'What's to be done?' said the cook. 'All this here moralizing ain't going to help us. Are them bodies to be left to lie there till they turn?'
'Don't be in such a smothering hurry!' exclaimed Legg. 'How are ye to know they're gone home? 'Ere's Bill for chucking of two warm bodies overboard. Feel their pulses, or try their breath with a piece of glass, or, maybe, you'll be murdering of them over again.'
'Don't talk of murdering!' said the boatswain savagely. 'That man there was killed by Mr. Vanderholt.'
'Where are we sailing to?' says Gordon.
'Why!' exclaimed Dabb, sending a pair of drink-stained eyes slowly travelling over thelittle ship, 'I'm dumped, mates, if there's e'er a navigator in the vessel!'
At this juncture Toole and Jones stepped to the body of the mate, and carried him to the side of the captain, whose form they bent over. The boatswain went down upon his knees, and looked with a face of hate and horror at the countenance of the dead man. This was a picture to handsomely symbolize one large, old, red tradition of the Merchant Service. Are there any Glews left? So long as they remain in command, so long will they prove the solvers of the so-called mysteries of the ocean—the abandoned ship, the boat-load of men whose statements differ, the stranded body with the wound in its throat.
'These men are dead,' says the boatswain, standing up. 'No use in letting 'em lie here to shock the female, should she come on deck. Get 'em covered up, and we'll bury 'em this afternoon.'
Toole fetched a small tarpaulin, and hid the bodies.
'How's the Dutchman getting on, I wonder?' said the boatswain.
He went to the open skylight, and looked down. He saw the figure of Mr. Vanderholt lying stiff in death on a sofa locker; his daughter sat beside him, inclined forwards, resting her chin on her hands, herself, whilst the boatswain watched, as stirless as the dead.
The seaman stepped back, and walked forward slowly. The sailors, Scott excepted, were gathered about the deck-house door, holding a council upon their condition and prospects. There was the hurry of nerve in their speech, and again one or another would look ahead, or on either bow. The boatswain, shoving in amongst them, said in his deep voice:
'I'm for getting something to eat. I want my dinner.'
'And I'm for getting something to drink,' said Toole.
The boatswain picked up Mr. Vanderholt's revolver, and, whilst he examined it, before pocketing it, he said:
'There's no chance of my bossing you, lads. I'll never do more than advise you. But let me give you this counsel: of coursethere'll be drink for the cabin somewhere aft. We're entitled to our allowance of rum, anyhow, and if we add a bottle or two of the cabin stuff to that allowance, who's a-going to miss it? That's not counsel, you say—no, butthisis: don't none of you go and get drunk. I vow to God the first man that falls insensible I'll chuck overboard. We're murderers and pirates—d'ye know that?' he roared, with a ferocious look at the men—a look that might have convinced shrewder perceptions than those about him that he was going mad—'and we're to take care, if we don't want to swing, that we're not found out. Can ye guess what swinging's like? Many's the time I've thought of it—of the gray, wet morning, and their coming in to fetch you to be hanged, and their making your arms fast astern, with a parson walking in front reading about death; then the standing upon the trap-door, and the crowds of faces—my God!—all looking at you, and, worst of all, the awful feeling that a man must have when the cap's drawed down, and he stands awaiting!'
'There's no call to keep on, Jim,' said Dabb; 'we don't want to be hanged, and we don't mean to do it. And who's a-going to fall down dead drunk, and act the beast, as you says, a-seeing how it stands with us?'
'Let's get something to eat,' said the boatswain. 'Jim,' said he, turning to Gordon, 'you know the ropes aft. Bring something for'ard from the Dutchman's pantry fit for the men to sit down to.'
'Am I to bring any drink?' says Gordon.
'What have they got down there?' asked Maul.
'There's some cases of bottled ale.'
'Bring eight bottles for'ards,' said the boatswain. 'Joe, go you along and lend him a hand.'
Gordon and Dabb walked aft, and disappeared down the companion-hatch. The others trudged about their deck-house door, passing and repassing each other in short look-out walks, their heads sunk, their backs bowed, and their hands plunged deep in their breeches pockets.
After some time, Gordon and the other arrived with their arms full of bottles ofbeer and preserved meats, and delicate cabin eatables out of the pantry. It was broiling hot. Mike Scott at the helm bawled to them to bring him a bottle. He swilled the foaming draught down out of a pannikin in a sort of dance of ecstasy.
'What's the young woman a-doing of?' asked the boatswain, following Gordon into the deck-house.
'She was sitting by her father's body when we entered. She jumps up as if she'd been stabbed, and says in a little shriek: "What do you men want?" I answered in the kindest voice I've got: "We're not here to hurt you, miss. The men are hungry, and want food, and I've come to fetch 'em some—food and a little beer. What can I get for you, miss?" says I. "This is the luncheon-hour. Let me spread the table for you." She shook, and held out her hands as though shoving me away. How could she sit down and eat with him lying there? Indeed, it went against me to name it, Jim. It was flung cruelly hard. I never see such a forehead as the poor old bloke's got.'
'By the vart of me oath, then,' exclaimed Toole—for now all hands had swarmed into the deck-house—'Maul took aim at the pistol, and never meant to kill him!'
They were hungry and thirsty, a rough, red-handed mob of seamen. They sat down upon their chests, and ate and drank, one taking a plateful of food to the helmsman, and whilst they dined they discoursed upon what was to be done.
Occasionally the boatswain would step out and look around. The wind was slack, the fiery eye of heaven was eating it up, and the sea waved in dull shades of satin and silver in winding dyes of faint violet and glassy brightness, as though a current ran; it sheeted with colours faint with tropic heat into the now visionary distance where sea and sky were blent.
'What are we to do with this vessel, and how are we to manage for ourselves?' said the boatswain, who sat on a chest with a tin of preserved meat between his knees. 'That's the question.'
'Ain't this moist stuff veal and 'am?'Whatever it is, it's blooming nice,' said a sailor.
'Joe, knock the 'ead off this 'ere bottle for me; you've got the knack.'
'Isn't there no port to which we could carry this craft and dispose of her, and then disperse?' said Allan, the cook. 'She might go for a song, for me. We only want our wages.'
'Where's the port without a fired consul?' said Maul. 'I'll tell ye what 'd happen: they'd ask questions, a file of soldiers 'ud come aboard, us men 'ud be marched off into a fortress, and lie in cells fourteen or twenty foot under the sea. There our beards would grow, our bones would wear out our shirts, and all the music ye'd get, mates, would be the clank of chains.'
'No port for me!' said Toole. 'I'm for kaping on the say, and being found in a situation of disthress.'
'We must agree to one yarn, and stick to it. What about the lady?' said Dabb.
'Do she know what's happened?' said Maul. 'How it came about, I mean? Then she couldn't say nothing agin our yarn.'
