The saving of this creature, which Bella elected to call Bengalee, because she said she was sure it came from Bengal, and also because she had once sung a song having that name, was followed by no other events of any importance whatever. Nor need their stay at the Cape be dwelt upon, because it consisted simply of various visits which were paid in the outskirts by Mr. and Mrs. Pooley, accompanied by Bella; by the unloading of a considerable portion of the cargo of theEmperor of the Moon, and by the refilling of the hold with other goods saleable in India.
And, now, they were once more on their way towards the Equator, going due north instead of due south, as when they had last approached it, and with a cool southern breeze driving the Emperor along under full sail. Yet, so gentle was this breeze that, even if there had been any who were not sailors in the ship--as Bella, as well as Mrs. Pooley, might now well be considered, after the length of voyage she had already gone through, added to a few extra days and nights of turbulence and storm--scarcely would they have felt any inconvenience from the motion. Thus, therefore, with occasionally a dropping of the wind which reduced their speed a few knots, and, sometimes, with a total drop in it, so that they did not progress a knot an hour, while the ship swung slowly round and round the compass, they found themselves at the time which is about to be described in about Latitude 45.10 S., and Longitude 30.50 E., or, as near as may be, about 250 miles to the S.W. of Mauritius.
Wherefore, since theEmperor of the Moonhas arrived thus far in the Indian Ocean there has now to be set down a series of strange events which befell her, of so remarkable and peculiar a nature that one wonders that those events have never been chronicled before. For, far different from the ordinary stress and disasters which overtake ships at sea were those which have to be described; far different from those which the recorders of maritime calamities are in the habit of chronicling either in romance or dry-as-dust descriptions of facts.
All of which the writer now proceeds to relate, beginning with so strange a coincidence as, perhaps, none but those readers who, in their voyage through life, have recognised that truth is more strange than the wildest fiction, will be willing to allow within the bounds of likelihood. However, to make a beginning--since the coincidence is true--theEmperor of the Moonwas in those latitudes above described when, it being a bright hot morning with the sea already gleaming like molten brass, with the pitch between the planks already of the consistency of putty, and with the brasswork in such a state of heat that it was unsafe to touch it unless one wanted to leave the skin of his palms and fingers behind them, the look-out on the fo'c's'le head yelled: 'Sail, right ahead!' Now, since nothing of this kind, neither steamer nor sailing vessel, had been seen since they had northed out of the west-wind drift, and since, also, the liners were rarely found outside of the Equatorial current, this cry was sufficient to fill every one on board with a considerable amount of interest and excitement.
'Whereaway?' called out Charke, who was on the poop at this moment, the captain, his wife, and Bella being below at breakfast; and, ere the man could repeat that the sail was right ahead and about five miles off, all those others there had come on deck.
'How pretty it looks, shining in the sun!' the girl exclaimed, as she regarded it through a pair of marine glasses which her uncle had placed at her disposal; 'and how the sail glistens! It looks like a star.'
'Humph!' said the captain, as he gazed through his binocular. 'Like a star! True enough, so it does. And,' he said, addressing the two mates who were standing near him, 'we have seen such stars hereabouts before, eh? Do you think,' he went on, addressing Charke, lowering his voice a little, 'it is one of those?'
'Don't know,' Charke said, working his own glass a good deal. 'Can't see how it can be; too far to the east. Bussorah, Muscat, Ras-el-Had, Mohamrah, Oman--that's their mark. What should they be doing here?'
'All the same,' exclaimed Pooley, 'it's the rig, and the true shape, that of a Jargonelle pear cut in half. I do believe that's what it is. They might have been blown out of their course, you know, or chased by one of Her Majesty's ships. What do you think?'
'I think,' said Charke, who always spoke of everything connected with his calling in the most unemotional manner possible, 'I think we shall know when we come up to her, as we must do in about half an hour. While,' he continued, with a subdued tone in his voice, while his eye glinted sideways towards where Bella stood, 'we are not naval officers but only humble merchant seamen. There's no prize-money for us, therefore it is not our business.'
Bella had, of course, been listening attentively to all that had been said since she had come on deck after running lightly up the poop ladder, and now, hearing these words about 'naval officers' and 'prize-money,' her interest became more intense than before.
'Oh, uncle!' she exclaimed, putting her hand on his sleeve, 'what does it all mean? Naval officers and prize-money! That's not one of Her Majesty's ships?'
'No, my dear,' the captain replied, 'that is not one of Her Majesty's ships; but I shall be precious surprised if she doesn't turn out to be one of the very craft that Her Majesty's ships are always on the look-out for hereabouts, only rather closer in towards the African coast than this. She has all the build of an Arab slave-dhow.'
'Ay,' exclaimed Charke, who was still using his glass freely, from where he stood behind them. 'Ay, and something more than the build, too. If I'm not mistaken, her hatches have open gratings. What do you say, Fagg?' turning to his junior.
'Seems so, sir,' said that young officer, who never wasted more words than necessary, 'though I'm not quite sure.'
