound coast, the storm-tossed ocean, the crafty, ruthless savage, if only they might enjoy religious freedom—from the men and women of their own creed and colour, crowded in unwholesome vessels—sold, yes, sold into slavery on arrival—from every kind of absconder and Adullamite, a newer, greater Britain confronts the world: in arms, a fearless rival; in peace or war, the strongest, the best educated, the most successful nation, this day, beneath the sun. Leavened by the virtue, the intellect, the heroism of the Pilgrim Band, the colossal American republic stands to-day, ready to face the universe in honourable contest: in contest for commercial success—for the triumphs of Art—for intellectual pre-eminence—for scientific progress.

What other human hive throws off such swarms as Britain the Unconquered—collectors from generation to generation of all things rich and precious in the eyes of men? Strong to defend also the treasure-cells; to punish, with fierce and deadly sting, the spoiler and the freebooter,—in material success rivalling, if not surpassing, the ancestral Briton.

The vast, impressive Dominion of Canada, about to take rank as the world’s granary, has shown her devoted loyalty to the British Empire in the recent war, and but for the mistaken policy[173]of the British Government—in the days of Lord North—the Great Republic of the United States might have been as firmly joined to the Mother Isle as the daughter States of Australia and New Zealand—forming a colossal bulwark against anarchy, socialism, and unnecessary interference with the world’s peace. That the rupture between Britain and her greatest oversea possession was suffered to take place, owing to the obstinacy of a mistaken King and a feeble Cabinet, was deplored by contemporary intellects of distinction. It has been even more deeply regretted by all thoughtful Britons, whether colonists or home-born, even unto this present day.

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

On a certain Saturday morning the mail steamer arrived from the east, bearing such passengers for Fremantle and Perth as desired to behold the world-famed goldfields of which they had heard so much.

Newspapers from Europe and America were then attainable. What long, luxurious Sunday morning lounges for the happy possessors of the latest news did these precious ‘home papers’ and letters represent! The younger son, roughly garbed, toil-worn, it may well be ragged even, smiled in his abundant beard as the post-mark of the village near the ancestral hall met his eager eyes. What tidings would the closely guarded sheets furnish? The death of the ailing sister—of the fond mother, the aged father, to whom he had vowed, with the careless confidence of youth, to return laden with gold, or bearing in other[174]form the imprint of success and distinction. How he rejoiced audibly to find that all was well! The Squire, hearty and hale, as of old—looking forward to the hunting season, or the annual ‘shoot’ over his preserves, with unabated confidence; the younger brother had taken his degree at Oxford, or Cambridge, and was safe for a curacy—there was a living in the family.

‘Thank God! Nothing wrong this time. Perhaps this time next year I may see my way.’ Then comes the sigh of hope deferred. Besides newspapers came people. Not so many as in the earlier days of the rich yields and the big ‘rushes.’ Mining, of course, not so sensational. Up-to-date appliances, improved machinery, with a steadier monthly output, and so on.

A close watch was, however, kept on the passenger list, as there was no knowing who might not turn up, or from whence. The men working now in the big mines as metallurgists, ‘shift bosses,’ or mine managers, chiefly well-born, often highly cultured and gently nurtured, had travelled far amid the older lands and cities,—historically famous,—as well as amid these newly found desert wastes: this arid, solitary, trackless wilderness so recently exploited by civilised man, with his absorbing needs. When, therefore, Gore Chesterfield threw down the paper containing the passenger list of the P. & O. linerAden, with an exclamation denoting surprise and satisfaction, the deduction was easy that a comrade of earlier years had arrived, with whom it would be a relief and a luxury to exchange confidences. ‘By Jove!’[175]he exclaimed, ‘this is a rum start!—who would ever have thought of Lytton Carteret of Guy’s, of all people in the world, turning up here? Why, he was with me in that expedition of Herman Paul’s on the pre-Phœnician “placers,”worrying through the ruins left by these rum chaps. Did they find gold? Yes, and plenty of it, judging by what we saw. But they went about it in a scientific manner—not like our burrowings and scratchings, living under canvas, and roasting our souls and bodies under canvas—like lunatics, as Eastern people consider all Englishmen to be.’

‘Well, what did they do that gave them such a “break” over us?’ inquired his Australian-born mate, belonging to a pioneer family founded by a retired military officer who had fought under Wellington through the long blood-stained Peninsular War from Ciudad Rodrigo to Waterloo, and who had turned his sword into a ploughshare after marrying one of the daughters of the land.

‘Do? What we don’t seem to manage so well in these latter days of civilisation about which we brag so unnecessarily. Built walled cities, or something near akin; put pressure on the Kaffirs and Zulus, tribesmen of the day (of course not these very fellows); but they made them work, whoever they were. First of all, built stone forts, inside which they could defy the heathen artillery of the period, cross-bows and arrows, with lances, maces, javelins, and so forth, for close fighting. They had pots and crucibles, smelted ore, and the rest of it. Oh! they were pretty well up to date, I can tell you.’

[176]‘Sounds well,’ said his comrade, who was scientific as well as practical—had taken two firsts, and two second scholarships at an Australian University for Civil Engineering. ‘Why did you and he come away from such a jolly interesting place?’

‘H—m! the death-rate was high, water bad, climate awful, steamy and airless; besides, to tell the truth, I suspected the working director of looking upon us much as Bismarck did the rank and file of the Prussian army—not perhaps exactly as “Kanonenfutter,” but to be expended (“gastados,” as the Spanish idiom is) primarily in the cause of science, chiefly for the glorification and renown of Sigismund Paulsen, botanist, member of the Society of Explorers, etc. etc.; you can’t beat a German leader for that. He is everything and everybody; the rest are nothing and nobody. So Carteret and I cleared.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Restless and dissatisfied as usual—capital operations not sufficiently numerous to compensate for loss of time—thought he’d try the South Sea Islands.’

‘Any gold there?’

‘None so far; but human life little regarded—obscure diseases, and a possible discovery, his absorbing life-long quest for a cure ofthemost terrible, insidious, so-called incurable disease, Leprosy!’

‘Horrible to think of! Why did he pick the most hopeless evil in the whole world—the most loathsome?’

‘Just because itwasso. He had lost a friend[177]by it, or rather, he had seen him deported to Molokai, the leper island, where Father Damien lived and died—himself a martyr-victim. The South Sea law is, that when the incipient symptom shows itself—the white circular mark never known to indicate falsely—the patient is carried off, and landed on the Island of the Lost, whence he or she can never return to civilisation.’

‘And do you mean to tell me that a man’s wife, or his child, can be legally torn from him and cast into hell—as such an accursed spot must be—compelled to live out the remainder of life there? What a fate—what a mockery of civilisation!’

‘This law, like others, was made for the preservation of society in the mass; better that the few should suffer than that the many be infected. So Carteret was compelled to see his friend torn from his wife, to witness his despair. They had only been married a few months. None knew, of course, how the infection was taken, nor did it matter. He was landed on that awful strand—is there now—where at a certain time in the evening the cries and groans of the patients in the more advanced stages can be plainly heard. Carteret is hardly sane on the subject, and from that hour resolved to devote his life to the discovery of a cure. To this end he made an exhaustive study of the disease in all its manifestations and stages of development. Worn with study, lowered in health and spirits, he turned to the as yet practically untrodden fields of research in the east of Asia, resolved to test the boundless, half-mythical[178]solitudes on the northern frontier of India. These he traversed, cheerfully risking health, freedom, life itself, if but the end could be obtained—the salvation of his friend, the happiness of Lilburne’s peerless wife. She was his cousin, and they had been boy and girl lovers.’

‘And has no cure ever been found for the disease?’ asked Leslie Bournefield. ‘So many physical evils have been attacked successfully of late years—X-rays, and what’s that other boon to mankind—Radium?’

‘Reports of cures, of course, but rarely authenticated,’ replied Chesterfield. ‘One feels doubtful, but nothing will discourage Carteret. He will go on searching till he dies, or Mrs. Lilburne does. Then, unless he elects to serve humanity in general for her sake—“in memoriam”—I fear his interest in the question will cease. His last remaining hope was in a nostrum said to be the property of the monks of Vatopede.’

‘Where in the world is that?’

‘It is the largest of the monasteries of Mount Athos, in the Levant. The richest, too, they say—built by the Emperor Constantine the Great. That worthy monarch, like Naaman the Syrian, was afflicted with leprosy. He thereupon ordered a number of children to be killed, a bath of innocent blood being the favourite remedy of the day! While they were selecting them, it was revealed to him in a vision that if he became a baptized Christian the leprosy would depart from him. He did so; he was immediately restored to health, and the children were set free. The legend is[179]related by Moses Chorensis, whose veracity is undoubted. One miraculous cure having occurred in their monastery, the good monks were not minded to let the fame thereof die out.’

‘What did they do to that end?’

‘It must be remembered that all monasteries of importance numbered among the brethren some who specially devoted themselves to the study and practice of medicine. To heal the sick was a part, an important part of the charity to which all members of monastic orders were vowed. As in the case of the nuns of certain convents, these institutions held specifics warranted to alleviate the more virulent diseases. Pilgrims from all parts of the civilised world resorted to the more famous monasteries. Many reached their homes professing to be cured. If not wholly restored to health, the undoubting religious faith of the mediæval period completed the process. Even in this age of analysis and positivism, do not the professors of the Christian Science cult work nearly on similar lines? And what quasi-miracles do they not allege? It must be remembered also that the monastic student, undisturbed by the distractions of a later age, safe within the massive convent walls, had enviable opportunities for perfecting his empirical remedies. Small wonder, then, that in course of time the priceless potion distilled from herbs grown only in the garden of Vatopede, mysteriously connected with the cure of Constantine the Great, came to be accepted as the sovereign remedy for the disease, alike terrible and insidious, which, since the dawn of history, had smitten with fatal power the[180]peasant in his cabin, the noble in his castle, the king upon his throne.’

