"Jeames"—he of the calves and whiskers—opened the door rather wider, I thought, than before, and his usually stolid and stupefied visage wore a strange expression. That might all have been fancy, forhecould not know the secrets of his mistress. I warily did not ask for her; but on giving my card, inquired for "Sir Percival Chalcot, or either of the ladies," certain that she I wanted alone was "at home."
The tall loafer in livery bowed, and ushered me up the great staircase once again; but instead of opening the door of the glittering drawing-room, where I expected to be met by the beaming face, the tender eyes, and radiant figure of her I loved, I was shown into the library, and found myself face to face with the baronet himself.
He looked as high-nosed and aristocratic as ever, and, moreover, as grim and pale and stern as death. He barely acknowledged my somewhat bewildered bow—I felt conscious that I had not been sent for professionally—and instead of asking me to be seated, he took a chair himself, and left me standing opposite. Folding one leg over the other, and putting the tips of his fingers together, as he lay back, and mostly looked up to the ceiling—
"Sir," said he, "my son has, doubtless, informed you in his note of this morning that I wished to see you?"
"Your son, Sir Percival—I received no note from him!" I replied, in utter bewilderment. "If Miss Chalcot is indisposed——"
"Do not dare to name Miss Chalcot, fellow! She is by this time in France."
"In France?" I repeated faintly, and with a sinking heart.
"Yes; and beyond the reach of beggarly adventurers andchevaliers d'industrie."
(So the letter had been a forgery by the brother—a lure for me.)
"Listen to me, sir, and attend," said the old man, gravely and calmly, "for it is the last time I shall ever degrade myself by addressing so contemptible a trickster!"
"Trickster, Sir Percival!" I exclaimed. "Your injurious language——"
"I said trickster," he continued, with a mock bow. "All has now been discovered; the secret meetings in the Park, the artful plans you have laid to worm yourself into the affections of a silly andwealthyyoung girl, luring her heart from the man—the gentleman, I mean—she is to marry; causing the delay of that marriage; making scandal and gossip even among the menials of my own household. Miss Chalcot, sir, has been sent to the Continent, and I hereby inform you that if you venture to follow, to trace, to speak with, or to write to her, THIS is but a small instalment of what is in store for you!"
And ere I could think or act, the savagely-proud old man had snatched up a heavy riding-whip that lay at hand, and dealt me two severe cuts fairly across the face, almost laying it open, as if with a sword blade.
"Madman!" I exclaimed; "dare you strike me?"
"Ihavestruck you twice, sir," said he, with a disdainful smile, as he reseated himself.
"You are old, and your white hairs protect you; but you have a son, and I'll have him out at Chalk Farm"—it was really Chalk Farmthen—"and—and—but, oh heaven!—he is the brother of Gertrude!"
"Bah! I thought so, you presumptuous beggar! Go—go! or I shall chastise you again. Go, I say! and remember well my words and my warning!"
I was trying to say something—I know not what—when the door opened and his son appeared with several servants, and before I could speak, I was thrust, dragged, beaten by many clenched hands, and forcibly expelled—yea, literally spurned—into the public street—I, Frederick Mortimer, M.D., &c., &c.
Right well did they know—old Chalcot and his son—that the very magnitude and depth of the insult to which they subjected me would protect them, and that, for her sake, they might have torn me limb from limb without revenge on my part. Yet every nerve and fibre tingled with shame and passion as I crossed the street, and while endeavouring to conceal my discoloured and lacerated face by my handkerchief, sought the seclusion of the park opposite, going to the very place where I was wont to meet my lost Gertrude, and where the charm of her presence seemed to hover still.
But where was she?
There I remained for some hours, in a state difficult to conceive. The insults to which I had been subjected drove me to the verge of insanity. My situation was unique, and I cannot now analyse or describe all the emotions that surged through my brain—memory furnishes nothing that will connect them. But there were rage and shame, grief, hatred, and love, and sorrow. It was here but yesterday she had said, prophetically, "To-morrow should end all!"
And all wasended, indeed!
France!—she was in France; there would I follow her, and yet be revenged upon them all. I started up to seek old Crammer, and resign my situation as his assistant.
The afternoon was far advanced, and many a patient must have been sorely neglected by that time. But what cared I if the world had burst like a bomb-shell beneath my feet? I sought the house in Bedford Street, with the red bottle in the fanlight, to find that its crimson glow paled beside the hue of Crammer's face. He was literally boiling and choking with indignation at me.
He had received due intimation of my "insolence and presumption" from Sir Percival; was desired to send in his account, and appear at the house no more. Thus his most aristocratic patients were lost to him for ever.
Ere I could speak, he took the initiative, and dismissed me, and that night found me in a humble residence, near the Temple, with, a few pounds in my purse, my worldly goods a portmanteau and a few medical books ("Bell on the Bones,") seeking to soothe my thoughts by the aid of an execrable cigar and a little weak brandy and water.
The bright bubble had burst! I had lost Gertrude, and she, being facile, or having little will of her own, on finding that she had lost me, would too probably make peace with her own family by fulfilling the engagement that was so odious to her.
As this conviction forced itself upon me, I could have wept; then I would start up, and mutter of going to France ere it might be too late; but I had no money, and travelling in those pre-railway times was not the cheap luxury it is now. Moreover, I knew not how or where to seek her; and while doubts grew thus, and time went on, I might lose her for ever.
The result of all this was that the next day saw me in a raging fever, and months elapsed ere I was convalescent. For some time after sense returned I knew not where I was, or what had happened to me. Close by a table sat a familiar figure in his shirt-sleeves, smoking, and occasionally taking a pull at a pint of stout. These pleasures he varied by reading aloud from a medical work, on pharmacy apparently, and breaking into a scrap from a song, thus:—
"'Plumbi subacet: an aqueous solution of the salt produced with the acetate and oxide of lead. A dense, clear liquid. Colourless, odourless, and slightly alkaline in taste. Produces a white coating on glass.'Plumbi subacet—that's the ticket!
"'He was a jolly old cock, and he cared not a d—nFor the laws or the new police,And he thought mighty little of taking a lamb,If he only fancied the fleece.'
"'Sodæ chloratæ: a solution of carbonate of soda, after the absorption of chlorine gas. A clear liquid, and colourless. Odour——'"
"Bob—Bob Asher!" said I, in a faint voice, and he started at once to my bedside; and from him I got a history of how ill I had been, and how he had been my chief attendant; how sore trials had come upon himself, and that, by his father's failure, he was at the lowest ebb now for funds, but had betaken himself to study, and meant to pass now.
"But who the deuce is this Gertrude of whom you have been raving for weeks past? Not she 'of Wyoming'—eh, Fred?"
I told him my story, and he was excessively indignant.
"Why, death alive!" said he, "Chalcot is only a baronet, and in the civil line of precedence—that is pretty like a full corporal in the army—the second round of the long ladder of rank. I'd have chucked the old beggar over his own window!"
"Not if you loved his daughter, Bob," said I mournfully.
"Well, no, perhaps."
"And you are reading up?"
"Hard, Fred. I am doing the 'Modified Examination' in pharmacy, and think I shall pass now."
