Chapter Twenty Four.

Chapter Twenty Four.“Requiem Aeternam...”Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county—as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric. To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them—Wagram at any rate—to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.Not through lack of opportunity—inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly—not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further—no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him—that was sufficient.He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held—a sacred trust—to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day’s sport, with gun or rod—but mostly the latter—should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have “taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded—have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own sex, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl. This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too—he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to associate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were “big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think—and this held equally good of father and son—which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it “said” plenty.A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie’squondamvictim—“Vance’s eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical aptitude, defined that much plucked youth.“Take a tip from me, Wagram,” remarked the latter one day. “You’re making a mistake having too much to do with that lot. They’re dangerous, and you’ll have to pay up smartly for your fun one of these days.”The other did not retort that the speaker had reason to be an authority on the point, nor did he get angry; he only answered:“I don’t like that kind of remark, Vance. I suppose because I’m not in the habit of taking anybody’s ‘tips’ I always take my own line. Sounds conceited, perhaps, but it’s true.”“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Wagram,” was the reply, given rather shamefacedly.But the time had now come when this reputation for reticence, for eccentricity, stood Wagram in good stead. If he had become graver, more aloof than ever under the influence of this new and overwhelming blow, his surroundings hardly noticed it. In anybody else it would have been at once remarked on; in him it was a mere development of his former and normal demeanour. One or two opined that he contemplated entering a monastery, but the general run gave the matter no further thought; and, the very vaguest, faintest inkling of the real state of things struck nobody at all.There was one, however, whose quick woman’s wit had not been slow to arrive at the fact that something had gone wrong—in some absolutely not-to-be-guessed-at and unaccountable way, but still gone wrong—and that was Delia herself. The county need not bother its opaque head any further as to how and why the Wagrams had “taken her up,” for the said Wagrams seemed to have dropped her with equal capriciousness. And the girl herself?No more of these pleasant informal invites to Hilversea when she cycled over to the chapel services on Sundays or other days. Wagram and the old Squire were as courteous and kindly in their bearing as ever, but—there it ended; and, strange to say, remembering her upbringing, or want of it rather, this daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour did not, even in her heart of hearts, feel hurt or resentful. For, as we have said, by some quick-witted instinct of her own she realised that some great trouble, secret and, therefore, infinitely the greater, was sapping the peace of this house, to the members of which she looked up with a feeling little short of adoration. She saw this, but nobody else did as yet.Delia had carried out the intention we heard her express to Wagram on the occasion of one of those visits which had constituted the bright days of her life. She had placed herself under the instruction of the old priest in Bassingham whose German nationality had first aroused her insular disapproval, and had been received into the Catholic Church; but in the result she had learned that a love of beautiful music and imposing and picturesque ceremonies was not the be-all and end-all of the matter by a long way; wherefore the change had put the coping-stone to the refining process which had been going on unconsciously within her, and the former undisciplined and inconsequent daughter of rackety, happy-go-lucky Siege House had become a self-contained and self-disciplined woman. As to this something of a test was put upon her when one day, on one of the rare occasions now when she had an opportunity of talking confidentially with Wagram, the latter remarked:“Talking of ‘duties,’ Miss Calmour, I wonder if you will resent what I am going to say? It seems ungracious after the great help you have given us here from time to time—musically, I mean. Well, then, you have a beautiful voice and great musical talent. Now, don’t you think you ought to turn that to account nearer home? The mission at Bassingham is a poor one. With your talents, if you threw yourself into helping to improve its choir, and musical arrangements generally, what a difference that might work in rendering it more attractive to outside people as well as to those within. Of course, music like many other accessories, is a mere spiritual luxury, not an essential, but it is often a powerful factor in the first instance, in attracting those without, and therefore, like any lawful agency in that direction, by no means to be despised. How if this is a talent entrusted to you to be turned to account? But there—I have no constituted right to set myself up as your adviser, and I suppose you are only setting me down as a solemn old bore intent on preaching you a sermon,” he concluded, with a smile—a sad one, she decided to herself, as his somewhat rare smiles were in these days.The natural human in Delia was represented by a feeling of blank dismay. Those rides over to Hilversea, and her part in the musical arrangements of its exquisite chapel, had been to her as something to live for. And now even this was to be denied her. But the self-discipline had become an accomplished fact.“I am setting you down as nothing of the sort, Mr Wagram,” she answered steadily, “nor do I know anybody in this world more competent to advise me or anyone else. Yes; you are right; I will follow your advice. But I may come up to Hilversea, and help occasionally when I am not wanted in Bassingham, mayn’t I?”“My dear child, of course; we are only too glad. You know, I was not putting it to you in your own personal interest. In such a matter nothing personal comes in, or ought to. But there—I seem to be preaching again.”The step Delia had taken involved upon her far less of a trial from those among whom she moved than she had expected. Old Calmour had been nasty and jeering on the subject, and in his cups had been wont to make exceedingly objectionable remarks and vulgar insinuations; but such to the girl were as mere pin-pricks now. Moreover, Clytie had on every occasion quelled, not to say flattened, him with all her serene but effective decisiveness; and the egregious Bob was in a state of complete subjection, as we have shown. To Clytie herself the whole thing was a matter of entire satisfaction, for she regarded it as a step, and a very important one, in the direction of furthering her own darling scheme; which scheme, by the way, did not seem to progress with the rapidity she would have wished.“You must force the pace Delia,” she said. “The thing’s hanging a little more than I like. You’ve got a first-rate cut in, and you ought to be able to capture the trick. Force the pace a little more; you’re not making the most of your opportunities.”“You’re wasting a deal of capacity for intrigue, Clytie,” was the answer. “There’s nothing ‘hanging,’ no pace to force, and no trick to capture, as I’ve told you before.”The other looked at her, shook her pretty head, and—being at times inclined towards vulgarity—winked.And then upon Hilversea and its surroundings and dependents fell another bolt—swift, sudden, consternating. The old Squire was dead.He had passed away in his sleep, peacefully and painlessly, for the expression of his fine old face was absolutely placid and almost smiling; and from Wagram downwards the bolt shot hard and grievous through many a heart. Not only of those belonging to the immediate neighbourhood did this hold, for in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the chapel what time the solemn High Mass ofRequiem—sung by the dead man’s lifelong friend, Monsignor Culham—was proceeding, not a few strange faces might have been discerned; faces of those whom Grantley Wagram and his son had benefited—in some instances even to the saving of life, where, but for such benefit, the means of preserving life by affording the requisite conditions would have been lacking.Very different, too, to thecortègewhich we saw issue from these doors a few months back is this which now comes forth to lay the dead man in his last resting-place in the little consecrated graveyard beneath the east window of the chapel, but no less solemn. The glow and splendour of light and colour, the mellow flooding of the summer sunshine are no longer here, and the gurgling song of full-throated thrushes is hushed. Instead, the frost and stillness of a winter noon, and an occasional sob as the coffin is lowered into the grave, while the chant of theBenedictusrolls forth mournful and grand upon the crisp air, so still that the lights borne on each side of the great crucifix burn with scarce a flicker, and the celebrant, vested in a black and silver cope of some richness, sprinkles—for the last time with holy water the remains of Grantley Wagram, now laid to his final rest.“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine,Et lux perpetua luceat ei.“Anima ejus, et animae omniumfidelium defunctorum per misericordiamDei requiescant in pace.”The words find echo in many a heart as the sad solemnity ends. The crowd melts away, the mourners withdraw—all save one, who stands motionless, with bowed head, looking down into the closing grave—and that one the dead man’s son.

Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county—as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric. To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them—Wagram at any rate—to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.

Not through lack of opportunity—inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly—not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further—no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him—that was sufficient.

He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held—a sacred trust—to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day’s sport, with gun or rod—but mostly the latter—should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.

But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have “taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded—have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own sex, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl. This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too—he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to associate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!

But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were “big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think—and this held equally good of father and son—which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it “said” plenty.

A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie’squondamvictim—“Vance’s eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical aptitude, defined that much plucked youth.

“Take a tip from me, Wagram,” remarked the latter one day. “You’re making a mistake having too much to do with that lot. They’re dangerous, and you’ll have to pay up smartly for your fun one of these days.”

The other did not retort that the speaker had reason to be an authority on the point, nor did he get angry; he only answered:

“I don’t like that kind of remark, Vance. I suppose because I’m not in the habit of taking anybody’s ‘tips’ I always take my own line. Sounds conceited, perhaps, but it’s true.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Wagram,” was the reply, given rather shamefacedly.

But the time had now come when this reputation for reticence, for eccentricity, stood Wagram in good stead. If he had become graver, more aloof than ever under the influence of this new and overwhelming blow, his surroundings hardly noticed it. In anybody else it would have been at once remarked on; in him it was a mere development of his former and normal demeanour. One or two opined that he contemplated entering a monastery, but the general run gave the matter no further thought; and, the very vaguest, faintest inkling of the real state of things struck nobody at all.

There was one, however, whose quick woman’s wit had not been slow to arrive at the fact that something had gone wrong—in some absolutely not-to-be-guessed-at and unaccountable way, but still gone wrong—and that was Delia herself. The county need not bother its opaque head any further as to how and why the Wagrams had “taken her up,” for the said Wagrams seemed to have dropped her with equal capriciousness. And the girl herself?

No more of these pleasant informal invites to Hilversea when she cycled over to the chapel services on Sundays or other days. Wagram and the old Squire were as courteous and kindly in their bearing as ever, but—there it ended; and, strange to say, remembering her upbringing, or want of it rather, this daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour did not, even in her heart of hearts, feel hurt or resentful. For, as we have said, by some quick-witted instinct of her own she realised that some great trouble, secret and, therefore, infinitely the greater, was sapping the peace of this house, to the members of which she looked up with a feeling little short of adoration. She saw this, but nobody else did as yet.