‘All this is very instructive, of course,’ said Bournefield, ‘but I can’t say I’ve taken much interest in the medical aspect of this curse of mankind; without meaning to be frivolous, I always thought it principally concerned the people of old Biblical times, and that it was practically unknown in these modern days.’

‘But you’ve heard of the Little Bay Leper Hospital in Sydney?’

‘I’ve seen reference from time to time in the papers. Half-a-dozen Chinamen there, are there not?’

‘Double the number, at least. But would you be surprised to hear that within the last few years two European ladies—rich, cultured, travelled, possessed of everything necessary for comfort and happiness—had been confined there?’

‘Surely not! Impossible! Is your information trustworthy?’

‘I was told of it by a Government official—an old family friend, a man of the highest reputation for truth and probity, with access to all such institutions by right of position.’

‘I suppose he told you more. How, in Heaven’s name, did it come to pass?’

‘It seems that these ladies were, in a literary sense, exploiting the South Sea Islands world, with which earthly paradise, as it appeared to them, they were charmed—one may even say intoxicated, as were many before them. The younger one (they were aunt and niece) took photographs[181]and kept a diary—she purposed to write a book when they reached “home.” Poor girl! how little she thought where that home was to be!’

‘And so?’

‘Yes, indeed!—gruesome, mysterious, hardly credible; but true, or it would not be life. They left Honolulu for Sydney in the San Francisco boat after touching at Ponapé. For a week all went well. Then they kept their cabins. The stewardess, the doctor, when appealed to, would say nothing beyond that the lady passengers were ill—very ill; fever perhaps; people often got it in these latitudes. But by and by dark rumours began to emanate from the forecastle—the crew knew what sort offeverwas occasionally spoken of with bated breath by island passengers. Captain and mate knewnothing—bluffed off all inquiry. But the Health Officer came on board directly the Heads were passed. It was early morning. The doctor was interviewed, and a very strict examination made of passengers and crew. After which the two lady passengers, muffled up to the eyes, were carried off in the doctor’s own boat. They were transferred without loss of time to the Little Bay Hospital.Leprosy, of course! Poor things! it was never known how they contracted it, but the fact was indisputable.’

‘Was it known before they came on board?’

‘Not suspected for an instant. But within a week after leaving they began (the stewardess said) to suffer from great depression and strange, unaccountable sensations. Dull pains, accompanied by semi-delirious conditions, supervened, gradually[182]becoming more acute and distressing. The doctor prescribed medicines which gave temporary relief, but did not explain his suspicions, and advised confinement to their cabins; occasionally, as the boat neared Sydney, sobs and wailing cries were heard by the attendants. As little as possible was said, and the facts of the case did not find their way into the papers.’

‘I never heard of anything so dreadful in my life,’ said the listener; ‘I feel like a man in a dream. But what became of them?’

‘The elder lady died, mercifully, within the year, after which the younger became insane, and was taken to an asylum, where she may be lingering yet for all I know. Better dead, perhaps.’

‘Of course the seizures are one in a thousand compared with the ratio of people killed by typhoid fever or smallpox—but what an awful possibility! One shudders at the thought not only of pain unceasing—almost unendurable, but of becoming loathsome to one’s fellow-creatures, even to one’s nearest and dearest. Why such a sacrifice of all things held dear to humanity should be permitted, shakes one’s belief in the Divine interposition in mundane affairs.’

‘Which leads into the domain of the unknowable, where the paths are dubious. Thank Heaven at least for the power of action!Thatat least is left to us. “So to bed,” as the late Mr. Pepys hath it.’

Carteret left for the coast on the following day. His next letter was from Honolulu, whence he had formulated a plan, and taken the first steps towards[183]the fulfilment of a long-devised scheme of relief. The ‘hour had come,’ he wrote, and, what was of more importance, ‘the man.’

Plentiful, and easy to be secured for adequate pay, as were the sailors of fortune on or around the beaches of Ponapé and Ocean Island, there were difficulties in the way.

They were bold sea-rovers, brave to recklessness, seasoned to all manner of tragedies—mutinies, wrecks, ‘cuttings out’ by savage islanders, what not. But they were short of the wherewithal with which to begin a campaign. They had neither cash nor credit,—proverbially without the first requisite, while the second indispensable was absolutely nil.

Throughout the wide ocean world of the South Pacific there was, however, one master mariner, owning the far-famed brigLeonora, and a name to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line Islands. This was the celebrated, perhaps more correctly termed notorious, William Henry Hayston, the dreaded captain of theLeonora—the smartest vessel of that strange fleet which the South Sea traffic bred and maintained. Half-traders, half-slavers, or wholly privateers, on occasion equally ready to play either part at a pinch, and wholly indifferent to flag, or maritime law, if the pay or prize-money were but adequate to the risk. It was freely asserted that there wasno adventurewhich this ‘pirate king’—so to speak—would not undertake on adequate remuneration. Lawless, dangerous, even desperate he might be, but he had rarely been known to fail[184]when perfect seamanship, dauntless courage, and contempt of all ordinary, even extraordinary, risks were indispensable. And whatever contract he elected to accept, he always commanded a crew fully prepared to stand by him to the death.

Captain William Henry Hayston, formerly of the United States Navy, but now unattached, owner and commander of the brigLeonora, may have had misunderstandings, more or less serious, with Her Britannic Majesty’s and other Governments in an earlier day, but if so, no one apparently cared to remind him of such trifles. As he walked up the principal thoroughfare with his supercargo, and first mate, a half-caste, well known (and feared also) throughout the island world, he did not give people the idea of a man to be lightly interfered with. Not that there was anything suggestive of unlawful callings or piratical ferocity about his manner or appearance. Perfectly dressed and appointed after the naval fashion of the day, his air was serene, his accent affable and courteous. Friends and acquaintances, official and otherwise, were greeted with the free speech and ready smile which had served him so well in many a close encounter with the myrmidons of the law.

Marching up to the Consulate of France, he presented himself to that dread official, and transacted a short interview with easy assurance and consummate policy; sympathised with the official view of some later native troubles; and after mentioning Callao as the port he thought would be probably his destination, gracefully made adieu, leaving his interlocutor utterly in the[185]dark as to his movements, his business, or his intentions.

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

With a well-found steamer, hope in his heart, and joy irradiating his every sense, Carteret on board theMoranais now nearing Honolulu—which, if the breeze holds fair, will be reached to-morrow night. Here he is to meet Captain Hayston, of theLeonora, with whom he has already arranged terms and conditions, and who has signified his willingness to land a crew at Molokai, prepared to carry off the arch-fiend himself, or the Governor of the Straits Settlements, always provided that the sum mentioned between them should be ‘planked down,’ and that the cost of any prosecution on behalf of the Crown be repaid within a specified time.

An unobtrusive entrance by theLeonorahad been made late at night, and in the morning it was announced that Captain Hayston had once more honoured their waters with his presence. The famous schooner had slipped in and taken up her anchorage without aid from pilot or other functionary, but she was no sooner discovered at dawnlight, placidly reposing like a strange waterfowl in a pond among the ducks and geese of a farmyard, amid the ships of all nations, than a distinct feeling of unrest, not unaccompanied by apprehension, began to manifest itself.

‘Some darned villainy afloat, I guess,’ said a grizzled American whaleman, ‘when William H. Hayston, master mariner, drops his anchor. Sometimes it’s contraband o’ war—blackbirdin’—or[186]smuggled opium—but thar was always some game on hand afore he quit—which he did sudden-like.’

‘Why, I thought they couldn’t bring anything agen him now?’ said one of thehabituésof the bar and beach—‘anyhow he spends his money free and pleasant—nothin’ mean ’boutthat!’

‘Maybe yes! maybe no!’ quoth the man from ‘Martha’s Vineyard.’ ‘Anyhow, folks had better keep their eyes skinned, I reckon, as hev’ anythin’ to lose, if it’s only an extry wife. He’s tarnation deep, and so all-fired lucky, that old Nick himself’ll hev’ to mind his eye when he passes in his checks.’

‘Pleased to meet you again, Captain Hayston,’ said Carteret. ‘I thought you were likely to be punctual when a business appointment like mine was on the cards. My name is Lytton Carteret.’

‘Sir, I duly received your letter with accompanying directions—trust we shall do business in terms of your offer’; and here the light glowed in his blue eyes like the sparkle in a fire opal.

‘Much obliged, Captain! We have met before. I saw you in the Bay of Islands in 18—. You were there when the crew of theJonathan Stubbsmutinied, and threw the captain overboard.’

‘That is so, and we helped to arrest the darned villains, and send them to Sydney for trial, where they were hanged in due form.’

‘Captain Hayston,’ said Carteret, ‘suppose we get to business. I’ve heard many things about[187]you, but I’m aware that you’re a man of your word.’ Hayston nodded. ‘I place the fullest confidence in your discretion. The affair, which I depend on your help to carry out, is, I am aware, of delicate, not to say dangerous nature. I wish to get away a friend of mine who is detained at Molokai.’