'I am,' replied Charke. 'I can see the grating slits perfectly as we get nearer.'
'What does that mean?' asked Bella, to whom this conversation conveyed nothing.
'It means,' said Pooley, 'that there is live stock below those gratings. Black cattle, as they used to be called on the West Coast. Ordinary hatches, to simply cover up cargo, are not made to let the air in. Cargo can do without breathing.'
'How awful!' Bella exclaimed, while through her mind there ran recollections of what she had heard or read casually of the slave trade in the old days, and also of the horrors of the North-West passage. 'How awful!'
'Bad enough,' replied Pooley, 'though not as bad as the old West African days, nor as shocking as you might think. The slave trade is a valuable one in this ocean, and those who are carried in the dhows are well enough fed. Rice, Indian corn, maize, and cassava is given them for food, and they have mats and matting galore to sleep on. Persian merchants and Arab gentlemen don't buy starved scarecrows for their domestic servants.'
'Whatever she is, and whatever her cargo is, there's something wrong with her,' the chief mate suddenly exclaimed. 'She's off the wind now, and the fellow who was at the helm has left it. It is abandoned. By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'he is lying wriggling by it. What on earth's the matter?'
'And,' added the second mate, 'there's a negro woman waving a red scarf. Something's wrong there, no doubt.'
'We shall be up to them in ten minutes,' the master said, all bustle and excitement now. 'Let go the foretack. Stand by to lower the starboard-quarter boat'; while, as he spoke, the men of the watch who had been leaning on the fife-rail rushed to the falls to be ready to let the boat sink to the water when the proper moment came. To Bella this seemed the most exciting moment of her life! There, in front of her, was one of those vessels, the name of which, or class of which, was almost unknown to her, except that, from odds and ends of conversation with her lover, she had gathered that these were the things in the chasing of which part of his existence might be passed until they met once more at Bombay. Here, on this glistening, glassy sea, the dhow lay--her one mast raking towards her bow instead of her stern, as is the case with most vessels of the Western world, and her long white triangle of a sail unfilled and flapping listlessly. A dhow--perhaps a slaver! as her uncle and the mate had said--a dhow in sore distress with, writhing by her helm, the man who had lately been steering her, and, over her bow, that negro woman waving frantically the red scarf. Excitement there was, indeed, in all this; excitement which caused Bella, even as she eagerly watched the vessel they were approaching, to wonder how the striking up of the band at a ball, or the ring of the prompter's bell ere the curtain rose on a drama that all London was flocking to see, could have ever stirred her pulses. What were they, those trivialities, to the smiling, glistening face of this Eastern sea--to the horror and the cruelties that this now tranquil ocean's bosom had enfolded through the ages.
Still the negress waved, not recognising, perhaps, in her blind, besotted, dumb, animal-like ignorance that help was at hand, and still, through their glasses, they could see that he who had steered the dhow now lay motionless. Then, at her ear, as theEmperorcame within six cable-lengths of the dhow, her uncle gave a few rapid orders, the second mate, accompanied by the boat's crew, jumped into the quarter-boat--the man at the wheel luffed until the vessel had not a motion in her. Swiftly the boat was lowered, the rudder and thole pins shipped, and she was on her way to the dhow.
'What do you make of it?' the master roared to Fagg ten minutes later, as, by then, theEmperor of the Moonhad come closer to the dhow through the motion of the swell. 'What?'
'I don't know what to make of it, sir,' the second mate called back. 'The man who was steering is, I think, dead. He does not move, and there is a white film over his eyes. The woman who waved the handkerchief seems well, but I cannot understand what she means. She does nothing but howl and point below.'
'Are the hatches grated?'
'Yes, sir, and there are four negroes beneath them. It is a slave dhow for certain. The negroes are shackled and handcuffed.'
'Have you searched further?'
'I am going to do so now. The ship is settling, I think. There is a kind of poop superstructure forming cabins.'
'Search at once; then bring all alive on board us.'
In a moment Mr. Fagg had disappeared into what he had termed a 'kind of poop superstructure,' and, while he was in it, all on board theEmperorwere occupied in speculating on what could have brought a slaver so far to the East and out of her ordinary course, and also in wondering what the mate would find during his further search.
But that wonderment was soon to be resolved, for, ere Mr. Fagg had been out of their sight five minutes, he rushed back from the superstructure to the deck, and bawled through his hands:
'There is a young naval officer lying in the poop cabin, and he is slightly wounded. His name is--is----'
'What?' roared Pooley, astonished at the mate's hesitation.
'It is marked on the rim of his cap--inside. It is--I--I am afraid it is Miss Waldron'sfiancé. The--the--name is Bampfyld.'
Come over, come homeThrough the salt sea foam.
Never, perhaps, on all that old highway of the waters, that silent road along which so many had steered their course to fabled Ormuz and to Ind, nor amidst fierce sea-fights 'twixt Arab and Persian, or Arab and European in later centuries, nor in the howl of storm when the waters closed around the shipwrecked and doomed, had there arisen a more piercing shriek than that which now issued from Bella Waldron's blanched lips.