I had been three months ill. Three months! Bob told me that the Chalcots' town house was still shut up, and no one knew in what part of the Continent they were travelling. Our separation seemed confirmed now. The dread of never again beholding that sweet face, with the bright eyes and the pretty crape bonnet, grew strong within me, and the idea that she might already have become the wife of another added to my torture of mind.
But lack of funds compelled me bestir myself anon, and through Bob's kind offices, and my own known skill while attending in the hospitals, I was fortunate enough to obtain temporary employment with Professor Sir —— ——, then the most celebrated anatomical lecturer in England, as an under demonstrator, my duties, as I may inform the uninitiated, consisting to a great extent in the preparation of the various subjects for minute dissection prior to his lectures; and during the hot weather in London, I know of no task more nauseous, repulsive, or typhoid in its chances and nature. However, such work is as necessary for the progress of science and the conservation of life and health in others as the terrible task of procuring the necessary subjects was then—when the tables of anatomical theatres and dissecting-rooms depended mostly, if not solely, on the results of felony—often of murder—and the abduction of the tenants of the tear-bedewed grave—an abduction in many instances, happily, never known to relatives.
The duties assigned to me at the rooms of Sir —— —— brought me in contact, under cloud of night, with wretches whose character was revolting, and caused me to shudder. Scores of bodies were brought me—valued at from five to twenty guineas each.
Use and wont is everything, and by me at that time they were viewed as coolly and callously as we may the fish that lie on marble slabs in the curer's window.
Weary with a long day's work at the dissecting-room, I had retired to my little lodgings, and thinking sadly over the bright past that could come no more, I felt disposed to ask heaven, upbraidingly, why I had ever been cast under the spell of Gertrude, when I was startled by the unusual sound of carriage-wheels stopping before my humble place. There were steps on the rickety stairs, and to my astonishment the professor entered, and shutting the door, said he wished to speak to me alone, as he had suddenly "an expedition" to suggest to me—one that would require decision and care to carry out, as so many morbid and vulgar rumours of violated graves were abroad, and the suspected, if caught, had but small chance of mercy from the mob.
"But, Sir —— ——, surely you don't expect me to go on such an errand?" I asked, with an incredulous smile.
"By Jove, but I do!" said he, laughing. "I have frequently done so, when a student here, in many a fetid London burying ground, now closed up or built over; but this is a most particular case—a subject we must positively have for demonstration, and, if possible to skeletonize afterwards."
"Is it peculiar, then?"
"Most peculiar!"
My curiosity was excited.
"Where is the burying-ground?" I asked.
"At R——, eight miles from town. No 'outrage,' as they call it, has occurred there. The place is unwatched and open. Would go with you myself—but two, you see—should be just in the way. Yesterday an old woman was buried there. Cholera, they say, caused her death; but anything is called cholera now. She was fifty-eight years old, and known well in the neighbourhood for a singular malformation of the spinal column, and I must have that portion of her for my museum; but as the old dame will not be very heavy you may as well bring the whole of her. Young Phosfat, so long my assistant, who has the practice there, has written me all about it. Take a trap and Bob Asher with you—he's game for anything—to-morrow afternoon, and, if you can, manage the matter without fuss. We'll call her an old Dutch woman in the class, say she came pickled in a cask from Holland."
The whole affair was a little exciting, so the high spirits of Bob Asher, who had frequently been engaged in such affairs in the churchyards of Edinburgh, decided me at once. We hired a dog-cart, took large overcoats with us, as the nights were chilly, a cloak, a coil of rope, heavy sticks, and even a brace of pistols for an extreme emergency, which I prayed devoutly might not occur, and we soon left London behind us.
Tom Phosfat was duly prepared by a letter from the professor for our arrival. He was a bachelor, and made us thoroughly welcome, so we had supper and a glass of grog with him: I should rather say several glasses of grog—too many for the work we had to do. However, we set out at midnight for the churchyard, which stood apart from the village, on the borders of a wide waste common, dark, secluded among trees, and lonely.
The night was gloomy and starless, and not a sound was heard—not even a withered leaf whirled by the passing wind—as we left the horse and trap under the shadow of a high hedge and vaulted over the low churchyard wall. My heart beat quickly, all the more so that Tom's brandy had been pretty potent.
The mouldering tombstones, half sunk in the long reedy grass, and tossing nettles, studded all the mournful place. God's acre seemed very solemn that night. The lonely old church, old as the days of the third Edward, half hidden by ivy, and spotted by lichens, raised its square Norman tower against the vapour-laden sky, and quaint heads and demon faces were peeping out of the mouldings and gargoyles upon us.
"You know the grave, Phosfat?" said I.
"Yes—hush—this must be it. There is no other new one in the ground," stuttered Tom, who had imbibed too much.
"This seems the burial place of wealthy people," said Bob Asher. "The old dame must have had money and to spare."
"By Jove, it is open!" said I, in a low whisper.
"It has not been quite filled up—boards are over it; only some branches and soil thrown in. How is this?"
"The bricking of the vault has been postponed till to-morrow," said Bob Asher, shovelling out thedébris. "We have no time to lose, Fred. Shall we break open, the top of the coffin, and use the rope to pull up the subject by the neck? That was the way with Knox's fellows in Edinburgh."
"Nay," said I, "by such a process the spinal column may be disturbed; and that won't suit the professor's purpose."
"Look round, and listen well; here goes then," and half turning the coffin on its side, Bob and Tom, by inserting their shovels under the lid, burst it up with a hideous jarring sound, and then the ghostly tenant was seen, enveloped in a shroud of white from head to foot; and even to us, prepared as we were for it, that figure had something horrible in its angular rigidity. Mufflingitin the dark cloak, I cast it over my shoulder, and deposited it in a sitting position—therigor mortishad passed away apparently—between the seat and splash-board of the trap. My companions meanwhile rearranged the grave and coffin as we had found them. Voices and lights now scared us. Phosfat was so tipsy that I had to leave Bob Asher to take care of him; and casting our shovels and rope into a clover field, I drove at a break-neck pace towards London, intensely anxious to reach the professor's house before day should dawn, lest the police or a passer-by might detect something weird in the person who was my companion.
It seemed to me that we had not proceeded a mile townward, between hedgerows, when the waning moon, hitherto invisible, began to glimmer over Hampstead Heath, shedding a ghostly farewell ray upon the silent country, where not a dog barked.
A strange sound, like the murmur of a voice, came to my ears at times. Was it a pursuit? I looked anxiously back, and even pulled up for an instant. Behind all was silent—but, oh, almighty heaven! what was this?
The old woman was moving—-her feeble hands essayed to lift the cloth that covered her face! A wild spasm of terror contracted my heart; and any one but a medical man, I am assured, would have abandoned the trap and an adventure so terrible; but the idea of a recovery from trance immediately flashed upon my mind, and my first thought was, the professor would not get the prized vertebræ after all. I lifted the almost inanimate woman beside me, and felt that she was warm, fleshy too, and had a returning pulse, which the motion of the trap accelerated. I uncovered her face that she might respire, and a wild cry escaped me—a cry that rang far over the heath.