‘It’s against island law—means fine and imprisonment on conviction. The damned place is closely watched. But it means yanking a soul out of hell, and I’ll risk it, if we agree.’

‘And now, as to the terms?’

‘I must have a thousand pounds. Five hundred down, and the balance when I land your friend at Norfolk Island. He can get a ship to any port in Australia after that.’

‘Agreed! You shall have a draft on my Sydney agents, Towns and Co., to-night; I can find an endorser here, before we leave, for the second payment, which I shall have great pleasure in making.’

‘That’s the way I like to do business,’ said Hayston, ‘but if you’ll give me the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening, on board theLeonora, we can talk everything fully over, and fix up the best way to carry this matter out.’

‘The arrangement will suit me very well. We shall be quite private, I know; and there is much to be said and settled before the start.’

After making the round of the chief places of business in the town, and posting letters of more or less importance, Carteret walked down to the beach with Hayston, and was pulled out to the[188]Leonora, graceful craft that she was! They were received at the gangway in true man-o’-war fashion, and as the Captain glanced round, with the quick, trained eye of the seaman born to command, Carteret noted that every man was at his place, and the vessel, generally, in exquisite order. The crew, with few exceptions, were islanders, some were half-castes, a few negroes, but all a muscular, daring, resolute lot—the discipline had evidently been strict and unrelaxing.

Going below, the stewards—one a light mulatto, the other a Japanese dressed in his native costume—were apparently just preparing to bring in the dinner. Carteret and the Captain entered a smaller cabin, under a heavy gold-embroidered curtain. This cabin was used as a smoke-room and private audience-chamber. The ornaments and curios suggested many climes and not less desperate adventures. Pistols with silver hilts—Malay krises—swords and daggers—evil-looking spears—South Sea dresses were in evidence, in number almost sufficient to cover the sides of the cabin.

‘I suppose,’ said Carteret, ‘there are stories about some of these weapons, Captain Hayston?’

‘Well! Yes! indeed—about nearly all of them,’ replied Hayston. ‘That krise was nearly making an end of me. I was looking at another man, when the devil of a Malay got close up in themêlée—it was a pirate junk affair—I was in the Navy of the United States then—(here he sighed). The Malay had just killed a midshipman, poor boy! and was fighting like ten devils, as all Malays do[189]when they’re “amok,” when a quartermaster cut him down, and the krise grazed my side.

‘That old silver casket with two handles was full of Spanish doubloons when I first came across it. It belonged to the captain of a slaver—a fellow that had eluded us and the smartest frigates of the British Navy. I was a youngster at the time, and thought the affair great fun. The slaver captain was a Spaniard, accused of enormous cruelties—throwing sick men overboard and all kinds of devilry. We found prisoners chained in the hold, officers and passengers from a merchant ship.’