'Tell'e what, my lads,' said the boatswain, looking thoughtfully around him, 'I'm not at all sure that the right tack don't lie in our up and telling the truth, explaining how we was exasperated, and proving that the deaths was accidental.'
'You're a-going to prove nothing accidental out of that bloke's knife,' said Dabb, with a dry, uncomfortable laugh, nodding at Toole.
'As good an accident as Maul's murtherous belaying-pin, and be damned to ye!' exclaimed the Irishman. 'Brothers, I'm thinking Joe there would have me be the only hanged man of this company. Is that because I'm a furriner?'
His eyes, fiercely squinting, met in Dabb's hot face. The seamen began to cut up tobacco, and then they lurched to the galley to light their pipes. The boatswain, pipe in mouth, stood in the waist, looking round him and aloft.
The little ship lay nearly becalmed. The sails swayed idly, fanning sweet draughts athwartships. The boatswain walked to the binnacle, and said, after looking at the card:
'There's no call now, Mike, to keep her heading for the Equator. I'm for giving my stern to this here boiling.'
'What's settled?' said Scott.
'Nothing.'
'I don't see,' said the man irritably, 'how anything's to be settled in this here roasting heat, and them two bodies side by side there. Him in the cabin's alone enough to take the curl out of a man's spirit. To think of him, with half a fathom of death, blue as ink, across his brow, and himself a-walking these very decks but just a little while gone! Three! It's too many!'
'One was the Dutchman's job,' answered the boatswain. 'But see here! Are ye afraid?'
'Afraid o' what?'
'Well, only that you're talking as if the ghosts of them bodies had jockeyed the yard-arms of your mind, and was close reefing your intellect.'
'I don't like dead bodies,' said Scott; 'and of all the dead bodies a-going,' he added, with a countenance of gloomy ferocity, 'the least I like is murdered bodies. Why don't yeget 'em cleared out overboard, Jim, and sweeten the little hooker? Do human blood smell? Something that my nose never tasted afore came along not long since in a breath o' wind.'
The boatswain went to the tarpaulin, pulled it aside, and examined the two dead faces.
'Dead they are,' said he, with a shiver of sick disgust.
He walked forward, and presently a few of the men came to the tarpaulin, carrying hammocks, twine, sinkers for the clews. They made despatch. Captain Glew, blind with death, threatened them as malevolently as in life, with his upper lip lifted and stiffened, exposing a snarling grin of fangs. The other poor wretch lay composed; the grog-blossoms had faded. His cheek was as pale as moonlight, and the expression was a smile.
Before stitching up the bodies, they emptied the pockets. Captain Glew had a silver watch and chain, a leather pocket-book, a silver-mounted, wooden pipe, a bunch of keys, and other odds and ends. The matelikewise owned a watch and a hair chain, tipped with gold—a woman's gift, no doubt.
'These things shall be put into their cabins,' said the boatswain. 'He's left a widow and young uns.'
'Are we going to bury 'em in their clothes?' said Toole.
'Holes and all,' answered Legg, with a significant glance at the sheath-knife on the Irishman's hip.
In a few minutes the two bodies made their last plunge, amidst the silence of the seamen, some of whom, nevertheless, continued to smoke, and the bubbles which flashed to the surface were as lasting a memorial of the dead twain's resting-place as any gravestone which could have been erected ashore for dogs to smell at.
A light air from the south-west was coming along, over the burnished heave, in a delicate blue film, with feelers and crawlers of the draught tarnishing the water in front of the breeze-line in catspaws.
'Shall we stick this vessel's head north?' said the boatswain, and now all hands came together in the gangway close beside thebulwark-rail, whence the bodies had sped; there was to be a discussion over every suggestion.
'If we go north, where's it to carry us to?' said Gordon.
'Out of this heat, anyhow,' answered the boatswain.
'We ought to make up our minds,' said the cook, with an uneasy look at the sea. 'We're just that sort of craft which is sure to excite notice. "Hallo," they sings out, "a yacht all this way down here!" and they comes sheering alongside to hail and take a look.'
'I'm not for going any further to the s'uth'ard,' said the boatswain doggedly.
After a great deal of talk, during which the galley was repeatedly visited for pipe-lights, they agreed to head the vessel north, if for no other reason than that of temperature. So the helm was put hard up, and the little vessel wore. When the ropes had been coiled down and the decks cleared, the boatswain called Gordon and Scott, who by this hour was relieved at the helm. These two men seemed the most respectable of the clan,perhaps the fittest for the mission the boatswain had now in his mind.
'Mates,' said he, dropping his words between hard sucks at an inch of sooty pipe, 'there's a difficulty in the cabin that's got to be made an end of. The Dutchman must be buried. Now, the three of us had better go below, with sail-cloth and twine, and stitch him up to the satisfaction of his daughter. I'd give this hand,' said he, holding up a paw as big as a boxing-glove, 'if he hadn't been killed. He had meant to get his dinner off our junk and pork to-day. It was the captain kept him in ignorance of our condition.'
'He'd have shot as many of us as there was balls in his pistol,' said Scott.
'You're right,' said the boatswain, as though he found something to rally him in that thought. 'Let's get what's wanted, my lads, and make an end.'
The dead man was alone when they entered the cabin. The ghastly hue of the blow that had killed him was fading. One hand lay upon his beard, and he seemed in thought.
'Quick, now,' says the boatswain, 'whilst the lady's out of sight.'
They emptied his pockets, putting everything they found upon the table, then quickly fell to swathing and stitching. In the midst of this work Gordon violently started, and cried out, muttering, 'Lor', how she took me!' Miss Vanderholt stood near him. She was painfully white, and her eyes were swollen almost to concealment. Yet anyone capable of interpreting human expression must have found a subtle token of resolution in her features, shadowy marks of firmness, as though the countenance was struggling to take its presentment from the spirit. This might be visible sooner to the eye of sympathy than to the vision of the head.
'Are you going to bury him?' she exclaimed, in a low, trembling voice.
'Yes, miss,' said the boatswain, rearing himself, and backing and looking at her.
'Is there no one who can read a prayer from the service over him?' said the girl.
The men looked at one another, shaking their heads, and then the boatswain said:
'Tell 'e what, lads: we'll stitch the poor gentleman up ready, and leave him a-bit, whilst the lady says a prayer by his side. It'll do him more good than any prayer that's a-going to come from us, whether we reads it, or whether we imagines it.'
Miss Vanderholt took a step to her father and kissed him, then, weeping silently, went to the foremost end of the cabin, and stood waiting.
FOOTNOTE:[1]A belaying-pin is a bar of wood or metal. It fits in a rail, and is used for making a rope fast to. When of wood it is heavy enough, when of metal deadly as a weapon or a missile.
[1]A belaying-pin is a bar of wood or metal. It fits in a rail, and is used for making a rope fast to. When of wood it is heavy enough, when of metal deadly as a weapon or a missile.
