CHAPTER V.ON THE EVE.

'"'Twas whispered in 'eaven; 'twas muttered in 'ell'"—

and so he went on to the end. "Well," says he, "what is it?" "I give it up," says I. "The letter H," says he.'

'Did you ever see a funeral at sea, father?' inquired Miss Vanderholt, watching the ship ahead, that was growing larger and whiter.

'Scores, my blessing; much too many. We shipped a heavy cargo at Bombay, and amongst it was cholera. I can still hear, in that dead calm of twelve days, the recurrent, sullen plunge of the shotted corpse.'

'The worst of being buried is, that you don't know what they're saying about you,' said Captain Glew. 'That's true, whether ashore or whether at sea. As the corpse goes along in the car, it might like to know what sort of a following it had, how the people who'd been thought friends had turned out. Yet, I dare say,' he went on, 'that if a man could get up and listen a bit,and take a look round, he'd be glad to sneak back.'

'Yes; if he had to hear his will read in a room full of relations,' said Miss Violet.

'I have often thought this,' said Mr. Vanderholt: 'that a man who is a genius and famous should provide by his will for a quiet funeral; for, by doing so, he guards against the risk of neglect.'

This was a touch above Glew. Mr. Vanderholt rose, and went to the rail to knock out the ashes of his pipe into the sea. Miss Violet began to read, and the captain fell to walking the deck.

The ship ahead grew rapidly. It was first like the half of the crescent moon leaning and shining, then it swelled into cotton-white canvas and a green hull. But the sun ate up the wind at noon. The vessels were then two miles apart, and it was not until about three in the afternoon that they were wafted by cat's-paws within speaking distance. She was a little barque, dingy with long travel. Her copper was green. Her figure-head was a romantic imagination. It represented a nymph, with her black hair fairlyconcealing her shape, extending her arms in a posture of ecstasy at a large gilt star that was fixed within a foot or two of her hands. Her canvas shone like satin, and at her mizzen-peak end languidly swung the Stripes and Stars, a very large flag, looking brand-new. A number of men, some of them coloured, lay over the forecastle-rail, indolently watching theMowbray. The barque had a little poop, and upon it, with one foot resting on a hen-coop and one hand grasping a backstay, stood the most extraordinary figure Mr. Vanderholt had ever beheld.

It resembled a man dressed in what, in former ages, were known as petticoat-breeches. Their plenty made them look like a frock. Inspecting this figure through a binocular glass, Mr. Vanderholt perceived that the rest of its garb consisted of a white shirt, a silk handkerchief, tied in a sailor's knot under a wide turned-down collar, a braided jacket, blue, and a cap with a naval peak, much after the pattern that is worn by yachting men.

A short, square man stood at the wheel, that blazed in a brass circle to the sun, andbeside him stood another man, remarkable for nothing but a long goatlike beard, and a blue cap, tasselled, pointed, and overhanging, such as mutinous smacksmen wear in Italian opera.

'A queer ship's company!' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt to Glew. 'In all your going a-fishing did you ever see the like of such a sailor-man as that chap yonder in the trousers?'

Captain Glew's reply was arrested by a hail from the little barque.

'Ho!' shrilled the strange figure in breeches. 'The schooner ahoy! What schooner are you?'

'TheMowbray, of London, on a cruise. What ship are you?'

'TheWife's Hope, from Calcutta to New York! Eighty days out! Jute and linseed! We're short of sugar: can you loan me some?'

All this was delivered in the voice of a bantam-cock, delirious with continuous triumphant clarioning.

'TheWife's Hope,' said Mr. Vanderholt, turning to his daughter. 'Here's some Yankee notion.'

'If that figure's not a woman,' answered Violet, 'it does not speak with the voice of a man.'

After a brief consultation with Mr. Vanderholt, Captain Glew shouted:

'I think we can let you have some sugar—a cask of moist, and some lump, to help you along to the next ship. We'll carry it aboard for you.'

The figure in breeches flourished its hand in a gesture of delight, and then began to walk the short poop with superior stately strides, constantly directing glances at the yacht. TheMowbraycarried three good boats, and the boat amidships was the long-boat; this was promptly got over the side. They broke out a cask of moist sugar and a case of lump; and a crew having entered her, Mr. and Miss Vanderholt were steered by Mr. Tweed to theWife's Hopeover the glazed heave of the deep-blue afternoon swell.

Very hot it was. The sunshine tingled in the water, and the trembling fire rose roasting to the face.

'Do you think we shall be welcome,father?' said Miss Vanderholt, a little nervously.

'We are here to see the wonders of the deep,' answered Mr. Vanderholt, 'whether they welcome us or not; and yonder figure seems to me to be one of the greatest wonders in the world.'

'It is a woman, sir,' said Mr. Tweed.

'A female ship-master,' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'TheWife's Hope! It should be theHusband's Despair.'

Miss Violet was gazing at the receding shape of theMowbray. The schooner lightly leaned with the swell, darting glances of flame as she swayed. Tender, blue fingers of shadow, like an outstretched hand in front of the sun, overran her sails, and the swing of her canvas was a miracle of milk-white light and violet shade against the hot liquid blue of the afternoon sky.

'A vessel like that is like a horse,' said Violet: 'you want to pat her side, to whisper encouraging words to her, to thank her for the noble, sweeping pace she has carried you at. How little she looks, and how lonely!'

They were fast approaching the barque.The petticoat-trousered figure, seeing that company was coming, had ordered a ladder to be thrown over the side, and she—for a woman it was—stood in the open gangway to receive the visitors.

'Have you brought what we asked you for?' she cried, the strain in her voice lifting it to a shriek.

Tweed answered with one of those tumbling gesticulations—a peculiar drunken, rounding fall of the arm and dropping of the head—which with sailors stand for 'yes.'

'Jump aloft, a hand,' screamed the lady skipper, 'and make fast a whip to the yard-arm! I'll want that sugar carefully hoisted!'

The boat drove alongside, and Mr. and Miss Vanderholt ascended the short ladder. Now that they stood close, they found that by no possibility could her garb make a man of the captain, with her large fine eyes and delicate features, though sunburnt to deformity. She was a tall woman, with a lofty, commanding air, which was not to be neutralized by anything diverting in the suggestions of her apparel. She looked hard at Miss Violet, and ran her eyes over her dress;her sex spoke in that, spite of her cropped head and abundant breeks.

'I have brought a cask of moist sugar, and a case of broken lump,' said Mr. Vanderholt, lifting his hat; 'and, madam, if you are in command of this vessel, it gives me a very singular satisfaction to make your acquaintance.'

'Don't call me "madam," I beg, sir!' exclaimed the other, showing a white set of teeth in a cordial smile, full of spirit. 'I am Captain Lind.'