Heavens! Was I going mad outright? She was Gertrude!—Gertrude Chalcot!—pale as death could make her, yet living still, her hazel eyes lurid and sunken, her dark hair falling about her face.
All that followed was like a swift nightmare: the drive to town, muffled in my overcoat and cloak; the abandonment of the trap in the street; her conveyance in secret to my lodgings, and placing her cosily in my own bed till I could get her other quarters and attendance. Luckily, Bob Asher, and the professor too, came about mid-day, or I should soon have been fit for Hanwell.
* * * *
How all this came to pass was very simple. Unwedded still, she had returned with her family to England in wretched health; her illness took a more serious form, and would seem to have culminated in a species of trance, with the medical technicalities of which it might be wearisome to trouble the reader. Suffice it, that the alarm of cholera was abroad, and the local terror at R—— induced her interment, as, perhaps, in too many other cases, hastily and prematurely; hence the vault being left unfinished, permitted her to respire, and our adventure—a mistake by the way—ended in her rescue, though a great horror of what her fate might have been filled my heart, and for a long period we were compelled to conceal from her the awful place in which she was found.
Under our united care she recovered fast. But my space is short.
Sweet is the union of lovers after a separation; but, with all its charm, much that was sad, startling, and even terrible, mingled with ours. She was mine now. Not even that proud and cruel father, who had so fiercely spurned me, could dispute the claim, I thought. Mine—oh, how strangely and how terribly mine!
The close of the year saw us married, Bob Asher acting as groomsman with greatéclat. Sir —— —— took me as a partner, and for a month I went with my bride to Baden. There, one day, at thetable d'hôte, she found herself face to face with her own parents. The alarm, the consternation, the scene, proved frightful; but all ended in a complete reconciliation, and Christmas-day saw us all happy at Chalcot Park, and I felt, on seeing my blooming Gertrude, in all the splendour of her beauty, opening the yearly ball, that I could with a whole heart forgive even her father for his pride and fury on the day that saw us separated.
"After all that has been, and is no more—after all that has passed between us, but never can pass again, why are we fated to meet—andhere?" wailed the girl, Clare Thorne, in her heart (for though a wedded wife, she was but a girl yet, being barely in her twentieth year), as she suddenly saw, with strangely-mingled emotions of joy, fear, and sorrow, the face of Fred Wilmot.
It was on a Sunday morning early, ere the East Indian sun was quite up, and in the cantonment church of Mirzapatam, a few miles from the Jumna, that this unexpected recognition took place.
The girl heard not the voice of the preacher, her husband Cecil Thorne, the chaplain of the station; she forgot for a time where she was, and her thoughts fled—fled away from that strange-looking cantonment church, with its long punkahs pulled by nut-brown coolies (who watched with amazement "the white man's poojah") moving alike over the head of the preacher and his congregation, when even at that early hour the air was breathless, and when the ring-necked paraquets, green pigeons, and other birds twittered in and out at the open jalousies—fled home, while her heart seemed to stand still—home to a quaint old English church in beautiful Kent, with its low broad Norman arches, its stained glass windows, its sculptured effigies, above which old iron helmets hung, and spiders spun their dusty webs undisturbed—for there it had been that she had last seen the face she now looked on, breathlessly, the face of her first love andthenbetrothed, Fred Wilmot, ere misfortune separated them, and a cruel fate sent her to Central India, to become the wife of the Reverend Cecil Thorne.
On the preceding day a new regiment had marched in, but she knew not till that moment at the morning sermon, that among its officers was Lieutenant Frederick Wilmot, till she saw him with his men, in his braided white kalkee uniform, carrying under one arm his pith helmet, encircled by a blue veil, and looking with his lithe form, embrowned face, dark grey eyes and heavy moustache, handsomer than ever, and so unlike her husband, Cecil Thorne, in his flowing white Indian cassock.
Square in figure, grave, massive, and commanding in form, the latter was a man, who, though all kindness and gentleness, seldom smiled and never laughed, and was one all unsuited to the volatile Clare; yet she had married him for a home; though knowing that every thought and impulse of her mind were at variance with his, and had given herself to him because she was heart-sick with the struggle for daily bread as a governess, and feared her hopeless future when left alone in India. A few years before—for he was much her senior—Cecil Thorne had been a hard-working curate on £80 per annum in one of the most squalid parts of the English metropolis, and was thankful to accept from the Bishop of Calcutta the post he held at the remote and sun-baked station of Mirzapatam. He was a good man, truly a soldier of Heaven, and among the sick and the dying, did many a task of mercy, from which even the doctors, and all, save the sisters of charity, shrank, especially in the times of famine and cholera.
Intent on his sermon, he saw not the glance of mutual recognition between Clare and Wilmot, the grave bow exchanged, and the paleness that came over the two young eager faces, whose troubled gaze sought each other from time to time, as their thoughts went back to their past—
"The love that took an early root,And had an early doom."
"Why are we fated to meet again, andhere?" was the ever-recurring thought of Clare, as she strove to fix her eyes on the grave face of her husband and listen to his eloquence, but she heard it not.
Her face was not a beautiful one, but it was sweet, earnest, and most winning in all its varying expressions.
India had paled it already, but the light of her dark hazel eyes, the warm tint of her rosebud lips, and her rich brown hair, almost black in hue, were all unchanged as when Wilmot had covered them with kisses and caresses, in the sad hour of their severance that seemed so long ago.
In due time the service was over, the congregation dispersing and departing on horseback or in buggies, while the new regiment, to the clangour of its band, was marching into its lines, and Fred Wilmot, she knew, was with it. Fearful that he might address her ere the column was formed, she remained nervously in her seat, striving to pray for strength of purpose, or for her past dull content, and then, when she deemed herself safe, drove home alone, for her husband, though hot the coming noon, had sick and other visits to pay.
Clare feared that Wilmot might call at their bungalow on the following day, as every one calls on every one else on arriving at a new station in India; so she resolved to take her horse and be out of his way in the cool of the evening, and also early on the following morning, but to evade him always in the narrow European circle at Mirzapatam she knew would be impossible.
That day her husband was long absent on his parochial duties, and Clare was not sorry; she wanted time for thought—but thought only took the line of refining, and a comparison of what was now the inevitable, with what might havebeen.
Clare was formed by nature for excitement, society, music, and gaiety, she did not like to be left to mope as a parson's wife "in the station to which the Lord had called her," as her husband constantly phrased it; and she had been wont to writhe under his advice as to how she was to comport herself, what she was to wear and not to wear, and to avoid the groups of young officers about the "Band Stand," and all risk ofgupor gossip. His intense goodness, his awful sense of propriety, even his fervid piety, had bored and wearied the young wife ere their dull honeymoon was well over; for though a good girl in every way, Clare was not pious, as Mr. Thorne understood piety. She went, per order, to church twice on Sunday, but flatly refused to teach "little niggers" in the mission schools, and he groaned in spirit over her contumacy. The excitement she wished, was not to be found in visiting old Hindoo women and teaching naked little boys that the precepts of Menou, the lawgiver, were idolatry.
"Oh dear, for what did you marry me, Cecil?" she asked one evening impatiently, when she heard the strains of military music coming from the forbidden band-stand, and knew that all the little gaiety of the place was centred there.
"To be a helpmate to me, Clare," he replied gravely, "and to share with me, so far as becomes my wife, my labours in the vineyard of our Divine Master. In our little Bengali church are regular Sabbath services and weekly prayer-meetings; there are fourpatshalasor elementary schools; but to not one of these have you gone; there are much evangelistic work and colportage work to be done, yet you assist in them not, and will not even sing the hymns I have translated from theTembavani."
"If I did, Cecil—dear Cecil, would you let me go even once a week to the military promenade—I do so love the band?" she asked, with her eyes full of tears.
"No; such frivolity becomes not my wife," was the firm reply.
Repiningly she obeyed his dictum in every respect, and when other ladies ventured to remonstrate with her, Clare, to do her justice, ever upheld her husband, and treated him with respect and honour.
Next day, ere the sun had risen, Clare Thorne, attended by Chuttur Sing, her native groom, went forth for her morning ride while the air was yet cool and delicious, and in every European she saw dreading to meet Wilmot, left the station behind her at a canter. She was clad in a light brown holland habit, trimmed with red braid; she wore a broad hat and long feather, and looked strikingly handsome.
Once or twice she looked back to the cantonment, and murmured to herself how strange it was to think that he should be there—he, after all! The civilians' bungalows were built on the little hills, where a puff of wind might be caught; but the barracks and sepoy lines occupied the centre of an arid and unsheltered plain, where never came a breath of wind to fan the withered cheek, or to drive away the fever and sickness for ever lingering there. As usual, thesiteof the cantonments was a blunder, and there our soldiers were doomed to languish, swelter, and perish by cholera or sunstroke, for the barracks had been built, and being so, had to be occupied.
"Poor Brown is down with cholera this morning." "Poor Brown! another told off to die. There are four doctors with him; but all in Europe couldn't give him another day in this world." Such were usually the first morning greetings in Mirzapatam when the bugles blew "the assembly." "And Smith of the 1st Bengal died about gun fire." "But that trump, Thorne, the chaplain, never left him till, with his own hands, he had closed his eyes." "When is the funeral?" "In orders, for sunset—the cool of the evening;coolat Mirzapatam!"
"Would Wilmot escape, or be going forth soon on a gun-carriage, as so many went, from that horrible barrack!" thought Clare, as she rode on towards the Jumna, where she knew the country grew beautiful; and she shivered as she thought of the life she led now.
Though her husband was chaplain to a military station, officers seldom or never, except when on duty, entered his bungalow; so the male visitors there consisted only of eurasian and native catechists, colporteurs, and teachers. To Clare it was an intolerable existence, and as she saw, when fever abated, the gay and happy lives led by the other ladies of the garrison, she repined sorely, and thinking of all these things, she rode slowly toward the Jumna.
Down from the Ghaut of Etawah the river was rolling in its beauty amid the most wondrous greenery in the world. There were oleanders (the pride of the jungles) sending forth their delicious perfumes from clusters of pink and white blossoms; the baubool, with its bells of gold, the sensation plant, and thousand others all growing together, while thebyahs, or crested sparrows, looked like clouds of gold as they floated in flocks over these and the waters of the river. Yet, lovely though the scene, the English girl, as she reined up her horse, thought she would rather have looked upon the Weald of her native Kent!
The same idea was in the heart of another, who was slowly approaching her, an officer in undress, with pith-helmet and loose white patrol jacket. He urged his horse close to Clare, and a little exclamation escaped her.
"Oh, fatality!" she murmured, on finding herself face to face with Fred Wilmot; and fatality it seemed indeed, that they should by chance have chosen the same hour and the same pathway, amid the many that diverged from the breathless cantonments. He sprang from his horse, and grasping the bridle with one hand, presented the other to her.
"Mrs. Thorne—Clare!" said he, in a broken voice, and as he uttered her name there came into his face a light, an almost divine tenderness, such as she had never seen in it, even in their sweet past time—the light of love, the joy of a great passion.
"IamMrs. Thorne, and we must remember that now, Fred," said she; but without drawing back her hand. None was near but Chuttur Sing, who certainly thought he would not have liked to have seenhiswifetête-à-têtewith thesahib-logue, in that solitary place, for to the Bengalees the ease of European society is an enigma they fail to understand.
"Till I saw you yesterday, I knew not in what part of India you were," said Wilmot, with his gaze fixed eagerly upon her now pallid face, "and now they tell me that you are the wife of that man—our chaplain, a morose and gloomy fellow——"
"My husband, Mr. Wilmot," said Clare, now withdrawing her hand, and shortening her gathered reins.
"Mr.Wilmot!" he exclaimed, almost reproachfully.
"My husband!" she repeated, with sorrowful emphasis.
"I beg your pardon, Clare. I am not likely to forget the fact," said he, with deep dejection; "but changed though the relations—broken the tie—between us, may I not be still your friend? I—I," he continued, in a voice so pathetic that her soul was moved, "I who was once so much dearer than any friend could be?"
"We must forget all that—friends? No, it is impossible! Better not—better not—oh, what fatality sent you here!" she added, restraining with difficulty her tears, and aware that the black-beady eyes of Chuttur Sing were upon her—Chuttur Sing of the spindle legs and huge red turban.
"You have not forgotten the past, then, Clare?"
"No—but I have sought to love my husband as a wife should."
"Sought?" he asked, inquiringly.
"Well—I have striven."
"But oh, Clare, we can neither love nor forget at will," said he. "May I come to visit you?"
"No—decidedly no!"
"Why, Clare?"
"My husband!" she replied, firmly enough.
"He knows nothing of our past—he never heard of me. Think how dear we were to each other, Clare—how much we have to remember."
"All the more reason to study the art of forgetting," replied Clare, whose hot tears were falling fast now, "and to show the necessity for your not coming near our bungalow."
"But if all our fellows, from the colonel down to the youngest sub, leave their cards for you and Mr. Thorne, save me, what will he think?"
"I cannot say," sighed Clare, wearily.
"I must come, then, to avoid remark. May I?"
"If you must, you may."
"Thanks, Clare—thanks; may I escort you home?"
"No—oh no—let us return separate," said she, nervously, and they parted, she urging her horse at a hand-gallop back to the arid plain, where the lines of Mirzapatam were now quivering, and to all appearance vibrating, in the hot rays of the uprisen sun.
So when Fred Wilmot called that evening at the Rev. Mr. Thorne's bungalow, he was cordially received by that gentleman, and by his wife politely, as a—stranger! Clad in a thin dress, through which her delicate arms and the contour of her bosom were apparent, she was reclining in a long-armed Indian cane chair, with all her dark-brown hair cast loose over her back and shoulders, just as her ayah had left it for coolness; and very charming and girlish she looked, especially when her colour heightened. The fragrant odour of the recently wettedtatties, or window-screens, pervaded a large uncarpeted drawing-room. An hour and more was passed in pleasant conversation. No reference whatevercouldbe made to the past, so from that hour each of thosetwofelt that the game of duplicity was beginning. The piano—which had its feet immersed in saucers of water to save it from creeping insects—was more than once resorted to; and Mr. Thorne was surprised to find how many airs and duets his wife and the new comer knew in common. He could little dream how often they had practised themtogether, in that sweet Kentish village so long ago, it seemed now. That night Fred Wilmot slept little. He had more than the mosquitos to keep him awake, while in the verandah without thewallahpulled drowsily at the cord of the punkah.
"Innocent, pure and artless as ever—poor Clare—poor darling!" thought he; "oh, what avail my money and position now—now that she is that sombre fellow's wife—yet all men speak well of him here. What are her dark eyes, her rich hair, her sweet English beauty to me now!"
Clare Thorne's life had been so dull, that one can scarcely wonder if she found the advent of Wilmot at the cantonment, and his visits, most welcome, though they filled her with a vague alarm—an undefined fear of violating trust and propriety. We have said that the Thornes had few visitors; this arose from the distaste the chaplain had of society and the general gravity of his demeanour; but Fred Wilmot cared little for all that; it was not him he came to see.
No thought of evil was in the innocent heart of Clare; nor was there in the heart of Wilmot, to do him justice, though he abandoned himself to the perilous charm of seeking the society of the girl who once loved him so well—from whom he had been separated, and who felt with him in common "thatdeathin life, the days that are no more." A little time the regiment would be moving further up country, and all would then be at an end. Meanwhile both were playing with edged tools!
Clare and her husband could not understand each other. His nature, which with all his apparent gloom was a passionate one, had no outlet save his great love for her, and his greater for religion. For him the dull routine of his daily life was enough; but Clare longed, like the girl she was, for amusement, excitement, display, society, and yet in gay British India she was condemned by this good and amiable, but fervid ascetic, to lead a life which, to one of her temperament, was one of unspeakable martyrdom.
She might, perhaps, under better auspices, have forgotten her first love in time, and learned to like, as much as she respected, her husband, had he only made some allowance for her weakness and foibles, and not judged her so hardly and set before her a standard of excellence which she was unable to attain.
But the crisis of her life was coming fast to Clare Thorne.
Her husband began to dislike the frequent visits and the somewhat brotherly familiarity of Wilmot with his wife; there was something in it undefinable. It was the reverse of flirtation, for his demeanour was grave, respectful and sympathetic, and in these elements the danger seemed to lie. Clare's bearing and tone were irreproachable; yet a suspicion, at which he blushed, was roused in the honest heart of Cecil Thorne.
"If it should be!" he muttered, with his firm white teeth clenched. Then he would watch and dissemble; but even that seemed a stain on his own rectitude. Thus one day he said, abruptly:
"Clare, that officer—Mr. Wilmot, has been here again. I see his music strewed all over the piano."
"Well, Cecil?"
"I forbid his visits—that is all!"
"Forbid his visits!" repeated Clare, startled, crushed, and blushing crimson; "then you must tell him so yourself."
"Why, madam?"
"He is an old friend of my family, and—and——"
"You, and he too, never said a word of this before!"
"I thought you knew it," faltered Clare, who found that she had made a sad mistake.
"Old friend—he is about five-and-twenty only. What brought him here to-day?"
"To give us these tickets for the garrison ball."
"Ball—you know I never go to balls."
"But may I?"
"No—you maynot!"
Poor Clare repined bitterly and wept profusely, but not for the first time in her life, and her husband, who knew that all Mirzapatam was on tip-toe about the forbidden ball, eyed her with a lowering expression. But he knew that he must exert his authority, or scandals might ensue, and he felt that Wilmot must cross his threshold no more. Indeed, the ball-tickets were returned to him, and when next he visited the abode of Mr. Thorne, that gentleman, who never did things by halves, and who deemed he had a duty to perform to religion, to himself, and society, gave the young officer a pretty distinct hint that his visits could be dispensed with, and Fred retired, his heart swollen with rage, mortification, and sorrow.
Shame and anger mingled with the sorrow of Clare. How tiresome of him to go on this way to her in their present abode, of all places in the world! Scandal—the thing he dreaded—would be sure to come of it. A great gloom now fell upon Clare, and the ball—girl-like—the forbidden ball rankled in her heart; Thorne supposed this gloom was caused by the banishment of Wilmot only; but that had merely something to do with it.
Was she, that he loved and trusted, wronging him cruelly in her heart? Was he nursing a traitress in his bosom? Sooth to say, the hitherto placid and plodding Cecil Thorne began to think, and sometimes say, all manner of desperate things to his scared and shrinking little wife, whose changed manner he attributed to Wilmot's influence, and he cursed the hour that ever the new regiment marched into Mirzapatam.
Loving his wife as he did, he would rather have seen her lying in her grave and himself reading the burial service over her, than living as a disgraced woman. Then, if there was great sorrow, there would be no shame, and she would be gone where never more dishonour could menace, or shame assail her.
"Clare, child," said he, "my little wife is my all to me. The soul that sinneth shall pay the wages of sin."
"But I have not sinned!" she exclaimed, passionately.
"As yet," said he, pointedly and coldly; "thank Heaven, my eyes were opened in time! Think of what would be my misery and our conjoint dishonour—I, a priest of the Church! Think of how our once happy home might have been desecrated and the bitterness of a love that is slighted!"
"You make too much or too little of all this!"
"I do not!"
"Oh, Cecil—Cecil—my dear husband—I have no forgiveness to ask of you; I only seek your pity."
"Idopity you," he replied, grimly, and thought the while,
"She can speak to me thus—with that fellow's kisses fresh upon her lips!" For he had undefined suspicions that Wilmot saw her yet, from time to time.
"How tiresome—how absurd is this jealousy!" thought Clare; yet her own conscience told her it was neither absurd nor mistakennow; and all this passed on the night of the forbidden ball!
Mr. Thorne's suspicions were right; theyhadbeen meeting, without design at first; ample though the cantonment, how could it be otherwise?
"Dear, good Fred," she said, one day, as they met among the baubool trees near an old ruined tomb—the tomb of Abu Mirza—"I want you to help me—you alone can do so."
"In what way?" he asked, looking at her in his old tender manner.
"To be good and proper—to keep in the straight path of propriety, and avoid all chance of scandal."
"You are quoting some sermon of Thorne's now."
"I am not—I mean it; we must speak no more;willyou help me?"
"Yes," said he, in a choking voice; "yes—if I can," and his mode of beginning was pressing her to his heart, and covering her face with kisses.
From this it may be inferred that the threads of the old, old story had become strong as cables again! She had been rent from Wilmot by Fate, and revenge at Fate made him selfish to her and pitiless to all, especially to her husband, who had, by forbidding his visits, at once given their intimacy a colouring it did not then possess. Now things were said that they had never said before, and wild schemes of plainly running away together—where, it mattered not—were more than openly hinted at by Wilmot. Be it sinful or not, she felt that she loved him better than her own life; his was the only mind that could hold dominion over hers; yet it was one infinitely inferior to that of Cecil Thorne; and his was the only hand whose touch thrilled the smallest fibres of her frame. She worshipped Wilmot, who, as he gazed into her eyes, could read there the struggle that was passing between conscience and passion, and how the latter was certain to triumph.
"Trust me—trust me," he whispered in her ear.
"I will trust you—I will, Freddy!" she replied, choked in tears.
"My own darling—to be my own at last—-and afterall!"
Clare knew what scandal and gossip were in England; but "gup" in India was fiercer, deeper, more trumpet-tongued, and already in fancy she saw every public print teeming with the story of her elopement and her husband's shame.
"He thinks too much of the other world to care much for this, or me!" she thought; but in that she wronged Thorne, who loved her dearly and devotedly, though in a cold and undemonstrative way, while Wilmot was all passion and energy.
"Oh, the scandal—the scandal we shall give!" said she, wringing her hands.
"Scandals die!" said he; "the world goes too fast now-a-days for anything—even for a wonder—-to live long; and we shall seek a land where none shall know our names or the miserable story of our past."
"Oh, Fred!" wailed the girl, "I was brought up by my mother, in the careful avoidance of all evil, all that was sinful and unholy; and now I am sinking into an ocean of unholiness in loving you, better than I love my own soul!"
"Do not thus upbraid yourself, my innocent darling," said he, in a quiet but passionate tone.
"Innocent? Oh, my God! who will call me innocent, good, or pure to-morrow? Yet, the life I bear maddens me."
"That life will soon be a thing of the past. I am wealthy now, my darling; the bar that poverty put between us is removed. I can give you a home like a palace, in any part of Europe, far, far away from this breathless India; and once my wife——"
"Oh—Wilmot!"
"My darling—-I will give you all the love a human heart can render you—the dearest of love and a new life."
"But not with that which makes life alone worth having."
He regarded her passionately, anxiously, and entreatingly.
She felt that if she hesitated—deliberated—she would be lost, and must become, in any land, even though unknown, a social outlaw, a virtual outcast. All this rushed upon her mind, though she said it not, and with all its minor details of mortification and bitterness, as she lay with her face hidden on the breast of Wilmot.
He smiled fondly, yet sadly, down upon her bent head, and clasped her trembling fingers in his stronger hands, and turning up her white and desperate little face, he dared, in the excess and blindness of his passion, to call on heaven to hear that she would never have cause to regret the step she was about to take.
And so they separated with reluctance, though in haste, aware that when they met again it would be to part no more!
Fred Wilmot had obtained a year's leave from the general commanding at Mirzapatam, and had taken all his measures for their mutual flight.
He was to meet her at evening gun-fire, near the old ruined tomb in the baubool grove, when Aloodeen, his native valet, would bring his buggy. In this they would proceed to the branch line that joined the greater line at Allahabad, from whence they could take the great Peninsular Railway to Calcutta, long before reaching which all traces of them would be lost!
It was early morning when the scheme was planned; a whole day was to elapse ere it could be put in operation; yet it seemed to pass with frightful rapidity to Clare, who felt like one in a dream, or as if it was some other person, and not herself, who was to meet Wilmot at the tomb of Abu Mirza.
Her silence, her pre-occupation, her nervousness, more than all, the whiteness of her little face, could not fail to attract the attention of her husband who, with unwonted tenderness, bent over her, and, taking her cheeks between his hands, said,—
"Look up, little woman—why, what is the matter with you?"
She closed her eyes, which dared not meet his earnest, honest, and searching gaze.
He then took her little hands caressingly in his, and felt, with alarm, that though the atmosphere without was stifling, they were icy cold and trembling.
"Is there anything wrong, Clare? What is the matter with you, my darling little wife?"
Still she was silent, for her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and she could only sigh in her heart secretly.
"Oh, heaven—what am I to do? Avoid the temptation—flee the sin—yea, even confess all—ere it be too late!"
Then she thought of her husband's frigidity of manner, his intense sense of morality, religion, purity, and rectitude, and her timid heart died within her.
"God help us, child," said Cecil Thorne, "I hope that no illness has seized you."
He thought wildly over the several fever and cholera beds he had been beside of late, and the strong man felt his soul die within him with fear, as he saw alternately the wistfulness and wild excitement in his wife's eyes.
"A doctor must be summoned," he exclaimed; "qui hi—hollo, there, Chuttur Sing!"
"Oh, no, Cecil, dearest," said she, with something between a sob and a hysterical laugh; "it is only the heat that affects me—and the thunder," she added, as a peal went hustling through the sultry air overhead.
A storm came on; the rain fell in torrents, and Clare, while in the act of selecting the garments and necessaries she would have to take with her, and while carefully selecting and putting aside, for someotherand worthier wife, it might be, the few jewels her husband's moderate means had enabled him to give her (Delhi bracelets of champac-work, and so forth), actually began to hope that, if the tempest of falling rain continued, the very flight for which she was preparing might be arrested, ere it was too late, and thus that her sore temptation might pass away!
The innocent words, the tender anxiety and trusting goodness of the man she was about to abandon and deceive, and the knowledge, that in time to come, there would be an amount of grief, shame, and sorrow for her, that would be known in its degree but to God and himself, wrung her heart, and filled her eyes with hot and blinding tears.
But the storm passed; the thunder died away beyond the hills that look down on the Jumna; the rain cooled the atmosphere, and the arid soil around the sun-baked cantonment soon absorbed it, to the last huge, warm drop that had fallen; and Clare knew that her lover would be truly, tenderly, and inexorably awaiting her at the old tomb, when the time of their fatal tryst came.
The cantonment ghuries—little gongs that hung near the guard-house doors—clanged the hours in succession, and in one more Clare knew that the sun would set. She was alone, for her husband was away, attending some sick beds; when he returned, she knew that her place would be vacant, and that she could never look upon his grave, earnest, and handsome face again. She sunk on her knees beside her bed, buried her face in her cold hands, and while she shivered in the agony of her conflicting thoughts, she prayed for strength to avoid her temptation, or that she might die in her mingled remorse and yearning love.
But her prayer was unheard: the hour came, and saw her, with a little travelling bag in her hand, stealing like a culprit from her husband's home, and taking the most unfrequented path to the tomb of Abu Mirza, the tiny white marble dome of which was glistening in the last rays of the sun above the golden bloom of the baubool trees. The brain of Clare seemed to reel; her temples felt on fire; all within her soul and around her seemed a mass of chaos, she could arrange, disentangle nothing; and almost in despair gave up the attempt to do so; but not the fatal design of meeting her former lover; for the die was cast!
In the distance she could hear the soldiers' children and some of the Christianised natives singing in the Mission School; their united voices came through the open windows on the calm pure air of the Indian night, and she could hear her husband accompanying them on an indifferent harmonium, so earnestly and humbly in the service of his Master, in the hymn he had translated from theTembavani:—
"Whilst Thee, with tongues of splendour,The orbs of heaven praise,Whilst groves to Thee their voices,With tongues of brilliance raise:Whilst Thee, with tongues of joyanceAll gay wood-warblers sing;Whilst praise to Thee, wood-flowerets,From tongues of fragrance fling:And whilst with tongues of clearness,The water-floods applaud Thee,With the tongue that Thou hast given,Shall I not daily laud Thee?"
"Poor Cecil—how unworthy I am of you!" thought she, and tears started to her eyes afresh as she thought of him and themorrow!
Her heart gave a convulsive leap and she stood still for a moment as the evening gun boomed over the cantonments when the sun set, and then the darkness fell instantly, as it always does in India where there is no twilight, and she saw Fred Wilmot instantly approach her, but from what point she scarcely knew. He was attired in plain clothes, for travelling evidently, but he was bareheaded, and she could see that his face looked most startlingly pale, that also pain and bewilderment were in it, and that he scarcely seemed to see her. Something in his looks and manner rooted Clare to the spot.
"Fred—Fred—Wilmot!" she cried, in a low voice, but, without stopping, he gave her one sad glance expressive of pity and love, sorrow and pain, and passing on towards the tomb, left her alone—alone and bewildered, while a new sense of great fear that she could not analyse, caused her to rush towards the house she had so lately quitted.
At the door she met her husband, full of excitement and agitation.
"You abroad, Clare," he exclaimed, with grave surprise; "have you then heard what has happened—ah, your white face tells me that you have?"
"What has happened, Cecil?" she asked, in a low, breathless voice.
"Poor Wilmot—God forgive me if I have wronged him!—has just been murdered and robbed by his native servant, a Patan scoundrel named Aloodeen."
"Murdered?"
"Yes—-just as the sunset gun was fired."
In a swoon Clare fell at his feet like one who was dead.
He had been stabbed to the heart! Who, or what was it in his likeness that Clare had seen at the place they were to meet? She was saved from her great temptation—saved to remain a sorrowing and innocent wife. She never again saw the face of Wilmot, even in a dream, though often in the years to come she decked his lonely grave with flowers.
From all we have read and heard of a singular sea-monster that has been seen from time to time in various parts of the ocean, it is difficult to doubt that some such creature, or creatures rather, may exist; though the reiterated allegations of "old salts," that theydoexist, may be but a relic of that dark superstition known as serpent-worship, which once prevailed over a great part of the world, and which still lingers in India, particularly among the Nagas, and of which snake-charming is a remnant.
How long this singular worship lingered in Western Europe we may gather from the "Atlas Geographus," published in 1711, which says, "there arestillremains of this idolatory" in Lithuania, where the Boors keep adders in their houses, and pay them profound respect while professing Christianity; and also, that few families in Samogitia, are without serpents as household gods.
Some years before this time, Sigismund, Baron of Herbestein, tells us, in his commentaries on Muscovy, that at Troki, eight miles from Wilna, his host acquainted him, that he had chanced to buy a hive of bees from one of the serpent-worshippers, whom he persuaded, with much reluctance, to worship the true God and kill his serpent. A short time after, in passing that way, he found the poor fellow miserably tortured and deformed, his face wrinkled and twisted away; and inquiring the cause, he answered, "That this judgment had come upon him for killing his god, and that he would have to endure greater torments if he did not return to his former worship."
In the sacred writings, but more particularly in the 8th chapter of Jeremiah and the 58th Psalm, are allusions to the taming or keeping of serpents; and Dr. Thomas Shaw found the same superstition prevailing in Barbary in 1757 (Travels).
Indian serpent-charming to this day, as we have said, is no doubt a remnant of that form of worship which spread all over the world, it may be from some dim tradition of the serpents of Eden and of Aaron's rod, that we have the Scandinavianjormagundr, among the fictions of the Edda, and to which Scott refers as—
"That sea-snake, tremendous curled,Whose monstrous circle guards the world."
The serpent and the circle were alike the emblem of eternity, and Odin was supposed to have at times the power of taking the aspect of the former; and a remnant of the same superstition is still to be found in Scotland in the knot-work upon Celtic crosses and Highland dirk-hilts.
In June, 1721 (as we are told in the "Historical Register" for the following year, sold by T. Norris, at theLooking-Glasson London Bridge), there appeared a terrible snake off the coast of Naples, not far from the Ponte-della-Maddalena, under which the river Sebeto flows into the sea, and it devoured a fisherman in presence of many of his friends, who had barely time to effect their escape.
The latter, fearing that the presence of this monster might destroy their fishery, and anxious to avenge their companion, made several weapons (harpoons?) of iron, and large hooks, and, putting to sea on the 6th of June in strong boats, discovered the great fish, and baited their lines with large pieces of horse-flesh, and ran a strong rope with a slip from the stem to the stern of a ship.
Rushing furiously at the boat, the snake was caught into the slip-knot, and ultimately drawn on shore, when, on being measured, it was found to be "twenty Neapolitan palms long. His mouth was excessively wide, having three rows of teeth in the form of a saw in the upper jaw, and but one row in the under. He weighed sixteencoutares, or about four hundred-weight. In the stomach were found the skull of a man, two legs, part of the backbone and ribs."
These were supposed to have been portions of the unfortunate fisherman, whom he had devoured some days before. By order of the Council of Health it was burned, lest it might infect the air.
The writer adds, that Johnson (to whom we shall refer presently) mentions similar fish—one that weighed eight hundred-weight; another that weighed four thousand pounds, and in the stomach of which was found a man, in a complete suit of armour!
It is a curious fact that recent scientific research has revealed the existence in the sea, at the greatest depths, of most minute and wonderfully formed organisms, the beauty and rarity of which necessarily secure our admiration; but instances of animals of enormous size being met with beyond those already known, are few and far between. This fact may be accounted for by the circumstance, that while it is easy to construct instruments for capturing the smaller creatures living in the deep, it is a very different matter to entrap and secure an unseen monster, whose very size must endow him with enormous strength. The whale, so far as we know, is the largest denizen of the deep. Whether it is possible that it can be equalled by giants of some other order or race, is the point which public curiosity is very keen to have settled.
The appearance of great snakes at sea is recorded by more than one old voyager; but it would seem to have been only of late years that the idea of their existence has been generally confined to one, familiar to us all as the "Great sea-serpent."
InOpuscula Omnia Botanic Thomæ Johnsoni, 1629, we have an account of a great serpent captured off Sandwich by two men, who found it stranded among the shoal water by the sea-shore. It is described as being fifty feet long, and of a fiery colour. We are also told that they conveyed the carcase home, and aftereatingit, stuffed the skin with hay, to preserve it "as a perpetual remembrance of the fact."
In David Crantz's "History of Greenland," published in 1766, we have an extract (illustrated by a drawing) concerning thekraken, from the narrative of a Captain Paul Egede, supposed to be the brother of a famous Danish missionary of the same name. The kraken, it is however necessary to remark, is the northern name for a giant cuttle-fish, the existence of such a monster being now a matter of scientific fact.
"On the 6th of July, 1734," says this old seaman, "as I was proceeding on my second voyage to Greenland, in the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, a hideous monster was seen to raise its body so high above the water that its head overtopped our main-sail. It had a pointed nose, and spouted out water like a whale; instead of fins it had great broad flaps like wings; its body seemed to be grown over with shell-work, and its skin was very rugged and uneven; when it dived into the water again, it threw up its tail, which was like that of a serpent, and was at least a whole ship's length above the water; we judged the body to be equal in bulk to our ship, and to be three or four times as long."
Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, celebrated in his days as a naturalist, though he never actually saw it or met any one whohadseen it, believed implicitly in the great sea-serpent existing somewhere; and in his writings has a good deal to tell us about its ways and habits; and it is upon record that Sir Lawrence de Ferry, commander of the old castle of Bergen, not only saw the monster, but shot at it on the high seas, wounded it, was pursued by it, in its pain and fury, so closely that he narrowly escaped with his life.
In 1801 there was cast ashore on the coast of Dorsetshire a snake twenty-eight feet in length and twenty feet in circumference; but this has since been alleged to have been a Basking-shark; and the same has been said of a great snake-like carcaso that was beaten to pieces by a tempest, and cast ashore on one of the Orkney Isles in the autumn of 1809, and some fragments of which, theScots Magazinefor that year states, were lodged in the Museum of the Edinburgh University.
A very distinct description of the sea-serpent occurs in Dr. Hooker'sTestimonyrespecting it, and communicated to Dr. Brewster'sJournal of Science. About half-past six o'clock on a cloudless evening at sea, the doctor heard suddenly a rushing noise ahead of the ship, which at first he supposed to be a whale spouting, but soon found to be a colossal serpent, of which he made a sketch as it passed the vessel at fifty yards' distance, slowly, neither turning to the right nor left. "As soon as his head had reached the stern, he gradually laid it down in a horizontal position with his body, and floated along like the mast of a vessel. That there was upwards of sixty feet visible, is shown by the circumstance that the length of the ship was a hundred and twenty feet, and that at the time his head was off the stern, the other end had not passed the main-mast.... His motion in the water was meandering, like that of an eel; and the wake he left behind him, was like that occasioned by a small craft passing through the water.... The humps on his back resembled in size and shape those of a dromedary."
Dr. Hooker states further, that the description precisely accorded with that of a serpent seen five years before by Captain Bennett of Boston. At a later period, three officers in Her Majesty's service—namely, Captain Sullivan, Lieutenant Maclachlan, and Ensign Malcolm of the Rifle Brigade—beheld a similar creature gambolling in the sea near Halifax; but they asserted that it was at least one hundred and eighty feet in length, and thicker than the trunk of a moderately sized tree. Nor must we forget the official account which was transmitted in 1848 to the Lords of the Admiralty, by Captain Peter M'Quhae of Her Majesty's shipDædalus, past which, he and his crew saw the great sea-serpent swimming merrily—a document which produced, or provoked, a learned paper in theWestminster Review; while Professor Owen asserted that what was seen from the deck of theDædalus, would be nothing more than a large seal borne rapidly southward on a floe or iceberg.
Recently, the appearances of the serpent have been amusingly frequent and clearly detailed. He has been seen in the north seas and the south seas, and in many places nearer home; in the Frith of Forth, off Filey Bay and the North Foreland, off Hastings and the Isle of Arran, the Menai Strait and Prawle Point; and in 1875, a battle between it and a whale was viewed from the deck of the good shipPaulineof London, Captain Drevar, when proceeding with a cargo of coals from Shields to Zanzibar, destined for Her Majesty's shipLondon. When thePaulinereached the region of the trade-winds and equatorial currents, she was carried out of her course, and after a severe storm, found herself off Cape Roque, where several sperm-whales were seen playing about her. While the crew were watching them, they suddenly beheld a sight that filled every man on board with terror. Starting straight from the bosom of the deep, a gigantic serpent rose and wound itself twice in two mighty coils round the largest of the whales, which it proceeded to crush in genuine boa-constrictor fashion. In vain did the hapless whale struggle, lash the water into foam, and even bellow, for all its efforts were as nothing against the supernatural powers of its dreadful adversary, whose strength "may be further imagined," says a leader in theDaily Telegraph, "from the fact that the ribs of the ill-fated fish were distinctly heard cracking one after the other with a report like that of a small cannon. Soon the struggles of the wretched whale grew fainter and fainter; its bellowings ceased, and the great serpent sank with its prey beneath the surface of the ocean."
Its total length was estimated at fifty yards, and its aspect was allowed to be simply "terrific." Twice again it reared its crest sixty feet out of the water, as if meditating an attack upon thePauline, which bore away with all her canvas spread. Her crew told their terrible story. But critics there were who averred that what they had seen was no serpent at all, but only a bottle-nosed whale attacked by grampuses!
In a letter to the London prints concerning this affair, we have another description of our old friend the serpent, as he appeared off St. David's Head, to John Abes, mate of a merchantman, in 1863. "I was the first who saw the monster, and shouted out. A terrible-looking thing it was! Seen at a little distance in the moonlight, his two eyes appeared about the size ofplates, and were very bright and sparkling." All on board thought his length about ninety feet; but as he curled and twirled rapidly, it was a difficult matter to determine. Captain Taylor ordered him to be noosed lasso-fashion with a rope, which John Abes tells us he got on the bowsprit to throw, but in the attempt threw himself overboard. "The horror of my feelings at the moment I must leave you to imagine," continues this remarkable epistle (which is dated from Totterdown, Bristol, September 19, 1875). "The brute was then within a few yards of me, with its monstrous head and wavy body, looking ten times more terrible than it did on board the brig. I shiver even now when I think of it. Whether the noise made by throwing the ropes over to save me scared him, I cannot say; but he went down suddenly, though not more so than I came up. After a few minutes he appeared some distance from us, and then we lost him."
When next we hear of the sea-serpent after his adventure off Cape Roque, he was beheld by the crew of no less a ship than Her Majesty's yacht theOsborne, the captain and officers of which, in June, 1877, forwarded an official report to the Admiralty, containing an account of the monster's appearance off the coast of Sicily on the 2nd of that month. "The time was five o'clock in the afternoon. The sea was exceptionally smooth, and the officers were provided with good telescopes. The monster had a smooth skin, devoid of scales, a bullet-shaped head, and a face like an alligator. It was of immense length, and along the back was a ridge of fins aboutfifteenfeet in length andsixfeet apart. It moved slowly, and was seen by all the ship's officers."
This account was further supplemented by a sketch in a well-known illustrated paper, from the pencil of Lieutenant W. P. Hynes of theOsborne, who, to the above description, adds, that the fins were of irregular height, and about forty feet in extent, and "as we were passing through the water at ten and a-half knots, I could only get a view of it 'end on.'" "It was about fifteen or twenty feet broad at the shoulders, with flappers or fins that seemed to have a semi-revolving motion. From the top of the head to the part of the back where it became immersed, I should consider about fifty feet, and that seemed about a third of the whole length. All this part was smooth, resembling a seal."
In the following month, the Scottish prints reported, that when the Earl of Glasgow's steam-yachtValettawas cruising off Garroch Head, on the coast of Bute, with a party of ladies and gentlemen on board, an enormous fish or serpent, forty feet in length and about fifteen in diameter, suddenly rose from the sea. Under sail and steam theValettagave chase. A gentleman on board speared it with a salmon "leister;" on which the serpent dived, and after a time reappeared with the iron part of the weapon sticking in its back. The monster scudded along for some minutes, again dived, and was not seen afterwards. There is little doubt, however, that the animal which figured in this instance was a very large basking-shark (Selache maxima).
An animal of exactly similar shape and dimensions was reported as being seen in the subsequent August by twelve persons in Massachusetts Bay; and soon after on three different occasions in the same quarter by the crew of a coasting vessel.