[190]CHAPTER VIII‘Theirlast prize,’ continued Hayston, ‘was a dreadful sight! Pah! I can hardly bear to think of it now.’ As he spoke, his face darkened, and a look of rage, concentrated, lurid, pitiless, passed over his features, transforming their whole expression into that of a demon—an avenging Azrael; his whole countenance suddenly passed from a state of smiling, even fascinating courtesy, to that of murderous wrath—deadly, implacable, consuming.‘They paid the penalty?’ said Carteret.‘Yes! They were triced up to the yard-arm—two and two—a trial was dispensed with—Uncle Sam having passed a special ordinance with regard to such cases. The sharks had gathered around after the first corpses were dropped. It was a calm: they were torn in pieces almost as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That the sea which had been crimsoned many a time with the blood of their innocent victims, should now be stained with their own, was only just retribution. Too merciful, of course; but we can’t go back to the methods of the Middle Ages—more’s[191]the pity! And now let us change the subject. “Land ho!” as an old captain of mine in the West Indies used to say when he heard the dinner bell.’The melodious sound of a silver temple-gong announced the service of a meal as perfect in its way as anything arranged on salt water can be.The wines, of the choicest French and Spanish vintages, were such as few ‘Amphitryons où l’on dîne’ have the privilege of presenting to a guest. The turtle soup would have tempted an alderman to change his religion. But once previously had Carteret tasted such Madeira as followed it. The fish, the prawn curry, the beautiful crested pigeons of the islands, guinea-fowls in size, pheasants in delicacy of flavour—without pursuing the detail, it may be assumed from Carteret’s testimony, then and afterwards, that a jury ofgourmetswould have been hard set to decide in favour of any naval competing function of the day. The dry champagne which followed the hock was of a known, accreditedcrû, but did not tempt Carteret to do more than reasonable justice to it. He had no intention of measuring strength of brain against his entertainer; more particularly with a vitally important stake on the cards. At a comparatively early hour he discussed with Hayston the more binding terms of the agreement, and argued them out, clause by clause, before they parted for the night. Not wholly satisfied with the propriety of concluding the affair after dinner, moderate as had been his potations, Carteret deferred the signing and sealing of the final instrument till[192]noon on the following day. Which was at once agreed to.Captain Hayston, indeed, expressed his intention of sailing for foreign parts on the morrow. Thus, if all preliminaries were completed at mid-day, he would be free to lift anchor, and taking advantage of the breeze off the land would initiate action. Doubtless he had intelligence agents on whom he could rely—agents ‘steady of heart, and stout of hand’ as ever served king or minister, and who dared not play him false. When, therefore, theLeonorashook out her topsails and stood off the land, a point or two to the south of west, shaping a course for the crimson afterglow of the fading sunset, there were ten thousand of Carteret’s dollars in the double-handled casket of the slaver Leon Gonzales, late master of thePedro Torero—also in the private escritoire an order for five hundred pounds, payable on demand by the firm of Robert Towns and Co., Fort Street, Sydney, endorsed by Oppenheimer Brothers, of Suva, Fiji.If the course was altered at midnight, and shaped to one which would bring them close to Molokai, where the eventful dash and relief expedition would be carried out, who was to be the wiser?.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .The night, for which they had watched for nearly a week, was almost a calm—but overclouded, and dark as a wolf’s throat. The proverbial hand, when held before the face, was invisible.[193]TheLeonora, miles away at nightfall, had glided closer to the land and lay off and on. The dropping of an anchor near the forbidden shore would, of course, have aroused suspicion. The crew, with Bill Hicks at the steer oar, had been carefully chosen. The whale-boat, which, for reasons of his own, the Captain of theLeonoraalways had on board, was reliable on any sea, and against any of the winds of heaven. The crew was composed of Rotumah islanders, perhaps the best men—except those of Norfolk Island—in rough water or wild gale that the South Pacific breeds. They may have had a general idea of the nature of the service in which they were engaged, but were merely told that they were to pull quietly to the beach near a rocky point, where a post stood in the sand, with a small lantern attached to it. There they would see a man, wrapped in a cloak. As soon as the boat grounded, he would walk towards them. They were to run to meet him, lifting him carefully into the boat, as he had been ill. Then to pull their d—dest. Bill Hicks would see to that; and the quicker they got back to the brig the surer they would be of a tot of rum all round, and a pound of tobacco. But, if they valued their skins, they were not to come back without their passenger. It is not improbable that they were aware of the object and circumstances of the secret service.But—Their’s not to make reply,Their’s but to do and die.The crew of theLeonorahad, before now, been[194]in affairs where certain shipmates had lost the ‘number of their mess.’ Such experience was nothing new to them. ‘It was all in the day’s work’—one man came back safe and sound, the other ‘went to Davy Jones.’.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .Nothing could have been more propitious: the silent, moonless night; the sleeping ocean, dark, waveless—unillumined save by the phosphorescence caused by a leaping fish—the sombre surface in Stygian repose. TheLeonorahad approached the dread island long after dark, gradually getting closer by long ‘boards.’ For a while the low rhythmic murmur of the unresting surge was the only sound which broke the strange silence, almost oppressive in its completeness. Then, as the boat left the ship’s side noiselessly, and, rowed with muffled oars, approached the shallows of the beach, a weird confused lament, as of wails, moans, and cries of pain, rose through the murky air. Such was the outcome of periodical seizures, with torturing, lancinating pains, which, towards the later hours of the night, occur with dreadful regularity in advanced or hopeless cases. As they increased in distinctness one might have observed a movement as of shuddering fear among the crew, who peered eagerly through the gloom, beyond which lay the dim white beach, with a fringe of plumy palms beyond. Straining his eyes, the quartermaster in the bow observed dark forms wandering, as it appeared to him, along the seashore. Their gait was slow and faltering; with weak, tremulous steps they seemed as though[195]doubtful of their ability to reach the point from which to survey the ocean—to look, if better was not to be had, upon the highway to freedom, and that outer world, from which they had been severed once and for ever. They might well have passed for a company of gibbering ghosts on the bank of that dark Lethean stream where earthly joys and sorrows cease.As the strange band neared the shore, the cries, the moaning, unintelligible chorus seemed to deepen in intensity, and once a scream as of agony unendurable rent the air.‘Hell’s gate open now, I guess,’ said Hicks; ‘and these are Old Nick’s beach-combers sent to say, “How’d yer like to come to this afore yer time’s up?”’ Here his voice altered at once. ‘Look out, you Maori Jack! here’s our passenger.’As he spoke, a tall man in a cloak dashed into the sea, and rushed towards the boat, wading above the waist, and holding up his arms beseechingly, while at the same time several of the others made as though to prevent him leaving their party. With a hoarse cry the Maori seized him, and almost lifting him up, dragged him into the boat, while the bow oar descended on the skull of the leading pursuer, who fell back, recovering himself with difficulty. There was no further attempt at capture. ‘Give way, men!’ shouted Hicks; ‘pull for the brig as if she was an eighty-barrel whale.’The strange passenger sank down as if exhausted, and made no remark or gesture. As the boat foamed up to theLeonora’sside, a[196]rope-ladder was let down, up which he—helped by the Maori’s strong grasp—climbed in safety. Once on the deck, he seemed to revive, and commenced to thank the Captain effusively. But he declined converse. ‘You will find refreshment in your cabin, señor! The steward will direct you. It will be better to defer explanations until the morning. Manuel’ (this to the mulatto), ‘see that this gentleman has all that he requires for the night. Adios!’‘Adios, indeed!’ thought the passenger, who had seen strange things in strange countries, and had picked up Spanish in his wanderings. ‘I feel bewildered for the present; I must clear my brain with sleep, if possible; I have had little enough for the last fortnight.’The breeze off the land by this time had slightly freshened. Sail was made ‘alow and aloft,’ and as the wavelets commenced to strike and fall off from her bows with increasing volume, the gracefulLeonoraswept smoothly yet rapidly on her course, at a rate of speed which, if there had been pursuit, gave little chance of her being overhauled.What an awakening it was for Alister Lilburne when, after a night of soundest sleep, he realised that he was many a league from that Isle of the Lost!—was again free, safe, unhampered by rules and hateful regulations such as are found necessary for semi-penal communities.The morning breeze, the roseate dawnlight, the lapping wave which kissed his cabin-side, the sea-birds’ cry,—all these were separate and distinct[197]joys and sensations which he recognised with a thankfulness too deep for words. When the Japanese steward shortly afterwards, bowing with Oriental humility, proposed to conduct him to a bath-room, and, at the same time, displayed a complete Spanish military uniform, he began to feel once more a resemblance to the man that he used to be, as also a newborn desire to learn how and by whom this change in his affairs had been brought about. Change? Yes! the change from a living grave—a hopeless, despairing existence—doomed to vegetate on the accursed isle till death released him from a state of mental torture all but unendurable. Weekly to witness the long-hoped-for, prayed-for opening of the prison gate for a fellow-victim. But only by the warder Death, or through a merciful alternative—the utter dethronement of reason.The purifying process complete, and the costume of the hidalgo donned, from which not even the sombrero, with sweeping feather, was absent, his island garments were made into a bundle, loaded with a ringbolt, and cast into the deep. His attendant then informed him that the Captain hoped to have the pleasure of meeting Don Carlos Alvarez at breakfast, at his convenience. Feeling partly like an actor in private theatricals, partly like a man in a dream, he followed Manuel to the smaller cuddy, where fruit and coffee, with a most appetising breakfast, were already set forth.‘I have the honour to salute Don Carlos Alvarez, who has joined my vessel at Santa Cruz[198]and desires a passage to Norfolk Island. Is it not so?’ said the Captain, speaking in Spanish, with formal and impressive courtesy.‘A vuestro disposición, Señor Capitan!’ answered the passenger in the same language. And, indeed, as he surveyed himself in one of the mirrors which, in massive silver frames, ornamented the apartment, he found it difficult to believe that he was not the haughty hidalgo with whom the tales of the Spanish main had made all students familiar.‘I have to thank you,’ he continued, still speaking in more or less pure Castilian, ‘for my life—for the recovery of my liberty, and all things that men hold most dear. Believe me, I await only the time when I may translate my feelings into deeds, to prove them true. But I would further beg you to add to my obligation, heavy as it is, the reasons for your thus interesting yourself in the affairs of a stranger.’‘That we have not met before, I am aware,’ answered Hayston. ‘My action is not wholly disinterested, you may probably guess; still, a man’s friends may intervene in his affairs—and to some purpose.’‘Friends!’ said the stranger. ‘How many is an outcast likely to have—outcast of God and man—may He pardon me for the thought!—in that Gehenna from which your skill and courage have rescued me? And if there be, by a miracle, so much as one left to him, who once had many, what power can he have had?’‘The power of the golden key,’ said the[199]sea-rover, looking around, as he spoke, upon wave and sky, as the freshening breeze sent the gay bark on her course with increased speed. ‘With a magic force in the background, weather like this, and such a water-witch as theLeonoraunder his foot, why should you, should any man, despair? Exile, sickness, wounds—losses, shipwreck, imprisonment,—everything but the rope or the axe, which ends all things, have fallen to my lot. But I never lowered my flag, and see where it flaunts in the breeze now! Bah! the Spaniard’s solace is the guitar; I must send for mine, and sing you one of my favourites,’ and here he trolled out the opening verse of ‘Yo soy contrabandista!’ ‘Gad! how the muleteers and smugglers of the Pyrenees used to dance and yell to the music! The very thought makes me young again.’ Here he sprang forward, raising his lofty head with a gesture of defiance, as if claiming to be the master of his own destiny, and daring a world in arms to subdue his will or shape his course in life. His eyes glowed with the light of battle—his upper lip curved in scorn—his vast frame seemed to grow in form and stature, as he stood there, towering above his companion, and presenting the contrast of a mediæval mail-clad knight alike to squire and pages as to the leathern-jerkined yeomen of the ranks.The passenger looked on him with eyes of admiration, as he stood, grand in the possession of unmatched strength—flushed with the triumph of successful enterprise, and glorying in his daring—the daring which had, so many a time and oft,[200]carried him through perils and desperate encounters, to which this last one was but child’s play.‘And now,’ said Hayston, taking the passenger’s arm, ‘let us walk the deck, while I tell you how I became possessed of your history, and was persuaded to mix myself up in your affairs. Can you call to memory the name of a friend who would be likely to be reckless of money and time spent in effecting your release?’‘Of course—there is Lytton Carteret—my wife’s cousin—sincerely attached to her, and an early friend of mine—but I have not heard of him for years. He was said to have been travelling in the East.’‘That is so. He informed me that he had nearly reached Lhassa, but had been turned back by a guard of Thibetan soldiers.’‘Then he has returned? And where is he now?’‘He is awaiting the return of the brigLeonoraat Apia harbour, where he hopes to meet Don Alvarez—now on his travels in the South Pacific.’‘Then he knows of my having left——?’‘Nukuheva, let us say—rather a fashionable resort just now—Lord Pembroke and a friend were staying there for some months lately.’‘A light breaks in on me. Of course I could hear nothing in that inferno, out of the world and the world’s life. Do I guess aright that it was he that——?’‘Yes! Señor Alvarez; it was he that engineered this littlecoupof ours. He had made[201]apasearto Easter Island, where he happened on William H. Hayston, master mariner—whom he met once at the Hokianga, New Zealand—and it came into his head that he might take a hand in this deal. Dollars, of course, were necessary, and he planked down handsomely. Made money in some place in West Australia, I think.’