[1]A belaying-pin is a bar of wood or metal. It fits in a rail, and is used for making a rope fast to. When of wood it is heavy enough, when of metal deadly as a weapon or a missile.
On the night of December 20, in the same year of the mutiny of theMowbray, a large full-rigged ship, homeward bound, was, to the north of the Equator, stealing silently through the dusk. The hour was about half-past nine. The moon rode high and shone gloriously, and the edge of the plain of ocean came in two sweeps of ebony to the clasp of splendour under the satellite. The ship lifted a cloud of sail to the stars. The night-wind was lightly breathing, and every cloth was asleep, stirless as alabaster mouldings, curving from each yard-arm, and climbing with the whiteness of the moon into three spires.
This ship was theAlfred, but not the famous Thames East Indiaman of that name.She was about sixteen hundred tons, with an abundant crew, a captain and four mates. She was carrying a valuable cargo and a number of passengers from India to London, and once only had she halted—at Simon's Bay, where she put a lieutenant of Marines and fifteen men ashore, and then proceeded, after filling her fresh-water casks. She was a flush-decked ship, and when you stood at the wheel your eye ran along a spacious length of deck, rounding with the exquisite art of the shipwright into flaring bows which sank into the true clipper lines, high above the keen and coppered forefoot.
A number of ladies and gentlemen sat and moved about the decks. The awnings were furled, and the moonshine glistened upon these people, and sparkled in the jewellery of the ladies, and silvered the whiskers of the gentlemen. On the weather side of the long quarter-deck walked the commander of the ship, Captain Barrington. A lady's hand was tucked under his arm, and he frequently looked to windward whilst he talked. To leeward paced the mate, and a little distance forward, in the deep shadows of themain-rigging, stood a group of midshipmen.
Right aft, upon the taffrail, sat three gentlemen. One smoked a pipe, the others cheroots. Captain Barrington permitted his guests—as he, with facetious politeness, called his passengers—to smoke upon the quarter-deck after five bells in the first watch. A considerable surface of grating stretched betwixt these three gentlemen and the wheel. The wheel was something forward of the grating, and the helmsman, therefore, absorbed in the business of keeping the ship to her course, could hear little more than the rumble of the tones of the gentlemen who conversed on the taffrail.
'I say, Parry,' said one of the gentlemen, who was, indeed, no less a personage than the surgeon of the ship, casting his eyes up at the moon, and tasting his tobacco, with slow enjoyment, in the discharge of each little cloud of it; 'did it ever occur to you to consider that all the great processes of this world—that all creation, in short, is based on circles?'
'Why do you address yourself to me?'said Captain Parry. 'What do I know about circles?'
'Behold yonder moon,' continued the doctor, pointing with the stem of his pipe to the luminary, beautiful with her greenish tinge, so sparklingly and brilliantly edged, too, so marvellously clear-cut, that you might then realize, if you never did before, the miracle of her self-poised flight through the domain of violet ether. 'She is a circle,' said the doctor. 'So is the sun. So are the stars. The flight of our system through space, if not a circle, is nearly so—enough to justify my theory that, when the Great Hand launched Creation, the design was one of circles.'
'Oh, blow that!' said one of the gentlemen. 'Parry, hand us a cheroot.'
'Whatever brings God closer to us is good,' said the doctor. 'This theory of construction proves the existence of a genius like to man's in the Great Spirit, and we can be in sympathy with it.'
'The breeze seems scanting,' said Captain Parry. 'If this voyage goes on lasting, I shall be like the sailor who, when he waswashed ashore on a desert island in his shirt, complained that he certainly did feel the want of a few necessaries.'
'A man going home to be married ought not to be becalmed,' said the doctor.
'How do you like the idea of being married, Parry?' said the third gentleman, who was one Lieutenant Piercy.
Captain Parry viewed the beautiful moon in silence.
'Until I got married myself,' said the Doctor, 'I used to express marriage by what I consider an excellent image. A man marrying is like unto a ship that grounds on a bar and beats over, where she lies unable to get out; so other ships passing behold her riding, royal yards across, and the bar thick under the bows.'
Captain Parry continued to view the moon.
'A man for comfort,' said Piercy, 'should marry a roomy woman. You know what I mean—a woman who'll give him plenty of geographical and intellectual room to move in. He's still contained in her, d'ye see, still in sympathy, still sacramentally one, yet he'sgot plenty of room,' he drawled. 'I remember some idiots who berthed a number of horses on board ship, and allowed no room for the toss of their heads. It's room that a chap wants in marriage.'
'Isn't that something white ahead there?' said Parry, pointing into the starry visionary distance, right over the bow.
The others seemed to look.
'Something white should be a ghost,' said Piercy. 'I wonder if ghosts walk the sea as they do churchyards?'
'The most terrifying ghost that, to my mind, ever appeared,' said the doctor, 'must have been the spirit of the Prince of Saxony. He came in complete steel, suddenly, upon his unhappy relative, who had idly pronounced his name, never dreaming to see him, and said: "Karl, Karl, was wollst du mit mich?" Is it the German that makes this question awful?'
'The worst of all ghosts,' said Captain Parry, who had been straining his eyes at the elusive gleam ahead, 'are the phantasies of the sick eye.'
'Right,' said the doctor.
'When I was ill some years ago in India, I had been reading Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and every night at a certain hour a miniature figure of Dr. Johnson would sit upon the mantelpiece and play the spinet. I knew the old cock hadn't a note of music in his soul. His head wagged like a simmering cauliflower. I was in a mortal funk whilst he played, but was too weak to throw anything at him. When the vision first appeared, I thought it might have been a large bottle. The mantelpiece was cleared, and still old Sam came and played upon the spinet for five nights running.'
'The most inconvenient of all ghosts is the living ghost,' said Lieutenant Piercy. 'An Irish sergeant told me that, before he left Ireland, he lent an uncle five pounds. On returning, after fourteen years, he called upon his uncle, and asked him for the money. "Och, shure," said the man, "haven't I spent the double of it in masses for yez?"'
'Talking of ghosts,' said the doctor, 'what do you say, gentlemen, to this psychological touch? A young man—call himBrown—after years of deliberation, seriously considers that he has been born into the wrong family. He is wholly out of sympathy with his relations. He is superior to them. He loves music, the fine arts, literature, and so on. His sisters are vulgar, his father a cad. The young man, feeling convinced that a serious mistake has happened, goes forth to search for his own family. He finds them at last, a cultivated circle of people, and they all seem to know that he belongs to them. Strangely enough, young Brown meets in this family with one of the sons, a young fellow of his own age—call him Jones. Jones laments to Brown that he is entirely out of sympathy with his family. They are superior to him. He likes vulgar songs, the diverting company of ostlers and billiard-markers. He objects to young ladies. He prefers shop-girls. The point is clear,' said the doctor. 'These young men were born into the wrong families. Brown hinted to Jones that he would meet with the right parties at the Browns', and Jones was received by the Browns with that instinctive perception of his claims as a member of thefamily which had characterized the meeting between Brown and the Jones's.'