'Captain Lind, then,' said Mr. Vanderholt, again lifting his hat, whilst his eyes disappeared in a grin full of wrinkles.

'You are the owner of that yacht, I reckon?' said Captain Lind; and Miss Vanderholt noticed the American accent in the skipper's speech.

'Ay, captain, that's my yacht, and this is my daughter,' answered Vanderholt, continuing to grin with all his might, whilst he looked first at Captain Lind, and then aloft, and then along the decks.

'What do I owe you for that sugar?' said Captain Lind.

'Our visit fully discharges your obligations, captain. There is enough, maybe, to keep you sweet till you get more.'

'Well, I thank you,' said the lady skipper; 'and when I have seen that cask safely inboards, we'll go into the cabin and drink a cup of tea.'

Mr. Vanderholt pulled out his watch, then, hailing Glew, said that he and Miss Vanderholt would remain another half-hour on board the barque.

'Don't let the vessels slide far apart, Glew!' he roared. 'Tweed, whilst we're below keep a bright look-out on the weather.'

The mate of theMowbraytouched his cap.

Miss Vanderholt stared with amazement at Captain Lind. A woman in charge of a ship! A woman qualified to handle the complicated machinery of the gear and sails of a barque of no mean tonnage, as tonnage then went! Did the men obey her? Wasn't she afraid of her sailors? And Miss Violet turned to inspect the seamen who were getting the sugar aboard in the gangway, whilst others lay on the rail lazilystaring at theMowbrayfrom the forecastle-head. A rough lot they looked—rougher even than theMowbray'screw, by virtue, no doubt, of their apparel, which was showing very much like the end of a long voyage. They carried sheath-knives on their hips, straw hats or Scotch caps on their heads; their naked breasts disclosed the wool upon them through rents in the flying wide dungaree shirt. And a woman had command of these fellows, had held them obedient, and brought them and the ship in safety to that part of the ocean in which theMowbrayhad encountered them! Who had ever heard of such a thing? It was a fact worth going to sea to realize. 'How George will laugh and doubt when I tell him!' Miss Vanderholt thought, as she looked with wonder, deepening ever, at the amazing figure built up of petticoat-trousers and blue jacket, very plentifully braided.

When the sugar was on board, Captain Lind, calling to the man in the opera-cap, said:

'See that cask safely stowed. This is a chance that mightn't happen again 'twixthere and New York; and I tell you, mister,' said she, turning to Mr. Vanderholt, 'that I have missed the sugar in my cup of tea. I have a sweet tooth. Who is that gent?' she continued, looking at Mr. Tweed.

'He is the mate of my schooner,' answered Mr. Vanderholt.

'Then, see here, Mr. Prunes,' she cried, with a womanly yell that broadened Tweed's mouth from ear to ear; 'whilst we're at tea below, you'll see that this gentleman has some refreshment. He can ask for what he likes, and if we've got it, he can have it. Send the boy aft, Mr. Prunes.'

All this was addressed to the tasselled seaman who was apparently the mate of the ship.

Captain Lind then conducted Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter below into the cabin—a little interior, rude in comparison with theMowbray'scabin, yet comfortable and breezy with the panting of the heel of a windsail, as the swing of the barque swelled the mouth of the tube aloft. There were two little cabins aft, and two little cabins forward, anda little square table amidships. A small black boy arrived.

'Bring tea and biscuit, and tell Mr. Prunes to give you some lump sugar. Don't eat none. Now spring! Hurrah!'

The lad, with a grin, leapt up the ladder, and the soles of his naked feet glimmered like bars of yellow soap as he disappeared.

'I never heard before of a lady taking command of a ship,' said Mr. Vanderholt.

Captain Lind pulled her cap off, and disclosed a head of rich brown hair, cut short, and divided in the middle.

'Well,' she answered, stretching forth her hand as an invitation to Miss Violet to seat herself, 'I'm not what is called in your country a lady. I'm just a plain Amurrican woman. Of course you've never heard of such a thing as a woman in charge of a ship. Are you an Englishman, sir?'

'Why, yes. My name is foreign—Vanderholt; but I am an Englishman.'

'Names don't signify now in the nationalities of folks,' exclaimed Captain Lind, smiling at Miss Violet. 'Look at Amurrica.They're coming fast, and when they settle they call themselves Amurricans. I can tell you, sir, there are very few Amurricans in Amurrica. Who's the Amurrican of to-day? Is he Mr. O'Brien, or is he Herr Von Dunks?'

'You asked me if I was an Englishman,' said Mr. Vanderholt, who was greatly entertained by the singular figure this strange, fine, original woman presented, as she sat at table, talking, and waiting for a cup of tea.

'Yes; because if you're an Englishman you'll be a century astern of us in Amurrica. We had to show you the road in nearly everything of consequence. We gave you steam,' said the lady, coolly making way for the negro boy, who just then arrived with tea—a japanned tray with an old silver teapot upon it and a bowl of broken lump sugar.

The captain instantly put one of these lumps into her mouth, and continued to talk and suck while she poured out the milkless tea, and shoved a plate of white biscuit towards Miss Vanderholt.

'We gave you steam, sir, and electricity. We taught you ship-building; for, until the Amurricans began to build, shapeliness and speed weren't known to the world. We offer you the double topsail. You'll take twenty years to consider it,' she said, leaning back in her chair with a sneer, while she lifted her saucer and teacup and began to sip in a ladylike way.

'I had no idea that we were so much in your debt,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'But I tell you what: if you can induce the ladies of Great Britain to study navigation, and take charge of ships, after the example you are setting, there are a great many husbands who will be everlastingly obliged to you for indicating a new source of income for the family, and a sure chance for peace at home.'

'You don't reckon, p'r'aps, that we Amurricans gave you electricity?' said the lady skipper, who seemed to find something suspicious in Mr. Vanderholt's answer. 'Who flew the kite? Who brought fire from the skies so that a man might know what to do with it?'

Vanderholt, holding his countenance behind his beard, respectfully bowed and sipped at his cup.

'Are there other female captains like yourself in your country?' asked Miss Vanderholt.

'Two,' she answered; 'there may be more. I'm a third, certainly. Stop till I spin the yarn. My father was a sea-captain, and when I was a girl carried me with him on several voyages. My husband was the master of a ship, and I always went to sea with him, and could discharge his duties as well as he, and sometimes better. He died, and left me a childless widow. But I was not poor. What with my father, and my husband, and here and there a legacy, I had got to own a few thousand dollars, which I didn't quite know what to do with, for I couldn't get value enough out of the money to live upon.'

Mr. Vanderholt pricked up his ears. Any reference to dollars and interest engaged him. He listened, and forgot he was at sea.

'Till one day,' continued Captain Lind, 'being at New York—I wasn't then living inthat city—I happened to pick up theNew York Hatchet, and, after reading it a bit, came across this passage——'

She left the table and entered an after-berth. Mr. Vanderholt exchanged looks with his daughter. Captain Lind returned, holding an old newspaper. She seated herself, and, popping another lump of sugar into her mouth, sucked, with a grave face, whilst she opened the paper. Then, when the sugar was gone, she read aloud:

'"Mrs. Sarah Davis, of New York, has just brilliantly passed her examination for a certificate as shipmaster and pilot, and, on receiving her certificate, will, it is announced, take the command of the yachtEmerald. This lady is, it is said, not the first of her sex who has been in command of a vessel. Mrs. Mary Miller, of New Orleans, obtained a master's certificate a few years ago, and is now captain of the full-rigged merchant-shipSaline."

'When I read this, an idea came into my head, and I wasn't long in making up my mind. There's no obligation in my country to take out a master's certificate, any morethan there is in yourn; but I was determined to let 'm know I was fit to command a ship, and I presented myself, and received some handsome compliments on a quality of all-round knowledge sights in excess of what the average captain carries to the ocean with him. This is my third voyage in theWife's Hope.'

'Why theWife's Hope?' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'You told me you were a widow.'

'I named her theWife's Hope,' answered Captain Lind, 'that she might encourage married women cussed with drinking, loafing, idling, gambling, worthless husbands, to direct their attention to a noble pursuit which would carry them leagues clear of the troubles of home, put money in their pockets, enable them to see the world and life, and help them,' said she, putting another lump of sugar into her mouth, 'to acquire that spirit of independence without which woman must always be meaner than the plantation slave, and her case a gone sight more hopeless.'

This little speech was delivered with somedignity. Mr. Vanderholt was impressed, and ran his eyes over her figure, and looked at her face with a countenance of earnest respect. The sugar in her mouth did not impair the stateliness of her manner and utterance.

'It would be more respectable and quiet than a divorce,' the captain went on. 'You'd find no bad husband going to sea with his wife. The cuss wouldn't have the liver for it.'

'The star of your figure-head,' said Miss Violet, 'I suppose, is the art of seamanship, and the figure stretching her hand towards it symbolizes woman rapturously greeting a new calling?'

'You've hit it down to the heels,' answered Captain Lind. 'It was my notion. Quite a pome, ain't it? Were you pleased with it as you came along?'

'We were delighted,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'I said to my daughter, or, if I did not say it, it was in my mind to speak it, "There is in that barque a strong original genius." America should distinguish you, captain.'

The captain bowed and smiled, and pushed the sugar-bowl away, that she might not be tempted by its contents.

'Aren't you afraid of your sailors?' asked Miss Vanderholt.

'Afraid!' echoed the captain, bridling. 'What is there in sailors to be afraid of? I have revolvers, and I know how to load and shoot, and I should no more hesitate to send a ball through a mutinous seaman's nut than put one of them lumps into my mouth. Don't you ever be afraid of any man, miss. Why man bosses woman's jest a question of muscle. My crew soon learnt the art of jumping to the music of my voice. I'm a little shrill—don't reckon that I sink my sex in these clothes—and it may be that sailors, being accustomed mainly to voices deep with drink and hollow with vice, run the more nimbly for being called to in their mother's tender notes. Will you have a cigar, sir?'

And, without awaiting Mr. Vanderholt's reply, she entered a cabin, and, after a short absence, returned with a box of cigars, a couple of loaded revolvers, and two long, dangerous knives.

'They need no better discipline whenever it comes to it,' said she, helping herself to another lump of sugar. 'Take a cigar, sir?'

Meanwhile, on deck the mate of theMowbrayconversed with the mate of theWife's Hope. Mr. Tweed had asked for no other refreshment than a glass of rum and cold water. He stood sucking a pipe in the gangway, ready for the appearance of Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter on deck, and beside him was Mr. Prunes. The first dog-watch had begun; it had seemed, however, to Mr. Tweed that it was all dog-watch with the crew of theWife's Hope; they only appeared to lounge a little more now that one of them had struck eight times on the forecastle bell. The sun was still high, but his splendour was deepening, and the lights which sparkled about the decks of the barque and in her sides were rich; she floated in the silence upon the dark-blue sea, with the whole lazy spirit of the hour in the sleepy droop of her canvas and the indolent roll of her hull.

'That's a fine schooner of yourn,' said Mr. Prunes to Mr. Tweed. 'It's likehaving the Wight aboard to see her. Bound to the Equator, eh? And what are you going to load there?'

He pulled his long goatee, with a laugh that struck a shudder through his cap.

'This seems a pretty comfortable old barkey,' said Tweed, slowly looking round him. 'Eighty days in finding your way here? Well, yer might have done worse,' he added, with a look aloft. 'Doomed if I could keep my face when I saw your skipper! It isn't that all that's becoming in a female don't unite in her; it's her sex that makes me laugh.'

'I shall be blamed glad when the voyage is ended,' said Prunes, pulling off his cap, and wiping his forehead with it; and now Mr. Tweed was not a little astonished to remark that this seaman wore his hair in a net. 'I signed more for a lark than for a berth. They told me that theWife's Hopewas in want of a chief mate. She was in Calcutta, and I hadn't been long out of 'orspital. I knew she was commanded by a woman, and reckoned upon being treated as captain, in fact, thoughshemight call herselfthe old man. Never was a chap more mistaken. If she hasn't held her own as master of this vessel from the moment the pilot left us, I'll swallow that pipe.'

'D'ye tell me she understands all about the manœuvring of a ship?' said Tweed.

'There's no man out of the Thames or Mersey who's got a trick above her, blow high, blow low, bet all you're a-going to take up!' exclaimed Prunes. 'See her put this craft about! It's yachting for nice discernment. I never knew any master keep his weather-eye lifting as this female do. She can smell what's coming along. She's reefed down when the sky's been blue as it is, all hands have been growling and laughing at her, and a quarter of an hour later the barque's been on her beam-ends, and the sea just one yell o' froth!'

'Doomed if it 'ud be a believable thing, if it couldn't be seen,' said Tweed. 'What made t'other mate leave the ship?'

'The same as'll make me glad to get to New York,' answered Mr. Prunes, putting on his cap, and caressing the tassel, whilst his eyes met in a squint of earnestness in thegrog-flowered countenance of Mr. Tweed. He paused, and seemed to reflect.

'What is it?' said Mr. Tweed.

Mr. Prunes began to nod at him, and then said in a low, confidential voice, and a glance aft at the companion-hatch:

'She's in want of that sort of mate which ashore they calls a husband.'

'Ha!' said Mr. Tweed; 'and it drove the other chap out of a good berth?'

'Well, there was a many quarrels, I believe, afore they got to Calcutta. Thinking that I might stand the better with her, seeing that I'm middling young, and that the sea hasn't robbed me of all that I owe to my mother, who was the handsomest woman in Shadwell, I kept dark about my 'ome, and to this bloomed hour she don't know that I've got a wife and three young uns awaiting my return in the little house I left 'em in at Stepney.'

'I'd up and tell her the truth, if I were you,' said Tweed.

A gleam of cunning twinkled in Mr. Prunes's eyes.

'I've been pretty comfortable for eightydays,' said he, 'under an error. There's no call now to correct it, seeing that the end of the voyage isn't fur off.'

Whilst he spoke, Captain Lind and Mr. and Miss Vanderholt were coming on deck. The captain sang out in a shrill, bantam-like voice, that caused Prunes to glance somewhat sheepishly at Tweed:

'The lady and gentleman are going aboard their schooner! See their boat all ready!'

Then, springing on to the rail with wonderful activity, she hailed theMowbray, and asked Captain Glew for his latitude and longitude. This she received, and entered upon a piece of paper with a face of triumph. Then, turning to Mr. Vanderholt, she exclaimed:

'See here, sir! A mile out, and the error may be his.'

'I am lost in admiration, I assure you,' said Vanderholt. 'I would rather have met this barque than theFlying Dutchman. It will be far more interesting to me to talk about than an apparition. It is really, captain, an extraordinary departure! I wish you prosperity, I am sure, ma'am.'

He bowed low. The captain of theWife's Hopethen shook hands cordially with Miss Vanderholt. Tweed got into the boat, and the party returned to theMowbray. Just before sunset a breeze came right along the red, shortening shaft of glory, as though it blew out of the sun. Both vessels immediately trimmed for their respective courses, and in an hour's time theWife's Hopehad vanished in the starlit dusk of the evening.

It was five days later, and in that time theMowbrayhad drawn four hundred miles closer to the Equator, still leaving a wide expanse of water to be measured. The weather had been of a constant tropic beauty. The heave of the Atlantic swell had the wide and solemn indolence of the South Pacific fold.

Mr. Vanderholt's face was crimson with the sea. He certainly looked extremely well; so, too, did his daughter. The sun had caught her, spite of a diligent use of her parasol and swift flights from his scorching eye to the shelter of the awning. It had delicately spangled the fair flesh of her face with some golden freckles, which somehow gave an archness to her looks, and a whiterflash to her teeth, when the play of her lips exposed them.

This fifth day following the meeting with theWife's Hopehad glowed through a cloudless splendour of sky into a glorious sunset, and a promise of cool heavens, full of rich stars, with the Southern Cross—

'Memorial reverenced by a thousand storms'—

low down over the jib-boom end.

Mr. Vanderholt came on deck when the sun was gone, though all the west was swimming in the fast waning crimson. A number of stars sparkled in the east. Mr. Vanderholt looked at them with delight, for they reminded him of the twinkling of the sky in windy summer trees.

A pleasant air of wind was blowing. Now that the sun was gone, the breeze seemed to fan over the bulwark-rail with the fragrance of a land of flowers. It was a sweetness that made you think of the Arabian gale of the poet, but the African land was leagues and leagues distant, and that sweet breath, therefore, was old Ocean's own.

The schooner, with every stitch upon her, saving the foretopmast studding-sail, to the setting of which Mr. Vanderholt had an objection, glided through the gathering dusk to the music of broken waters. Miss Vanderholt sat in the cabin, under the lamp. She was reading, and appeared to be interested. Mr. Vanderholt filled his pipe from a pouch whose size corresponded with the bowl it was to feed, and whilst he did this he looked about him.

Glew stood between him and the lingering scarlet, and his body, black as indigo, rose and fell. What was the matter? It seemed to Mr. Vanderholt that an unnatural stillness was in the little vessel. He still preserved the forecastle faculties, and carried the eye, whilst he could bend the ear, of a sailor. Eight bells had been struck. The second dog-watch was therefore over. The watch below would, or would not, have gone to bed.

All this Mr. Vanderholt knew; but so bright, flushed, and sweet a night, after the roasting and blinding glories of the day, might well prove a temptation to the handswhose turn it was to take rest till midnight to linger to converse and suck out yet another pipe of tobacco.

But the silence forward was so deep that Vanderholt, hearkening with his forefinger pressed upon his bowl of unlighted tobacco, thought it ominous. At intervals somebody away in the bows would speak. The voice was a growl, and it would be answered by a growl, and it seemed to the owner of theMowbraythat, whoever it might be that broke the silence in his little ship, made utterance with the throat of a sleeping mastiff.

Mr. Vanderholt lighted his pipe, seated himself, and called to Captain Glew, who immediately crossed the deck.

'The men seem very quiet, Glew.'

'And a good job too, sir. This is a yacht, and we've got a lady aboard.'

'Ay, ay, man, that's so. But, yacht or no yacht, lady or no lady, surely I'm the last man to be opposed to a little harmless dog-watch jollity whenever my sailors have a mind to it.'

The man at the helm was not far off, and Vanderholt spoke low.

'They're a crew that want keeping under,' said Captain Glew. 'They're not used to pleasure-sailing of this sort. I singled them out myself, and had good hopes of them, and there's no fault to be found with them as seamen. This light cruising job is fast spoiling them. They need the heavy work of a full-rigged ship.'

'If they find the job an easy one, then I suppose they're satisfied?' said Mr. Vanderholt.

'I'm very much afraid that there's no kind treatment, and no easy job under the sun, that's going to satisfy an English sailor,' said Captain Glew.

'You're hard upon the calling, Glew. You're talking to a man who has had to work hard and fare hard.'

'Sir, if you'd been in command, you'd know that I speak the truth.'

'Aren't you rather a taut hand, Glew? Not that I object to a strict discipline on board ship; but there is a manner of talking to sailors.... I've heard of a captain who never would address a sailor if he could help it, but if he had anything to give him he'dput it down upon the deck and kick it at him.'

'And I've heard of sailors, sir, who've scuttled their ship, broken the captain's heart by ruining the voyage, and made a widow of his wife by sending him adrift in an open boat. I've had charge of seamen, and I know their natures, and I'm sorry that you should think I'm a taut hand, sir.'

'Understand me,' said Vanderholt soothingly: 'you are, perhaps, a taut hand, but I do not say unnecessarily taut. Frankly, I do not think the men love you.'

'What's a sailor's love like?' said Captain Glew.

Here Miss Vanderholt came on deck. Captain Glew placed a chair for her beside her father.

'What a heavenly sweet and silent night!' exclaimed the young lady. 'Is that a ship on fire down there?'

'It's the moon rising, miss,' exclaimed Captain Glew.

Her upper limb floated blood-red on the sea-line like a glowing ember. She sailed up, large, swollen, stately, the face rusty, asthough the luminary had been a mighty casting in the African sands, and was now sent aloft red-hot by some thrust of giant shoulders. At her coming the wind freshened in a damp gust, the schooner strained, and the sound arose of water broken quickly into froth.