'My God!' she screamed, repeating the second mate's words. '"The name is Bampfyld!" Oh, it's Gilbert--Gilbert! There is no other in the Navy List. Let me go to him, uncle!'
'No, no,' the master said, while good Mrs. Pooley put her arms round the girl as she stood there by the poop-rails and endeavoured to calm and soothe her. 'No, no, Bella; they will bring him on board directly, then,'--and in his desire to ease the girl's heart he raised the ghost of a smile to his lips--'then you shall nurse him till he is well. Yet,' he muttered to Charke, as he walked over to where the first mate stood, 'yet, how on earth does he find himself in that infernal dhow!'
'Heaven knows,' the other answered. 'But, perhaps, 'tis not so strange, after all. There may have been a fight between his ship and the slaver--though there's not much fight in them when they get a sight of the British Flag!--or he may have been sent to board her and got cut down, or half-a-hundred things. All of which,' he added, with his now usual cynicism, 'are equally likely or unlikely. Anyhow, he is here--or will be in a few moments--and we shall have him for a passenger to Bombay. Your niece is in luck, sir,' and he turned on his heel and went down the ladder to the deck to see to the raising of the boat, which was now making its way back to the ship.
To Stephen Charke, still loving the girl as madly as he did, still raging inwardly at the knowledge that every knot which the ship made was bringing her nearer to the man who, as he considered, had torn her from him, this incident seemed the last and most crushing blow of all. God knows what hopes the mate had cherished in his bosom since first he had learnt that Bella was to be a passenger in her uncle's ship for about four months; what ideas might have been revolving in his mind as to whether, in those four months, something extraordinary, something almost unheard of--not to be dreamt of nor foreseen--might happen to give him one more chance of winning her. He was a romantically-minded man, a man with so rich an imagination that, to him, there sometimes came ideas that few are ever burdened with. And, in that full and teeming imagination, there had been pictured to him visions of theEmperor of the Moonbeing wrecked and Bella and he alone spared--he, of course, saving her at the peril of his own life and winning her away from her more aristocratic lover by so doing. Or, he dreamt of that lover being himself wrecked and lost, or pierced by an Arab spear in some affray, or shot in a hand-to-hand fight with a particularly bold slaver (since he knew well enough that the ships of the Bombay station were often enough down here) or--or--or he cherished any mad vision that first rose to his brain.
And now--now--this very man, this successful rival, this aristocratic naval officer, with his high birth and future peerage, was actually being brought aboard the ship where the woman was whom they both loved--brought on board 'slightly wounded,' and his own last chance thus gone. Gone for ever now! Perhaps, therefore, it was no wonder he should bite his lip and smother unholy murmurs deep down in his throat; perhaps, too, he merits compassion. He had loved this girl fondly since first he set eyes on her, and once, at one time, he thought he had almost won her. Then this other had come in his way, had swept him out of Bella's heart, or the approach to it, and his chance was over. Yet, once again, they had met through an almost unheard of, and scarcely to be imagined, opportunity, and--lo! here was his successful rival once more at hand to thwart him. It was hard on him, or, as he muttered to himself, 'devilish rough.'
The quarter-boat was coming back to the ship now, Fagg steering her, while, between him and the stroke oar, there lay the body of the young naval officer, clad in his 'whites.' And again as Bella, madly whispering 'Gilbert, Gilbert, my darling,' stood by the head of the accommodation ladder--which had been lowered while the boat was gone to the dhow--the men brought her lover gently up and laid him on the deck under the awning.
'Oh, Gilbert!' she cried again, as now she bent over him, while stroking his hair, which, on the left side of his head, was all matted with thick coagulated blood, 'Oh, Gilbert! to think that we should meet thus! Sir!' she screamed to Fagg, who was about to descend again to the boat to fetch off the others still in the dhow, 'where is he wounded? Where? Have you had time to discover?'
'I have looked him over, Miss Waldron, and, to tell you the truth, I do not think there is much the matter with him.'
'Thank God! Oh, thank God!'
'That blood,' the second mate continued, 'comes from a heavy contusion at the side of his head, but the skull is uninjured. Also there is no concussion--observe the pupils of the eyes are not at all dilated.' Then he turned away and went swiftly down the ladder again, muttering that, if he was to save the Arabs and the negroes, there was no time to be wasted. The dhow was filling fast, he added. There was a big hole in her below the waterline, and a quarter of an hour would see the end of her.
And now Gilbert was carried to the cabin corresponding with Bella's on the port side of the vessel, aft of the saloon, and Mrs. Pooley, with the steward, went in to undress him, telling Bella that, as soon as he was comfortably placed in the bunk, she should come and take her place by his side. Whereon the girl, distracted by both her hopes and fears--hopes that the second mate was right in his surmises as to her lover's wounds, and fears that he was wrong--sat herself down on the great locker that was in the gangway, and gave herself up to tearful meditations.
'Ah, if he should die!' she murmured; 'if he should die! Then my heart will break.'
Though, as you shall see, and have undoubtedly divined, Gilbert was not to die then, at least.
But, by this time, other things were taking place above which were almost as startling as the discovery of Lieutenant Bampfyld in that slave-dhow. Startling, not only because of the unexplained cause that had brought the Arab slaver into this portion of the Indian Ocean, but also because of the strange and mysterious behaviour of those others who were now being conveyed on board theEmperor of the Moon. Ere they came, however, Mr. Fagg had sent over information surprising enough in itself, and sufficient to prepare all on board the ship for what, a little later, they were to see.
'The owner--if he is the owner,' he cried, 'the man who fell down while steering, is dead. He is stiffening. I presume I had best leave him to go down with the dhow?'
'Ay,' called back Pooley. 'Ay. What about the others?'
'I cannot make them out. The negress seems well enough, but terribly frightened. As for the four men below, they all appear blind. We have taken their shackles off and they grope their way about as though in the dark. My men have to lead them up the ladders--yet their eyes look clear enough.'
'Have they been kept in the dark, think you, and is the sun dazzling them now?'
'No, sir. The open gratings have furnished the part of the hold they were in with plenty of light.' He paused a moment, and those in theEmperorsaw him gazing down steadfastly to that hold; then he called again: 'We must come away now, sir. The water is pouring in. The dhow will not swim much longer.'
'Do so,' answered back Pooley; and five minutes afterwards the boat was on her way to the ship, laden with the rescued negroes. Mr. Fagg had proved right in his surmise as to the necessity for leaving the slaver at once. For, ere he came on board, she was observed to heel over a little to starboard, then to further do so with a jerk; then, suddenly, she righted until she was on a level keel--and, next, sank below the waves like a stone, the body of the dead man, who had fallen down while steering, alone remaining above the heaving waters, and being swirled round and round in the whirlpool caused by the wreck, until it too went down.
Creeping up the companion, their hands directed to the side-ropes by the sailors; feeling the steps with their huge splay feet--as a mule feels its way along the thin line of insecure path that rounds the smooth face of a precipice--those stricken men came; huge, splendid specimens of the swart negroes of Wyassa and Wahiyou and Wagindo, whom the Arab slaver ships from Kilwa, below Zanzibar, and transports to Bussorah and Mohamra, whence they often reach the more distant Turkish harems. Now, looking at them as they stood on the deck of theEmperor of the Moon, it seemed as though their course was almost run. For, though these men would never be slaves to Arab or Persian or Turk, of what use to himself or any one else is an unhappy blind nigger who, to exist at all, must work like a dray-horse?
'Poor wretches!' said Pooley to Charke as they both stood regarding these blacks, 'see how the shackles have eaten into their ankles. Poor brutes! They say that sometimes these fellows sell themselves willingly into slavery; I doubt much if these have done so. Ah, well! we must take them with us to Bombay, where, at least, they will be free. I wish,' he added, 'we could communicate with them somehow and learn who and what they are.'
'Perhaps,' said Charke quietly, unemotionally as ever, 'Lieutenant Bampfyld can tell us when he comes to. Since he was in the dhow, he probably knows what she was and where she came from.' Then, breaking off to cast his eye around, he said: 'Sir, there is a breeze coming aft. Shall we not make sail?'
'Ay,' cried Pooley, springing to the poop, 'ay, we have had little enough wind for some days. Summon the watch.'
A few moments later the order to square the yards thundered along the deck; the men rushed to the braces. Far off, up from the dusky, wizard south, the wind was coming as they fisted the canvas, and theEmperor, heeling over, gathered way and sped once more towards India. She gathered way faster and faster as outer jib and topsails were loosed and sheeted home, fore and main top-gallant sails and spanker yards braced sharp up, and main-sail, main-royal and mizzen top-gallant sails set, as well as jibs and staysails. She talked, as the sailors say, as she went through the water; she hummed and sang beneath the breeze that came up from far down by the Antarctic circle--a breeze whose cool breath was gone and was, instead, perfumed now by the warm spicy odours of adjacent Mauritius and Reunion. Away, over the vast waste of golden waters she flew, and the master, standing on the poop, called down to his first mate joyfully to ask him if this would not do well enough for Bombay.
'Ay, ay, sir,' answered Charke, turning round from giving orders to the men aloft to answer his chief. 'Ay, ay, sir.'
While to himself he muttered: 'Bombay! India! Well, when we are there, all is ended for me!'
The sailor is, as all the world knows, a light-hearted, mercurial creature. Face to face with death in some form or other during every hour of his life--although, often, the mere presence of death is neither known nor suspected--he is only too elated and happy when momentarily without anything to cause him anxiety. Such was the case now with Captain Pooley, since his beautiful ship was rapidly picking up all the time she had lost by lack of wind and delays, 'and since,' as he jovially phrased it, 'all his new passengers were doing well.'
'First and foremost,' he said that evening, as he sat at the head of his table with Bella in the place of honour on his right hand, his wife on the left, and Mr. Fagg opposite to him, while his honest, sunburnt face gleamed rubicund beneath the inch of white under his hair which his cap had preserved from the sun, 'Bella's young man is all right. Then Bella's new plaything, the tiger, takes kindly to its lodgings--though you will have to sell it, my child, directly we get to Bombay, and distribute the money it fetches among the men. Then those wretched slaves--even they will eat and drink, won't they, Fagg?'
'Not much of that, sir,' the second mate answered, who was eating and drinking pretty well himself, however; 'they don't care to do much of either. They make a good deal of moaning up in that deck-cabin forward which you have given them. The woman, however, seems all right. I suppose the lieutenant has not been able to tell you much about the dhow yet, Miss Waldron?' he asked, bending forward a little as he addressed her.
'At present,' she replied, 'we have had little conversation. He says, however, that he sent me a telegram from Bombay, telling me not to start as theBriseuswas coming down here. He only came-to an hour ago, however,' she went on, while a ravishing blush swept over her face, 'and we--we--have had so much to----'
'Spare her, Fagg,' said Pooley, with a laugh, and passing the claret at the same time. 'Spare her. Suppose you woke up one fine afternoon and found your sweetheart bending over you in your berth and whispering all sorts of endearing things in your ears, as well as kiss----'
'Uncle!' cried Bella, while Mrs. Pooley touched her husband's arm reprovingly with her forefinger, and Mr. Fagg hid his face behind the vase of brilliant Cape gooseberries on the table. 'Uncle!' Whereon the bluff, good-natured sailor desisted, and began to speculate on the blindness with which the rescued negroes were attacked, and on that attack being, as he imagined, a recent one. 'They capture these poor wretches inland,' he went on musingly, 'in the big lake region as often as not; but, as far as I have ever heard, blindness is not one of their afflictions. Moreover, these Arab owners and captains wouldn't buy blind slaves, either for selling farther north, or for using as sailors in their dhows. Therefore, I take it, this blindness must have come on them since they were shipped. That's strange, isn't it?' while, as he spoke, he rose, and went to his neat mahogany bookcase which was securely fastened to one of the saloon's bulkheads, and took down the two medical works he possessed--the one dealing with all general human complaints to which our flesh is heir, and the other with tropical diseases more especially. Yet neither under the heading of 'Eye,' nor 'Blindness,' nor 'Optics,' could he find aught that bore upon the subject; nor, in his book on tropical complaints, could he discover any information that might enlighten him as to why the four negroes should be so stricken.
He spoke again, however, after turning over the leaves of these erudite volumes a second time, saying: 'Fever, I know, sometimes produces blindness as an after-effect, yet--well, we have all seen these fellows, and there's no fever in them, I should say. Oh, deuce take this confusion of tongues!' he exclaimed irritably; 'if it did not exist we could find out so much from the sufferers themselves. Bella, our only hope is in you and your patient. If Lieutenant Bampfyld can't tell us something, we shall never know who these men and the woman are, where they came from, what is the matter with them, and to whom the dhow belonged. Can he speak anything but English, child?'
'He knows some Hindustani,' Bella replied; 'and, I think he said, some words of Swahili. He has taken up Eastern languages in the Service, which was one of the reasons for his being appointed to theBriseus. He may be some help. At least he can tell us how he came on board that horrid ship.'
As she spoke, eight-bells struck on deck, and, as the sound came through the skylight, both she and Mr. Fagg rose, the girl doing so because it was the hour at which she intended to visit Gilbert again, and the latter because it was time to relieve Stephen Charke, who would now come below to take his supper. For Bella had fixed this hour for paying her last evening visit to her future husband because she knew that the second mate would then descend, and she was never now desirous of being more in his company than necessary.
She therefore left the saloon before Fagg could have relieved Charke, and, going to the cabin in which Gilbert Bampfyld lay, pushed back the curtain that hung at the door and went in to him, while observing as she did so that he was awake and gazing upwards as he lay. And she saw that he smiled happily on perceiving her, and whispered the word 'Darling' as she advanced to his bedside.
'You are better, dearest,' she said, bending over him and putting her hand on his forehead, which was cool and moist. 'Much better. Aunt will come soon with fresh bandages for your poor head, and then you will have a good night's refreshing sleep. And to-morrow, perhaps, you will be able to tell us how you came to be in that hideous slaver. Oh, Bertie!'--for so she often called him--'what a mercy it was that we found you as we did. And what a miracle that we should have met thus. Home-keeping and narrow-minded people would say, if they read it all in a book, that such a thing was unnatural and impossible.'
Their first meeting, their joy at discovering that they had come together again in this marvellous manner; their rapture when, a few hours before, Gilbert Bampfyld had emerged from his stupor and unconsciousness, has not been forgotten, although the description of it has been omitted. Omitted for the simple reason that most of us have been, or are, lovers; most of us have known in our time, or know now--and those are the happy ones!--the sweet, unutterable joy with which such meetings are welcomed. Who does not remember the sudden, quickened beat of the heart at some period of their existence, as they met again the one they loved the best of all in this world; the creature upon whom their thoughts were for ever dwelling, and from whom those thoughts, however wandering they had heretofore been, were, at last, never more to roam! Picture to yourself, therefore, what rhapsody was Bella's when, forgetting everything else but that she held her lover to her heart, she wept over his salvation from an awful, swift, impending death; picture also to yourself the delirious joy which coursed through Gilbert's now unclouded mind, as he found himself in her arms--with her--close to her. Picture this, and no further description is needed of their meeting in that cool, darkened cabin of the old ship. Imagine for yourself what your own ecstasy would have been in such or kindred circumstances, and you possess the knowledge of what theirs was.