'Brown is a snob and Jones an ass,' said Parry.
Here the chief officer came right aft, and looked into the binnacle. As the cheeks are sucked in, so the sails hollowed to the sudden emptiness of the atmosphere along with the slight floating roll of the whole fabric. A low thunder fore and aft broke from the masts.
'I'm sick of that noise!' exclaimed Lieutenant Piercy. 'The cockroaches dance to it. The kitchen offal that the cook threw overboard yesterday delights in it, and dwells alongside, a loving listener. I say, Mr. Mulready,' he called to the mate, 'when are you going to give us a whole gale over the taffrail—something that shall come roaring down upon the ship in a cloudless thunder of wind?'
'Ha, sir, when?' answered the mate, a dry man.
Captain Parry, with a slight yawn, stood up, stretched his arms, stepped across the grating, and sprang upon the deck, then stoodlooking over the bulwark-rail at the distant icy gleam on the bow.
'The heat seems to have baked the life out of Parry,' said Lieutenant Piercy, 'or is it that his spirits sink as he approaches home, knowing what lies before him?'
'A man should feel himself a poor creature,' exclaimed the doctor, 'when he understands that a fit of despondency, a mood of unspeakable depression, reaching even unto tears, may be caused, not by the affections—oh no!—but by a little piece of celery, or half a pickled walnut.'
'I am thirsty,' said Piercy; 'come below, doctor, and have a drink.'
Four bells were struck. The ladies disappeared. Five bells—then most of the gentlemen vanished. Six bells, and now the ship seemed clothed in sleep and silence. At intervals faint catspaws stirred, none of which were neglected by the mate of the watch, who, regardless of the smothered curses of the seamen, hoarsely roared orders for the braces to be manned. Thus, stealthily, the ship floated through the midnight sea, flooded with moonshine.
Then came the dawn, the resurrection of the day, trailing its ghastly shroud across the face of the eastern sky. The watch of the mate came round again at eight bells—four o'clock—and when the day broke it found him on deck, standing at the rail, and peering ahead.
'Bring me the glass,' said he to a midshipman.
Some three points on the bow of the ship lay a schooner. She had all cloths showing, saving her little top-gallant sail and royal. She was certainly not under command, and yet she did not seem derelict. Mr. Mulready levelled the ship's glass. What was she?
Scarcely a yacht, yet of yacht-like finish and delicacy. The faint breeze trembled in her moon-white canvas. She lay head to wind, and the long pulse of ocean swell, in lifting and sinking her, exposed her sheathing in flashes, and submitted to the eye of Mr. Mulready the handsomest sea-going model he had ever looked at.
'Something wrong there,' thought he, carefully covering her with his glass, andintently examining her for any signs of life, for smoke in the caboose chimney, for a head peering in sickness over the bulwark rail.
About a mile and a half separated the two vessels, and it had taken theAlfrednearly the whole night long to measure the space betwixt the gleam over the bows and the spot of waters whence it had first been sighted by Captain Parry.
The chief mate could do nothing without the captain; but, whilst the crew were washing down the decks, often pausing for a breath or two in their scrubbing to glance at the graceful, helpless, lonely fabric that was now drawing abeam, Captain Barrington stepped through the companion-hatch. His sight immediately went to the schooner.
'What vessel have we there?' he exclaimed, and he picked up the telescope that lay upon the skylight. 'She is abandoned, sir,' said he to his chief mate.
'She looks too beautiful for ill-luck,' answered the mate. 'The man who moulded her knew his art.'
'What's she doing all this way down here?' said Captain Barrington, talking with the telescope at his eye. 'She's a gentleman's pleasure-boat. Has she been sacked, and her crew and pleasure-party murdered? Brace the foretopsail aback. I'll send a boat aboard.'
The ship came to a stand, with a lazy sigh of the light breeze in her canvas, the yards of the fore creaking on parrel and truss as they came round to the drag of hauling sailors. A boat was manned, lowered, and despatched in charge of the third officer, an intelligent young gentleman of the name of Blundell.
'Thoroughly overhaul her,' the captain had said. 'If she is derelict, bring away the log-book and papers.'
And as the boat swept towards the schooner the skipper turned to Mr. Mulready and exclaimed:
'If she be abandoned, I'll put a crew aboard, and we'll sail home together. There is value in that little ship, sir, and she is too handsome a craft to be allowed to wash about down here.'
Some of the male passengers arrived for their customary bath in the head. Do not believe the bath-room of the metal palace of this day comparable as a luxury to the old head-pump.
You stripped, you sprang on to a grating betwixt the head-boards, and an ordinary seaman went to work. The gushing blue brine sank to your marrow. It gushed in cold sweetness through and through you. You gazed down, and saw the clear blue profound out of which the sparkling coil that hissed over your body was being drawn. It was the one delight of the tropics, the one joy that haply sometimes checked the profanities in the passengers' mouths when they came on deck and found the ship motionless.
One of the first to come on deck to taste the sweetness of the head-pump was Captain Parry. The instant he rose through the hatch his eye caught sight of the schooner. He stood awhile staring; someone coming up behind him forced him to move out of the hatch. He stepped out, still with his eyes glued to the schooner, and advancing,that his vision might clear the quarter-boat, he again came to a stand, staring.
He was a tall, well-built young man, about eight-and-twenty years of age, close-shaven and dark, and there was something Roman and heroic in the cast of his countenance. He was airily clothed for the bath, and watched the schooner with a towel or two dangling in his grasp.
By this time the boat had reached the side of the apparently abandoned vessel, and the third officer might with the naked eye easily have been seen to spring aboard, followed by a seaman. He stood awhile taking a view of the decks, then disappeared.
'Captain Barrington,' exclaimed Captain Parry, wheeling suddenly upon the skipper of the ship as he approached him, 'is anything known of that vessel?'
'I have just sent a boat to board her,' answered the captain.
'Will you allow me to use that glass?'
He took the telescope from the captain's hands, and resting the tubes on the bulwark rail, gazed thirstily. There was something of astonishment—indeed, of amazement—inhis face when he turned to Captain Barrington.
'I don't think I can be mistaken,' he exclaimed in a low voice, talking to the captain, but looking at the schooner. 'It is the same figure-head, exactly the same rig, the same size, so far as the eye can measure her at this distance. She has a deck-house for her sailors, and her paintwork is the same. It will be extraordinary!'
He fetched his breath in a half-gasp.
'Do you know that vessel, d'ye say, Captain Parry?' asked old Barrington, looking with curiosity and interest at the fine young fellow.