'Glew and I have been talking about the men, Vi,' said Mr. Vanderholt, after contemplating for a few minutes the hot lunar dawn.

'They don't look a very happy crew,' answered Miss Vanderholt; 'but heat will make people sullen. The sailors have to work in the sun, and, after all, there is very little money for them to receive apiece when they reach home.'

Vanderholt laughed, and said:

'Quite as much as they shall get out of my pocket. Four pounds and five pounds a month, Vi. Why, I've been signing on, when a fine young man, for two pounds five, and glad to get it.'

'Are the crew dissatisfied?' inquired Miss Violet.

'Well, I don't mind owning to you, Mr. Vanderholt,' said the captain, 'that they'vebeen trying to make a trouble about the stores. But I wouldn't allow it.'

He stopped short, with a vibratory note in his voice, as though a piece of catgut had been twanged.

'The stores ought to be good,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'The cheque that was made payable to Mr. Lyons was a liberal one.'

'Do they grumble at one thing more than another?' said Miss Vanderholt.

'Oh, first it's the pork, then it's the beef; they'll work their way right through till they come to the pickles,' said Glew, with a short, nervous laugh.

'This is the first time I've heard that the men are dissatisfied,' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt.

'What is the good of worrying you with fo'c's'le troubles, sir? You're on a cruise for your health, and the worries of the ship should be mine, not yours.'

'It is well meant, Glew,' said Vanderholt, a little uneasily. 'They are a rough body of men, mind. I was long fed on pork and beef, and my palate has memory enough to distinguish, I think. Tell Allanto-morrow to cook samples of both kinds, and I will lunch off them.'

This being said, Mr. Vanderholt smoked for awhile in silence. The question of pork and beef and sailors' grievances is uninteresting at all times, and peculiarly uninviting on a fine moonlight night. The subject was dropped. Captain Glew moved off, and father and daughter sat alone in the moonlight.

The atmosphere was now misty with the silver of the satellite; she was nearly a full moon, and rained her glory most abundantly. She made a fairy vision of theMowbray, etherealizing her into a fabric of white vapour and fountain-like lines as she leaned, purring at her cutwater, from the delicate wind.

'I don't think Glew treats the men well,' said Miss Vanderholt, turning her knuckles to the moon to see the diamonds in her rings sparkle. 'He is restrained when I'm on deck; I judge him by the demeanour of the crew.'

'They are not yachtsmen; they are not fresh-watermen. I, too, have eyes in myhead, and I'll not condemn Glew off-hand for being what the Americans call a "hard case,"' answered Mr. Vanderholt. 'They are rough fellows, got out of low sailors' boarding-houses. I know the breed—the right sort of men for a jaunt of this kind—and I'm very well satisfied with them. But they have the look of growlers, and the man Jones, who should be the most trustworthy of the lot, has the very best genius for putting on a surly, dangerous face, and posturing in the mutineer style when hotly called to of any sea-dog that I can recall. So, Vi, I'm not for interfering with the duties of the captain.'

He smoked, and his little eyes dwelt upon the face of the beautiful moon.

'If the sea,' said he musingly, 'were a silver shield it could not flash more brightly. How mysterious does the moon make the world of waters! They speak of the awe bred of darkness—the awe, the uncertainty—yes, I have known it; but how much more must this lighted ocean stir one's spiritual pulses than if it were a bed of darkness!'

'You are certainly better,' said Miss Violet; 'you are seldom poetical at home.'

'No man who has been to sea can help being a poet,' said the old gentleman complacently, smoothing his beard. 'He beholds many strange appearances; he dreams strangely. Mysterious fancies thicken upon the drowsy vision of his lonely midnight look-out, and with himthenit is as the great poet sublimely sings:

'"But shapes that come not at an earthly call,Will not depart when mortal voices bid;Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid,Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall."'

'"But shapes that come not at an earthly call,

Will not depart when mortal voices bid;

Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid,

Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall."'

He relighted his pipe, and smiled at the moon, and seemed very well pleased with the acuteness of his memory.

'Those are noble lines,' said the girl.

'They are Wordsworth's. Ach! What delight that man has given me.'

'How much pleasanter it is,' said Miss Violet, 'on a glorious night like this to talk of poetry, and the visionary shapes of the sea, than of sailors' beef and pork!'

'You would not think so if you had been stuck here for ten days on a raft.'

'Well,' exclaimed the girl, heaving a sigh, 'the Equator is not very far off now, and then we shall turn and go home.'

'I hope that our forefoot will cut the Line by the 25th,' answered Mr. Vanderholt. 'We shall be home in February, brown, and in the best of spirits.'

'And George will have started—will be coming.'

They talked for a little while about this gentleman. It was ten o'clock before they quitted the deck. A man struck four bells on the forecastle. Immediately a figure arose from the deep shadow cast by the deck-house on the planks, and went aft to relieve the helm. Captain Glew stood on the yacht's quarter, and was as visible in the moonshine as though the bright dawn had broken. There was a muttering about the course at the helm, and then the man who had been relieved took a step or two forward, looking at the captain.

'What are you staring at?' said Glew.

The man, continuing to walk but slowly,persisted in staring, so that his head revolved.

'What are you staring at?' repeated Glew, in a soft but threatening voice.

The skylight and companion-way were wide open; he had no wish that his note of temper should penetrate.

'Mayn't a man use his eyesight aboard this bloody ship?' said the seaman, coming to a halt.

'Go forward!' exclaimed the captain, stiffening himself at the rail.

The man seemed to hesitate, then went slowly towards the forecastle, audibly muttering. This man's name was Joseph Dabb.

When he was close to the deck-house, a sailor, who was squatting in the shadow of it, exclaimed gruffly:

'What was he a-saying of?'

'Asked me what I was a-staring at because I was looking at him.'

'S'elp me, all angels!' exclaimed the squatting figure, after spitting right across the deck, 'if I don't feel sometimes like cutting the scab's heart out of him! We're not men inhissight. We're muck. Hethinks of us as muck, and he talks of us as muck. He speaks to us as if we was muck, and it's muck he's shipped aboard this vessel for us muck to eat.'

He stood up, and the whites of his eyes glistened in the reflected moonlight that whitened off the edges of the stay-foresail, as he turned his gaze aft, where the figure of the captain walked. A man came out of the deck-house and joined the company. Immediately after, a fourth man approached from the forecastle, and stood listening.

'They've been a-yarning about us half my trick,' said Dabb. 'The captain said this pleasuring was a-spoiling of us.'

All four united in a low, dismal laugh, which would have been a loud, defiant, mirthless roar but for the sleepers in the deck-house, hard by which they were talking. Sleep is counted a sacred thing at sea.

'Ay,' exclaimed one of the men, who proved to be Mike Scott, 'you lay a man's going to be spoilt by the pleasuring that's to be done underhim. What was said, Joe?'

'That blarsted Dutchman talks in his beard. That and his pipe smothered up his voice. I couldn't hear him. T'other was more clear. He spoke of sailors as had scuttled their ships, as had broke the cap'n's heart by ruinating his voyage, and made a widder of his wife by sending him adrift. T'other speaks, and then the cap'n says, "What's a sailor's love like?"'

Silence followed.

'What do he mean by "a sailor's love"?' exclaimed the third man, Maul. 'Is it a belaying-pin or a handspike? You'll find he's a-trying to excite a disgust against us sailors in the mind of that old Dutchman, so that he may make a difficulty about paying us at the end of the voyage.'

''Ow d'ye know,' said Dabb, 'that it ain't the Dutchman who's put the skipper up to ill-treating of us, reckoning upon sailing into the Thames with some of us in irons? D'ye mean to say——'

'Whisper, you crow!'

'D'ye mean to say,' continued the man, lowering his voice, 'that the stores were shipped without the Dutchman knowing oftheir character? I'm a-beginning to smell blue hell in this business.'

All this while the moon shone sweetly and piercingly. A divine peace was upon the sea, and the light noises of the wind were as fresh as dew on grass, with the sound as of the plashing of many fountains. In the cabin they talked of poetry—and one of the sailors forward was for cutting the captain's heart out!

The little royal and top-gallant sail were half aback; the luffs of the jibs were trembling.

'Trim sail!' shouted Captain Glew; and he continued to bawl as he walked slowly forwards: 'Brace forward the topsail-yard! Ease away the weather braces! Get a drag on your jib-sheets!' And it was clear, by the manner in which he delivered these orders to the men, that he had been watching and thinking of them all the time they had been talking about him.

All was quiet after this. The moon rolled down into the sea, the shadow of the earth slipped off the eastern horizon, and the schooner floated into another tropicalmorning, wide and high with cloudless splendour. Nothing was in sight.

The date was December 15, 1837.

At half-past eleven, the steward, a man named Gordon, who had been shipped for cabin duty, but who had sailed on many occasions as an able seaman, so that his sympathies were wholly with the forecastle, went to the harness-cask, and, unlocking it, picked over some pieces of meat, brine-whitened, and carried two cubes of the flesh forward to the cook.

'What's this for?' says Allan. 'Here's stink enough. The pork's measly bad to-day!'

'Samples for the cabin table,' said the steward, Gordon, dabbing the flabby offal down on the dresser.

'Ho!' says the cook. 'They'd best be cooked separate, I suppose. The stench'll break the young lady's heart if they're boiled in them coppers.'

'Cook 'em as you like. That's your business,' said Gordon. 'It's for one o'clock.'

'Who's going to eat 'em?'

'How big's a man's windpipe?' asked Gordon. The cook eyed him. 'Would about that lump,' said Gordon, snatching up a knife and slightly scoring a corner off one of the pieces, 'fit a man's windpipe?'

'Ah! would it?' muttered the cook. 'And if you'll let me guess whose pipe it is you're a-thinking of, I wouldn't mind telling you that I'm game—s'elp me God!—to ram it down with this—a clean job!'

And seizing a long, black, sharp-ended poker, he flourished it at Gordon's mouth, poising it as though he meant to do for the steward.

Gordon rounded out of the little caboose with a laugh.

Mr. Tweed walked the weather side of the quarter-deck; his sextant lay upon the skylight cover. The seaman named Legg was at the helm. His figure, airily clad in duck and calico and wide straw hat, stood out like a painted figure of marble, as it slightly rose and slightly fell against the hot pale-blue sky in the north.

Miss Vanderholt was seated in a deck-chair under the awning, beside aquarter-boat. A book lay upon her lap, but her hands were clasped upon it, and her eyes were bent upon the sea. She viewed it listlessly. The monotony of that eternal girdle was growing shocking. It seemed to bind up her very soul. She thought to herself: 'They speak of the freedom of the sea. But doesn't its sense of freedom come only when motion is swift, when the roar of the white water is strong, and when one's home is not very far off?'

It was the men's dinner-hour. Miss Violet had often, during the warm weather, from her comfortable quarter-deck chair, observed a couple of men a little before noon stagger with sweating faces out of the galley, bearing in their hands a sort of wooden washing-tub, which sent up a great deal of steam. This she knew was the crew's dinner.

She had sometimes wondered how they ate: whether they spread a table-cloth; whether they planted a cruet-stand in their midst, and placed knives and forks on either hand, for the hearts to cut and come again. Who carved? She supposed that the boatswain took the head of the table.

She had never felt so curious, however, in this matter as to ask questions, and as, moreover, she had not caught so much as a glimpse of the interior of the crew's dwelling-house, she had figured into conviction a comfortable little sea-parlour in which the men dined just as she and Glew and the mate and her father dined.

'After all,' she mused, keeping her hands clasped upon her open book, with her eyes fastened upon the sailors' house, 'it is the monotony of the sea that repels. It must have its good side. Plenty to eat and drink, and, as father says, most of the wonders of the world—islands, harbours, inland scenes of beauty—to be visited at the cost of others.'

Whilst she thus moralized, she beheld a head with a very savage and malicious look upon its face in the deck-house door. The figure of the man was exposed to the waist, and two great hands grasped for support each side of the opening. It was the head of the boatswain of the schooner, James Jones, carpenter and second mate—but as second mate he had never been called upon to serve. He was uncovered, and his hair was wild.His expression was devilish. Though at some distance from the man, the young lady could clearly distinguish a look of fury upon the seaman's face, as though he had just slain a shipmate, and was in the act of leaping on deck.

He stood in the doorway, and continued to stare aft. Miss Vanderholt glanced uneasily at the skylight. She waited for her father and Captain Glew to appear. The captain was bound to arrive in a minute or two, for already Mr. Tweed, who had glanced at the boatswain without appearing to see anything unusual in the man's fixed, half-in and half-out posture, and dark, endevilled face, had picked up his sextant, and was ogling the sun.

Mr. Vanderholt was the first of the two to come on deck. His daughter called to him softly, and said:

'Father, did you ever see, in all your life, such a wicked expression as that man wears?'

'What man?' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt, lancing his teeth with a silver toothpick, and gazing along the decks with an expression of bland benevolence.

'That man there, in the door of the galley,' said the girl. 'He's been standing like that for the last three or four minutes, hatless, looking aft, with that face of fury, as if they'd tied him in the doorway and were goading him.'

'I certainly see a man lounging in the doorway,' said Mr. Vanderholt, who was a little short-sighted. 'Does he look angry?'

He spoke somewhat uneasily, and turned his head to see if the captain was on deck. Glew at that moment rose through the hatch, armed with his sextant. Vanderholt went up to him, and said:

'There is a man leaning in the door of the caboose—now I look again I see it is the boatswain—whose face my daughter tells me is formidable with temper. I do not clearly see all that way off. I hope it will mean no fresh trouble about the stores. Let them know I have ordered pieces of the pork and beef to be boiled for our mid-day meal.'

Whilst he was speaking, Glew's eyes were fixed upon the boatswain, who, at the moment that Vanderholt ceased, withdrew. Glew's attitude was immediately andinsensibly charged with malice and danger, with passions quickly growing and contending, by the odd, crouching air he carried, whilst he had watched the boatswain and listened to his employer.

'That Jones,' he said, 'is the right sort of forecastle scoundrel to breed a mutiny, and if he troubles me to-day we must have him out of it, Mr. Vanderholt, in the approved old method. Mr. Tweed, can you lay your hands readily upon a set of irons for that fellow?'

The mate answered:

'The carpenter has charge of the irons, sir, and the carpenter is, unfortunately, the boatswain himself.'

'Go forward,' said Captain Glew, 'and ask the man to give you a set of irons.'

'Stop!' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt, glancing at the helmsman, whose eyes were upon Glew, and who was clearly a listener. 'We must have no talk of irons in this vessel, until something has been done to warrant their introduction.'

'If there should come a difficulty,' was the captain's answer, 'we may find itimpossible to get forward so as to procure the irons. I like to be beforehand.'

'I'll not have it!' said Mr. Vanderholt, with warmth.

Captain Glew simply said, 'Ay, ay, sir,' and turned his face to the sun, with his sextant lifted.

Now it was that the boatswain reappeared, still without his hat, his head very shaggy, his shirt-sleeves rolled above his elbows, disclosing the muscles of a carthorse. He sprang, in a single bound, through the door of the deck-house, grasping his mess-kid. The seaman Dabb followed; he, too, grasped a mess-kid. Then the rest of the crew appeared—Gordon, Allan, Toole, Scott, Maul.

'Now, bullies, are we ready?' exclaimed Jones, in a voice of thunder; and he put the kid upon the deck. Dabb did likewise.

'Hurrah for a hot male of mate for the cabin!' shouted Simon Toole.

The boatswain and Dabb, each man in his boots, kicked. They kicked at the kids with all their might, and the wooden vessels rushed aft to the very feet of Captain Glewand Vanderholt, scattering their precious contents of pork and pea-soup over the smooth planks. Never was an uglier affront offered to the master of a ship. Never had mutinous insolence been carried to a greater height. Captain Glew turned white as milk, but not with fear. Well for him had he felt fear. Mr. Vanderholt was ashy pale. He called to his daughter to go below. She sprang up, but, instead of going below, went and stood right aft, beside the helmsman, to whom she said:

'What do those men want?'

'Their rights!' he answered, with a diabolical leer.

The frightened girl made a quick step to the companion-hatch, and stood beside the cover; she was afraid to go below.

'What's the meaning of this atrocious conduct, men?' shouted Mr. Vanderholt. 'I am sorry if anything's wrong with you. I am an old sailor——'

He was interrupted by Captain Glew roaring out: 'Tweed, help me to put that scoundrel in irons!' And he rushed forward, Tweed following.

'Oh, my God!' cried Mr. Vanderholt; 'stay your hands, men! This is my ship! I am master here! I'll see your wrongs righted!'

'There'll be murder!' shrieked Miss Vanderholt.

'Go below, for Christ's sake!' roared the distracted man; and, catching hold of hisdaughter's arm, he dragged her down the steps into the cabin.

'No man in this ship puts me in irons,' said the boatswain, showing his teeth, as he squared up at Captain Glew, with his immensely thick arms covered with hair, arrows and crucifixes. 'I've been wanting the killing of you this many a day, you rat! and, as you men hear me, by the living Lord, I'll kill him if he lays a finger upon me!'

For a few minutes Captain Glew paused, waiting for Mr. Tweed, who had disappeared. He stood one man to seven; his nostrils were dilated; his eyes were on fire; his skin was a ghastly white; and his fingers worked like those of one who plays a piano. His breath flew from him in sharp, quite audible hissings. He was the incarnation of wrath fiendish above anything human, and in that pause those of the men who met his gaze seemed to quail.

Mr. Vanderholt came running from the companion-hatch. His right hand was in the pocket of his coat.

'What is it, men?' he bawled. 'I am anold sailor, and was a man at sea when you were boys. Is your pork bad? Is the rest of your food bad?'

'Go and gut yourself!' roared Dabb. 'If that cuckoo had the victualling of this ship, you had the paying of him; and was there ever a Dutchman that didn't know good food from bad by the price of it?'

He was proceeding. Gordon, standing alongside, clipped the dog over the back of his neck, and silenced him.

Mr. Vanderholt swayed speechless on the slightly heaving deck of his vessel. He was petrified. He stared at the insolent villain; he couldn't credit his senses.

Indeed, it was shocking that that fine old gentleman, with his full gray beard, his dignified bearing, his knowledge of life and letters, his years, his great fortune, should be thus addressed by a brute of the sea, a scab, a wen of the ocean, who ashore, in liquor, was, of course, the swaggering, yelping terror of women and little children.

Mr. Tweed came along from the forecastle, grasping an iron bar with rings upon it The moment the men saw him, three orfour—Scott, Toole, Allan, and another—flung themselves upon him. The irons were sent whizzing overboard, the man himself was felled to the deck. He rose in a minute, breathless and mad.

'But youshallcome aft. Help me, Tweed!' And the captain, crying this out in a voice frightful to hear with its tension of passion, flung himself upon the boatswain.

'The man who moves—the man who interferes with the captain, I'll shoot!' shouted Vanderholt, pulling out a revolver, a six-barrelled engine of those days, from his pocket, and taking aim at the crew.

Tweed had sprung upon the boatswain, and now three madmen were wrestling. A fourth rushed in; he was Simon Toole. He yelled like a savage as he leapt upon the heaving and writhing group.

'Stand back, or I'll shoot you!' shouted Mr. Vanderholt. 'I have six men's lives here.'

He saw Toole seize Captain Glew by the throat, and taking aim at the man, he pulled the trigger. The flash, the report, was followed by a dying groan, and Tweed, withboth hands lifted and clenched, fell, shot through the head.

At this moment an iron belaying-pin[1]struck Mr. Vanderholt across the face. It was Maul who hurled it. He flung it with the rage and meaning of murder, standing not a couple of fathoms away from the unhappy gentleman, who dropped like a running man when he falls dead from heart disease.

'You murderous curs!' groaned Captain Glew, falling upon one knee with his hand to his side.

For a little while they stood raging; their shouts were hoarse and insane. Legg bawled to them from the helm, and they answered him. You would have thought that they were breeding some fresh hellish scene of bloodshed amongst themselves, so flushed, wild, clamorous was the mob of them, every man trying to drown the other's voice.

'It was his doing!' said Jones, pointing tothe figure of the dying captain. 'I never wanted it!'

'Anyhow, we're not responsible forhim,' said Allan, nodding at the body of the mate. 'Who floored the Dutchman?'

'I did!' yelled Maul.

'He's a killed man,' said Scott, stooping to look at him.

'Water,' whispered Captain Glew.

Toole's eyes were on the captain at the instant, and the ruffian saw the man's lips move.

'He's spakin'!' he exclaimed, with a face of sudden horror, backing two or three steps.

Dabb put his ear to the dying man's mouth.

'He asks for water,' said the seaman; and he sprang to the scuttle-butt and filled a pannikin which stood handily by the side of the dipper, and, lifting Captain Glew's head, he poured some of the cool drink into his mouth.

'Drag me out of the sun,' muttered the captain.

'Mike, len's a hand,' called Dabb; andquite gently these two seamen, who were just now devils, carried the captain aft into the shelter of the awning, where they left him to lie and expire, with the Union Jack rolled up as a pillow.

'I never wanted it! I never wanted it!' suddenly broke out the boatswain, in a deep groaning voice. 'This is a swinging matter. What's to be done? It's damnation to our souls. Why couldn't ye have let the old Dutchman be?'

'His pistol was full cock on you, Jim, when I let fly,' answered Maul. 'He's only stunned. Hasn't a man a right to fight for his life? Look at them barrels!' he added, pointing to the revolver.

'Here comes his daughter,' exclaimed Gordon.

Miss Vanderholt was standing in the companion-way. She wore a straw hat, and her eyes, under the shadow of the brim and under the fluff of hair about her brow, looked twice their usual size—strained, unwinking, blind, with sudden, dreadful amazement, but brilliant as light also with horror and terror.

She came out of the hatch slowly. Legg, at the helm, with a note of commiseration, said:

'He's only been knocked down. He shouldn't have got messing about with firearms amongst a mob of angry men.'

She did not hear him, or, if she did, she did not heed him.

She went straight to her father, making a low wailing or moaning noise as she walked. The boatswain exclaimed:

'No harm was intended to him, miss. 'Twas him that shot Mr. Tweed.'

She stooped, moaning, but so as to be scarcely audible, and looked closely into her father's face. He lay on his back, staring with white eyes, half-closed, at the sky. He had fallen as though shot through the heart. A great, livid weal, dreadful to see, blackened and lifted his brow. A little blood that had trickled from one ear lay glazed close beside the gray hair of his whiskers.

'Is he dead?' she asked, looking round at the men, and speaking in a voice sunk with fear.

'Let's carry him aft to his cabin. It's notright the young lady should see him lying there,' said Gordon.

Thereupon, Gordon, Allan, and Jones picked the body up and bore him aft, followed by Miss Vanderholt, who often staggered as she walked. They got him into a cabin, and put him down upon a sofa.

'An ugly job!' said one of the seamen.

'Who did it?' the girl asked.

The men made no answer.

'Oh, father!' she cried, trembling violently; then, dropping upon her knees beside him, she began to free his throat. 'He may only be stunned,' she said. 'What is to be done? Shall I bathe his face?'

'If he's only stunned, I allow he'll come to all right, if he's left alone,' said Gordon.

'You'll please to recollect this,' said one of the men: 'he comes rushing along, with a pistol to shoot us with, and the motive was to strike the revolver out of his hand before he could send a second shot. It was him that killed the mate;' and the speaker wheeled on his naked feet, and went to the companion ladder. He was almost immediately followed by the others.

The girl was alone with her dead father. But was he dead? He looked so. Yet the lifeless looks of one in a swoon or in a fit may easily pass as marks of death. She ran to his cabin, and fetched a bowl, into which she splashed cold water from a decanter, and for a quarter of an hour she ceaselessly bathed his face and head. He never stirred. Not the least sigh escaped him. She could not find his pulse, though she sought for it, with trembling fingers, about his wrists. His hands were growing cold, and they lay very dead and heavy in hers, and still she thought, still she hoped, she prayed.

'It may be the same as a fit, or a swoon. He has been stunned. If I sit here patiently, I may see signs of life, and he will come to.'

But, if he should be dead? What would they do with the schooner? What would they do with her? Terrors shook her; they wrenched her heart, and she wrung her hands in agony.

If her father was dead, and she quite understood that Captain Glew and Mr. Tweed were dead, though she but vaguely understood that her father had shot the mate,and that Captain Glew had been assassinated—if he was dead, she was alone in the schooner with eight seamen, who had made outlaws and reckless criminals of themselves by the murders done that morning.

Meanwhile, on deck, the men were quieting down. Their rude, unreasoning passions were paling. Consternation was beginning to work in them. They had gone fearfully and tragically far beyond the unformed wrathful fancies which were in them when they kicked the mess-kids aft, and when the Irishman howled at the sight.

The mate lay dead, with a dark purple hole in his forehead, upon the deck, abreast of the little square of main hatch. Aft, with his head pillowed on the rolled-up ensign, was the corpse of the captain. These were sights, coupled with the thought of the dead man below, to drive the keenest power of realization of what had happened that day into the mind of an idiot, and there was no idiot in that schooner.

Legg had been relieved at the wheel by Scott.

TheMowbray, all this while, was sailinga dead south course for the Equator—her queer destination—royally clothed; her white breasts of canvas were swelled with the blue gushing of the wind; her jibs yearned at their sheets as they rose and sank in a play of soft shadow, with the airy rise and the seething stoop of the bows.

'There's too much gone and happened this all-fired day,' said Allan, folding his naked, burnt arms on his breast, and leaning against the side of his little caboose whilst he eyed askew the body of the mate. 'What's to be done?'

The men came and stood about him.

'It was like forcing of a man's hand,' exclaimed the boatswain. 'I was never in a mess of this sort afore. But, curse catch me, if an angel could have stood him—an angel from the skies!' he shouted, lifting up his two great hands, with a wild melodramatic gesture, to the heavens. 'I couldn't tell you why, but there was hate of us as sailor-men in the very turn of the rooter's body as he walked the deck. There's but one remedy for the likes of him, but it's hard upon sailors;' and he smeared the sweat offhis brow, which had taken a scowl dark as thunder.

'I saw that there bleeding old Dutchman a-covering of you, Jim,' said Maul, pointing to the revolver which yet lay upon the deck. 'There was no mistaking the meaning in his face. I'd pulled out the pin ready for whatever was to come along, and, say what yer will, yer owe me your life.'

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