‘But, Captain Hayston, it is myrightto pay everything which this affair has cost. I shall have funds when I arrive in England. My credit, indeed, is good at this moment in Lombard Street—I insist——’‘In this charter party, I only know Lytton Carteret, and must decline to mix up business with Señor Carlos Alvarez, or any friend or relative. It can be settled with him only after I fulfil my contract; but, until then, I must decline—much as it grieves me—to consider you in any other capacity than as mypassenger. From that time forward we shall be friends, I trust?’‘Have it your own way, Captain Hayston,’ said Lilburne, inwardly smiling at the idea of the buccaneer, as he was often held to be, being scrupulous about extra payment for service rendered. ‘In all other respects I shall always regard you as a friend in need, to be trusted in fair weather or foul, to my life’s end.’ Here he grasped the Captain’s sinewy hand, and shook it with a fervour commensurate with the importance of the occasion.‘Buon amigo—malo adversario,’ replied Hayston. ‘We shall be unlikely to meet again; though, but for hard luck, and the mystery of fate, you and I, and your friend—a man whom I[202]honour and respect from the bottom of my heart—might have been comrades to our lives’ end.’‘And why not now? Surely it is not too late—why not change your career? Why not uproot the ties and habits of early youth—atone for the mistakes—crimes, if you will—of a reckless manhood?—retrace the downward path—repent in sackcloth and ashes—a white sheet, if you like.’‘Fancy “Bully” Hayston in a white sheet!’ The absurdity of the situation seemed to strike him, and he laughed till the tears came into his eyes. ‘No,’ and a sad, stern look came over his changeful brow—‘what says Byron, whom I used to read in my youth?‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.But still we love even in our rage,And haunted to our very ageWith the vain shadow of the past,As is Mazeppa to the last!’.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .Once more the course was changed—another forty-eight hours would bring theLeonorato Apia harbour. Here the erstwhile Spanish Don would be landed. The identification of Alister Lilburne with the Spanish-speaking, Spanish-garmented Alvarez would be difficult, if not impossible.All that the crew—discreet of their kind—knew, or could testify to, was, that a Spanish-speaking individual had been on board their vessel for a few weeks, and had left them at Norfolk Island. They had heard that he had come from Sydney, and was going back as soon as he could get a ship. Had he come from Molokai? They did not know.[203]In fact, the four Rotumah men had been carefully prevented from showing themselves on shore, and the rest of the crew had beenadvisedby Bill Hicks to recognise no one, and to notice nothing outside of the ordinary cruise of their voyage. They had shipped a cargo of copra at Ponapé, and declined to answer any questions save such as related to island produce..       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .Carteret was always reticent as to the route by which he and Lilburne made their way to West Australia—landing at Albany from a German cargo-boat, and parting at Perth. It was discovered after Lilburne had been on board theLeonora, that the white mark, more or less circular, on account of which he might so easily have lost his life, as well as his liberty, had no more to do with leprosy than with scarlet fever. It was simply the remains of a cicatrice, resulting from an Arab spear-wound received in one of his desert wanderings in early life. The skin had contracted, after the healing process was complete, and, as often happens, had lost its original colour and shape. Hayston himself—who had taken a medical course in his University days, and was no mean practitioner in the department of wounds, and surgical matters generally—after a minute examination pronounced it to be free from the remotest likeness to the earlier stages of the disease. Not satisfied with this, he called a quartermaster, who had lived on every island in the South Pacific, and had acquired a reputation as a successful medicine-man among the sailors and beach-combers.[204]‘Take a look at Don Carlos Alvarez here, Ben!’ said Hayston. ‘What d’ye make of it? Any Molokai business about it?’‘No more than there is about this, Captain!’—pointing to a scar upon his brawny chest, right in the centre of a tattooed mermaid’s bosom, that marine enchantress being represented as smiling seductively upon a shipwrecked mariner. ‘That was a touch I got at the Navigators, when the natives nearly cut us off—a close thing it was, Captain. But it healed up wonderful—and there it is—white enough too. I suppose those cranks at Tahiti would have boxed me up with the other poor devils if I hadn’t taken French leave—in a native canoe. But I gave ’em leg-bail for it, and here I am to-day, as sound as a roach, and as good an A.B. as there is in the fleet.’‘That will do, Ben, I am satisfied; you have been two years in theLeonora, so your case is proved, at any rate. The fact is, señor, that there was such a scare about the disease when first the native Councils at Honolulu began to legislate, that they went to the other extreme in suspected cases; thinking it better that a few should be wrongfully imprisoned than that infection should run riot over the whole island. To this day, however, medical men are not agreed on the subject of contagion.’Of course Mrs. Lilburne had been advised by letter from time to time of the possibility of her husband’s release. What such hope and expectation meant to these hardly entreated lovers may be imagined. In her case, she was supported by[205]an unshaken faith in the goodness of God. The belief in which she had been reared had for years furnished her with support and consolation, even in a state of exile, loneliness, and comparative poverty. Was it for her to doubt that He would make a way for her to escape from that lamentable position, when it pleased Him to put a period to her misery? If she was wretched, lonely, forsaken, placed by fate among the sick and the dying, was it for her to repine—to despair? Day by day she saw the strong perish before her eyes—the young and fair—the hopeful and the indifferent. The terrible fever of camps and crowds spared neither age nor sex. Who was she, that she should be specially protected? Rather ought she to be thankful that she was in a position to help the helpless, to succour the dying, to cheer the terrified soul, on the verge of ‘the undiscovered country,’ with the vision of a serene and glorified hereafter.So she possessed her soul in patience, finding in unrelaxing, even more zealous devotion to her duties that relief from painful thought which ever accompanies conscientious adherence to duty. In vain her friends adjured her not to neglect her own health. She persisted in ‘working herself to death,’ as they averred, to the last day—when she went off, carrying the blessings and prayers of the whole community with her. The German boat would be at Perth on an appointed day, when she trusted to coach and train service to enable her to meet her long-lost, despaired-of husband. Over his transports, her tears and sobs of joy when she rushed into the arms of the lover of her youth, the[206]husband of her choice—raised, as she felt, from the dead—saved, too, from a death of lingering agony, of gradual, yes! loathsome, offensive decay, we may not dwell.Of their feelings, on an occasion so rare, so unique, in fact, as their reunion under uncommon, even improbable circumstances, only those who have experienced partings—absences—even remotely resembling them, may faintly conceive: the almost incredible change from the dark despair, which invaded every waking moment, which robbed sleep of its healing power—all existence of its zest and flavour, while only the faintest glimmer of hope appeared in life’s dungeon to warn off the man from suicide, the woman from that negative existence which would have invited the fell disease among the victims of which she ministered daily, nightly. How many instances had she witnessed among the early workers of the goldfields! Some were unsuccessful at the first onset. Fortune eluded them. Hope deserted the unstable worker—the impoverished wife: the next stage was a pallet in the crowded hospital, all too soon to be followed by the requiem dirge and the funeral train. The environment was depressing, but, encircled by sickness, oft-times alone with death at the midnight hour, no terrors ever caused Elinor Lilburne to swerve for one moment from the undoubting faith of her youth, or to shake her trust in God. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,’ had been a light to her path. And now the Supreme Ruler of events had manifested His loving mercy, in redeeming both[207]body and soul, and preserving husband and wife for a newer Eden, and the enjoyment of their immortal love.At the first discussion of ways and means, Lilburne was in favour of at once returning to England, of taking up their old life among friends and relatives. Somewhat to his surprise his wife gently, but no less firmly, dissented from the plan.‘No, Alister,’ she said; ‘it would be ungrateful, ungenerous even, to quit hurriedly a spot where I have been sheltered, welcomed, and provided for; where I have found friends in the hour of need, nobly sympathetic in their treatment of a stranger. Nowhere could I have met with greater kindness, or assistance more delicately offered.’‘But surely a mining camp, as I understand this Pilot Mount, or whatever it is called, must necessarily be a rude, uncivilised place.’‘You must not say that, Alister, unless you wish to hurt my feelings. In the first place, it is now a city, with a population of sixty thousand people, employed in mines which have paid a million and a half sterling in dividends within the last few years—besides having as inhabitants a larger proportion of high-minded, accomplished, and, in a sense, distinguished people, than many places in the old country, of greater size and apparent importance.’Her husband took her hand, and smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed!’ he answered, ‘I was not aware that I was on delicate ground. I ought to have made allowance for colonial experience. Isn’t that what they call it? And they must have been[208]people of superior merit, to have appreciated my darling during the years of exile. I feel impatient to make their acquaintance.’‘It will not be difficult to do that; only you mustn’t run away with the idea that the inhabitants are all alike, and have no degrees of social rank. However, you will see when we arrive. I should not be surprised if you found goldfields life less disagreeable than you expected.’‘But you don’t ask me to stay there?’‘You shall do exactly as you wish. Have I not always been an obedient wife? But I wish to make you acquainted with a strange and unfamiliar phase of colonisation, closely bearing on the well-being of the Empire, about which I know you are an enthusiast.’‘It is an order—as they say in India. When shall we start?’‘Not before next week. I am not going to hurry you off. I have a fortnight’s leave of absence, which we must spend at Perth Water. Then I return to my post, to leave everything in order, and say good-bye to my patients. Dear souls! what should I have done without them—or some of them withoutme—I am proud to say.’.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .When it was bruited abroad throughout Pilot Mount, and to the West Australian world at large, that Nurse Lilburne had gone to Perth to meet her husband—hadindeed met him on the incomingCarl Schiller, and was returning to resume her position at the Pilot Mount hospital,—also, after putting everything straight, to give up her[209]appointment, and probably ‘go home,’ great was the excitement, general the regrets, sincere indeed the sorrow which was openly displayed by her more intimate friends and fellow-workers. Never would they get such another Matron—so wise, so tender, yet so firm, and clever too as an organiser. She had redeemed their hospital from comparative confusion and chaos; now it was as well managed as any of the metropolitan ones. The Health Officer, the Inspector General, the great doctor M‘Diarmid,every one, had said so. And now, when it was the pride and joy of ‘the field,’ here was her husband turning up from nobody knew where, and, of course, to take her away with him. It was most discouraging.As for the local press—a journalistic flood of wonder and admiration, congratulation and grief, poured over the bars and lodging-houses, the hotel parlours, the stores—the churches even, and flowed and surged, and eddied, throughout the wide regions of ‘the field’ and its dependencies. The name and fame of Nurse Lilburne, the modern revival of the ‘lady with the lamp,’ had spread far and wide. The fever-stricken miner, the inexperienced tourist, the youthful governess, the toil-encumbered matron, all owned to deep debts of gratitude, all joined in a chorus of congratulation and heartfelt thanksgiving. ‘Heaven had had mercy,’ said the devout. ‘It is the Lord’s doing.’ ‘First man ever I knowed to come back from wherehe’sbeen,’ said South Sea Jack.It had not generally transpired, nor had it been thought necessary to advertise the fact of his[210]detention at so evil-reputed a locality. It was generally supposed that pecuniary losses had resulted in his trying to redeem his fortunes in South America, whence he had now returned, having at length fallen upon a ‘bonanza’ in silver. The environments of the country not being favourable to the habitudes of a refined Englishwoman, it had been decided that she should make a home in Western Australia.She had formerly elected to take the work temporarily, as the member of a nursing sisterhood; and coming to Pilot Mount in the worst period of an epidemic of typhoid and pneumonia, she had accepted the position of Matron in the newly organised hospital, partly from motives of Christian charity, but chiefly as a means of allaying the torturing anxiety which afflicted every waking hour, and, at times, denied her even necessary sleep.When it was known, indeed promulgated by the press, that Nurse Lilburne, the devoted, the beloved, the Angel of the Lord (as the Cornish Wesleyans called her), had in the dark hours of fever watched by the bedside of so many a ‘Cousin Jack,’ and (as was believed) had restored the father or husband to the weeping wife and babes, the enthusiasm thus aroused seemed boundless, uncontrollable.That she should permanently leave ‘the field’ was too sorrowful for words—a public calamity, a disaster. Still, if man and wife had come together after years of separation, who would be mean enough to put their loss in the scale against the crowning joy of her happiness?[211]The situation was not new to them. Many a miner’s family, in humbler life, had gone through the same experience. How often had they clubbed together to help to build and furnish the modest cottage, in which the long-separated man and wife could again set up the altar of domestic life, and reinstate the household gods! But in this case it appeared to the leaders—the representative men of the city and the mining community—that an effort should be made to render the recognition of the benefits derived from Mrs. Lilburne’s devoted, unselfish labours, worthy of the great principle which she represented: of the invaluable services which she had rendered to all the classes of the community, ‘without fear, favour, or affection,’ making no distinction between rich and poor—the lowly and those of exalted station.