Delia had carried out the intention we heard her express to Wagram on the occasion of one of those visits which had constituted the bright days of her life. She had placed herself under the instruction of the old priest in Bassingham whose German nationality had first aroused her insular disapproval, and had been received into the Catholic Church; but in the result she had learned that a love of beautiful music and imposing and picturesque ceremonies was not the be-all and end-all of the matter by a long way; wherefore the change had put the coping-stone to the refining process which had been going on unconsciously within her, and the former undisciplined and inconsequent daughter of rackety, happy-go-lucky Siege House had become a self-contained and self-disciplined woman. As to this something of a test was put upon her when one day, on one of the rare occasions now when she had an opportunity of talking confidentially with Wagram, the latter remarked:

“Talking of ‘duties,’ Miss Calmour, I wonder if you will resent what I am going to say? It seems ungracious after the great help you have given us here from time to time—musically, I mean. Well, then, you have a beautiful voice and great musical talent. Now, don’t you think you ought to turn that to account nearer home? The mission at Bassingham is a poor one. With your talents, if you threw yourself into helping to improve its choir, and musical arrangements generally, what a difference that might work in rendering it more attractive to outside people as well as to those within. Of course, music like many other accessories, is a mere spiritual luxury, not an essential, but it is often a powerful factor in the first instance, in attracting those without, and therefore, like any lawful agency in that direction, by no means to be despised. How if this is a talent entrusted to you to be turned to account? But there—I have no constituted right to set myself up as your adviser, and I suppose you are only setting me down as a solemn old bore intent on preaching you a sermon,” he concluded, with a smile—a sad one, she decided to herself, as his somewhat rare smiles were in these days.

The natural human in Delia was represented by a feeling of blank dismay. Those rides over to Hilversea, and her part in the musical arrangements of its exquisite chapel, had been to her as something to live for. And now even this was to be denied her. But the self-discipline had become an accomplished fact.

“I am setting you down as nothing of the sort, Mr Wagram,” she answered steadily, “nor do I know anybody in this world more competent to advise me or anyone else. Yes; you are right; I will follow your advice. But I may come up to Hilversea, and help occasionally when I am not wanted in Bassingham, mayn’t I?”

“My dear child, of course; we are only too glad. You know, I was not putting it to you in your own personal interest. In such a matter nothing personal comes in, or ought to. But there—I seem to be preaching again.”

The step Delia had taken involved upon her far less of a trial from those among whom she moved than she had expected. Old Calmour had been nasty and jeering on the subject, and in his cups had been wont to make exceedingly objectionable remarks and vulgar insinuations; but such to the girl were as mere pin-pricks now. Moreover, Clytie had on every occasion quelled, not to say flattened, him with all her serene but effective decisiveness; and the egregious Bob was in a state of complete subjection, as we have shown. To Clytie herself the whole thing was a matter of entire satisfaction, for she regarded it as a step, and a very important one, in the direction of furthering her own darling scheme; which scheme, by the way, did not seem to progress with the rapidity she would have wished.

“You must force the pace Delia,” she said. “The thing’s hanging a little more than I like. You’ve got a first-rate cut in, and you ought to be able to capture the trick. Force the pace a little more; you’re not making the most of your opportunities.”

“You’re wasting a deal of capacity for intrigue, Clytie,” was the answer. “There’s nothing ‘hanging,’ no pace to force, and no trick to capture, as I’ve told you before.”

The other looked at her, shook her pretty head, and—being at times inclined towards vulgarity—winked.

And then upon Hilversea and its surroundings and dependents fell another bolt—swift, sudden, consternating. The old Squire was dead.

He had passed away in his sleep, peacefully and painlessly, for the expression of his fine old face was absolutely placid and almost smiling; and from Wagram downwards the bolt shot hard and grievous through many a heart. Not only of those belonging to the immediate neighbourhood did this hold, for in the crowd which thronged the approaches to the chapel what time the solemn High Mass ofRequiem—sung by the dead man’s lifelong friend, Monsignor Culham—was proceeding, not a few strange faces might have been discerned; faces of those whom Grantley Wagram and his son had benefited—in some instances even to the saving of life, where, but for such benefit, the means of preserving life by affording the requisite conditions would have been lacking.

Very different, too, to thecortègewhich we saw issue from these doors a few months back is this which now comes forth to lay the dead man in his last resting-place in the little consecrated graveyard beneath the east window of the chapel, but no less solemn. The glow and splendour of light and colour, the mellow flooding of the summer sunshine are no longer here, and the gurgling song of full-throated thrushes is hushed. Instead, the frost and stillness of a winter noon, and an occasional sob as the coffin is lowered into the grave, while the chant of theBenedictusrolls forth mournful and grand upon the crisp air, so still that the lights borne on each side of the great crucifix burn with scarce a flicker, and the celebrant, vested in a black and silver cope of some richness, sprinkles—for the last time with holy water the remains of Grantley Wagram, now laid to his final rest.

“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine,Et lux perpetua luceat ei.“Anima ejus, et animae omniumfidelium defunctorum per misericordiamDei requiescant in pace.”

“Requiem aeternam dona, ei Domine,Et lux perpetua luceat ei.“Anima ejus, et animae omniumfidelium defunctorum per misericordiamDei requiescant in pace.”

The words find echo in many a heart as the sad solemnity ends. The crowd melts away, the mourners withdraw—all save one, who stands motionless, with bowed head, looking down into the closing grave—and that one the dead man’s son.

Chapter Twenty Five.The Red Derelict.“What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we’d very likely be eaten.”“Eaten! Oh, captain, you can’t really mean that. In these days too!”“But I do mean it. Yonder’s a pretty bad coast. As for ‘in these days,’ we haven’t yet captured quite all the earth, only the greater part of it. There are still some rum places left.”“Oh!” And the inquiring lady passenger stared, round-eyed, to eastward, where, however, no sign of any coast was visible, nor yet in any other quarter.The steamshipBalekawas shearing her way through the smooth satiny folds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred the surface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quite tolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it was hot—unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposed to the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare hand with the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. So completely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumes of smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had no business to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations—seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet the said solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimming above the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or a school of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in graceful leaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to the teeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here and there a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface in scarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring lady passenger off afresh.“Look, there’s another shark; what a number we’ve seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a ship means that there’s going to be a death on board?”“But this one isn’t following the ship; he’s going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”“Yes, I know. But do you think there’s anything in the idea?”“Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a ship there’d soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker’s really smelling after is the stuff that’s thrown overboard from the cook’s galley from time to time.”“Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea—weird but romantic.”“It’d be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. “They soon will, too—a good many have already. In the old ‘windjammer,’ days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack’s head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn’t got time to bother about that sort of thing.”“Then sailors aren’t superstitious any more?”“No more than shore folk. I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”“Then you’ve no superstitions of your own, captain—you, a sailor?”“Not one; I don’t believe any such nonsense.”A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.TheBalekawas steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal—a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.“I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. “It’s all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s a hard and fast rule.”“There’s no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn’t to be,” retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; “but if there is, why, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.“Think? Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.“But you don’t agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”“Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. “That’s a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”“There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. “What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”“We can’t do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. “That’s a hard and fast rule.”“Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to the Valpy case,” naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, and relating to a disputed succession. “If the Valpy in possession weren’t justified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was a congenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that—why, there’s no such thing as any law of common sense.”“What were the facts?” asked the man who had been appealed to from outside. “I have not been much in the way of reading the papers of late.”They told him—several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-room gathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that a vast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been an exemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependent on him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim, and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a few minutes in a lethal chamber would have constituted the only appropriate and adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as to whether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally entitled to remain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those here present were of opinion that he was.“I don’t agree with you at all,” said the uncompromising man. “We can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s the divine law, and—”“Hallo! What’s the excitement?” interrupted somebody, as several persons hurried by the open door, some with binoculars in their hands.“Oh, we’ve only sighted some ship, I suppose,” said the leader on the other side. “What I was going to say is—”But ever so little to break the sea and sky monotony of a voyage will avail to raise a modicum of excitement; wherefore, what the speaker “was going to say” remained perforce unknown, for the group incontinently melted away in order to see what little there was to be seen.That little was little enough. A solitary speck away towards the sky-line; to those who had binoculars, and soon to those who had not, taking shape—that shape the hull of a ship. Little enough in all conscience.But—was it? The submerged hull of a ship and no more, save for two stumps of mast of uneven length sticking out of her. The poop and forecastle were above water, and in the wash of the increasing evening swell part of the bulwarks heaved up as the hulk rolled lazily, her rusty red sides, glistening and wet, showing a line of encrusting barnacles. This was what met the eager gaze of the passengers of theBalekain the lurid, smoky glare of the tropical sunset as the steamer swept up to, and slowed down to pass, the sad relic; and there may have been some among them who noticed that the long, straight path of her foamy wake has undergone an abrupt deviation behind her—for the derelict had been lying right in her course.Right in her course! An hour later and it would have been dark—very dark—and then!There was quite a buzz of interest among the passengers; the man who had been to sea a great deal advancing, of course, all sorts of wild and impossible theories with regard to the wreck. But though glasses were strained upon her no trace was visible as to her name or nationality.“By George! I’m blest if it isn’t the Red Derelict herself!” exclaimed the fourth officer, lowering his binoculars. Instantly he became the centre of an inquiring group, chiefly ladies.“The Red Derelict? What’s that, Mr Ransome?” came the eager query.“Haven’t you heard of her?” said the other, who was little more than a merry-faced boy. “Why, she’s a sort of Flying Dutchman. She’s been cruising around in these waters some time now, and they say it isn’t lucky to sight her.”“Luckier than not to sight her—and an hour later we shouldn’t have sighted her—in the dark.”The rejoinder was significant, and it came from the quiet passenger who had been appealed to for his opinion during the smoke-room discussion. The fourth officer looked not at all pleased at this encroachment on his own privileges as oracle. But he was destined to look less pleased still.“Mr Ransome,” interrupted the captain’s voice from the bridge overhead, “just send me the second quartermaster here. After that I want you here yourself.” And the captain’s tone was crisp, and his face was grim—and the merry-faced boy looked no longer merry, for he knew a wigging was in store.“Right, sir,” he answered, starting off with alacrity.“Powis, d’you hear that blighted young fool blithering away about Red Derelicts and Flying Dutchmen?” said the captain in an undertone to the chief officer. “As if passengers ain’t a skeery enough crowd without filling ’em up with all sorts of sick old sea lies into the bargain. He ought to be sent back to school again and well swished. Well, log the derelict.”The bugle rang out its second dinner summons to the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old England,” and there was something of a scurry among the passengers, who had ignored the first in their eagerness to watch the derelict. A few, however, remained, gazing after the ghastly eloquence of the deserted hulk, now black and indistinct in the dusk, for in the tropical seas darkness comes down with a rush.“Wonder if there’s anything in Ransome’s yarn about that beauty,” said one man, shutting his binoculars. “Hang it! I’m not superstitious, but, all the same, I wish we’d never sighted her.”