'I would swear that she is theMowbray,' answered Captain Parry, picking up the glass afresh, and continuing to talk. 'She was purchased by Mr. Vanderholt, who made a yacht of her, and, when I was last in England, I went a short cruise in her along with Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter, the lady to whom—to whom—— Good God! the longer I look, the more I am satisfied. No name is painted on her; you will find her name in the boats. What, underheaven, brings her here, lying abandoned? Yes, oh yes! I'd pick her out if she were in a fleet of five hundred sail.'
'It may be as you say,' exclaimed Captain Barrington. 'It is a very remarkable meeting. But we can be sure of nothing until the third officer returns.'
A few passengers, attracted by this conversation, had drawn close. You heard murmurs of excitement. A voyage at sea, in the old days of tacks and sheets, was a tedious affair, in spite of flirtation, cards, the simple diversions of the dance on the quarter-deck, the heaving of the quoit, the bets on the run. Even a floating bottle was a something to cause a stir. It broke the dull continuity of the day. A sail was a Godsend. And here now, after many weeks of tedious ocean travel, here now had suddenly uprisen, all at once, coming down a-beam out of the darkness of the midnight, so to speak, an ocean mystery that would be fraught with an inexpressible significance if Captain Parry's conjecture proved accurate.
To this gentleman, for whom the head pump had magically ceased to have existence,the time of waiting and suspense was frantically long. Lieutenant Piercy came and stood beside him.
'But, supposing it is theMowbray,' said the young officer: 'her presence in this sea needn't concern your friends. The vessel may have been sold. They may have been carrying her to some distant port. If it is fever, the dead will be found; if mutiny——' Here Lieutenant Piercy stopped, puzzled.
'I don't think Vanderholt would sell her,' exclaimed Parry. 'He was proud merely of her possession, though he did not often go afloat. How amazing to see her lying there! Of course it is theMowbray,' he exclaimed, again levelling the glass. 'She used to carry a long-boat, and that's gone. If her people have left her, they went away in it.'
'She's certainly abandoned,' said Piercy, 'or something living would have shown itself by this time.'
'Why the deuce doesn't that fellow Blundell return?' muttered Parry, in an agony of impatience.
But, even as he spoke, the figure of the mate might have been observed to drop overthe schooner's side into the boat. The oars swept the brine into steam. The boat hissed alongside, and the third mate stepped on board. All the people of the saloon or cabin had by this time heard the news; they knew that an abandoned schooner, which was an ocean mystery, lay close by, and they had made great haste to dress themselves, insomuch that a large number of them were on deck. They elbowed round the third mate, and the commander, and Captain Parry, to hear the ship's officer's report.
'She is theMowbray, sir, of, and from, London. I can't find any papers. Here's her log-book, sir. The last entry is in a female hand. The vessel was apparently on a pleasure cruise.'
'Let me look at that book,' said Captain Parry.
He turned the pages till he came to the last entry, then began to read, now and then swaying himself, then making a step in recoil. All saw by his face and his motions, by his strange gestures, by the wild looks he would sometimes cast from the page to the schooner, that what he read was carryingthe bitterness of death to his heart. Meanwhile the captain was questioning the third officer.
'There's nothing alive on board?'
'Nothing, sir. I searched everywhere.'
'No dead bodies?'
'None, sir.'
'Did you discover nothing to enable us to make a guess at what's become of her people?'
'Everything is in its place, sir. The log-book was left conspicuously open on the table of the cabin, that had, doubtless, been occupied by the captain.'
'Will you kindly accompany me below, Captain Barrington?' said Captain Parry, who was so extremely agitated and distressed that he could barely utter the words.
The passengers made room. Every face bore marks of pity and astonishment. They had heard that the last entry was in a female hand, and they had also heard—indeed, they could see—that yonder schooner was abandoned.
Captain Parry followed the commander of the ship down the companion-steps into abright, handsomely-furnished saloon; thence they passed into an after-cabin, the door of which Captain Barrington shut. A large, old-fashioned stern window provided a spacious view of the sea. The light came off the water in a cloud of splendour, and glowed and throbbed upon the nautical brass instruments upon the table, and sparkled in a glazed framed likeness of Mrs. Barrington.
'The entry here,' exclaimed Captain Parry, trembling with excitement, and the twenty contending passions within him, 'is in the handwriting of the young lady to whom I am—to whom I was—to whom I am to be married on my arrival in England. She is Miss Violet Vanderholt. You perceive,' he said, pointing with a shaking forefinger, 'that she writes her name. The story she tells is of a diabolical mutiny. It took place on December 15. This entry is dated the 18th; to-day is the 20th. TheMowbrayhas, therefore, been abandoned two days only, perhaps not a day, for though this last entry is dated the 18th, the crew need not necessarily have abandoned theschooner till yesterday, or even this morning.'
'It is certain,' said Captain Barrington, 'that the hands, together with the young lady, were on board the schooner on the 18th.'
'Quite certain, sir; but here is her story. Pray read it aloud to me; I did not fully master it.'
Captain Parry, with a shaking hand, gave the log-book to his companion. It was of the usual form of log-book, with a good wide space for 'Remarks' on the right-hand side of each page. Captain Barrington, a white-haired man of fifty-five, with scarlet cheeks, glanced over a few of the earlier entries. He saw that the log had been kept down to December 14, afterwards the entry was in a female hand, strong, sure, but somewhat small:
'I have ascertained that none of the men can read. I am writing an account of what has befallen us, hoping, since the men talk of leaving her and taking me with them, that this yacht may be met with, and this log-book discovered. I heartily pray anyinto whose hands this book may fall that he will publish my narrative to the world, so that my father's fate and my own may be made known to Captain George Parry, H.E.I.C.'s Service, to whom I am engaged to be married.'
The commander looked at Parry with brows arched by astonishment and sailorly concern. The officer brought his hands together in a convulsive gesture, and turned his eyes with a look of despair upon the sea, framed in the window.
'My father was Mr. Montagu Vanderholt, a well-known Cape merchant. We resided at —— Terrace, Hyde Park, London. I, Violet Vanderholt, am his only daughter. He thought that a sea-trip would do him good. He asked me to accompany him. I was his only companion, and we set sail from the Thames, November 1, in this year. The master was Captain Glew. He treated the crew harshly, and excited their hate, though he was cautious in his behaviour when I was on deck, so that I never could say he spoke to a man barbarously. But the dreadful tragedy of thisvoyage was occasioned by the bad food supplied to the sailors. This was undoubtedly Captain Glew's fault. He had been commissioned to victual the vessel, and was responsible for her stores, and I fear he knew that what he bought was not wholesome for men to eat, though the charges my poor father was at should have given the men the very best quality of food. They complained to Glew, but not to my father. Captain Glew never hinted that the men were murmuring, and the mutiny was sprung upon us with dreadful suddenness. The captain and the mate seized the boatswain, and a man stabbed the captain in the side, and mortally wounded him. My father dragged me below, and, rushing into his cabin for a pistol, returned on deck to cow the men with the weapon. They did not heed him, and he fired, and, as I have since been told, and must believe, shot the mate, Mr. Tweed, accidentally through the head. Mr. Vanderholt was killed by an iron bar, flung with murderous violence. They afterwards feigned that this bar was thrown with the intention of dashing the pistol from myfather's hand. This is all that I have to relate.