‘Theirlast prize,’ continued Hayston, ‘was a dreadful sight! Pah! I can hardly bear to think of it now.’ As he spoke, his face darkened, and a look of rage, concentrated, lurid, pitiless, passed over his features, transforming their whole expression into that of a demon—an avenging Azrael; his whole countenance suddenly passed from a state of smiling, even fascinating courtesy, to that of murderous wrath—deadly, implacable, consuming.

‘They paid the penalty?’ said Carteret.

‘Yes! They were triced up to the yard-arm—two and two—a trial was dispensed with—Uncle Sam having passed a special ordinance with regard to such cases. The sharks had gathered around after the first corpses were dropped. It was a calm: they were torn in pieces almost as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That the sea which had been crimsoned many a time with the blood of their innocent victims, should now be stained with their own, was only just retribution. Too merciful, of course; but we can’t go back to the methods of the Middle Ages—more’s[191]the pity! And now let us change the subject. “Land ho!” as an old captain of mine in the West Indies used to say when he heard the dinner bell.’

The melodious sound of a silver temple-gong announced the service of a meal as perfect in its way as anything arranged on salt water can be.

The wines, of the choicest French and Spanish vintages, were such as few ‘Amphitryons où l’on dîne’ have the privilege of presenting to a guest. The turtle soup would have tempted an alderman to change his religion. But once previously had Carteret tasted such Madeira as followed it. The fish, the prawn curry, the beautiful crested pigeons of the islands, guinea-fowls in size, pheasants in delicacy of flavour—without pursuing the detail, it may be assumed from Carteret’s testimony, then and afterwards, that a jury ofgourmetswould have been hard set to decide in favour of any naval competing function of the day. The dry champagne which followed the hock was of a known, accreditedcrû, but did not tempt Carteret to do more than reasonable justice to it. He had no intention of measuring strength of brain against his entertainer; more particularly with a vitally important stake on the cards. At a comparatively early hour he discussed with Hayston the more binding terms of the agreement, and argued them out, clause by clause, before they parted for the night. Not wholly satisfied with the propriety of concluding the affair after dinner, moderate as had been his potations, Carteret deferred the signing and sealing of the final instrument till[192]noon on the following day. Which was at once agreed to.

Captain Hayston, indeed, expressed his intention of sailing for foreign parts on the morrow. Thus, if all preliminaries were completed at mid-day, he would be free to lift anchor, and taking advantage of the breeze off the land would initiate action. Doubtless he had intelligence agents on whom he could rely—agents ‘steady of heart, and stout of hand’ as ever served king or minister, and who dared not play him false. When, therefore, theLeonorashook out her topsails and stood off the land, a point or two to the south of west, shaping a course for the crimson afterglow of the fading sunset, there were ten thousand of Carteret’s dollars in the double-handled casket of the slaver Leon Gonzales, late master of thePedro Torero—also in the private escritoire an order for five hundred pounds, payable on demand by the firm of Robert Towns and Co., Fort Street, Sydney, endorsed by Oppenheimer Brothers, of Suva, Fiji.

If the course was altered at midnight, and shaped to one which would bring them close to Molokai, where the eventful dash and relief expedition would be carried out, who was to be the wiser?

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

The night, for which they had watched for nearly a week, was almost a calm—but overclouded, and dark as a wolf’s throat. The proverbial hand, when held before the face, was invisible.

[193]TheLeonora, miles away at nightfall, had glided closer to the land and lay off and on. The dropping of an anchor near the forbidden shore would, of course, have aroused suspicion. The crew, with Bill Hicks at the steer oar, had been carefully chosen. The whale-boat, which, for reasons of his own, the Captain of theLeonoraalways had on board, was reliable on any sea, and against any of the winds of heaven. The crew was composed of Rotumah islanders, perhaps the best men—except those of Norfolk Island—in rough water or wild gale that the South Pacific breeds. They may have had a general idea of the nature of the service in which they were engaged, but were merely told that they were to pull quietly to the beach near a rocky point, where a post stood in the sand, with a small lantern attached to it. There they would see a man, wrapped in a cloak. As soon as the boat grounded, he would walk towards them. They were to run to meet him, lifting him carefully into the boat, as he had been ill. Then to pull their d—dest. Bill Hicks would see to that; and the quicker they got back to the brig the surer they would be of a tot of rum all round, and a pound of tobacco. But, if they valued their skins, they were not to come back without their passenger. It is not improbable that they were aware of the object and circumstances of the secret service.But—

Their’s not to make reply,Their’s but to do and die.

Their’s not to make reply,Their’s but to do and die.

Their’s not to make reply,Their’s but to do and die.

Their’s not to make reply,

Their’s but to do and die.

The crew of theLeonorahad, before now, been[194]in affairs where certain shipmates had lost the ‘number of their mess.’ Such experience was nothing new to them. ‘It was all in the day’s work’—one man came back safe and sound, the other ‘went to Davy Jones.’

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

Nothing could have been more propitious: the silent, moonless night; the sleeping ocean, dark, waveless—unillumined save by the phosphorescence caused by a leaping fish—the sombre surface in Stygian repose. TheLeonorahad approached the dread island long after dark, gradually getting closer by long ‘boards.’ For a while the low rhythmic murmur of the unresting surge was the only sound which broke the strange silence, almost oppressive in its completeness. Then, as the boat left the ship’s side noiselessly, and, rowed with muffled oars, approached the shallows of the beach, a weird confused lament, as of wails, moans, and cries of pain, rose through the murky air. Such was the outcome of periodical seizures, with torturing, lancinating pains, which, towards the later hours of the night, occur with dreadful regularity in advanced or hopeless cases. As they increased in distinctness one might have observed a movement as of shuddering fear among the crew, who peered eagerly through the gloom, beyond which lay the dim white beach, with a fringe of plumy palms beyond. Straining his eyes, the quartermaster in the bow observed dark forms wandering, as it appeared to him, along the seashore. Their gait was slow and faltering; with weak, tremulous steps they seemed as though[195]doubtful of their ability to reach the point from which to survey the ocean—to look, if better was not to be had, upon the highway to freedom, and that outer world, from which they had been severed once and for ever. They might well have passed for a company of gibbering ghosts on the bank of that dark Lethean stream where earthly joys and sorrows cease.

As the strange band neared the shore, the cries, the moaning, unintelligible chorus seemed to deepen in intensity, and once a scream as of agony unendurable rent the air.

‘Hell’s gate open now, I guess,’ said Hicks; ‘and these are Old Nick’s beach-combers sent to say, “How’d yer like to come to this afore yer time’s up?”’ Here his voice altered at once. ‘Look out, you Maori Jack! here’s our passenger.’

As he spoke, a tall man in a cloak dashed into the sea, and rushed towards the boat, wading above the waist, and holding up his arms beseechingly, while at the same time several of the others made as though to prevent him leaving their party. With a hoarse cry the Maori seized him, and almost lifting him up, dragged him into the boat, while the bow oar descended on the skull of the leading pursuer, who fell back, recovering himself with difficulty. There was no further attempt at capture. ‘Give way, men!’ shouted Hicks; ‘pull for the brig as if she was an eighty-barrel whale.’

The strange passenger sank down as if exhausted, and made no remark or gesture. As the boat foamed up to theLeonora’sside, a[196]rope-ladder was let down, up which he—helped by the Maori’s strong grasp—climbed in safety. Once on the deck, he seemed to revive, and commenced to thank the Captain effusively. But he declined converse. ‘You will find refreshment in your cabin, señor! The steward will direct you. It will be better to defer explanations until the morning. Manuel’ (this to the mulatto), ‘see that this gentleman has all that he requires for the night. Adios!’

‘Adios, indeed!’ thought the passenger, who had seen strange things in strange countries, and had picked up Spanish in his wanderings. ‘I feel bewildered for the present; I must clear my brain with sleep, if possible; I have had little enough for the last fortnight.’

The breeze off the land by this time had slightly freshened. Sail was made ‘alow and aloft,’ and as the wavelets commenced to strike and fall off from her bows with increasing volume, the gracefulLeonoraswept smoothly yet rapidly on her course, at a rate of speed which, if there had been pursuit, gave little chance of her being overhauled.

What an awakening it was for Alister Lilburne when, after a night of soundest sleep, he realised that he was many a league from that Isle of the Lost!—was again free, safe, unhampered by rules and hateful regulations such as are found necessary for semi-penal communities.