“What would happen if we went ashore here? Why, we’d very likely be eaten.”

“Eaten! Oh, captain, you can’t really mean that. In these days too!”

“But I do mean it. Yonder’s a pretty bad coast. As for ‘in these days,’ we haven’t yet captured quite all the earth, only the greater part of it. There are still some rum places left.”

“Oh!” And the inquiring lady passenger stared, round-eyed, to eastward, where, however, no sign of any coast was visible, nor yet in any other quarter.

The steamshipBalekawas shearing her way through the smooth satiny folds of the tropical swell, and the light breeze which stirred the surface combined with the air the ship was making to render life quite tolerable beneath the grateful shade of the awnings. Otherwise it was hot—unequivocably hot; and where the glisten of brasswork was exposed to the overhead noonday sun the inadvertent contact of the bare hand with the said brasswork was sufficient to make the owner jump. So completely alone on this shoreless sea was the steamer that the plumes of smoke from her great white funnels seemed as though they had no business to taint this free, pure air with their black abominations—seemed, in fact, an outrage on the blue and golden solitude. Yet the said solitude was by no means devoid of life. Flying-fish skimming above the liquid plain singly or in flights like silvery birds, or a school of porpoises keeping pace with the ship for miles in graceful leaps, as their sportive way is, constituted only hints as to the teeming life of the waters in common with the earth and air; or here and there a triangular fin moving dark and oily above the surface in scarcely perceptible glide. The sight started the inquiring lady passenger off afresh.

“Look, there’s another shark; what a number we’ve seen within the last day or two, captain. Is there any truth in that idea that a shark following a ship means that there’s going to be a death on board?”

“But this one isn’t following the ship; he’s going very nearly clean in the contrary direction.”

“Yes, I know. But do you think there’s anything in the idea?”

“Why, I think that if somebody died every time a shark followed a ship there’d soon be none of us left to go to sea at all. What the joker’s really smelling after is the stuff that’s thrown overboard from the cook’s galley from time to time.”

“Really? Well, there goes another weird legend of the sea—weird but romantic.”

“It’d be a good thing if a few more of them went overboard,” laughed the matter-of-fact captain. “They soon will, too—a good many have already. In the old ‘windjammer,’ days when you had nothing to do half the voyage but sit and whistle for a breeze, these yarns got into Jack’s head and stuck there. Now with steam and quick voyages, and a rattling spell of work in stowing cargo every few days or so, Jack hasn’t got time to bother about that sort of thing.”

“Then sailors aren’t superstitious any more?”

“No more than shore folk. I’ve seen landsmen both on board ship and ashore who could give points in that line to the scarriest old Jack-tar who ever munched salt horse, and knock him hollow at that.”

“Then you’ve no superstitions of your own, captain—you, a sailor?”

“Not one; I don’t believe any such nonsense.”

A solitary passenger, passing at the time in his walk up and down, overhearing, smiled and nodded approval.

TheBalekawas steering north by north-west, every eleven or eleven and a half knots that her nose managed to shove through the water that creamed back from her straight stem bringing her an hour nearer England. She was not a mail steamer, or even a regular passenger boat, being one of a private venture embarked in with the object of cheapening freight between England and the South African ports. But besides a full cargo she carried a limited complement of passengers and a quite unlimited ditto of cockroaches; otherwise she was an exceedingly comfortable boat, and combined good catering with a considerable reduction on current rates of passage money by the ordinary lines, all of which was a consideration with those to whom a few days more or less at sea mattered nothing.

The smoking-room amidships was a snug apartment with roomy chairs and well-cushioned lounges. In one corner three or four of the male passengers were hard at work capturing the Transvaal—a form of amusement widely prevailing at that time, although the war had not yet been started; rather should we have omitted the transition qualification, for they had already conquered and annexed the obnoxious republic, and that with surprisingly little loss or difficulty. Then the discussion waxed lively and warm, for the justifiability of the proposed annexation had come up; meanwhile others had dropped in.

“I maintain it would be utterly unjustifiable,” said one. “It’s all very well to urge that it would be for the good of civilisation and numbers, and all that sort of thing, but we can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“There’s no such thing as a hard and fast rule, or oughtn’t to be,” retorted with some heat he who had borne the main part of the argument; “but if there is, why, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ is a fairly safe one. What do you think sir?” turning to a man who was seated in another corner reading, but who had paid no attention to the discussion at all.

“Think? Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been in that part long enough to have formed an opinion,” was the answer.

“But you don’t agree with our friend there that there should be a hard and fast rule for everything? Surely you are of opinion that every question should be decided on its own merits?”

“Certainly,” replied the other politely, though inwardly bored at being dragged into a crude and threadbare discussion upon a subject in which he felt no interest whatever. “That’s a sound principle all the world over, and a safe one.”

“There you are,” cried the first speaker triumphantly, turning upon his antagonist. “What did I tell you? This gentleman agrees with me entirely, as any sensible man would on such a point as that.”

“We can’t do evil that good may come of it,” reiterated the said antagonist. “That’s a hard and fast rule.”

“Hard and fast rule be blowed! You might as well apply that to the Valpy case,” naming a somewhat prominent lawsuit then going forward, and relating to a disputed succession. “If the Valpy in possession weren’t justified in sticking to possession when he knew the real heir was a congenital idiot, and a homicidal one at that—why, there’s no such thing as any law of common sense.”

“What were the facts?” asked the man who had been appealed to from outside. “I have not been much in the way of reading the papers of late.”

They told him—several of them at once, as the way of a smoking-room gathering is. By judicious winnowing down he managed to elicit that a vast deal of property had been in dispute, that the holder had been an exemplary landlord, and, in short, a sort of Providence to all dependent on him; whereas the man who had successfully established his own claim, and thereby had ousted him, was one of those subjects for whom a few minutes in a lethal chamber would have constituted the only appropriate and adequate treatment. Indeed, the only matter of debate was as to whether the former holder, knowing that he was not legally entitled to remain in possession, was justified in retaining the same. Those here present were of opinion that he was.

“I don’t agree with you at all,” said the uncompromising man. “We can’t do evil that good may come of it. That’s the divine law, and—”

“Hallo! What’s the excitement?” interrupted somebody, as several persons hurried by the open door, some with binoculars in their hands.

“Oh, we’ve only sighted some ship, I suppose,” said the leader on the other side. “What I was going to say is—”

But ever so little to break the sea and sky monotony of a voyage will avail to raise a modicum of excitement; wherefore, what the speaker “was going to say” remained perforce unknown, for the group incontinently melted away in order to see what little there was to be seen.

That little was little enough. A solitary speck away towards the sky-line; to those who had binoculars, and soon to those who had not, taking shape—that shape the hull of a ship. Little enough in all conscience.

But—was it? The submerged hull of a ship and no more, save for two stumps of mast of uneven length sticking out of her. The poop and forecastle were above water, and in the wash of the increasing evening swell part of the bulwarks heaved up as the hulk rolled lazily, her rusty red sides, glistening and wet, showing a line of encrusting barnacles. This was what met the eager gaze of the passengers of theBalekain the lurid, smoky glare of the tropical sunset as the steamer swept up to, and slowed down to pass, the sad relic; and there may have been some among them who noticed that the long, straight path of her foamy wake has undergone an abrupt deviation behind her—for the derelict had been lying right in her course.

Right in her course! An hour later and it would have been dark—very dark—and then!

There was quite a buzz of interest among the passengers; the man who had been to sea a great deal advancing, of course, all sorts of wild and impossible theories with regard to the wreck. But though glasses were strained upon her no trace was visible as to her name or nationality.

“By George! I’m blest if it isn’t the Red Derelict herself!” exclaimed the fourth officer, lowering his binoculars. Instantly he became the centre of an inquiring group, chiefly ladies.

“The Red Derelict? What’s that, Mr Ransome?” came the eager query.

“Haven’t you heard of her?” said the other, who was little more than a merry-faced boy. “Why, she’s a sort of Flying Dutchman. She’s been cruising around in these waters some time now, and they say it isn’t lucky to sight her.”

“Luckier than not to sight her—and an hour later we shouldn’t have sighted her—in the dark.”

The rejoinder was significant, and it came from the quiet passenger who had been appealed to for his opinion during the smoke-room discussion. The fourth officer looked not at all pleased at this encroachment on his own privileges as oracle. But he was destined to look less pleased still.

“Mr Ransome,” interrupted the captain’s voice from the bridge overhead, “just send me the second quartermaster here. After that I want you here yourself.” And the captain’s tone was crisp, and his face was grim—and the merry-faced boy looked no longer merry, for he knew a wigging was in store.

“Right, sir,” he answered, starting off with alacrity.

“Powis, d’you hear that blighted young fool blithering away about Red Derelicts and Flying Dutchmen?” said the captain in an undertone to the chief officer. “As if passengers ain’t a skeery enough crowd without filling ’em up with all sorts of sick old sea lies into the bargain. He ought to be sent back to school again and well swished. Well, log the derelict.”

The bugle rang out its second dinner summons to the strains of “The Roast Beef of Old England,” and there was something of a scurry among the passengers, who had ignored the first in their eagerness to watch the derelict. A few, however, remained, gazing after the ghastly eloquence of the deserted hulk, now black and indistinct in the dusk, for in the tropical seas darkness comes down with a rush.

“Wonder if there’s anything in Ransome’s yarn about that beauty,” said one man, shutting his binoculars. “Hang it! I’m not superstitious, but, all the same, I wish we’d never sighted her.”

Chapter Twenty Six.An Omen.There was the usual clatter of knives and forks, and chinking of glasses, and scurrying of stewards in the well-lighted saloon, and during dinner the derelict they had just passed took up a large proportion of the conversation. As to this the captain’s table constituted no exception.“What sort of ship would she have been, Captain Lawes—English?” The speaker was the lady passenger we heard making inquiries as to sea superstitions. She was a bright, rather taking woman of about thirty, making the homeward voyage with one child, a sweetly-pretty little girl, who was made a great pet of among the passengers—indeed, a great deal more than was good for her.“Can’t say for certain, but am inclined to think so. She must have been a timber ship or she’d hardly have kept afloat for so long.”“How long do you think she’s been like that?”“Can’t say either for certain. She may have been months, and, from the look of her, a good few of them. Or she may have been years.”“And do you think there’s anyone on board?” The captain stared.“Anyone on board?” he echoed. “Well, not anyone living, of course. But it’s hardly likely anyone would have remained on board. The fact of her being still afloat shows that they had plenty of time when they abandoned her.”“But if there is? What a ghastly idea it seems, that old ship floating about for ever in those oily seas, a floating coffin for some poor wretches imprisoned within her! Ugh! it’s horrible!”“You’ve got a lively imagination, Mrs Colville,” said the captain drily. “You’re not a novelist, are you?”“Oh no; I wish I were. But isn’t a half-sunk ship like that, right in our way, rather dangerous to navigation?”“That’s exactly the wording of our log-book when we report the occurrence: ‘Dangerous to navigation.’”“But why don’t you sink her, then, and get her out of the way?”The captain stole a quick, comical glance at the passenger on his other side.“In the first place, as the American lady said when she was asked why she didn’t get married: ‘I guess I haven’t time.’ You see, I don’t own this boat, Mrs Colville, nor yet her cargo. What would my owners say if I spent half the night hanging around trying to sink every derelict one passes at sea? We’re behind time as it is, thanks to the barnacles we’ve accumulated. Again, she may be worth salvaging, though I don’t think so.”“Mr Ransome was saying she had been around here quite a long while. He called her the Red Derelict; said she was a sort of Flying Dutchman, and it was unlucky to sight her.”“I know he did,” answered the captain grimly, with a complacent recollection of the savage wigging that rash youth had received at his hands. The other passenger struck in:“I told him it would have been still more unlucky if we hadn’t sighted her till—say, an hour later. She was right bang in our course.”The captain looked not altogether pleased at this remark, but the speaker was a personage of some consideration on board.“We keep a look out, you know, Mr Wagram,” he said.“Of course. But I always notice that the first hour of these tropical nights is the darkest, perhaps because of the suddenness with which it rushes down. Now, a hulk like that, flush with the surface and showing no lights, would it be discernible until too late?”The captain knew that the chances were twenty to one it wouldn’t, but for expediency’s sake he was not going to own as much. As he had said before, passengers were a skeery crowd, and didn’t want any extra frightening.“Chances are it would,” he answered, “especially in a smooth sea like this. There’s always a disturbance on the surface as the thing rises and falls, an extra gleam of phosphorus, or something that the lookout man on the forecastle can’t miss.”“That’s satisfactory,” rejoined the lady. “Do you believe in luck, Mr Wagram?”“In the sense in which we are going to be unlucky because we’ve seen a dismantled hulk—decidedly not. The idea is too puerile even for discussion.”“Oh, I wish I were as strong-minded! Do you know, I’m terribly superstitious.”“Really? Well, I believe many people are,” he answered politely, with a faint dash of banter.“Mrs Colville was trying to get at me on that very subject this afternoon,” laughed the captain. “She thought all sailor-men were born fetish-men.”“It’s all very well, no doubt,” she answered. “You may laugh, and all that, but, all the same, I wish we hadn’t seen that Flying Dutchman of yours. I’m sure it’ll bring us ill luck.”Hardly were the words uttered than a hush fell upon the saloon. To the clatter of knives and forks, the chink of glasses, and the loud hum of voices—at this stage of the dinner at its highest—had succeeded a dead silence. It had seemed compulsory, for it had begun without. The regular, monotonous thrashing of the propeller—which had become almost a necessity, so habitual was it by now—had ceased. The ship lay still upon the smooth, oily waters. The engines had stopped.Those who have experience of sea voyages will be familiar with the effect produced by such an occurrence. So thoroughly has the churning beat of the propeller become a part of one’s existence that the sudden cessation thereof is enough to awaken the soundest sleeper, and when it befalls during waking hours, and in mid-ocean, why, then, it is not the constitutionally timid alone who can plead guilty to a misgiving, and the conjuring up of a disabled ship rolling helplessly on the swell, and waiting for assistance that may be long enough in coming.Such was the prevailing state of mind among the passengers of theBalekaat that moment. The timid decided that it was a case of breakdown; those not timid hoped it was not. Tongues began to wag again, but not so briskly, and immediately a steward came in and reported something to the chief engineer, who presided at another table in the saloon. The latter went out.“What has gone wrong, captain?” said Mrs Colville, not without a dash of anxiety. “Have the engines broken down?”“I haven’t been down to the engine-room to see yet,” was the bland reply. “McAndrew has just gone out, so we shall know directly.”“Ah! There now, Mr Wagram, look at that!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t I say that wretched derelict would bring us ill luck? And just as I was saying so we stop.”“Is that ill luck?” said Wagram, with a smile. He himself had made no comment whatever on the occurrence, but was going on with his dinner as if nothing had happened. “It is no uncommon event at sea for the engines to stop for a few minutes for various intelligible and harmless reasons. Am I right, Captain Lawes?”“Perfectly.”“But why don’t they send up to let you know what’s gone wrong, captain?” persisted the lady. “I should have thought that’s the first thing they’d do.”“The fact that they don’t shows that there’s nothing the matter. McAndrew knows better than to set up a scare among the passengers by sending despatches into the saloon in the middle of dinner.”And the speaker, like Wagram, continued tranquilly to ply his knife and fork. At heart he felt annoyed at the turn events had taken. He knew—while despising it—the depths of asininity to which the average human understanding will plunge in the matter of “luck” and “ill luck,” and such a coincidence as that which had befallen was sufficient to start some idiot among the passengers getting it into the newspapers on arrival in England. Moreover, he knew, of course, that a merchant captain is by no means the almighty little tin god that most landsmen think him, even while at sea, and that in the eyes of owners he is of fairly small account. And, strange as it may seem to the enlightened mind, the reputation of an “unlucky ship” is easier gained than lost. So when, a minute or two later, a note was brought to him from the engine-room he at once stood up and addressed the saloon.There was no cause whatever for alarm, he explained. The stoppage was due to something wrong with the machinery, but of a trifling nature, and which was even then nearly repaired. Any minute they might be under way again.There was clapping of hands at this, and cries of “Hear, hear!” Reassured tongues began to wag again, and the lowered voices and murmurs of misgiving were heard no more. And lo! even before dinner was done, there came a pulsation through the fabric of the ship, gentle at first, then increasing. The beat of the propeller was heard as well as felt. They were on the move again, and now a marked increase of hilarity was significant of reaction after the recent depression of alarm.“The world is very full of prize idiots, Mr Wagram,” observed the captain when the bulk of the passengers had gone out, including the lady at his right. He had purposely sat on longer than usual.“Yes. You could scrape together a considerable fool show out of it,” laughed the other, filling his glass. “But between ourselves, now that we are alone, why don’t the naval people send out a gunboat to look for this confounded hulk and sink her? They can’t have so much to do on this West Coast Station, and she must be infernally dangerous to shipping.”“So she is really. But at sea we have to take a lot of chances—a sight more than you landsmen would dream of, I don’t mind tellingyou.”“So I should imagine. Look at this.” From a notecase he extracted a newspaper cutting and handed it to the captain. It was the identical account of the appearance of the derelict which Haldane had read out that happy summer morning at dear old Hilversea, and something of a sigh escaped him at the recollection. “Think it’s the same?”“‘TheRhodesian... Latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes North, longitude 16 degrees 38 minutes West... about 900 or 1000 tons’” ... went on the captain, skimming the report. “H’m, h’m—it’s rum, certainly, but it might easily be. The description seems to tally exactly. Why, it’s quite a long while ago too. And the latitude isn’t far out with our present position. Yes; it’s rum.”“But how the deuce can the thing stick about in one place? Seems as if it were bound to drift away, Heaven knows where—perhaps on shore and get broken up.”“Ever heard of circular currents, Mr Wagram? It’s that that forms the Maelstrom. There are some queer currents hereabouts too, which may account for the thing hanging around here till the crack of doom. I knew she’d been a long time in the water by the look of her. But may I ask, without being curious, what made you keep that cutting—let alone carry it about with you?”“That’s more than I can tell you, for I hardly know myself. I suppose the circumstance struck me as an out-of-the-way strange one, so when all at once I made up my mind for a voyage or two it came back to my mind, and so I hunted up the number it was in and cut it out.”“Yes; it’s a rum thing, very,” repeated the captain, glancing again through the newspaper cutting. “‘About eight feet of iron foremast standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it.’ That’s exactly the description of the hooker we’ve just passed, except that there was no rigging trailing from it. But that may have carried away or been knocked off.”“Well, it’s behindus, at any rate,” said Wagram, rising. “Let’s hope it’ll soon go to the bottom of its own accord. I suppose the thing can hardly keep afloat for ever.”To his fellow-passengers Wagram was a sealed book, in that all conjectures as to his identity and his circumstance failed. He was very reticent, and this they were at first inclined to resent; but a certain charm of manner and a never-failing courtesy to all quickly dispelled any idea that “side” might be the underlying motive of such reticence. The fact that he had paid extra for the privilege of having a cabin to himself, and that nearly the best on the ship, seemed to throw some light upon his circumstances. Though reticent, however, about himself he could not exactly be called unsociable, for he would spend his evenings in the smoke-room, entering into the current chat over a pipe or so. But who he was, and where from—that nobody knew.Not much inclined for sociability was he to-night. The incident of the derelict had brought back the past—the old happy past—and again he seemed to live through those bright sunny days at Hilversea, surrounded by all that made life joyous, and, underlying all, the ecstatic sense of possession. But now—! Well, his quest was ended. He had carried it out conscientiously, energetically, and—nothing had come of it.No; nothing whatever. He had followed out Develin Hunt’s directions to the letter—sparing not himself. He had betaken himself, always with care and absence of ostentation, to the locality in which that worthy had pronounced his half-brother to be, but of the latter he could learn nothing. Once he had lighted on what seemed a clue, but it had ended in smoke. Then, acting upon another, he had taken ship for Australia, and had followed it up, with like result. Once more he had returned to South Africa, to meet again with no reward to his efforts. At last, baffled at every turn, he had concluded he might legitimately abandon the search, and so here we find him again on his way homeward.His wanderings, although he had spared no expense towards the attainment of his object, had been undertaken on no luxurious lines. He had roughed it in strange wild places, had undergone real hardships, and on occasions real peril, and the experience had hardened him. He was in splendid condition, dark, sunburnt, and as hard as nails. But now had come upon him a great home-sickness, and he was regretting the easy-going lack of foresight which had moved him to take passage on board theBalekainstead of upon one of the more crowded but swifter steamships of the regular mail line.Pacing the deck in the tropical starlight he recapitulated to himself the whole situation. All had gone below now, but he remained, as his custom was; the swirl of the phosphorescent lines from the stem of the ship; the muffled clank of the engines; the weird, long-drawn cry of the lookout on the forecastle as the bells were struck every half hour—the sole accompaniment to his meditations. It all came back—the weeks of blank desolation following upon his father’s death, and how the voice of conscience, proving stronger than that of his advisers, had spurred him forth upon his fruitless quest. Well, it had proved fruitless, which seemed to point to the certainty that his advisers had been right.It all came back. The wrench of that uprooting—of tearing himself away from Hilversea, and all it involved; the farewells, too, though he had avoided these as much as possible—in cowardly fashion he now told himself. Haldane’s hearty regrets and expectation to see him soon again; Yvonne’s blue eyes brimming with tears, which the affectionate child was at no pains to conceal; the genuine grief of his humbler friends; the last Mass in the chapel; and the final shutting out of everything behind him as the carriage whirled him off to Bassingham station in the murk of the winter day. Delia Calmour, too, whom he could not but think that he and his father and the indirect influences of their surroundings had been incidental, under Heaven, in guiding into the way of light. Poor child! He knew she would miss him, as he recalled the brave effort she had made to subdue all manifestation of the extent of her regret when he had bidden her good-bye; and he smiled to himself as he remembered certain arrangements which he had made with his solicitors providing that, in the event of anything happening to him, this girl whom he and his father had befriended should never be thrown upon the world to combat that uncompromising enemy with her own unaided resources.Yes; Hilversea rose up before him now, fair, pleasant, restful in its sunshine as the very plains of heaven. Soon he would be within it again. He had trampled all considerations of self under foot and had followed the voice of conscience—and the result had been “As you were!” Surely he had done enough. Clearly his stewardship was his still, and, Heaven help him, he would endeavour to fulfil it to the utmost of his power, and would teach his son to do the same after him. Gerard? He must have grown quite tall, he reflected. What a splendid-looking fellow he would be.Pacing up and down, hour after hour, Wagram’s thoughts ran too fast for his mind—and ever the silence, the swirl of the sea, and the streaking fall of a star in the murky tropical zenith. Then came a sudden jar, and a crash that shivered the ship from stem to stern. For a few moments this horrible jarring vibration continued, then the whole fabric gave a convulsive kind of heave, and the tremor ceased. All was still—but the thrash of the propeller was no longer felt, no longer heard. The throbbing of the engines had ceased—again.

There was the usual clatter of knives and forks, and chinking of glasses, and scurrying of stewards in the well-lighted saloon, and during dinner the derelict they had just passed took up a large proportion of the conversation. As to this the captain’s table constituted no exception.

“What sort of ship would she have been, Captain Lawes—English?” The speaker was the lady passenger we heard making inquiries as to sea superstitions. She was a bright, rather taking woman of about thirty, making the homeward voyage with one child, a sweetly-pretty little girl, who was made a great pet of among the passengers—indeed, a great deal more than was good for her.

“Can’t say for certain, but am inclined to think so. She must have been a timber ship or she’d hardly have kept afloat for so long.”

“How long do you think she’s been like that?”

“Can’t say either for certain. She may have been months, and, from the look of her, a good few of them. Or she may have been years.”

“And do you think there’s anyone on board?” The captain stared.

“Anyone on board?” he echoed. “Well, not anyone living, of course. But it’s hardly likely anyone would have remained on board. The fact of her being still afloat shows that they had plenty of time when they abandoned her.”

“But if there is? What a ghastly idea it seems, that old ship floating about for ever in those oily seas, a floating coffin for some poor wretches imprisoned within her! Ugh! it’s horrible!”

“You’ve got a lively imagination, Mrs Colville,” said the captain drily. “You’re not a novelist, are you?”

“Oh no; I wish I were. But isn’t a half-sunk ship like that, right in our way, rather dangerous to navigation?”

“That’s exactly the wording of our log-book when we report the occurrence: ‘Dangerous to navigation.’”

“But why don’t you sink her, then, and get her out of the way?”

The captain stole a quick, comical glance at the passenger on his other side.

“In the first place, as the American lady said when she was asked why she didn’t get married: ‘I guess I haven’t time.’ You see, I don’t own this boat, Mrs Colville, nor yet her cargo. What would my owners say if I spent half the night hanging around trying to sink every derelict one passes at sea? We’re behind time as it is, thanks to the barnacles we’ve accumulated. Again, she may be worth salvaging, though I don’t think so.”

“Mr Ransome was saying she had been around here quite a long while. He called her the Red Derelict; said she was a sort of Flying Dutchman, and it was unlucky to sight her.”

“I know he did,” answered the captain grimly, with a complacent recollection of the savage wigging that rash youth had received at his hands. The other passenger struck in:

“I told him it would have been still more unlucky if we hadn’t sighted her till—say, an hour later. She was right bang in our course.”

The captain looked not altogether pleased at this remark, but the speaker was a personage of some consideration on board.

“We keep a look out, you know, Mr Wagram,” he said.

“Of course. But I always notice that the first hour of these tropical nights is the darkest, perhaps because of the suddenness with which it rushes down. Now, a hulk like that, flush with the surface and showing no lights, would it be discernible until too late?”

The captain knew that the chances were twenty to one it wouldn’t, but for expediency’s sake he was not going to own as much. As he had said before, passengers were a skeery crowd, and didn’t want any extra frightening.

“Chances are it would,” he answered, “especially in a smooth sea like this. There’s always a disturbance on the surface as the thing rises and falls, an extra gleam of phosphorus, or something that the lookout man on the forecastle can’t miss.”

“That’s satisfactory,” rejoined the lady. “Do you believe in luck, Mr Wagram?”

“In the sense in which we are going to be unlucky because we’ve seen a dismantled hulk—decidedly not. The idea is too puerile even for discussion.”

“Oh, I wish I were as strong-minded! Do you know, I’m terribly superstitious.”

“Really? Well, I believe many people are,” he answered politely, with a faint dash of banter.

“Mrs Colville was trying to get at me on that very subject this afternoon,” laughed the captain. “She thought all sailor-men were born fetish-men.”

“It’s all very well, no doubt,” she answered. “You may laugh, and all that, but, all the same, I wish we hadn’t seen that Flying Dutchman of yours. I’m sure it’ll bring us ill luck.”

Hardly were the words uttered than a hush fell upon the saloon. To the clatter of knives and forks, the chink of glasses, and the loud hum of voices—at this stage of the dinner at its highest—had succeeded a dead silence. It had seemed compulsory, for it had begun without. The regular, monotonous thrashing of the propeller—which had become almost a necessity, so habitual was it by now—had ceased. The ship lay still upon the smooth, oily waters. The engines had stopped.

Those who have experience of sea voyages will be familiar with the effect produced by such an occurrence. So thoroughly has the churning beat of the propeller become a part of one’s existence that the sudden cessation thereof is enough to awaken the soundest sleeper, and when it befalls during waking hours, and in mid-ocean, why, then, it is not the constitutionally timid alone who can plead guilty to a misgiving, and the conjuring up of a disabled ship rolling helplessly on the swell, and waiting for assistance that may be long enough in coming.

Such was the prevailing state of mind among the passengers of theBalekaat that moment. The timid decided that it was a case of breakdown; those not timid hoped it was not. Tongues began to wag again, but not so briskly, and immediately a steward came in and reported something to the chief engineer, who presided at another table in the saloon. The latter went out.

“What has gone wrong, captain?” said Mrs Colville, not without a dash of anxiety. “Have the engines broken down?”

“I haven’t been down to the engine-room to see yet,” was the bland reply. “McAndrew has just gone out, so we shall know directly.”

“Ah! There now, Mr Wagram, look at that!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t I say that wretched derelict would bring us ill luck? And just as I was saying so we stop.”

“Is that ill luck?” said Wagram, with a smile. He himself had made no comment whatever on the occurrence, but was going on with his dinner as if nothing had happened. “It is no uncommon event at sea for the engines to stop for a few minutes for various intelligible and harmless reasons. Am I right, Captain Lawes?”

“Perfectly.”

“But why don’t they send up to let you know what’s gone wrong, captain?” persisted the lady. “I should have thought that’s the first thing they’d do.”

“The fact that they don’t shows that there’s nothing the matter. McAndrew knows better than to set up a scare among the passengers by sending despatches into the saloon in the middle of dinner.”

And the speaker, like Wagram, continued tranquilly to ply his knife and fork. At heart he felt annoyed at the turn events had taken. He knew—while despising it—the depths of asininity to which the average human understanding will plunge in the matter of “luck” and “ill luck,” and such a coincidence as that which had befallen was sufficient to start some idiot among the passengers getting it into the newspapers on arrival in England. Moreover, he knew, of course, that a merchant captain is by no means the almighty little tin god that most landsmen think him, even while at sea, and that in the eyes of owners he is of fairly small account. And, strange as it may seem to the enlightened mind, the reputation of an “unlucky ship” is easier gained than lost. So when, a minute or two later, a note was brought to him from the engine-room he at once stood up and addressed the saloon.

There was no cause whatever for alarm, he explained. The stoppage was due to something wrong with the machinery, but of a trifling nature, and which was even then nearly repaired. Any minute they might be under way again.

There was clapping of hands at this, and cries of “Hear, hear!” Reassured tongues began to wag again, and the lowered voices and murmurs of misgiving were heard no more. And lo! even before dinner was done, there came a pulsation through the fabric of the ship, gentle at first, then increasing. The beat of the propeller was heard as well as felt. They were on the move again, and now a marked increase of hilarity was significant of reaction after the recent depression of alarm.

“The world is very full of prize idiots, Mr Wagram,” observed the captain when the bulk of the passengers had gone out, including the lady at his right. He had purposely sat on longer than usual.

“Yes. You could scrape together a considerable fool show out of it,” laughed the other, filling his glass. “But between ourselves, now that we are alone, why don’t the naval people send out a gunboat to look for this confounded hulk and sink her? They can’t have so much to do on this West Coast Station, and she must be infernally dangerous to shipping.”

“So she is really. But at sea we have to take a lot of chances—a sight more than you landsmen would dream of, I don’t mind tellingyou.”

“So I should imagine. Look at this.” From a notecase he extracted a newspaper cutting and handed it to the captain. It was the identical account of the appearance of the derelict which Haldane had read out that happy summer morning at dear old Hilversea, and something of a sigh escaped him at the recollection. “Think it’s the same?”

“‘TheRhodesian... Latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes North, longitude 16 degrees 38 minutes West... about 900 or 1000 tons’” ... went on the captain, skimming the report. “H’m, h’m—it’s rum, certainly, but it might easily be. The description seems to tally exactly. Why, it’s quite a long while ago too. And the latitude isn’t far out with our present position. Yes; it’s rum.”

“But how the deuce can the thing stick about in one place? Seems as if it were bound to drift away, Heaven knows where—perhaps on shore and get broken up.”

“Ever heard of circular currents, Mr Wagram? It’s that that forms the Maelstrom. There are some queer currents hereabouts too, which may account for the thing hanging around here till the crack of doom. I knew she’d been a long time in the water by the look of her. But may I ask, without being curious, what made you keep that cutting—let alone carry it about with you?”

“That’s more than I can tell you, for I hardly know myself. I suppose the circumstance struck me as an out-of-the-way strange one, so when all at once I made up my mind for a voyage or two it came back to my mind, and so I hunted up the number it was in and cut it out.”

“Yes; it’s a rum thing, very,” repeated the captain, glancing again through the newspaper cutting. “‘About eight feet of iron foremast standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it.’ That’s exactly the description of the hooker we’ve just passed, except that there was no rigging trailing from it. But that may have carried away or been knocked off.”

“Well, it’s behindus, at any rate,” said Wagram, rising. “Let’s hope it’ll soon go to the bottom of its own accord. I suppose the thing can hardly keep afloat for ever.”

To his fellow-passengers Wagram was a sealed book, in that all conjectures as to his identity and his circumstance failed. He was very reticent, and this they were at first inclined to resent; but a certain charm of manner and a never-failing courtesy to all quickly dispelled any idea that “side” might be the underlying motive of such reticence. The fact that he had paid extra for the privilege of having a cabin to himself, and that nearly the best on the ship, seemed to throw some light upon his circumstances. Though reticent, however, about himself he could not exactly be called unsociable, for he would spend his evenings in the smoke-room, entering into the current chat over a pipe or so. But who he was, and where from—that nobody knew.

Not much inclined for sociability was he to-night. The incident of the derelict had brought back the past—the old happy past—and again he seemed to live through those bright sunny days at Hilversea, surrounded by all that made life joyous, and, underlying all, the ecstatic sense of possession. But now—! Well, his quest was ended. He had carried it out conscientiously, energetically, and—nothing had come of it.

No; nothing whatever. He had followed out Develin Hunt’s directions to the letter—sparing not himself. He had betaken himself, always with care and absence of ostentation, to the locality in which that worthy had pronounced his half-brother to be, but of the latter he could learn nothing. Once he had lighted on what seemed a clue, but it had ended in smoke. Then, acting upon another, he had taken ship for Australia, and had followed it up, with like result. Once more he had returned to South Africa, to meet again with no reward to his efforts. At last, baffled at every turn, he had concluded he might legitimately abandon the search, and so here we find him again on his way homeward.

His wanderings, although he had spared no expense towards the attainment of his object, had been undertaken on no luxurious lines. He had roughed it in strange wild places, had undergone real hardships, and on occasions real peril, and the experience had hardened him. He was in splendid condition, dark, sunburnt, and as hard as nails. But now had come upon him a great home-sickness, and he was regretting the easy-going lack of foresight which had moved him to take passage on board theBalekainstead of upon one of the more crowded but swifter steamships of the regular mail line.

Pacing the deck in the tropical starlight he recapitulated to himself the whole situation. All had gone below now, but he remained, as his custom was; the swirl of the phosphorescent lines from the stem of the ship; the muffled clank of the engines; the weird, long-drawn cry of the lookout on the forecastle as the bells were struck every half hour—the sole accompaniment to his meditations. It all came back—the weeks of blank desolation following upon his father’s death, and how the voice of conscience, proving stronger than that of his advisers, had spurred him forth upon his fruitless quest. Well, it had proved fruitless, which seemed to point to the certainty that his advisers had been right.

It all came back. The wrench of that uprooting—of tearing himself away from Hilversea, and all it involved; the farewells, too, though he had avoided these as much as possible—in cowardly fashion he now told himself. Haldane’s hearty regrets and expectation to see him soon again; Yvonne’s blue eyes brimming with tears, which the affectionate child was at no pains to conceal; the genuine grief of his humbler friends; the last Mass in the chapel; and the final shutting out of everything behind him as the carriage whirled him off to Bassingham station in the murk of the winter day. Delia Calmour, too, whom he could not but think that he and his father and the indirect influences of their surroundings had been incidental, under Heaven, in guiding into the way of light. Poor child! He knew she would miss him, as he recalled the brave effort she had made to subdue all manifestation of the extent of her regret when he had bidden her good-bye; and he smiled to himself as he remembered certain arrangements which he had made with his solicitors providing that, in the event of anything happening to him, this girl whom he and his father had befriended should never be thrown upon the world to combat that uncompromising enemy with her own unaided resources.

Yes; Hilversea rose up before him now, fair, pleasant, restful in its sunshine as the very plains of heaven. Soon he would be within it again. He had trampled all considerations of self under foot and had followed the voice of conscience—and the result had been “As you were!” Surely he had done enough. Clearly his stewardship was his still, and, Heaven help him, he would endeavour to fulfil it to the utmost of his power, and would teach his son to do the same after him. Gerard? He must have grown quite tall, he reflected. What a splendid-looking fellow he would be.

Pacing up and down, hour after hour, Wagram’s thoughts ran too fast for his mind—and ever the silence, the swirl of the sea, and the streaking fall of a star in the murky tropical zenith. Then came a sudden jar, and a crash that shivered the ship from stem to stern. For a few moments this horrible jarring vibration continued, then the whole fabric gave a convulsive kind of heave, and the tremor ceased. All was still—but the thrash of the propeller was no longer felt, no longer heard. The throbbing of the engines had ceased—again.

Chapter Twenty Seven.A Sacrifice in Vain.The solitary watcher realised instinctively that this time something was wrong. So, too, did the residue of his fellow-passengers, for in an incredibly short space of time they came swarming up from below in various stages of dress and undress—mostly the latter—and many and eager were the inquiries heard on every side, and anxiety was depicted on every face; while on others there was a look which spelt downright scare—these, too, by no means exclusively the property of the ornamental sex.There was some excuse for it; for to find oneself started out of one’s sleep by a jarring shock, to realise that the vessel is no longer moving, to rush up on deck only to find her lying helpless on the black midnight sea, the hurried gait and speech of officers and crew, to the accompaniment of the hoarse roaring of the steam pipes—all this is well calculated to try the nerves of the ordinary passenger; to conjure up visions of collision, or running on a rock, and the swift and sudden foundering with all hands.“What is it? Are we ashore? Have we collided?” were some of the questions uttered on every side, and from the more fearful: “Are we going to the bottom?”“Going to the bottom? Of course not,” snapped the chief officer, who had come up in time to catch this last query. “There’s no cause for alarm. The propeller shaft has snapped, and we shall have to lie to and signal for assistance. Soon get it too; we’re in the line of steamers. Look! here goes the first.”The sharp hiss of a rocket rent the air as the fiery streak shot up high into the heavens, exploding with a reverberating boom. It was followed immediately by another.“I came to tell you,” he went on, “that the captain’s orders are that all the passengers go below. Wine and refreshments will be served in the saloon immediately.”“Then wearegoing to the bottom,” pronounced one fool. Upon him the “chief” turned.“Grub would be a rum sort of preparation for that, wouldn’t it?” he said scathingly. And there was a laugh, though, truth to tell, somewhat of a hollow one.In the saloon the grateful popping of corks was already audible, and on the tables the stewards were setting out bottles of champagne and glasses, while others were bringing in the materials for a cold supper. When well through this the ship’s surgeon announced that those who were not dressed had better get into all their clothing, and also collect any valuables they might possess, but that absolutely no luggage of any kind would be allowed. At the sound of the bugle all were to repair on deck. No; there was no occasion for panic of any kind. Ample time would be afforded—“only, of course, they mustn’t make it till next week,” appended the doctor, by way of raising a laugh.“That means the boats,” pronounced one man decidedly.“Well, I’m for another go of ‘the boy,’” reaching over for the nearest champagne bottle. “It may be long enough before we get another look in.”“It’s all that damned derelict,” said another. “I’m not superstitious, but I wish to the Lord we’d never sighted her. I said so this afternoon.”“This afternoon? Why, it hasn’t come yet,” retorted the first. “Man, you might as well have said to-morrow.”Again there was a laugh—not much of a one—but the more they could laugh the better.“Mr Wagram, I am dreadfully frightened,” said Mrs Colville, to whose wants he had been attending. “Is there really much danger, do you think?”“No. There’s plenty of boat room—that’s where we score off the overcrowded mail steamer. Why, it’ll be quite an adventure to look back upon after we are picked up. Now, I think you had better collect whatever you may want to take—valuables, papers, anything of that kind. And, it’s time to dress the child.”“Oh, that won’t take a minute. I’ve let her sleep as long as possible. For the rest, I’ve hardly anything worth collecting. But you? You haven’t been to bed, have you?”“No; I was doing my usual midnight tramp on deck when the smash came. Like yourself, I’ve nothing much to collect either.”She stole a look at him, and it was one of admiration—evoked not only by the tall, straight form and dark, refined, pensive face. His consummate coolness under the stress was what appealed to her now. Not one among the others but had shown some slight sign of flurry, or at any rate excitement beyond the ordinary. This one had not. Had they been planning a trip on shore at some port of call his tone and demeanour could hardly have been more even, more thoroughly composed.“Are you a fatalist, Mr Wagram?” she said. “You treat all this as a matter of course.”“I am no sort of ‘ist,’” he answered, with a smile. “Well—what?”“Great heavens! I was forgetting,” she said. “We won’t be able to land anywhere. The captain told me if we were to go ashore anywhere off here we’d very likely be eaten—by savages. He was telling me only this afternoon. Good heavens! what is to become of us?”“The quarter you have just invoked twice will take care of that—never fear. Now go and waken Lily. I’ll wait for you here.”Hardly had she left him than the bugle rang out. Its notes, almost like the trump of doom to some of the more frightened, came pealing down the companion-way, and immediately the saloon was filled with a scuffling crowd making for the upper air. Now more distant, in different quarters of the ship, its blast sounded again and again. Still Wagram sat motionless in his chair.“Hallo! ain’t you going up?” cried one of the last, thus seeing him. “Man, but the bugle’s gone again and again.”“I know it has,” said Wagram calmly, finishing off his glass; “I’m waiting for Mrs Colville.”The other went his way without another word. Wagram, thinking it about time to hurry up hisprotégé, started in the direction of her cabin, and as he did so a pealing shriek of utter and complete despair brought his pulses to a momentary standstill.The while, on deck, the more or less scared passengers were quickly lined up in rows—the women and children apart. They, for their part, noticed two things: that the surface of the sea was much nearer than it had been the last time they had stood here—in fact, appallingly near; and that beside each boat stood its crew, just as they had seen them at ordinary Saturday afternoon fire drill. A thick, sickly murk had settled overhead, shutting out the stars—and by the glare of the lanterns it might be seen that the ship was very low down in the stern indeed. The roaring of the steam had now ceased, and the great funnels towered above, white and ghostly. And now what had actually happened began to be whispered around. The propeller rod had snapped, and in snapping had fallen through the keel, ripping away plates, and tearing open a tremendous leak, through which the water had rushed with alarming rapidity. Then it was found that the watertight bulkheads were of no use. The doors had somehow got jammed, and would not close. During all the time that the coolness and forethought of the captain and officers had utilised by sending the passengers below for some final refreshment the ship had been slowly settling.The expedient had been a good one. To that degree invigorated, the passengers, lined up there, were less susceptible to panic, and the work of loading the boats and lowering went on with clockwork regularity and order.That shriek had the effect upon Wagram of the lash on a racehorse. He sprang in the direction whence it proceeded. Mrs Colville’s cabin was at the end of a long passage out of which other cabins opened, and now he found her standing in the doorway of hers with an awful look upon her ashy face.“Lily. My little one. She’s gone!” she screamed at sight of him.“Gone?”“Yes. She isn’t here. Oh, God! Oh, God! Where is she?”“Keep cool. We’ll find her,” urged Wagram. “She may be on deck. Go up there and see. I’ll search here meanwhile.”But the frantic woman refused. She dashed into each cabin along the passage, searching everywhere, screaming aloud the little one’s name.“Go up—go up,” repeated Wagram. “I’ll bring her to you if she’s below, but she can’t be.”The noise above—the trampling and the hauling—increased. The lowering of the boats had already begun.“I won’t,” she screamed. “Oh, my Lily—my little one! Where are you? Oh, God—where are you?”She turned to dash along the passage. As she did so the ship gave a sudden lurch, flinging open a cabin door with some violence. It came in full contact with the forehead of the frenzied woman, and sent her stunned into Wagram’s arms.“Better so,” he said to himself as he lifted her.The last boat was lowered and ready—in the settling state of the ship, not far below her taffrail. As she lay alongside a man rushed up from the companion-way bearing a limp, unconscious figure.“It’s Mrs Colville,” said Wagram quickly as he handed over his burden. “Her child’s lost below; I’m going to look for it.”“Into the boat with you, sir,” ordered the captain decisively. “Not a moment to lose.”But Wagram’s answer was to make a dart for the companion-way. He disappeared within it.“Shove off!” cried the captain. “I’m not going to sacrifice a lot of lives for that of one splendid fool. Shove off!”“Ay, ay, sir.” And at the words, with sudden and cat-like rapidity, two of the boat’s crew sprang upon the captain, who was standing at the rail, and in a trice he was tumbled into the boat, and still securely held while quick, long pulling strokes increased her distance from the sinking ship.“No, you don’t, sir,” said the men, restraining with difficulty their commander’s furious struggles. “The old hooker can go down without you for once. Get back to her? No, you don’t. For shame, sir. You’ve got a missis and kiddies waiting at Southampton, remember.”The captain fumed and swore, and called them every kind of damned mutineer, and worse—in fact, a great deal worse—so much worse that they had to remind him respectfully that the boats containing the women and children must be within easy earshot. Why should he go down with his ship, they pointed out to him, instead of remaining above water to command another? Not the last man to leave her did he say? Well, that couldn’t be helped—if a passenger were such a lunatic as to go below just as she was taking her last plunge.There was no bombast about Captain Lawes’ intention. While there was a man on board he would not have left her, and in this case he would not have, even though that man, being a passenger, had ignored his authority. But his crew had taken the matter into their own hands.The steamy sea murk was thickening, and came rolling in from seaward in damp, hot miasmatic puffs. But the settling hull of theBalekawas still discernible with tolerable plainness. To her many a hail was sentbut—fronther, to their straining ears, none was returned.“I think, sir,” said young Ransome, the fourth officer, slyly, “that I didn’t quite deserve all you—well, all I got for saying that infernalRed Derelictwas unlucky to sight.”“You damned, impudent, mutinous young dog!” growled the exasperated and captive skipper. “Shut your blasted head. As it is, I’ll log you for mutiny and insubordination and general incompetence. I’ll bust you, out of this service at any rate. See if I don’t, my man.”The fourth grinned to himself, and said nothing. He was not greatly concerned. He knew his skipper well enough, you see.“She’s goin’! There she goes!” sang out one of the men.All eyes were bent on the ship. Her row of lights gave a great heave up, then rapidly disappeared. A heavy, booming cavernous plunge, and then a great volume of white water shot upward in the dimness.TheBalekahad disappeared; but the lives of those on board her were saved so far—all but one.All but one, we repeat, for the other life which that one had been sacrificed to save was safe too, for at that moment the missing child was being transferred from the boat into which it had been handed in the scurry to the one which contained its still unconscious mother.

The solitary watcher realised instinctively that this time something was wrong. So, too, did the residue of his fellow-passengers, for in an incredibly short space of time they came swarming up from below in various stages of dress and undress—mostly the latter—and many and eager were the inquiries heard on every side, and anxiety was depicted on every face; while on others there was a look which spelt downright scare—these, too, by no means exclusively the property of the ornamental sex.

There was some excuse for it; for to find oneself started out of one’s sleep by a jarring shock, to realise that the vessel is no longer moving, to rush up on deck only to find her lying helpless on the black midnight sea, the hurried gait and speech of officers and crew, to the accompaniment of the hoarse roaring of the steam pipes—all this is well calculated to try the nerves of the ordinary passenger; to conjure up visions of collision, or running on a rock, and the swift and sudden foundering with all hands.

“What is it? Are we ashore? Have we collided?” were some of the questions uttered on every side, and from the more fearful: “Are we going to the bottom?”

“Going to the bottom? Of course not,” snapped the chief officer, who had come up in time to catch this last query. “There’s no cause for alarm. The propeller shaft has snapped, and we shall have to lie to and signal for assistance. Soon get it too; we’re in the line of steamers. Look! here goes the first.”

The sharp hiss of a rocket rent the air as the fiery streak shot up high into the heavens, exploding with a reverberating boom. It was followed immediately by another.

“I came to tell you,” he went on, “that the captain’s orders are that all the passengers go below. Wine and refreshments will be served in the saloon immediately.”

“Then wearegoing to the bottom,” pronounced one fool. Upon him the “chief” turned.

“Grub would be a rum sort of preparation for that, wouldn’t it?” he said scathingly. And there was a laugh, though, truth to tell, somewhat of a hollow one.

In the saloon the grateful popping of corks was already audible, and on the tables the stewards were setting out bottles of champagne and glasses, while others were bringing in the materials for a cold supper. When well through this the ship’s surgeon announced that those who were not dressed had better get into all their clothing, and also collect any valuables they might possess, but that absolutely no luggage of any kind would be allowed. At the sound of the bugle all were to repair on deck. No; there was no occasion for panic of any kind. Ample time would be afforded—“only, of course, they mustn’t make it till next week,” appended the doctor, by way of raising a laugh.

“That means the boats,” pronounced one man decidedly.

“Well, I’m for another go of ‘the boy,’” reaching over for the nearest champagne bottle. “It may be long enough before we get another look in.”

“It’s all that damned derelict,” said another. “I’m not superstitious, but I wish to the Lord we’d never sighted her. I said so this afternoon.”

“This afternoon? Why, it hasn’t come yet,” retorted the first. “Man, you might as well have said to-morrow.”

Again there was a laugh—not much of a one—but the more they could laugh the better.

“Mr Wagram, I am dreadfully frightened,” said Mrs Colville, to whose wants he had been attending. “Is there really much danger, do you think?”

“No. There’s plenty of boat room—that’s where we score off the overcrowded mail steamer. Why, it’ll be quite an adventure to look back upon after we are picked up. Now, I think you had better collect whatever you may want to take—valuables, papers, anything of that kind. And, it’s time to dress the child.”

“Oh, that won’t take a minute. I’ve let her sleep as long as possible. For the rest, I’ve hardly anything worth collecting. But you? You haven’t been to bed, have you?”

“No; I was doing my usual midnight tramp on deck when the smash came. Like yourself, I’ve nothing much to collect either.”

She stole a look at him, and it was one of admiration—evoked not only by the tall, straight form and dark, refined, pensive face. His consummate coolness under the stress was what appealed to her now. Not one among the others but had shown some slight sign of flurry, or at any rate excitement beyond the ordinary. This one had not. Had they been planning a trip on shore at some port of call his tone and demeanour could hardly have been more even, more thoroughly composed.

“Are you a fatalist, Mr Wagram?” she said. “You treat all this as a matter of course.”

“I am no sort of ‘ist,’” he answered, with a smile. “Well—what?”

“Great heavens! I was forgetting,” she said. “We won’t be able to land anywhere. The captain told me if we were to go ashore anywhere off here we’d very likely be eaten—by savages. He was telling me only this afternoon. Good heavens! what is to become of us?”

“The quarter you have just invoked twice will take care of that—never fear. Now go and waken Lily. I’ll wait for you here.”

Hardly had she left him than the bugle rang out. Its notes, almost like the trump of doom to some of the more frightened, came pealing down the companion-way, and immediately the saloon was filled with a scuffling crowd making for the upper air. Now more distant, in different quarters of the ship, its blast sounded again and again. Still Wagram sat motionless in his chair.

“Hallo! ain’t you going up?” cried one of the last, thus seeing him. “Man, but the bugle’s gone again and again.”

“I know it has,” said Wagram calmly, finishing off his glass; “I’m waiting for Mrs Colville.”

The other went his way without another word. Wagram, thinking it about time to hurry up hisprotégé, started in the direction of her cabin, and as he did so a pealing shriek of utter and complete despair brought his pulses to a momentary standstill.

The while, on deck, the more or less scared passengers were quickly lined up in rows—the women and children apart. They, for their part, noticed two things: that the surface of the sea was much nearer than it had been the last time they had stood here—in fact, appallingly near; and that beside each boat stood its crew, just as they had seen them at ordinary Saturday afternoon fire drill. A thick, sickly murk had settled overhead, shutting out the stars—and by the glare of the lanterns it might be seen that the ship was very low down in the stern indeed. The roaring of the steam had now ceased, and the great funnels towered above, white and ghostly. And now what had actually happened began to be whispered around. The propeller rod had snapped, and in snapping had fallen through the keel, ripping away plates, and tearing open a tremendous leak, through which the water had rushed with alarming rapidity. Then it was found that the watertight bulkheads were of no use. The doors had somehow got jammed, and would not close. During all the time that the coolness and forethought of the captain and officers had utilised by sending the passengers below for some final refreshment the ship had been slowly settling.

The expedient had been a good one. To that degree invigorated, the passengers, lined up there, were less susceptible to panic, and the work of loading the boats and lowering went on with clockwork regularity and order.

That shriek had the effect upon Wagram of the lash on a racehorse. He sprang in the direction whence it proceeded. Mrs Colville’s cabin was at the end of a long passage out of which other cabins opened, and now he found her standing in the doorway of hers with an awful look upon her ashy face.

“Lily. My little one. She’s gone!” she screamed at sight of him.

“Gone?”

“Yes. She isn’t here. Oh, God! Oh, God! Where is she?”

“Keep cool. We’ll find her,” urged Wagram. “She may be on deck. Go up there and see. I’ll search here meanwhile.”

But the frantic woman refused. She dashed into each cabin along the passage, searching everywhere, screaming aloud the little one’s name.

“Go up—go up,” repeated Wagram. “I’ll bring her to you if she’s below, but she can’t be.”

The noise above—the trampling and the hauling—increased. The lowering of the boats had already begun.

“I won’t,” she screamed. “Oh, my Lily—my little one! Where are you? Oh, God—where are you?”

She turned to dash along the passage. As she did so the ship gave a sudden lurch, flinging open a cabin door with some violence. It came in full contact with the forehead of the frenzied woman, and sent her stunned into Wagram’s arms.

“Better so,” he said to himself as he lifted her.

The last boat was lowered and ready—in the settling state of the ship, not far below her taffrail. As she lay alongside a man rushed up from the companion-way bearing a limp, unconscious figure.

“It’s Mrs Colville,” said Wagram quickly as he handed over his burden. “Her child’s lost below; I’m going to look for it.”

“Into the boat with you, sir,” ordered the captain decisively. “Not a moment to lose.”

But Wagram’s answer was to make a dart for the companion-way. He disappeared within it.

“Shove off!” cried the captain. “I’m not going to sacrifice a lot of lives for that of one splendid fool. Shove off!”

“Ay, ay, sir.” And at the words, with sudden and cat-like rapidity, two of the boat’s crew sprang upon the captain, who was standing at the rail, and in a trice he was tumbled into the boat, and still securely held while quick, long pulling strokes increased her distance from the sinking ship.

“No, you don’t, sir,” said the men, restraining with difficulty their commander’s furious struggles. “The old hooker can go down without you for once. Get back to her? No, you don’t. For shame, sir. You’ve got a missis and kiddies waiting at Southampton, remember.”

The captain fumed and swore, and called them every kind of damned mutineer, and worse—in fact, a great deal worse—so much worse that they had to remind him respectfully that the boats containing the women and children must be within easy earshot. Why should he go down with his ship, they pointed out to him, instead of remaining above water to command another? Not the last man to leave her did he say? Well, that couldn’t be helped—if a passenger were such a lunatic as to go below just as she was taking her last plunge.

There was no bombast about Captain Lawes’ intention. While there was a man on board he would not have left her, and in this case he would not have, even though that man, being a passenger, had ignored his authority. But his crew had taken the matter into their own hands.

The steamy sea murk was thickening, and came rolling in from seaward in damp, hot miasmatic puffs. But the settling hull of theBalekawas still discernible with tolerable plainness. To her many a hail was sentbut—fronther, to their straining ears, none was returned.

“I think, sir,” said young Ransome, the fourth officer, slyly, “that I didn’t quite deserve all you—well, all I got for saying that infernalRed Derelictwas unlucky to sight.”

“You damned, impudent, mutinous young dog!” growled the exasperated and captive skipper. “Shut your blasted head. As it is, I’ll log you for mutiny and insubordination and general incompetence. I’ll bust you, out of this service at any rate. See if I don’t, my man.”

The fourth grinned to himself, and said nothing. He was not greatly concerned. He knew his skipper well enough, you see.

“She’s goin’! There she goes!” sang out one of the men.

All eyes were bent on the ship. Her row of lights gave a great heave up, then rapidly disappeared. A heavy, booming cavernous plunge, and then a great volume of white water shot upward in the dimness.

TheBalekahad disappeared; but the lives of those on board her were saved so far—all but one.

All but one, we repeat, for the other life which that one had been sacrificed to save was safe too, for at that moment the missing child was being transferred from the boat into which it had been handed in the scurry to the one which contained its still unconscious mother.

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