'I am writing this at ten o'clock on the morning of the 18th. I cannot imagine what the men intend. I asked the boatswain, who has treated me with great civility throughout, to tell me what they mean to do. This very morning I repeated the question. He answered he could not say. The men were undecided. Some were for going away in the boat, and taking their chance of being picked up, and some for remaining in the vessel. I gathered from his manner that these were few. What are they to do with the schooner if they stick to her? They might, indeed, wreck her off some island where they could represent themselves as shipwrecked men. I know that they regard me as a witness against them, and that my life is in great danger, and the merciful God alone knows what is to become of me. It is nearly——'
Here the entry ended.
The commander of the ship looked at Captain Parry.
'The hand of Providence is in this,' saidthe scarlet-faced man, very soberly and seriously.
'They cannot be far off!' exclaimed Captain Parry, stepping to the stern window with an air of distraction, and staring out at the sea.
'It is a clock-calm,' said the commander, 'and if anything which moves by canvas has received the crew, we may presume that she lies as helpless as we, not far distant.'
'But what excuse could they make,' said Captain Parry, 'to be transferred from so staunch a little ship as theMowbray?'
'They might say that they were without a navigator.'
'Wouldn't another vessel put a navigator on board so fine a craft and send her home, sooner than leave her to go to pieces? In that case we should not have found her here.'
'There's nothing to be done at sea, sir, by arguing and speculating,' said Captain Barrington, still preserving his very serious manner, as though, indeed, he had found something to awe him in the circumstanceof a girl writing, so to speak, in the heart of the Atlantic, with particular reference to her lover, and that lover reading her words there. 'It is as likely as not,' he continued, 'that they have gone away in the long-boat. It is clear, from the narrative, that the majority were in favour of that measure. These are quiet waters, and the men have reason to hope that they will be picked up soon, in which case they can tell their own story.'
'But Miss Vanderholt?' exclaimed Captain Parry. 'She can bear witness against them. What will they do with her?'
'Ha!' exclaimed the commander, fetching a deep breath. 'It is certain, anyhow, that she is not in the schooner.'
In the year of this story Old Leisure was still going to sea. He flourished as pleasantly upon the ocean as amidst the hens and dunghills, the milkmaids and dairies, of the Poyser farmyard. He brought his main-topsail to the mast without reluctance when there was anything to be seen or talked to; he went on board the stranger, and dined with him; invited the stranger in return; then leisurely proceeded. There was no prompt despatch, to speak of, no urgency. The wind was the prevailing condition of the immense distances which the wooden keel traversed. Old Leisure kept his eye to windward, and hauled out his bowlines; but it was a time of ambling, of dozing,and of whistling for winds until too much came.
Only in such a time as this now dealt with could we conceive a large, full-rigged ship, homeward bound from India, full of impatient hearts, hove-to, with a derelict schooner within easy hail, and the commander taking plenty of time to reason about her with a gentleman who was infinitely concerned in her unexpected, astounding apparition and log-book narrative.
'The thought of Miss Vanderholt being at the mercy of a crew of mutinous ruffians is unbearable!' exclaimed Captain Parry. 'What is to be done? Advise me, in the name of God, captain! You know—you know—I have told you she was to be my wife. You are an old sailor. For God's sake, counsel me!'
'If I could be sure that they had made off in their boat, and were still afloat in her,' answered the captain, 'I should know how to advise you. But if they have been received on board a ship, then I don't see what can be done. For in what direction may that ship be heading? Enough if youryoung lady should be safe, sir. Supposing her to be on board a ship, I have no doubt of your hearing good news of her, in course of time, after your arrival in England.'
He opened the cabin-door, and called to one of the stewards.
'My compliments to the chief officer, and ask him to come to me.'
Mr. Mulready quickly presented himself.
'We have some notion,' said Captain Barrington, addressing his mate, whilst he laid his hand upon the log of theMowbray, 'that the crew of the schooner may have left her in their boat, taking the young lady with them. Send a couple of hands—don't trouble the young gentlemen,' said he, with a supercilious smile, vanishing almost as it appeared upon his firm lips, 'but a couple of sharp hands to the royal mastheads. Give one of them this glass.' He handed Mr. Mulready a binocular. 'Let the other take the ship's telescope aloft. I want the sea carefully swept. Make them understand that they must creep in their search to the very verge,for how far off is a boat visible? But they might sight the gleam of her lugsail.'
Mr. Mulready took the glasses, and went swiftly out.
Captain Parry stood at the open window, listening to what was passing, straining his sight also with consuming passions of dread, blind desire, helpless wrath, at the star-blue line of the sea that swept the brilliance of the heavens within little more than a league. The captain of the ship went to a locker, and took out a chart of the Atlantic. He spread it, and called to Captain Parry.
The officer turned, and eagerly stepped to the chart. He saw zigzag prickings or lines upon the white sheet, as though somebody had been trying to represent flashes of lightning. Each line terminated in a little dotted circle. These were the 'runs.' But, then, these were also the Doldrums, and the motive power of that ship, theAlfred, lay in the breeze that, in the Doldrums, blows in the delicate catspaw that scarcely has power to run a shiver into the glazed breast.
'This was our situation at noon yesterday,' said the commander, putting his finger uponthe northernmost little circle. 'There is no land for leagues, as you may observe.'
'What are those rocks?' observed Captain Parry, peering.
'St. Paul's Island—a horrible hornet's nest of black fangs, entirely out of the boat's reach. I am not sure that I ever heard of a boat effecting a landing. Anyone cast ashore there must perish. There is nothing to eat or drink. It is the desolation of hell!' added the commander, with a note of religious fervour in his speech; 'and a dreadful surf like a nightmare of storm raves day and night round those rocks.'
'What is to be done?' said Captain Parry, lifting himself erect from the chart. 'If they are in a boat they cannot be far distant. They have not long left the schooner, but every stroke of the oar carries them further away, and renders the search more hopeless.'
'The search?' exclaimed the commander, in a note of inquiry and surprise.
'I don't mean in this ship, of course,' said the officer, speaking with agitation and very quickly. 'A clipper schooner lies close athand. If you will lend me a navigator and a few hands, we will sweep the sea, taking this mark,' he continued, putting his finger upon the chart, 'as our base, and hunting with masthead look-outs, and fierce fires burning by night, in circles whose circumference or diameter I should leave to the judgment of the mate in charge.'