The morning breeze, the roseate dawnlight, the lapping wave which kissed his cabin-side, the sea-birds’ cry,—all these were separate and distinct[197]joys and sensations which he recognised with a thankfulness too deep for words. When the Japanese steward shortly afterwards, bowing with Oriental humility, proposed to conduct him to a bath-room, and, at the same time, displayed a complete Spanish military uniform, he began to feel once more a resemblance to the man that he used to be, as also a newborn desire to learn how and by whom this change in his affairs had been brought about. Change? Yes! the change from a living grave—a hopeless, despairing existence—doomed to vegetate on the accursed isle till death released him from a state of mental torture all but unendurable. Weekly to witness the long-hoped-for, prayed-for opening of the prison gate for a fellow-victim. But only by the warder Death, or through a merciful alternative—the utter dethronement of reason.

The purifying process complete, and the costume of the hidalgo donned, from which not even the sombrero, with sweeping feather, was absent, his island garments were made into a bundle, loaded with a ringbolt, and cast into the deep. His attendant then informed him that the Captain hoped to have the pleasure of meeting Don Carlos Alvarez at breakfast, at his convenience. Feeling partly like an actor in private theatricals, partly like a man in a dream, he followed Manuel to the smaller cuddy, where fruit and coffee, with a most appetising breakfast, were already set forth.

‘I have the honour to salute Don Carlos Alvarez, who has joined my vessel at Santa Cruz[198]and desires a passage to Norfolk Island. Is it not so?’ said the Captain, speaking in Spanish, with formal and impressive courtesy.

‘A vuestro disposición, Señor Capitan!’ answered the passenger in the same language. And, indeed, as he surveyed himself in one of the mirrors which, in massive silver frames, ornamented the apartment, he found it difficult to believe that he was not the haughty hidalgo with whom the tales of the Spanish main had made all students familiar.

‘I have to thank you,’ he continued, still speaking in more or less pure Castilian, ‘for my life—for the recovery of my liberty, and all things that men hold most dear. Believe me, I await only the time when I may translate my feelings into deeds, to prove them true. But I would further beg you to add to my obligation, heavy as it is, the reasons for your thus interesting yourself in the affairs of a stranger.’

‘That we have not met before, I am aware,’ answered Hayston. ‘My action is not wholly disinterested, you may probably guess; still, a man’s friends may intervene in his affairs—and to some purpose.’

‘Friends!’ said the stranger. ‘How many is an outcast likely to have—outcast of God and man—may He pardon me for the thought!—in that Gehenna from which your skill and courage have rescued me? And if there be, by a miracle, so much as one left to him, who once had many, what power can he have had?’

‘The power of the golden key,’ said the[199]sea-rover, looking around, as he spoke, upon wave and sky, as the freshening breeze sent the gay bark on her course with increased speed. ‘With a magic force in the background, weather like this, and such a water-witch as theLeonoraunder his foot, why should you, should any man, despair? Exile, sickness, wounds—losses, shipwreck, imprisonment,—everything but the rope or the axe, which ends all things, have fallen to my lot. But I never lowered my flag, and see where it flaunts in the breeze now! Bah! the Spaniard’s solace is the guitar; I must send for mine, and sing you one of my favourites,’ and here he trolled out the opening verse of ‘Yo soy contrabandista!’ ‘Gad! how the muleteers and smugglers of the Pyrenees used to dance and yell to the music! The very thought makes me young again.’ Here he sprang forward, raising his lofty head with a gesture of defiance, as if claiming to be the master of his own destiny, and daring a world in arms to subdue his will or shape his course in life. His eyes glowed with the light of battle—his upper lip curved in scorn—his vast frame seemed to grow in form and stature, as he stood there, towering above his companion, and presenting the contrast of a mediæval mail-clad knight alike to squire and pages as to the leathern-jerkined yeomen of the ranks.

The passenger looked on him with eyes of admiration, as he stood, grand in the possession of unmatched strength—flushed with the triumph of successful enterprise, and glorying in his daring—the daring which had, so many a time and oft,[200]carried him through perils and desperate encounters, to which this last one was but child’s play.

‘And now,’ said Hayston, taking the passenger’s arm, ‘let us walk the deck, while I tell you how I became possessed of your history, and was persuaded to mix myself up in your affairs. Can you call to memory the name of a friend who would be likely to be reckless of money and time spent in effecting your release?’

‘Of course—there is Lytton Carteret—my wife’s cousin—sincerely attached to her, and an early friend of mine—but I have not heard of him for years. He was said to have been travelling in the East.’

‘That is so. He informed me that he had nearly reached Lhassa, but had been turned back by a guard of Thibetan soldiers.’

‘Then he has returned? And where is he now?’

‘He is awaiting the return of the brigLeonoraat Apia harbour, where he hopes to meet Don Alvarez—now on his travels in the South Pacific.’

‘Then he knows of my having left——?’

‘Nukuheva, let us say—rather a fashionable resort just now—Lord Pembroke and a friend were staying there for some months lately.’

‘A light breaks in on me. Of course I could hear nothing in that inferno, out of the world and the world’s life. Do I guess aright that it was he that——?’

‘Yes! Señor Alvarez; it was he that engineered this littlecoupof ours. He had made[201]apasearto Easter Island, where he happened on William H. Hayston, master mariner—whom he met once at the Hokianga, New Zealand—and it came into his head that he might take a hand in this deal. Dollars, of course, were necessary, and he planked down handsomely. Made money in some place in West Australia, I think.’

‘But, Captain Hayston, it is myrightto pay everything which this affair has cost. I shall have funds when I arrive in England. My credit, indeed, is good at this moment in Lombard Street—I insist——’

‘In this charter party, I only know Lytton Carteret, and must decline to mix up business with Señor Carlos Alvarez, or any friend or relative. It can be settled with him only after I fulfil my contract; but, until then, I must decline—much as it grieves me—to consider you in any other capacity than as mypassenger. From that time forward we shall be friends, I trust?’

‘Have it your own way, Captain Hayston,’ said Lilburne, inwardly smiling at the idea of the buccaneer, as he was often held to be, being scrupulous about extra payment for service rendered. ‘In all other respects I shall always regard you as a friend in need, to be trusted in fair weather or foul, to my life’s end.’ Here he grasped the Captain’s sinewy hand, and shook it with a fervour commensurate with the importance of the occasion.

‘Buon amigo—malo adversario,’ replied Hayston. ‘We shall be unlikely to meet again; though, but for hard luck, and the mystery of fate, you and I, and your friend—a man whom I[202]honour and respect from the bottom of my heart—might have been comrades to our lives’ end.’

‘And why not now? Surely it is not too late—why not change your career? Why not uproot the ties and habits of early youth—atone for the mistakes—crimes, if you will—of a reckless manhood?—retrace the downward path—repent in sackcloth and ashes—a white sheet, if you like.’

‘Fancy “Bully” Hayston in a white sheet!’ The absurdity of the situation seemed to strike him, and he laughed till the tears came into his eyes. ‘No,’ and a sad, stern look came over his changeful brow—‘what says Byron, whom I used to read in my youth?

‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.But still we love even in our rage,And haunted to our very ageWith the vain shadow of the past,As is Mazeppa to the last!’

‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.But still we love even in our rage,And haunted to our very ageWith the vain shadow of the past,As is Mazeppa to the last!’

‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.But still we love even in our rage,And haunted to our very ageWith the vain shadow of the past,As is Mazeppa to the last!’

‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.

But still we love even in our rage,

And haunted to our very age

With the vain shadow of the past,

As is Mazeppa to the last!’

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

Once more the course was changed—another forty-eight hours would bring theLeonorato Apia harbour. Here the erstwhile Spanish Don would be landed. The identification of Alister Lilburne with the Spanish-speaking, Spanish-garmented Alvarez would be difficult, if not impossible.

All that the crew—discreet of their kind—knew, or could testify to, was, that a Spanish-speaking individual had been on board their vessel for a few weeks, and had left them at Norfolk Island. They had heard that he had come from Sydney, and was going back as soon as he could get a ship. Had he come from Molokai? They did not know.[203]In fact, the four Rotumah men had been carefully prevented from showing themselves on shore, and the rest of the crew had beenadvisedby Bill Hicks to recognise no one, and to notice nothing outside of the ordinary cruise of their voyage. They had shipped a cargo of copra at Ponapé, and declined to answer any questions save such as related to island produce.

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

Carteret was always reticent as to the route by which he and Lilburne made their way to West Australia—landing at Albany from a German cargo-boat, and parting at Perth. It was discovered after Lilburne had been on board theLeonora, that the white mark, more or less circular, on account of which he might so easily have lost his life, as well as his liberty, had no more to do with leprosy than with scarlet fever. It was simply the remains of a cicatrice, resulting from an Arab spear-wound received in one of his desert wanderings in early life. The skin had contracted, after the healing process was complete, and, as often happens, had lost its original colour and shape. Hayston himself—who had taken a medical course in his University days, and was no mean practitioner in the department of wounds, and surgical matters generally—after a minute examination pronounced it to be free from the remotest likeness to the earlier stages of the disease. Not satisfied with this, he called a quartermaster, who had lived on every island in the South Pacific, and had acquired a reputation as a successful medicine-man among the sailors and beach-combers.

[204]‘Take a look at Don Carlos Alvarez here, Ben!’ said Hayston. ‘What d’ye make of it? Any Molokai business about it?’

‘No more than there is about this, Captain!’—pointing to a scar upon his brawny chest, right in the centre of a tattooed mermaid’s bosom, that marine enchantress being represented as smiling seductively upon a shipwrecked mariner. ‘That was a touch I got at the Navigators, when the natives nearly cut us off—a close thing it was, Captain. But it healed up wonderful—and there it is—white enough too. I suppose those cranks at Tahiti would have boxed me up with the other poor devils if I hadn’t taken French leave—in a native canoe. But I gave ’em leg-bail for it, and here I am to-day, as sound as a roach, and as good an A.B. as there is in the fleet.’

‘That will do, Ben, I am satisfied; you have been two years in theLeonora, so your case is proved, at any rate. The fact is, señor, that there was such a scare about the disease when first the native Councils at Honolulu began to legislate, that they went to the other extreme in suspected cases; thinking it better that a few should be wrongfully imprisoned than that infection should run riot over the whole island. To this day, however, medical men are not agreed on the subject of contagion.’

Of course Mrs. Lilburne had been advised by letter from time to time of the possibility of her husband’s release. What such hope and expectation meant to these hardly entreated lovers may be imagined. In her case, she was supported by[205]an unshaken faith in the goodness of God. The belief in which she had been reared had for years furnished her with support and consolation, even in a state of exile, loneliness, and comparative poverty. Was it for her to doubt that He would make a way for her to escape from that lamentable position, when it pleased Him to put a period to her misery? If she was wretched, lonely, forsaken, placed by fate among the sick and the dying, was it for her to repine—to despair? Day by day she saw the strong perish before her eyes—the young and fair—the hopeful and the indifferent. The terrible fever of camps and crowds spared neither age nor sex. Who was she, that she should be specially protected? Rather ought she to be thankful that she was in a position to help the helpless, to succour the dying, to cheer the terrified soul, on the verge of ‘the undiscovered country,’ with the vision of a serene and glorified hereafter.

So she possessed her soul in patience, finding in unrelaxing, even more zealous devotion to her duties that relief from painful thought which ever accompanies conscientious adherence to duty. In vain her friends adjured her not to neglect her own health. She persisted in ‘working herself to death,’ as they averred, to the last day—when she went off, carrying the blessings and prayers of the whole community with her. The German boat would be at Perth on an appointed day, when she trusted to coach and train service to enable her to meet her long-lost, despaired-of husband. Over his transports, her tears and sobs of joy when she rushed into the arms of the lover of her youth, the[206]husband of her choice—raised, as she felt, from the dead—saved, too, from a death of lingering agony, of gradual, yes! loathsome, offensive decay, we may not dwell.

Of their feelings, on an occasion so rare, so unique, in fact, as their reunion under uncommon, even improbable circumstances, only those who have experienced partings—absences—even remotely resembling them, may faintly conceive: the almost incredible change from the dark despair, which invaded every waking moment, which robbed sleep of its healing power—all existence of its zest and flavour, while only the faintest glimmer of hope appeared in life’s dungeon to warn off the man from suicide, the woman from that negative existence which would have invited the fell disease among the victims of which she ministered daily, nightly. How many instances had she witnessed among the early workers of the goldfields! Some were unsuccessful at the first onset. Fortune eluded them. Hope deserted the unstable worker—the impoverished wife: the next stage was a pallet in the crowded hospital, all too soon to be followed by the requiem dirge and the funeral train. The environment was depressing, but, encircled by sickness, oft-times alone with death at the midnight hour, no terrors ever caused Elinor Lilburne to swerve for one moment from the undoubting faith of her youth, or to shake her trust in God. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,’ had been a light to her path. And now the Supreme Ruler of events had manifested His loving mercy, in redeeming both[207]body and soul, and preserving husband and wife for a newer Eden, and the enjoyment of their immortal love.

At the first discussion of ways and means, Lilburne was in favour of at once returning to England, of taking up their old life among friends and relatives. Somewhat to his surprise his wife gently, but no less firmly, dissented from the plan.

‘No, Alister,’ she said; ‘it would be ungrateful, ungenerous even, to quit hurriedly a spot where I have been sheltered, welcomed, and provided for; where I have found friends in the hour of need, nobly sympathetic in their treatment of a stranger. Nowhere could I have met with greater kindness, or assistance more delicately offered.’

‘But surely a mining camp, as I understand this Pilot Mount, or whatever it is called, must necessarily be a rude, uncivilised place.’

‘You must not say that, Alister, unless you wish to hurt my feelings. In the first place, it is now a city, with a population of sixty thousand people, employed in mines which have paid a million and a half sterling in dividends within the last few years—besides having as inhabitants a larger proportion of high-minded, accomplished, and, in a sense, distinguished people, than many places in the old country, of greater size and apparent importance.’

Her husband took her hand, and smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed!’ he answered, ‘I was not aware that I was on delicate ground. I ought to have made allowance for colonial experience. Isn’t that what they call it? And they must have been[208]people of superior merit, to have appreciated my darling during the years of exile. I feel impatient to make their acquaintance.’

‘It will not be difficult to do that; only you mustn’t run away with the idea that the inhabitants are all alike, and have no degrees of social rank. However, you will see when we arrive. I should not be surprised if you found goldfields life less disagreeable than you expected.’

‘But you don’t ask me to stay there?’

‘You shall do exactly as you wish. Have I not always been an obedient wife? But I wish to make you acquainted with a strange and unfamiliar phase of colonisation, closely bearing on the well-being of the Empire, about which I know you are an enthusiast.’

‘It is an order—as they say in India. When shall we start?’

‘Not before next week. I am not going to hurry you off. I have a fortnight’s leave of absence, which we must spend at Perth Water. Then I return to my post, to leave everything in order, and say good-bye to my patients. Dear souls! what should I have done without them—or some of them withoutme—I am proud to say.’

.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .

When it was bruited abroad throughout Pilot Mount, and to the West Australian world at large, that Nurse Lilburne had gone to Perth to meet her husband—hadindeed met him on the incomingCarl Schiller, and was returning to resume her position at the Pilot Mount hospital,—also, after putting everything straight, to give up her[209]appointment, and probably ‘go home,’ great was the excitement, general the regrets, sincere indeed the sorrow which was openly displayed by her more intimate friends and fellow-workers. Never would they get such another Matron—so wise, so tender, yet so firm, and clever too as an organiser. She had redeemed their hospital from comparative confusion and chaos; now it was as well managed as any of the metropolitan ones. The Health Officer, the Inspector General, the great doctor M‘Diarmid,every one, had said so. And now, when it was the pride and joy of ‘the field,’ here was her husband turning up from nobody knew where, and, of course, to take her away with him. It was most discouraging.

As for the local press—a journalistic flood of wonder and admiration, congratulation and grief, poured over the bars and lodging-houses, the hotel parlours, the stores—the churches even, and flowed and surged, and eddied, throughout the wide regions of ‘the field’ and its dependencies. The name and fame of Nurse Lilburne, the modern revival of the ‘lady with the lamp,’ had spread far and wide. The fever-stricken miner, the inexperienced tourist, the youthful governess, the toil-encumbered matron, all owned to deep debts of gratitude, all joined in a chorus of congratulation and heartfelt thanksgiving. ‘Heaven had had mercy,’ said the devout. ‘It is the Lord’s doing.’ ‘First man ever I knowed to come back from wherehe’sbeen,’ said South Sea Jack.

It had not generally transpired, nor had it been thought necessary to advertise the fact of his[210]detention at so evil-reputed a locality. It was generally supposed that pecuniary losses had resulted in his trying to redeem his fortunes in South America, whence he had now returned, having at length fallen upon a ‘bonanza’ in silver. The environments of the country not being favourable to the habitudes of a refined Englishwoman, it had been decided that she should make a home in Western Australia.

She had formerly elected to take the work temporarily, as the member of a nursing sisterhood; and coming to Pilot Mount in the worst period of an epidemic of typhoid and pneumonia, she had accepted the position of Matron in the newly organised hospital, partly from motives of Christian charity, but chiefly as a means of allaying the torturing anxiety which afflicted every waking hour, and, at times, denied her even necessary sleep.

When it was known, indeed promulgated by the press, that Nurse Lilburne, the devoted, the beloved, the Angel of the Lord (as the Cornish Wesleyans called her), had in the dark hours of fever watched by the bedside of so many a ‘Cousin Jack,’ and (as was believed) had restored the father or husband to the weeping wife and babes, the enthusiasm thus aroused seemed boundless, uncontrollable.

That she should permanently leave ‘the field’ was too sorrowful for words—a public calamity, a disaster. Still, if man and wife had come together after years of separation, who would be mean enough to put their loss in the scale against the crowning joy of her happiness?

[211]The situation was not new to them. Many a miner’s family, in humbler life, had gone through the same experience. How often had they clubbed together to help to build and furnish the modest cottage, in which the long-separated man and wife could again set up the altar of domestic life, and reinstate the household gods! But in this case it appeared to the leaders—the representative men of the city and the mining community—that an effort should be made to render the recognition of the benefits derived from Mrs. Lilburne’s devoted, unselfish labours, worthy of the great principle which she represented: of the invaluable services which she had rendered to all the classes of the community, ‘without fear, favour, or affection,’ making no distinction between rich and poor—the lowly and those of exalted station.

Back to IndexNext