'Darling,' he said again now, as she held to his lips a cooling drink that she had brought into the cabin with her, 'darling, I can tell you in half-a-dozen sentences or less----'
'No,' she said. 'No; not now. To-morrow, when you have slept----'
'Yes, now. Why, dearest, I am well! I could take the middle watch to-night if necessary, or--or--do anything that a sailor may be called on to do. And as for finding me in that dhow, why, it's the simplest thing on earth--or the waters. Listen. TheBriseus, as you would have learnt by that telegram I sent you if you had ever received it, was suddenly ordered to join the Cape Squadron--dhow-catching. And I can tell you we were not so very long before the game began, since by the time we were abreast of Kilwy--which is the southern limit of the legal slave trade--we fell in with twelve dhows, one of them being our friend from which I was rescued by your people. And you may depend we were after them like lightning, while beginning to ply them with shell and shot from our little gun forward. They scattered, of course, though some got hit and lay disabled on the water, while I went off in the whaler with her crew to attack one that seemed badly knocked about. The one in which I was when found by you.'
'The horror!' exclaimed Bella, with a pretty shudder.
'No, no; don't call her that, because, after all, I owe my life to her.'
'Well, the angel!' exclaimed Bella now, with sudden change.
'Though I don't altogether know that the captain meant to save me----'
'The wretch! I'm glad he's dead.'
Gilbert laughed at these variations in Bella's mental temperature. Then he continued.
'They are artful--incredibly artful--in these dhows. They will let our pinnaces or whalers or any other of the ship's boats come alongside, then, all of a sudden, they cut their lee halliards, and down comes their great sail over us, enveloping the boat and all in it, just as if it was in a net or a bag.'
'Ah!' gasped Bella.
'And that's not all. When you are caught like that, they have another pleasing little way of firing at you from above through the canvas, so that you are being shot down while, all the time, you have no chance of escape.'
'Oh!' exclaimed Bella. 'To think of it! Ah, the wretches.'
'They do, Bella. Fortunately, however, this one couldn't do it, being disabled, and she had, therefore, come up to the wind with hardly any way on her. This was all right for us, as I meant to board, so as we came alongside each other we hooked on to her anchor cable, which was hanging pretty low down, and we should have got on board, too, only at that moment the dhow gave a lurch which sent the whaler half-seas under, and I got a blow on the head which knocked me insensible----'
'Oh, Gilbert! That wound on your head!'
'I suppose so. At any rate, I knew no more about it; and I don't know anything further, now, since I was insensible till I woke up here this morning and found you bending over me. However, I'm all right now, or soon shall be.'
'But how did you come into the dhow you were found in?' Bella asked, while pouring out, directly afterwards, one question after another. 'And when did it happen--yesterday, or a week ago? And where was the whaler, and the sailors, and theBriseus? And why did they all desert you? What a nice kind of a captain yours must be, to be sure!'
'My opinion is now,' said Gilbert, 'that the dhow you found me in, rescued me--picked me up. And I expect our captain--he is a rattling good skipper, Bella, all the same--heard I was drowned and thinks I've missed my muster. My cousin Jack will imagine for a month or so--till we get in to Bombay--that he is the future Lord D'Abernon,' and he laughed as he thought of how soon Cousin Jack would be undeceived.
'But the dhow we found you in--how did she escape, and why didn't theBriseuscapture her?'
'Some must have got off in the confusion since it was only an hour from dark. I'm certain to be reported lost when the ship goes into either Zanzibar or Aden, and---- What's that?' he exclaimed, breaking off suddenly. 'Surely that's your uncle's voice!'
He recognised it because Captain Pooley had been in to see him after he recovered his consciousness and had congratulated him on doing so, as well as on being practically restored, while saying also that he was delighted at being the means of rescuing him out of the sinking slaver.
'Yes,' Bella replied, 'that's uncle's voice; and the other is that of Mr. Charke, the first mate.'
'Listen! What is it he is saying?'
It was perfectly easy to hear what he was saying, since both master and mate were conversing in the saloon, to which Charke had descended. And the words which reached their ears, as they fell from the latter's lips, were: 'Oh, no doubt about it whatever, sir; not the least. The negress is now as blind as the negroes themselves. She cannot see her way along the deck, nor any of the signs we have made before her eyes.'
The southerly wind did not hold as it should have done considering the time of year, and the consequence was that theEmperor of the Moonwas by no means making such a passage as was to be expected of her. Indeed, by the time that the second day had passed since the rescue of Gilbert from the slaver, and when the evening was at hand, she was almost motionless on the water, while such sails as were still left standing hung as listlessly as though they were suspended in a back room. Now, this was disheartening to all on board--that is to say, to all except one person--as is generally the case when such things happen. The master was grieved because he looked upon the delay as an absolute waste of valuable time, while as for Bella and Gilbert--well, it is scarcely necessary to write down here what they were looking forward to at the end of their journey, or what visions haunted the mind of the latter concerning the Cathedral in Bombay and a ceremony of marriage being performed at the altar-rails by the Bishop. Yet, all--passengers, master, officers and men--had to swallow their disappointment as best they might, and to recognise the fact that Bombay was still over three thousand miles away and not likely to be reached for very many days.
The one person who was, however, resigned to the affliction of delay was Stephen Charke, in whose brain there still lingered a wild and chimerical idea that there might yet be sent by Fate some extraordinary piece of good fortune which would, even at the last moment, sever Gilbert and Bella, with the subsequent result of bringing him and her together.
It has been said that he was a dreamer, and never had he been so more than now, since, sleeping and waking, he still mused on the possibility of some extraordinary set of circumstances arising which should force the girl into his arms. Yet, he had to own to himself that nothing was more unlikely than that any such circumstances could by any possibility arise. If anything visited these seas, this stupendous ocean, at this period of the year, it was most likely to be a flat calm such as that which they were now experiencing, instead of storms; and, even if storms should come, of what avail would they be to separate Gilbert Bampfyld and Bella Waldron?
'I am a fool,' he would mutter to himself, as he smoked his pipe in either the solitude of his own cabin or on the deck at night, 'a fool. A madman! One has only to observe how they love each other, how they never leave each other's side, to see that nothing could ever bring her to me. Even though she and I were cast on some deserted shore, even though I saved her from forty thousand threatened deaths--even though Bampfyld himself were dead and buried, she would never give herself to me. I am,' he would repeat again, 'a fool.' And this acknowledgment would, for a time, operate wholesomely on him--a man whose mind was not altogether that of a visionary and whose heart was not, by nature, a perverted or warped one--and he would resolve that, henceforth, he would think no more of this girl for whom his love was so fierce and, to him, so disturbing. He made resolutions, therefore, and kept them--until the next time that he saw the lovers together, smiling, talking, happy in each other--'billing and cooing,' as he called it, with a smothered curse.
They were on deck together, now, on the evening of the second day of calm as Stephen went up to take the first watch, since Gilbert had refused to remain a prisoner in the cabin allotted to him for more than twenty-four hours, and Pooley was also there, Fagg being below finishing his supper. Mrs. Pooley sat on the poop in a deck-chair engaged in some needlework she had constantly on hand, and, forward, the men were engaged in smoking and telling yarns, while the general idleness which pervades the forecastle when a ship is becalmed prevailed everywhere. One man was reading a short story to his mates out of a country paper six months old, another had a sewing-machine between his legs with which he was mending his and his comrades, clothes, a third was teasing and playing with 'Bengalee,' the tiger cub, which was growing--or seemed to be growing--fast. At present, however, it was safe to let it loose since it had no more strength than a large-sized cat, and teeth not much bigger than those domestic animals possess. Generally, the creature followed Bella about wherever she went, rolling down the companion ladder after her like a striped ball when she went below, or lying on the edge of her dress when she sat on deck; but at night it was shut up in a locker forward and looked after by the sailors. The hour for its temporary retirement had not, however, yet arrived, wherefore it was still gambolling about amongst the men.
Altogether, the vessel presented a peaceful scene as she lay 'idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean,' while, from forward, there came the droning voice of the sailor who was reading the storiette to his mates, interrupted only by the laughter of the others at the cub's leaps and growls; and, from the after part of the ship, the talk of the 'quarter-deck' people arose.
'Come,' said Pooley now, addressing Charke, 'come, let us go and look at those unfortunate niggers. The Lord knows what is to become of them. The woman, you say, never rises from the floor of the cabin, but only lies there and moans. It is the strangest thing I ever heard of in my life. I wish, Mr. Bampfyld,' turning to that gentleman as he passed with Bella, 'that you could give us some information about that dhow we found you in.'
But, of course, Gilbert could tell them no more than he had already done a dozen times, while repeating in substance all that he had said to hisfiancée.
'I am sorry,' he had said on each occasion, and again said now, 'but I know absolutely nothing. I was insensible when I was taken into the dhow--as taken in I must have been, since I could never have got in by myself--and, as you are well aware, I was insensible when I was brought out. I positively know nothing.'
'The helmsman's death was as strange as anything,' Pooley observed. 'Fagg says there was no wound about him that he could see. What, therefore, could he have died of?'
'Sunstroke, I imagine,' the first mate said, in his usual emphatic, crisp manner. 'Sunstroke. It could not have been fever, otherwise these negroes would have it, too. Yet,' he went on, in a manner more meditative than usual with him, 'those Arabs, if he was an Arab, rarely suffer from that. It takes a white man to get sunstroke.'
'Well, come,' said the master again, 'let's go and see to them. The sun is on the horizon; it will be dark in a quarter of an hour's time.' Whereon he strode forward, accompanied by Charke, while Mr. Fagg, who had come up from the saloon, began to keep such watch as was necessary. And Gilbert, bidding Bella go and sit with Mrs. Pooley, strode after them, since he was anxious to have a look at the unhappy creatures who had been rescued at the same time as himself.
The male blacks had been put into a deck cabin (in which was usually kept an assortment of things such as spare lamps, a boat sail or two, and Mr. Fagg's bicycle, on which he disported himself whenever he got ashore anywhere), wherein some matting had been thrown down for their accommodation. And, as now they neared this cabin, they heard sounds proceeding from within it which were really moans, but, to their ears, had more the semblance of the bleating of sheep. Also, it seemed as if one of them within was chanting some sort of song or incantation.
'We shall have to stop this noise in some way, sir,' Charke said to the captain; 'it has been going on more or less ever since they came on board, and the men complain that it disturbs them in the fo'c's'le. It's a pity we can't communicate with them somehow. Perhaps Lieutenant Bampfyld might try, as he says he knows some words of Swahili'; while as he spoke he looked at the man who had once more, as he considered, or chose to consider, stepped in between him and the woman he loved. Yet, because he never forgot that he was a gentleman born, there was nothing in his manner that was otherwise than polite when he addressed Gilbert.
'I have tried,' said the latter, 'more than once to-day. And either my Swahili is defective, or that is not their language. I suspect that it's Galla, of which I do not know a word.'
Meanwhile, the captain had drawn back the cocoanut matting which hung in front of the deck cabin door, though, after peering into the sombre dusk for a moment, he started back, exclaiming: 'Good Heavens! what has happened now? Have they murdered one of their companions, or what?'
It was, in truth, a weird sort of scene on which he, as well as Gilbert and Charke, gazed, as the swiftly-failing tropical evening light illumined the interior of the cabin. Flat on the floor of it lay one of the negroes, undoubtedly dead, since there was on his face the gray, slate-coloured hue which the African assumes in death. Yet his eyes were open, only now, instead of that bright glassy look which all their eyes had had since they were brought on board, there was a dull filmy look, which told plainly enough that there was no life behind them. Still, dead as the man undoubtedly was, he did not present the most uncanny spectacle of all within! That was furnished by those who of late had been his comrades, and by the strange grotesqueness--a grotesqueness that was horrible in itself--of their actions. All three of the living negroes were on their knees in the cabin, which was roomy enough to amply admit of their being so, while, with their great black hands, they were pawing the man all over, feeling his breast and body, and endeavouring to bend his fingers and toes as well as his legs and arms; while, even as they did so, from their great mouths came that moaning incantation which resembled so much the bleating of sheep. Doubtless they felt almost sure that their fellow-slave was dead, and these actions were being performed as tests. Yet, also, there was a solemn, wild unearthliness attached to the whole thing by the manner in which, when one of the visitors standing at the door and peering in made a remark, all turned their sightless eyes towards that door and then held up each a hand, and emitted a hissing noise through their great pendulous lips, as though enjoining silence and respect for the dead. They held up those hands with the fingers stretched enormously apart and with the palms towards the intruders. Their eyes were bright enough as they glared at the three white men outside, whom they could not see, yet, somehow, the gleam in them and the knowledge that they were sightless gave so creepy a feeling to those regarding them that they could not restrain a shudder.
'What in God's name is it?' exclaimed Pooley, he being the first to speak. 'What? What horrible disease that blinds them to commence with, and then kills--and kills not only negro, but Arab--captured and captor? Who--which--will be the next?'
As he spoke, a thought struck each of the three as they stood there gazing at one another in the swiftly-arrived darkness of the tropical night--a thought to which, however, not one of them gave utterance.Whowould be the next? An Arab had died from some strange, unknown disease in the ship wherein these men had been found, and, now, one of them, too--a negro! Had, they reflected, this insidious horror been, therefore, brought into a ship full of white men? Would they also fall victims to that which had killed the others? That was the thought in their minds--in the minds of all of them, though not one gave voice to that thought.
'He must be got away from them--taken out of that cabin,' Pooley said, his speech a little changed now, and more husky and less clear than usual. 'Perhaps the woman, the negress, may be of some avail. I doubt if they will let us remove him without difficulty--though--poor blind things as they are--they could scarcely make any resistance. Go across to the other cabin, Mr. Charke, and fetch her over.'
He had been anticipated in his order, however, by the chief mate ere he spoke, Charke having, through some idea of his own, already crossed the deck to the opposite cabin in which the woman was placed. Therefore, as Pooley looked round to see why the mate did not answer him, he saw in the darkness that he was returning; while he perceived--even in this darkness, which was not quite all darkness yet, and by the light of the foredeck lantern--that Charke looked pale and agitated.
'The woman,' he said, 'is dead, too, I believe. She is lying on the cabin floor motionless--and cold.'