The commander began to slowly pace his cabin. Once he paused, and gazed with a face of earnest gravity at the sea that came brimming to the counter in a sheet of winding lines, the light swathes of the tropic calm, the oily gleam, the trouble of some stream of current twinkling in diamonds.
Captain Parry eyed him with anxiety. He dreaded a discussion that might kill the hope that had suddenly been born in him. A tap on the door caused the commander to start.
Mr. Mulready entered.
'The masthead men have been working hard with their glasses, sir, and report nothing in sight.'
'How is the schooner?'
'Forlorn, but safe, sir.'
'Take a boat and go aboard, and make a further thorough examination of her, and overhaul her stores—all as smartly as may be, sir. This gentleman has an idea, and I don't know but that it might prove practicable,' said the commander. And, as Mr. Mulready left the cabin, the captain of the ship turned to Parry, and asked him to follow him on deck.
On the commander emerging, the third mate approached and touched his cap, and exclaimed:
'When I said there was no living thing aboard that schooner, sir, I should have reported a small coop full of cocks and hens, all alive, and very hungry and thirsty. I fed them with some rice I found in the galley, and poured a quantity of water into their trough.'
He saluted, and marched off.
'In the face of Miss Vanderholt's last entry,' said the captain to Parry, 'we don't want live cocks and hens to tell us that that vessel has been recently abandoned.'
She lay softly lifting upon the light swell, a beautiful, helpless fabric. The shudderswhich ran through her canvas were like the distress of something living. She had slewed somewhat, bringing her jibbooms to bear upon the ship. In the blind, hopeless way of abandoned craft, she was posture-making for help.
The excitement aboard theAlfredwas very great indeed. The mastheading of the men, the pictures of their little bodies high in the heavens, sweeping the deep with binocular and telescope, had immensely stimulated the passions of curiosity and wonder.
What did the captain expect the sailors to see upon that vast girdle of brine, that rolled flawless to the glorious stroke of the sun? It was known that the young lady who had been on board the schooner was betrothed to Captain Parry. Could romance be carried beyond this? The ladies fluttered in talk, the gentlemen growled.
'I'm keeping a diary,' said a major, with great, dyed, well-curled whiskers, to the surgeon of the ship, 'of this voyage home, as I did of the voyage out, and I shall probably publish it, sir. But this incident willnot be credited. Sages in their day have believed in ghosts, and laughed to scorn a report of earthquakes.'
'I do not see why this incident should not be believed,' said the doctor.
'It is too probable—for the sea, sir. If you want a sea-fact to be accepted, state that which a sailor will know to be impossible.'
'Parry looks as haggard as if he had been up for a week of nights,' said the doctor.
Many eyes were fixed upon him as he stood beside the master of the ship, viewing the schooner and talking. The ship forward was a gem of an ocean piece, with the smoke of her galley-chimney going straight up, the sailors—it was their breakfast-time—lounging in the cool of the shade of the jibs, with hook-pots and biscuits, and pipes of tobacco: and the great foresail, white as milk, floated motionless from its long yard.
Some soldiers in white clothes were seated upon the booms, in the wake of the draught which would stir from that vast square of sail when the weak swell of the sea put a faint pulse of life into it. The skywas sublimely lofty, with the light-blue brilliance of the tropic zone; not a cloud to depress it to the sight, and all the air was gone.
Captain Barrington and Captain Parry stood together at the mizzen shrouds, looking at the schooner, conversing, and waiting for the return of the mate. The passengers very respectfully gave them a wide berth.
'No,' says Captain Barrington presently; 'I shall have no objection, sir. I am to be influenced by humanity in this business. My owners cannot and will not object,' he added, as if thinking aloud. 'We shall be saving a valuable yacht. Mr. Blundell is a very efficient young officer, quite experienced enough to take charge, and he will receive certain instructions from me, sir, for we must define the area of sea to be searched, and the time to be taken.'
He looked at the schooner thoughtfully.
'She is under two hundred tons,' said he. 'Mr. Blundell and four men and a boy should suffice; I can spare no more.'
'I am no sailor, but I can pull and haul,' said Captain Parry. 'I can do a man's bit. What time would you limit us to?'
'I should wish to be a little elastic. There's no wind here to depend upon,' answered the commander. 'I will see Mr. Blundell in my cabin after breakfast, and explain my ideas.'
Presently the breakfast-bell rang. The captain and the passengers went below. Captain Parry asked that a biscuit and a cup of tea should be brought to him on deck. He gazed round upon the spacious sea, and the tranquillity of it soothed and calmed his inward, hidden, fuming impatience.
He knew that the stagnation that held theAlfredmotionless would keep the boat so, unless the men rowed, which was not very conceivable, for sailors do not commonly row when the distance they have to traverse runs into hundreds of miles. If they had been taken aboard a ship, she, too, must be lying becalmed.
Yet one black dread ever haunted Captain Parry's fancies. He was going to seek the boat. Had Miss Vanderholt accompaniedthe men? Would they carry with them a living witness to their piracy and murders? Had not she been murdered before the schooner was abandoned?
It was ten o'clock when the mate returned from theMowbray. All this while the sea remained satin-smooth. The sun, soaring high, burnt fiercely; the paint bubbled in blisters, the pitch ran in soft-soap, and the whole light of the schooner's canvas poured under her in quivering sheets of quicksilver.
Mr. Mulready was dark with dirt and sweat, and looked like a man who has passed a week in stowing a ship's hold. Captain Parry stood in the gangway to receive him, and the mate's immediate inquiry was for the commander. He was closeted with Mr. Blundell.
'What news can you give me?' said the military officer, grasping the dry-minded mate by the arm, and looking beseechingly into his face.
'There's just plenty of stores and fresh water,' answered Mr. Mulready, 'enough to last a small crew six months. Her after-holdis rich in the eating line. There are about two dozen cocks and hens.'
'I don't meanthat!' exclaimed Parry wildly. 'Did you find no hint of the fate of the young lady?'
'My answer must be,' answered the mate, with a certain formal, sympathetic gravity, 'that nothing is alive on yonder vessel saving a few cocks and hens.'
The captain made his appearance, followed by Mr. Blundell.
'I have arranged with the third officer,' said he, walking straight up to Captain Parry and the mate, 'that he shall take charge of the yacht and search for the boat. There can be no hurry whilst this clock-calm lasts. Still, I dare say you'll be glad to go on board.'
'I'm mad to go on board!' answered Captain Parry.
'Get your luggage together, then, sir. Mr. Blundell will provide the schooner with a couple of pistols out of the arms' chest, and the necessary ammunition. If you fall in with the boat, remember they are eight seamen, rendered desperate by murder. Youwill be but seven. The possibility is faint, the chance is the smallest,' the captain muttered in a dying voice.
'I thank you for your foresight,' said Parry; and he went hastily to his cabin to pack up.
The mate told Captain Barrington that there were plenty of rockets and portfires aboard the schooner. A fireball by night might bring the boat to the yacht. He then produced a piece of paper, and gave the commander an idea of the quantity of stores in the little vessel.
'They'll want nothing from us, then,' said Captain Barrington. 'However, since the mutiny appears to have been owing to the rottenness of the food, sling a couple of casks of our beef into the boat.'
It was eleven o'clock when all was ready for Captain Parry to go on board theMowbray. Four men and a boy had volunteered as a crew, and when the boat was freighted she lay deep alongside with seamen's chests, luggage, casks of beef, and human beings. The passengers made a tender farewell of this singular, most romantic leave-taking inmid-ocean. They pressed forward to shake Captain Parry by the hand. Some hoped that the blessing of God would attend his search. More than one lady raised a handkerchief to her eyes. As the boat shoved off, a hearty cheer broke from the whole length of the vessel. The boat reached the side of theMowbray, and all that was to be received on board was hoisted up.
Captain Parry breathed deep, and wore a wildness in his looks, whilst he stood for a few minutes gazing round about him. Of course, he remembered the little ship perfectly well—the delightful cruise he had taken in her, with Violet and her father, a little while before he returned to India. He looked, and began to realize the brutal scene as the girl had sketched it in that last entry. It was hard to think of his immensely wealthy friend Mr. Vanderholt meeting a mean, base end at the hands of a brutal Ratcliffe sailor. What had they done with Violet? The little ship seemed to smell of human blood. The airy graces of her heights, the beauty of all that was choice and finished betwixt her rails, seemed to have departed.Wherever murder stalks, the spirit of horror, attended by the ghost of neglect and decay, follows. They break the windows of the house. They command the spiders to build. The dirty little building in which the body was found is going to pieces. The alley up which the body was dragged is of a sickly green, with a growth of unwholesome grass.
It was so with this yacht—this beautiful fabric, theMowbray. The wizardry of murder had changed her to the sight of Parry. He cursed her with all his heart as the cause of the destruction of his sweetheart and Mr. Vanderholt, and, wondering what the devil had brought her so far from home, whether it might be possible that father and daughter had been sailing to India to meet him, that they might return together in the same vessel, he put his hand upon the fire-hot companion-hood, and descended the ladder.
He searched, as the two mates had searched, and, of course, found more than they. He beheld in a cabin memorials of his sweetheart—her dresses, her hats, a veil,and a pair of gloves lay in her cot. One glove was still bulked with the impress of her hand, as though she had but just now drawn it off in a hurry, and cast it down. He peered narrowly. The cabin was a charming little boudoir. He witnessed no suggestions of violence; nothing appeared to have been disturbed. He sought for marks of blood, then thought to himself, 'If she is murdered, they did not kill her with a knife—they drowned her.'
He stayed for half an hour in this cabin, then entered the adjoining berth, which had been Mr. Vanderholt's. He found nothing to help him here. The old gentleman had been eccentric. He had believed he loved the life of the forecastle,—God help him!—and he had illustrated his idle imagination of fondness by causing his berth to be rendered as uncomfortable as possible.
Parry was disturbed in his investigations of this berth by a bustle in the cabin. He looked out, and saw a couple of sailors coming down with his luggage.
'Tumble those traps in here,' said he. 'Are we moving?'
'It is a fact, sir,' said one of the men, who was a Swede. 'A little gentle vindt has begun to blow, and derAlfredis going home.'
'Home? I do not quite understand,' exclaimed Captain Parry.
He said no more, however, to the men, and went on deck to look about him.
An air of heaven, blowing out of the boundless blue, with not a cloud in the sky to show you where it came from, was wrinkling the wide waters into a thrilling azure, and under the sun the glory was blinding.
They had trimmed sail on the schooner—a trifling matter; a hand was at the helm; Mr. Blundell stood beside him, looking into the little binnacle. On the bow was theAlfred, with her foretop-sail full, every cloth stirless, so soft was the cradling of that sea. Her yards were braced forwards, and she seemed to lean; she floated upright in silent majesty, nevertheless, her trucks plumb with the zenith, and, as she gained way, her short scope of wake sparkled like a shoal of herrings under her counter.
Mr. Blundell was a stout, hearty young sailor, about two-and-twenty years of age. He had that sort of face which is often met at sea under both flags—perfectly hairless, fleshy, permanently tinctured by the roasting fires and the drying-in gales and frosts of ocean-travel. He was looking at the compass of the schooner when Captain Parry approached. Perhaps he sought for a hint or two in gear that did not lead like a ship's, and canvas that was not shaped for square-yards. At a motion from Captain Parry, he drew away from the helmsman.
'I am at a loss,' said the captain, looking at the ship under the shelter of his hand. 'Is theAlfredgoing home?'
'Certainly, sir,' answered Mr. Blundell. 'We've dipped our farewell. We're now on our own hook.'
'Then, I mistook. I supposed when Captain Barrington talked of limiting us to time that he intended we should return to him here,' said Captain Parry.
The young mate smiled.
'His notion in limiting us to time,' said he, 'was that we should not run the questinto a hopeless job. There should be a limit.'
'Of course, a reasonable limit,' said Parry. 'What is it?'
'It has been left to my judgment, sir; and I am willing to be governed by you.'
'Thanks, Blundell!'
Captain Parry, pronouncing this sentence with warmth and emotion, stepped to the binnacle and looked at the card.
'You are holding the schooner north-west,' said he. 'You have a reason?'
'We must head her on one course or another,' answered Blundell. 'I propose, with your leave, to carry out Captain Barrington's ideas. He has sketched me a circular course. I'll compass it off on the chart below presently, and you shall form your own opinion. Loose the square canvas, my lads!' he sang out, abruptly breaking from Captain Parry.
The captain lent a hand to pull and haul; he dragged to the music of the salt-throats at the sheets and halliards. The breeze freshened in a steady gushing. The ocean was a miracle of laughing light. Alreadyyou heard the snore of foam at the cutwater, and the stealthy hiss of its passage aft.
TheAlfredwas growing small and square in the blue distance. She was feeling the breeze now, and her pale and shapely shadow leaned as she headed, with an occasional dim flash from her wet, black side, into the far northern recess.
Captain Parry went below, and returned on deck with the binocular which he had observed in Mr. Vanderholt's cabin. The main rigging of theMowbraywas rattled down to the height of the lower masthead. The captain got into the shrouds, and made his way to the crosstrees. Higher, being no sailor, he durst not crawl. With one hand he grasped a topmast shroud that was sweating tar; with the other he lifted the glasses, and searched the sea till his eyes swelled and throbbed in their sockets. When he descended he said to the mate: