*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64321 ***

THE CONVICT SHIP

VOL. III.




NEW LIBRARY NOVELS.


  UNDER SEALED ORDERS. By GRANT ALLEN. 3 vols.

  A LONDON LEGEND. By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 3 vols.

  THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS. By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 2 vols.

  THE DRIFT OF FATE. By DORA RUSSELL. 3 vols.

  BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. By WALTER BESANT. 1 vol.

  THE MINOR CHORD. By J. MITCHELL CHAPPLE. 1 vol.

  HIS VANISHED STAR. By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 1 vol.

  ROMANCES OF THE OLD SERAGLIO. By H. N. CRELLIN. 1 vol.

  VILLAGE TALES AND JUNGLE TRAGEDIES. By B. M. CROKER. 1 vol.

  MADAME SANS-GÊNE. By E. LEPELLETIER. 1 vol.

  MOUNT DESPAIR. By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 1 vol.

  THE PHANTOM DEATH. By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 1 vol.

  THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN. By ALLEN UPWARD. 1 vol.


LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.




  THE CONVICT SHIP

  BY
  W. CLARK RUSSELL

  AUTHOR OF
  ‘THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR’ ‘MY SHIPMATE LOUISE’
  ‘THE PHANTOM DEATH’ ETC.

  [Illustration]

  IN THREE VOLUMES--VOL. III.

  London
  CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
  1895




  PRINTED BY
  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
  LONDON




  CONTENTS
  OF
  THE THIRD VOLUME


     CHAP.                                                         PAGE

    XXXIV. SHE WITNESSES THE DEPARTURE OF THE OFFICERS AND
             SOLDIERS                                                 1

     XXXV. SHE LISTENS TO THE CONVICTS DEBATING                      32

    XXXVI. SHE SUPS WITH HER SWEETHEART                              63

   XXXVII. SHE DESCRIBES A WILD, DRUNKEN, UPROARIOUS SCENE           82

  XXXVIII. SHE ESCAPES FROM THE CONVICT SHIP WITH HER SWEETHEART
             AND OTHERS                                             109

    XXXIX. SHE RELATES HOW HER SWEETHEART RESOLVES TO HIDE IN AN
             ISLAND                                                 141

       XL. SHE HELPS TO KEEP WATCH                                  160

      XLI. SHE VIEWS THE ISLAND OF TRISTAN D’ACUNHA                 176

     XLII. SHE MEETS THE TRISTAN ISLANDERS                          198

    XLIII. SHE SEES CAPTAIN ROTCH AND MR. NODDER AGAIN              225

     XLIV. SHE WITNESSES NODDER’S CONFESSION                        274

      XLV. SHE CONCLUDES HER STORY                                  304

           POSTSCRIPT                                               323




THE CONVICT SHIP




CHAPTER XXXIV

SHE WITNESSES THE DEPARTURE OF THE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS


By this time the awning had been spread. In the cuddy a crowd of
convicts were roaring out the chorus of some vulgar popular song of
that time. Will said: ‘We have had nothing to eat. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Here, you!’ exclaimed Tom to the fellow at the helm. ‘Jump below to
the cuddy and bring us some food and wine to breakfast off. I’ll not
trust this young gentleman amongst them. You’re known as a friend.
Johnstone, hold the wheel.’

The man went like a dog to the companion-hatch and disappeared down it.

‘A worthy example of the British sailor,’ said Tom. ‘He’s one of those
fellows who’d swear a man’s life and liberty away for a noggin of rum.
D’ye see that boat, Marian?’ He pointed to a long thin boat, called the
captain’s gig, that hung by davits over the stern, with the line of
her gunwale on a level with the taffrail. ‘She’ll give us our chance.
Johnstone, that’ll be the boat we’ll make off in. The sooner the
better. Hark to them below! Oh, my dear heart, what has your love for
me brought you into? Johnstone, the equipment of that boat will be your
duty. I shall hold you responsible for everything being in its place
when we come to want her.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ answered the lad, with the habit of a sailor in answer
to an order.

‘Is it true, Tom, that they’d hang you if they found you in command of
this ship?’ said I.

‘There’s been murder and piracy, and the ringleaders would be hanged,
and I, found in command of the ship, would be reckoned a ringleader.
But do not fear. They’re not going to catch me. We’ll be out of the
vessel soon, though heaven help the unhappy ruffians when it comes to
our leaving them.’

Presently the sailor came up out of the cuddy. He brought a bottle of
sherry, a broken tumbler, a plate of white biscuit, and some tinned
meat. He said sullenly, as he put the stuff down on the grating, that
it was all he could find. There wasn’t a whole tumbler to be seen.

‘Them convicts is gone mad,’ he said, as he sulkily grasped the wheel.
‘Them as ain’t singing’s fighting. The cabin floor’s a-running with
blood. They’re mostly the young ’uns. I never bargained for the likes
of this raree-show. What’s a-going to befall the fired ship if this
sort of carrying-on’s to last?’

‘It was to be a roasting hot job,’ said I pointing to the injured
topgallantmast.

He gave me an evil look, but, meeting Tom’s eyes, turned his head and
stared away into the white, sultry, stagnant distance. I kept my back
upon the bloodstains; I could not have held them in view and tasted
food. Whilst we ate and drank we heard Mr. Bates calling out orders on
the main-deck. I met Tom’s glance; he faintly smiled; it was the first
time I had seen him smile. But, indeed, the tragedy of the morning
became a kind of burlesque, when you thought of the chief mate of the
ship, dressed as a convict, giving orders under the eye of Barney
Abram, who was himself clothed in the apparel of the captain.

We moved forward a little way to get well into the shelter of the
awning and out of hearing of the fellow at the wheel. The bottle had
been half full. We emptied it and threw it and the broken tumbler
overboard, and talked whilst we watched the motions of the convicts on
the main-deck and listened to the choruses of the brutal revellers in
the cuddy. Some of the mutinous sailors went aloft with tackles on the
main and fore-yards; meanwhile a number of the convicts cleared away
the long-boat, a large, squab fabric which lay stowed forward of the
galley. Tom said she was big enough to safely carry forty souls.

‘I wish you and I and Will there were in her,’ said he, out of sight
of this ship. ‘But she’ll provide us with the opportunity we want,’ he
added, with a sideway motion of his head towards the gig over the stern.

‘What are your plans after we leave the ship?’ said I. ‘The gig’s a
little boat for this vast sea.’

‘My plans,’ he answered, making as if he would take my hand, and
arresting the gesture with a fierce glance at the helmsman, ‘are
first of all to get away. The rest must be our fortune. Anyhow, we’ll
endeavour to keep afloat till we’re picked up.’

‘It might run into weeks before we fall in with a ship just here,’
said Will, ‘and what’s to happen then? It’s very well for Marian and
me--what’s to become of you, sir?’

‘What’s to become of Tom?’ cried I. ‘If you mean that, you must ask
what’s to become of me too.’

Tom stood up and said: ‘The convicts mustn’t see us always together,
and particularly will it not do for them to see us talking earnestly.
They’re felons, with the suspicions and passions of felons. I’m going
to the captain’s cabin.’

He walked briskly to the companion-way, at which he paused to look
steadily round the sea, and then disappeared.

‘Why do you take me up so sharply, Marian?’ said Will.

‘Call me Marlowe. Suppose you should be overheard? Sharply? Why do you
ask what’s to become of Tom? It never could be right with me if it’s to
be wrong with him. And yet you say it’ll be all right for you and me if
we’re picked up.’

‘If we’re picked up he may be carried to England. What then?’

‘We’ll not allow ourselves to be picked up by a ship going to England.’

‘We may be nearly dead with thirst and without provisions. Look what a
sea it is! Do you know where we are? This is the junction of the two
Atlantics. If you are dying of thirst you’ll be glad to be picked up,
though the ship we should fall in with were bound to--to----’ And my
cousin, with an expressive face, pointed downward.

‘Don’t talk to me. Leave it all to Tom. He is an old sailor, and will
he risk the liberty he has got this day? I would sink and drown in his
arms sooner than stay in this detestable ship, or not be by his side
wherever he goes!’

‘Aye, that’s all very well. But I’m to make one in the boat, remember.
I’m very sorry for Butler, and like him greatly, although hang me if I
think his prison experience has improved his manners. But I don’t see
my way to go down hand in hand with him.’

‘Hold your tongue!’ I cried. ‘The darling saved your life, and this is
your gratitude!’

He got up and walked aft, and stood looking at the gig.

I walked to the poop-rail and gazed down at the mass of convicts
who filled the decks. Some of them were throwing the remains of the
barricades overboard. A considerable group stood near the port gangway,
and every one of that gang carried a soldier’s musket, with its bayonet
fixed. Some of those fellows had acted as first and second ‘captains’
under the doctor. They were now less noisy in the cuddy; a few in that
interior did, indeed, continue to drunkenly shout out choruses. Here
and there a felon roamed with lurching steps, and often with a cut
face and blood upon him as though from a savage scuffle; but I soon
noticed that if this sort of fellows got into the people’s way they
were elbowed and kicked without ceremony even to the extent of being
thrown headlong. Most of the noisiest and the wounded people were
young. In truth, already was I sensible of a change in the bearing of
the unhappy men. They stood in bodies watching what was going forward.
The first clamorous, brutal transports, the early delirious passions
which successful rebellion and the possession of freedom had excited,
were sobering. Perhaps they had not met with drink enough yet to make
them all the fierce, wild, shouting, exulting demons some of them had
been changed into by the cuddy drams. Be this as it may, there was less
confusion; the senseless bawling had become rare. On deck, the shouts
broke only from the throats of tipsy scoundrels aimlessly issuing out
of the cuddy into the quarter-deck throng, where, as I have said, they
would be hustled and kicked, and sometimes forced into silence by being
knocked down.

Mr. Bates, no longer distinguishable from the felons who remained
clothed in the convicts’ garb, stood at the gangway, superintending
the hoisting and lowering of the long-boat over the side. Some of
the convicts worked as though they had been sailors in their day.
Close beside the little mass of armed men stood Barney Abram, and
near him were five or six convicts, variously attired in plundered
clothes. These fellows were, without exception, of the better class of
prisoners. Most of them had filled positions of some little trust under
the doctor, such as cook and barber, and I guessed that they were among
the recognised heads of the risen criminals.

Will joined me and began to talk of the gig and the difficulty of
safely lowering a boat hanging athwartships when a vessel was in
motion. I bid him leave everything to Tom and do as he was told--that
is, to see that the gig was furnished ready for getting away in. He
burst into a laugh at sight of Mr. Bates, and for some time could
not recover his composure; in truth, the poor fellow seemed a little
hysterical, and after we had been standing a few minutes drew me away,
saying; ‘Let’s go over to starboard; the sentry was killed just here,
and I keep on seeing his face as they threw him over the side.’

Several of the convicts came out of the cuddy by way of the
companion-hatch and, finding the poop a clear deck, began to play at
leap-frog and to gambol and hop and cut capers with the grace of frisky
cart-horses. Their ugly faces and rowdy behaviour made a slum or back
alley of that white deck. The beauty of the sea, the brilliance of
the blue heavens, the fiery sparkles and lights in the polished brass
and glass about the poop vanished. Those tumbling convicts instantly
brought with them a flavour of London fog. The air resounded with the
cry of the costermonger; an evil odour of decayed vegetables attended
them, and you seemed to hear the music of the barrel-organ.

They came floundering and skylarking and caper-cutting up to where Will
and I were standing; they gathered about us, and Will was for moving
off, but I held my ground; I did not love their language, believe me,
but it would not do to seem shy of them. They were flushed with drink,
and talked rapidly and thickly in the most intolerable, coarse speech
you can imagine; yet they were not so drunk as to be unintelligible.
Seemingly they had been amongst the most successful in plundering the
cabins. One pulled out Captain Sutherland’s gold watch, and, dangling
it on high by its chain as though playing at bob-cherry, roared out:
‘This is the thumble! Here’s the yack for a nob’s gurrell!’ Another
produced a pin, a third a large old-fashioned silver watch, which Will
whispered had belonged to the second mate. Their talk was a compound
of oaths and thieves’ slang, but they took not the least notice of
me or Will; they jabbered hoarsely and thickly and swiftly amongst
themselves, as though on the eve of coming to blows, breaking off
presently, however, to watch the long-boat rising out of her chocks
when the tackles were manned by some score or two of felons.

The great boat was got over as smartly as though all concerned in
lifting and lowering her were sailors. All necessary information
as to where stores, fresh water, and so forth were to be found had
doubtless been obtained from Mr. Bates. Anyhow, no time had been lost,
but soon after the boat had been floated a number of people, under
the superintendence of some of those men whom I had taken to be the
leaders, rolled a cask of fresh water, a tierce or two of beef, two or
three barrels of flour and biscuit, and other matters which my memory
does not carry, to the open gangway, and very rapidly all these things
were stored in the boat alongside.

Just then Tom came out of the cuddy by way of the quarter-deck, and
went to Bates and Barney Abram, who stood together, with whom he spoke.
Tom, attended by Bates, returned to the cuddy, and after an interval
reappeared with a sextant-case, a chart or two, and such appliances as
I supposed they would need in the long-boat to enable them to steer a
course for land. These things were handed down to some convicts who
were stowing the provisions in the boat. Tom stood in the gangway and
looked down, and then called out for the oars, sail, and mast of the
boat to be brought along and shipped. When he had seen to this, he
glanced up, and, observing me, ascended the poop-ladder.

‘Hi!’ said he, walking up to the group of convicts, who had been
talking and swearing and boasting of their plunder, but were now
silent. ‘What are you doing here? This is no part of the ship for you!’
he cried, cursing them. ‘Get away down to your quarters! This poop is
for the captain and the mate and Mr. Abram, and the rest of us, who are
responsible for the safety of the vessel, and for landing you where you
may bolt and get hanged at your leisure. Off with ye! Off with ye!’ And
laying hold of the sturdiest he gave him a thrust.

The convicts were used to this sort of usage, and probably would have
recognised no other treatment than that of kicks and curses. They
yielded as submissively as felons to the command of an armed warder,
went in a body down the ladder, and mingled with their fellows on the
main-deck.

‘Those people below must be sent adrift,’ said Tom, coming to my
side and talking as though he thought aloud. ‘It’s a hardship, but I
see the need. If they’re kept, they’ll be murdered. They start well
equipped--I’ve seen to that. It’s odds if they’re not picked up in a
day or two, spite of our friend Will’s misgivings. They’ll take three
boats from the ship. That’ll leave two and the gig. The gig’s for us.
The convicts must see to themselves. It’s not a thing to be debated.
It’s every man for himself at such times as these,’ and his eye went
to the stain at the head of the poop-ladder where the sentry had been
butchered.

‘Tom,’ said I, ‘if the sailors are leaving the ship, who’s to carry on
the work?’

‘Seven or eight rogues stay,’ he answered. ‘Four or five of the
convicts have been to sea. With near two hundred and fifty souls in
the ship, I should be able to manage if I chose to keep by her. How
many of the crew went to your complement?’ said he, turning to Will.

‘Thirty, sir,’ answered the lad.

‘All told?’

‘Thirty ordinary and able seamen and idlers,’ said Will.

‘They looked a ruffianly lot!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘The people counted upon
more help than they got. Abram asked all hands to remain; only seven
or eight chums and acquaintances of the prisoners stick to the ship.
Those were the scoundrels who flung themselves upon the sentries. Yes,
they’ll need two quarter-boats besides the long-boat. A numerous family
to send afloat, and under the line, too, with--how many women and
children?’

Will gave him the number.

Tom made a grimace of pity, folded his arms and stood, with a stern
face, watching what was happening in the gangway.

Mr. Bates was showing the convicts how to rig the accommodation-ladder
over the side. I looked at Tom, and particularly noticed the change in
his face, just as I had felt and witnessed the change in his nature and
bearing. That change I had before observed, but not so clearly. The
light was searching. He stood in repose, forgetting himself and viewing
the proceedings on the main-deck. He was pale and thin and ill and
haggard, yet his manly beauty lacked none of its old charms. Nay, there
was a gain, I thought. He seemed the handsomer because of the severity
of his expression. There was a fierceness that gave his lineaments a
heroic cast. Suffering had deepened and accentuated all that was manly
in his looks by an infusion of sternness that wanted not in scorn and
haughtiness.

When all was ready with the long-boat, the armed convicts formed
themselves into a lane betwixt the open gangway and the hatchway. They
fell in with the precision of soldiers to the cries which commanded
them, and stood erect and orderly, every man letting the butt of his
musket rest upon the deck. A crowd of men, many of them armed with
the small-arms which they had found in the ship, gathered around the
main-hatch and obstructed the view. A fellow, with a fiddle in his
hand, climbed on the bulwark-rail close to the yawn of the gangway,
and putting the fiddle into his neck, screwed out a tune. He was the
convict who used to play the prisoners round the decks at exercise.
When the mass of felons heard this music, they burst into a great
shout of laughter. Such a wild, dreadful shout of merriment has seldom
gone up out of human throats. The few remaining revellers in the cuddy
tumbled drunkenly out on the quarter-deck on hearing the fiddle and the
shouts, and rent the air with another hideous burst of laughter.

I heard a man bawl instructions down the main-hatchway, but could not
catch what he said. Abram and some others roared out an order for
silence, and, tipsy as a number of them were, as great a stillness
fell upon the convicts as ever had been observed in their time of
discipline.

The first to come up was Doctor Russell-Ellice; he was dressed as a
convict, and I did not recognise him until Will cried out. He was
immediately followed by Captain Sutherland, who had also been forced
into the felon’s garb. Next came Captain Barrett, dressed as a convict;
then the sergeant and the soldiers of the guard, most of whom were
habited in the prison apparel, though some were without coats. Neither
the doctor nor the officers looked to right or left. They kept their
eyes fastened upon the deck, and so passed through the rows of armed
criminals to the gangway. Nothing was to be heard but the insulting
squeaking music of the fiddle. The hush upon the great throng of men
made the scene tragically impressive. I felt a deep pity for Captain
Sutherland, and asked Tom in a whisper if his influence could not keep
the poor fellow on board that he might escape with us if we got away;
but Tom, without looking at me, held up his hand to warn me not to
speak.

I went to the side and looked down at the long-boat. She was a large,
roomy fabric, and sat high and buoyant despite her liberal equipment
of food and water. These passed into her: the surgeon, the commander
of the vessel, Captain Barrett, and eighteen soldiers, two of their
number having been killed. They were all, as I have said, habited as
convicts; and now I observed the degrading effect of the prison-dress
upon the person, for the doctor, Captain Barrett, and most of the
soldiers looked as sorry a set of rogues as any that were in the ship,
and needed but irons and the barber to make you suppose them criminals
of the most desperate kind.

A pause in the proceedings happened when the last of the soldiers had
passed down the ladder and entered the boat. Abram shouted to the
fiddler to stop his noise. So great was the silence among the convicts
that everything said clearly reached the ear. The prize-fighter went
into the gangway and looked over, and, turning to some of the people
whom I had taken to be among the chiefs and ringleaders, called out:
‘There is roob for as bady agaid.’

Tom and Will came to the rail and looked down at the boat. The doctor
sat in the stern-sheets with arms folded and head bowed. He exhibited
no signs of life. Captain Sutherland’s posture was that of a crushed
and broken-hearted man. I grieved and could have wept and entreated for
the poor fellow; he was a good, harmless sailor, an excellent seaman,
and his usage was barbarous, seeing that the convicts had no other
cause to punish him and revenge themselves than his being in command of
the ship.

When Abram called out as I have just said, Captain Barrett sprang to
his feet and shouted: ‘Where are my men’s wives and children? You’re
not going to send us adrift without them, are you?’

‘We’ll forward ’eb od to you later!’ exclaimed Abram, turning his head
without turning his body and shouting with his massive hand at the side
of his mouth: ‘Jodsud’--here he addressed a convict named Johnson, one
of several armed men who guarded the entrance of the main-hatch; it
was this Johnson who had bawled down to the doctor and others to come
up--‘there’s roob for twedy bore id the lo’g boat! Call ’eb up!’

Tom made a stride to the head of the poop-ladder, and, in a voice whose
accents rang through the ship like a volley of pistol shots, shouted:
‘Hold! Abram, the next to come up and enter the long-boat are the women
and children!’

The mass of convicts looked up at him; indescribable was the effect of
this universal turning of faces one way.

‘Dot lo’g ago you wouldn’t ’ave anything to do with this busidess!’
shouted Abram savagely. ‘What wasn’t your busidess thed isd’t goi’g to
be your busidess dow!’

‘I’ll have no discussion!’ cried Tom with the utmost ferocity. ‘I’m a
man of my word. Blood has been shed, and now you want to round off the
murders with the most hellish piece of separation ever perpetrated on
the high seas. We have lived together,’ he cried to them all in clear,
fierce, powerful tones, ‘for many months, in the hulk and here, and I
know there are scores amongst you who detest the thought of keeping
poor women and little children from their husbands, whose sole offence
has been their duty. Am I right? You are under the influence of men
who, as your responsible leaders, elected by yourselves, should be the
last to advise you to blacken yet what, God knows, is black enough, by
a fiendish act of brutality and inhumanity!’

‘We don’t want to be jawed,’ bawled a tipsy convict. ‘Better bring the
doctor aboard again if that’s to be the lay.’

‘Butler,’ shouted Abram, ‘I’b blowed if you’re goi’g to have your way
id everythi’g!’

‘But I’ll have my way in this! I’ll have my way in this!’ cried Tom
with a note of madness in his voice and the look of a madman in his
face. ‘You begged me to take charge. Fifty of you whined and petitioned
me, as the only navigator amongst you, to command this ship if you
seized her. And I consented--on what terms? No cruelty, I said, and
safety for three friends. There’s to be cruelty now--cruelty so hellish
that the vilest heart amongst you must sicken and shrink if it will but
give the intention a thought. You’re playing me false in this, Abram.
I say--don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ he cried, raising his voice and
brandishing his arms at the great mob below.

I glanced at the long-boat at this moment. The doctor had pricked
his ears and was sitting looking up at the ship with a pale face of
astonishment. Captain Barrett, erect in the boat, listened and stared.
Captain Sutherland repeated three or four times: ‘Who is it? Who is
it?’ For Tom was not to be seen by them; indeed, nobody was visible
along the whole line of the ship to those people low-seated save Abram
at the gangway and the fiddler and me and Will at the rail.

Some fellow near the mainmast hoarsely shouted: ‘Butler wants it all
his own way. Let him chuck it and rot! There’s Bates, the mate of the
ship. He’s be’n kep’ to oblige Butler. He’s a navigator. He’ll do the
trick.’

‘No!’ thundered Bates, roaring out as though he were hailing the
fore-topsail in a gale of wind. ‘You’ve forced me into giving orders,
and I’m cursing myself for my cowardice. But so help me, you men, as I
stand here, one and all of you, good and bad, drunk and sober, as you
listen, sooner than that you shall keep the women and children on the
chance of my taking Butler’s place, you may now--now--now,’ he roared,
pointing up, ‘turn to and reeve your yardarm whip and run me aloft.
D’ye hear me! Now--_now_!’ he screamed, in the extremity of his wrath
and resolution, and having spoken he backed from the knot of convicts
out of the thick of whom he had exclaimed, put his shoulders against
the bulwark, folded his arms and settled himself firmly on his legs as
a man prepared for the worst, and at that instant he made as heroic a
figure as Tom.

Silence followed. The hush was extraordinary. The deep stillness that
lay upon the white ocean seemed to come into the ship as a spirit. I
saw that Abram was at a loss. He looked savagely about him and made an
angry step or two as though he would pace the deck. Tom, gripping the
brass rail, kept his eyes, full of fire, upon Abram; his breast rose
and fell violently with the vehemence of his breathing. Resolution
as fearless and magnificent as the chief mate had given expression to
was visible in his posture and looks, and not the grossest and most
ignorant of the unhappy creatures who stared up could have mistaken his
mind.

He seemed to wait for Abram to speak, then cried out, addressing the
mass of men generally: ‘Is it your wish that I should navigate this
ship and carry you to where we shall presently decide?’

Most of the fellows stared at one another like fools, as though they
lacked courage to answer.

‘Answer me, any of you!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t think I care how it
goes. Treat me as you’ve dealt with those whose blood stains these
decks, and I’ll thank you. I’m a convict--the most wretched of the
wretches among you--and broken-hearted as none of you are. Use me as
you will. But if I take charge, I’m captain; and if I’m captain, my
will in what concerns the general safety is law. The general safety
will be imperilled by the detention of the women and children. I,
a fellow-convict and seaman, tell you this. Now answer me: Am I in
command or not?’

‘It was settled!’ howled Abram.

‘Johnson!’ cried Tom. ‘You at the hatchway there! Order the women and
children on deck and pass them into the boat!’

Johnson kept silent.

‘Do what you’re told!’ shouted a voice. Then followed a hoarse,
confused uproar from fifty throats: ‘Get ’em out of the ship!’
‘Butler’s right! Who the plague wants to keep them?’ ‘It’ll lead to
murder, and we want our liberty ashore.’

‘Order the women and children on deck!’ cried Tom; whereupon some
man--but it was not the convict Johnson--bellowed down the main-hatch.

In a few minutes the women came up out of the ’tweendecks one by one,
every woman with a child in her arms, for there were eight and eight,
though every woman was not a mother. The poor creatures’ eyes were red
with weeping, their faces white with fear. The husband of one of them
had been killed that morning. They were dressed in bonnets and shawls.
My heart was cold as I watched them. They went to the side and passed
one by one down the gangway ladder; the great crowd of convicts looked
on. Not a word was uttered whilst the women walked through the lane of
armed men. As they entered the boat, their husbands eagerly clasped
and kissed them and kissed the children; it was like a meeting of the
survivors of some terrible disaster, and the tears stood in my eyes.

The boat seemed crowded when the women were in her, though, at a pinch,
another ten or twelve persons might have found space.

‘Off with you dow and bake roob for the other boats!’ shouted Abram.
‘Head right away and be th’kful you’ve falled idto the ’a’ds of hubade
people! If you ha’g about dear us, s’elp be Peter, we’ll fire idto you!’

A soldier seized an oar and shoved the boat off. When she had gone
clear by her own length, the soldiers threw over the remaining oars
and began to row. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon; a long
morning had been spent in getting that big boat out, storing, crowding,
and sending her adrift. I looked around the sea; not the least breath
of air anywhere dyed the molten resplendent surface that brimmed in
a breast of delicate blue silver light into the morning distances.
The soldiers rowed vigorously, as though all in the boat feared the
convicts would play them some murderous trick if they hung within reach.

A number of people got on the line of bulwark-rail and watched the boat
as she drew away. I had thought to hear a hundred vile, blasphemous
insults flung after her, but nothing was said in that way. The fellows
laughed and talked and pointed, but no man called out.

Barney Abram came on the poop, followed by Mr. Bates, as though the
mate had been ordered to attend. The sweat was running from the
prize-fighter’s face, and the scars about his brow and forehead
were knitted into a scowl. My heart beat fast. I dreaded a quarrel
between him and Tom, for Abram swung the deadliest fist of any man in
England. Greatly to my relief, however, spite of his dark and sweating
face, which seemed to give the lie to his behaviour, his manner was
conciliatory.

‘You shouldn’t lose your tepper so easily, Butler,’ said he. ‘What’s
the good of exciti’g yourself? You start this gentlebud off’--here he
motioned to Mr. Bates--‘who talks a lot of rot to the people about
yardarbs. I walked hib rou’d the deck to oblige you, that the people
bight see he’s by fr’e’d; and thed, excited by you, he jaws theb
about yardarbs. If they had taken hib at his word!’ He looked up, and
pointing, exclaimed with his extraordinary smirking grin: ‘That’s what
I thi’k you gentlebud of the sea call a yardarb. Gallus high, ain’t it,
by rosebud?’ And he turned his fiery black eyes upon me.

‘The women are safe, and I’m satisfied,’ answered Tom. ‘Abram, I had
looked for more humanity at your hands. You--a man of your reputation,’
he added, with an angry, sarcastic smile that instantly faded, ‘to
truckle to such beasts as we’ve had to live amongst ever since
we’ve found ourselves together in irons; but the matter’s ended,’ he
exclaimed, with a sort of sudden bustle and hurry in his manner. ‘Let’s
get the other boats away. There’s a destination to be settled and
arrangements for working the ship to be made. This weather is good for
talk, but it may change in an hour.’

‘Right,’ exclaimed Abram. ‘Bates, call up your bed and give your
orders.’

‘Captain Butler,’ exclaimed the poor mate, ‘let me leave this ship with
the crew.’

Abram fiercely rounded upon him. ‘Is this your gratitude?’ he exclaimed
in his thick stunted accents. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Butler, he wasn’t to
be trusted? Wolves tear hib! Why don’t the flat-catcher dow whed he’s
well off?’

‘You’re here and you’ll remain here, Bates,’ said Tom, giving the
unfortunate man an expressive look. ‘Get those two quarter-boats
alongside and have them provisioned, and let me advise you to take a
sheepshank in your tongue.’

Mr. Bates went to the rail and called to the men. Some seamen and
convicts came tumbling on to the poop.

‘We’ve got hib and we’ll keep hib,’ said Abram, pulling off
the captain’s cap and wiping his brow with the captain’s
pocket-handkerchief, and straddling in front of Tom, a massive,
terrible figure. ‘Butler, you was right. I’ve beed turdi’g it over. You
card’t be singleadded. Suppose you should die. We’d let hib understa’d
what betrayal ’ud cost. But what’s the good of getti’g excited? Dever
lose your tepper. If I couldn’t keep by tepper’--and here he spoke with
his eyes fixed on me--‘what ’u’d be by reputatiod as a public bad?’




CHAPTER XXXV

SHE LISTENS TO THE CONVICTS DEBATING


Tom and the prize-fighter talked together whilst Mr. Bates got the
boats alongside and superintended the stowage of provisions and water
in them. I went into the shadow of the awning to get out of the heat
of the sun and to remove myself from Tom, that we might not be seen
together constantly. Some of the ringleaders, as I must term the
fellows whom the convicts undoubtedly regarded as heads or chiefs under
Tom or Abram, joined my sweetheart and the prize-fighter, and the air
speedily hummed with the eager, animated talk of the crowd. Will joined
me, and we watched the long-boat. She had gone about a mile, and they
had hoisted the sail for the shelter of its shadow. It hung like a
sheet of silver from its yard, without a stir, so smooth was the sea,
so still the air. The soldiers continued to sweep the boat along; the
oars glanced like hairs of silver as they rose and fell.

Will went to the binnacle to judge of the course the boat was making.
The scoundrel seaman who grasped the wheel growled out with a low,
coarse laugh and in a cursing voice some remark I did not catch.

‘You wouldn’t have said that yesterday,’ exclaimed Will, and came back
to me without taking further notice of the miscreant. ‘They are heading
due west,’ said he. ‘I don’t suppose they will make up their minds till
the other boats join them.’

‘What is the nearest land?’

‘The Brazilian coast. But the nearest is a long way off. There’s but a
small chance for them outside of being picked up. And yet what a lump
of a boat she is compared with the gig! When is she to be provisioned?
And when are we to get away? And when we’ve got away, what’s going to
happen? Good angels, I wish we were both at Stepney!’

‘Leave everything to Tom,’ said I, ‘and do as he tells you.’

He looked at me with a mutinous eye, went to the rail and stared over
the side. Tom and the council of convicts had left the poop. I peered
through the skylight; the cuddy was empty, the table covered with
fragments and remains of food with broken china and broken bottles and
glasses, and the deck scarcely fit to walk on for the wounding stuff
that strewed it. I went to the break of the poop to see what they were
about on the main-deck. Both quarter-boats were alongside and a gang
of convicts were stowing them. The decks were filled with the people,
who, since the departure of the long-boat, had grown orderly. The mass
of them conversed in knots; groups hung about the galleys. They had
discovered pipes and tobacco--tobacco there would be in plenty for the
guard and the crew, and possibly a stock of pipes. A number of the
convicts had pipes in their mouths, and their profound enjoyment of the
tobacco, after months and, perhaps, years of penitential abstinence,
undoubtedly helped to keep them quiet.

The sun stood something to the left of north, and the tall, motionless
spaces of canvas on high cast shadows over the decks, and betwixt the
rails the high noon was endurable. A thick, sickly smell of roasted
paint rose from the ship’s side. If you put your hand upon the exposed
wood or any piece of metal, you were burnt as though you touched hot
iron. I thought to myself: If these unhappy wretches should run short
of water! If this calm should hold them motionless here for days and
perhaps for weeks! For calms often serve ships so in these parts, as I
had heard my father and his sea friends tell. I sought to compute the
number on board, and, allowing for those who were presently to leave
the ship, I calculated we should muster hard upon two hundred and fifty
souls. When Tom left them, what would the miserable creatures do? But,
then, what was that to me? All I cared for was that Tom should come
off with his life and be a free man, no longer a degraded criminal,
clanking in irons, to be mangled by the cat, perhaps, at the will of
any ferocious Tasmanian ruffian who might take a dislike to him.
The convicts had seized the ship. One had but to look toward the now
distant long-boat to appreciate the felons’ estimate of human life.
I could not pity them when I thought of how they would have kept the
women and children and of the havoc they had wrought below, and when I
looked at their faces, recalled their songs and oaths in drink, their
bestial speech, and saw the plunder on their vile backs.

Tom and Abram and a little crowd of men stood near the gangway. My
sweetheart looked on. He gave no orders. Poor Mr. Bates did all the
work of superintendence, and watched the convicts as they slung the
provisions and water for the seamen into the quarter-boats. When this
work was ended, some cries were raised; the throngs of people gathered
about the main-hatch and filled the quarter-deck; the armed malefactors
formed a lane as before, but this time the fiddler did not make his
appearance.

A hoarse voice at the main-hatch summoned the fellows below to come up,
and one after another the crew arrived. The huge one-eared boatswain,
with his staring, glassy eyes, scowled round him with daring, defiant
looks. Abram stood in the gangway and he halted every man ere passing
him over the side to say: ‘You cad stop with us if you like. We’re
short of worki’g ’a’ds and we’ll treat you as one of us. What’ll you
do?’

Mr. Balls made no answer; he passed sullenly on; so did the sailmaker
and carpenter. Mr. Stiles, with a bewildered look at the convicts and
then through the gangway at the white gleam of sea visible there, wiped
his face on the sleeve of his convict jacket and said: ‘Where might you
be bound to, sir?’

Some one cried out: ‘That bloke was the ship’s steward. He’s of no use.’

‘Over you go,’ said Abram, giving Mr. Stiles a dab with his immense
hand between his shoulder-blades, and the steward went with a run to
the gangway and disappeared down the ladder.

Two of the sailors agreed to remain. Will, who had come to my side,
told me that they were the poorest, most skulking and worthless of the
forecastle hands. The convicts, however, cheered when these fellows
said they would stay, and the armed men opened to let them pass into
the crowd. Will’s fellow-apprentices looked up at him as they went to
the boat, and one made a face as though to express his disgust at what
he took to be my cousin’s disloyalty or cowardice. I marked the effect
of this upon Will, and grasped him by the arm, whispering passionately:
‘Not a word!’ and knew by the working of his face that I was just
in time to arrest some angry protesting sentence that might have
endangered him and me too.

Whilst the seamen filed through the gangway, I chanced to look down
upon a crowd of convicts on the quarter-deck, and spied a fellow
pick another man’s pocket. He did it with admirable nimbleness and
dexterity. Both men, the thief and the victim, were dressed in
Lieutenant Chimmo’s clothes. The man that was robbed was the rogue who
had held up Captain Sutherland’s gold watch and chain as though he
meant to play at bob-cherry, and it was this watch and chain which the
other sneaked with inimitable adroitness.

I supposed no one but myself saw this; many stood about, close, too,
and the fellow stole the watch with the most foolish, staring, innocent
face you could imagine, looking at the seamen going through the gangway
as though he could think of nothing else. But scarcely had he snugged
the watch and chain in his side-pocket, when another convict next him
whipped it out with incredible skill and swiftness. Indeed, I should
not have remarked the motions of the rogue’s hand but for the gleam of
the gold. A minute later, the first convict put his hand to his pocket
and missed the watch. He turned furiously upon the second convict,
shouting: ‘A thief! A thief!’ for all the world as though he had been
some respectable man in the streets just robbed. The felon who had the
watch roared out: ‘A thief! A thief!’ and fell upon the second convict
whose pocket he had picked. A scuffle followed. The second convict,
whose guilt appeared to be assumed by all who stood near, as though
they knew him as a thief without morals and capable of robbing a
brother-thief, was kicked and beaten, and a mob of shouting convicts,
with this rascal in the midst of them, surged forward, and I took
notice that the rogue who shouted the loudest and kicked the hardest
was the fellow who had the watch.

This commotion caused no uneasiness amongst the crowd who stood on the
side of the deck where the open gangway was. No doubt they understood
what had happened, and guessed that enough were concerned in the
scuffle to insure justice being done.

By this time both quarter-boats were filled with the seamen. I dare say
there were eleven or twelve men in each, and more could not have gone
without peril, for they were small boats, though they were stout and
fairly new. Bates had seen that each craft had its proper equipment
of mast, sail, oars, rudder, and the like. One of the ringleaders, a
sallow-faced convict with a hare-lip and but two or three fangs in
his upper jaw, roared down to the seamen to shove off, and in a few
minutes both boats were heading in the direction of the long-boat,
which had come to a stand awaiting them. Many convicts sprang upon the
bulwarks and howled out insults in the wickedest language of the slums,
in the most revolting speech of the great city rookeries and haunts of
sin and infamy. The seamen rowed away in silence.

Tom came on to the poop and looked at me a little while with a face
of grief and horror, as though his very soul shrank up within him, to
think that I should be a spectator of such scenes and a hearer of such
language. I read his mind; he would not approach me to speak.

Barney Abram followed, and with him were the hare-lipped man and some
score of convicts, of whom half might have been principals in the
seizure of the ship.

‘Let’s get to busidess,’ said Abram. ‘Talk to the people as was
arradged, Butler.’

On this, Tom, laying hold of the brass rail, leaned forward and cried
out that every man was to come together on the quarter-deck, as he
had a few words to say to them. Mr. Bates stole up the ladder to my
side and, without speaking, gazed with a look of bitter distress at
the receding boats. Still was the ocean as polished a plain as ever
it had been during the morning. The sun flashed up the water into
blinding dazzle in the north-west, and the heat was terrible. There was
no motion in the ship to fan the lightest of the topmost cloths; the
atmosphere floated like the breath of an oven, without refreshment of
the draughts which circle about a deck when the becalmed craft leans
with the swell and her courses and topsails swing. The convicts massed
themselves upon the main-deck; their faces were white or scarlet with
the heat. The drink had been distilled out of them by the roasting
temperature, and the unhappy beings stood looking up at Tom with as
orderly a bearing as ever they exhibited when the doctor addressed them.

‘Men,’ said my sweetheart, ‘I’ve taken charge of this vessel. It’s the
interests of everybody aboard her that I’ve now to consider; it’s for
us, all assembled as we are, to consider what’s to be done. And first
understand this: No ship can be sailed without discipline. Look aloft,
men, at those vast heights. You see for yourselves what a complicated
thing a ship is. If I and the mate of your own election,’ and here he
pointed to Mr. Bates, ‘give an order, it must be promptly obeyed. If
not--but you’re not fools--you can guess what must follow if we’re not
obeyed. I’ll not interfere in any arrangements which don’t affect the
safety of the ship. You’ll sleep where you choose, and eat when you
choose, and whatever you do that doesn’t concern our lives will be no
business of mine. But remember, there are nearly two hundred and fifty
of us!’

He was interrupted by some voice shouting out the exact number.

‘You taste this weather, don’t ye? You can guess how it would fare with
us to run short of water, and next to that would be the running short
of provisions. You must be willing to go on allowance.’

‘Willing? Of course. That’s to be expected,’ broke in three or four of
them.

‘Those amongst you who have been seafaring men will unite with the
sailors and form a crew and take the forecastle for your quarters,
which must be your own, never to be intruded upon. Is that understood?’

‘Understood!’ was the answer, in a roar.

‘The rest will form themselves into three watches under heads, as in
the doctor’s time; and every watch will come on deck turn and turn
about, and stand by to assist the crew by pulling and hauling, cleaning
and making the ship sweet, and so helping to keep you all alive, ready
for the run ashore when the hour comes.’

A great cheer echoed this sentence.

‘Mr. Bates,’ continued Tom, ‘knows where everything is stowed in this
ship. He’ll sample your food for you and name you your water allowance.
Use him kindly, men. He’s of first-rate consequence to us.’

When this was said, Barney Abram crossed to the mate, brought him to
the middle of the break of the poop, near to where Tom stood, and
there, in the sight of all the convicts, shook him by the hand. This
was done in silence, but it was a very expressive performance--some
might hold after the Eastern manner, seeing who was the main actor.

Tom went on: ‘I must have the captain’s cabin; the navigating
instruments of the vessel are there and certain conveniences of
furniture. The chief mate will also need his cabin; he’ll share it with
that young gentleman,’ said he, pointing to Will. ‘If any of you in
the hurry of this morning has mistaken Mr. Bates’s effects for Captain
Barrett’s or the other officers’ or the commander’s, I’ll beg him to
return them. He is our friend, and Mr. Abram wishes him to be well
used. It is not right he should be thus dressed.’

‘Look at yourself?’ cried a voice on the quarter-deck.

‘Yes, but I’m a convict!’ exclaimed Tom, savagely.

This raised a roar; a hundred men seemed to speak at once; they yelled
out to this effect--that there were no longer any convicts aboard that
ship, that they were all free men, that they had got their liberty and
meant to keep it, and so forth.

‘Order!’ bawled Abram, raising his arms above his head. ‘We’re here to
discuss batters quietly. The capt’id’s talked very sensibly, ad I’b
with hib up to the hilt as far as he’s gord. Are those your sedibents?’
said he, looking round at the little crowd of convicts who stood near.

‘There must be discipline,’ answered one of them, ‘and Butler’s talked
very good sense so far.’

‘How about the stock of spirits?’ exclaimed a tall, thin, pale,
grey-haired convict, dressed in an officer’s shell-jacket too short for
him--so that when I think of him now it is always somehow in connection
with Mr. Dickens’s incomparable figure of Smike. ‘’Sponsible men are
wanted to see to that.’

‘You’re right, Williams,’ said Tom, giving him an emphatic nod.

‘Every cask of spirits,’ continued the man, speaking somewhat nasally
and amidst a silence that might have rendered his voice audible as far
as the forecastle, ‘is full of little devils swimming about. And every
little devil, when he’s swallowed, carries seven other little devils,
all a-clinging to one another’s tails, down into a man’s inside. Call
it eight devils,’ said he, raising his voice. ‘One for each eye, is
two; one for each ear, is four; one for the tongue’s, five; and there’s
three over to keep the others goin’ it. ’Sponsible men, Abram, if that
there sea is not to shut up this pleasing dream of liberty.’

‘Men,’ said Tom, ‘there’s sound reason in what you’ve heard. But I spy
good sense breaking out amongst you all. Don’t let your feelings carry
you away. Look at the mess in the cuddy! What good has your drunken,
breaking scramble done? The sober and sound amongst you should compel
the men who smashed up that pleasant interior to clear it out, and to
make it a shipshape abode for those whose quarters it’s to become.’

Some one shouted: ‘We’ll have that done!’

‘Dow talk to us about where we’re to go,’ said Abram.

‘Talk to me, and I’ll advise you,’ said Tom, with his eyes upon the
crowd beneath, folding his arms and standing erect.

‘You’re a navigator and know the world,’ exclaimed the sallow,
ill-looking man with the hare-lip.

‘Aye, and I’ll counsel you when you’ve spoken and want advice,’ said
Tom.

‘Where are we now?’ exclaimed a convict on the quarter-deck.

‘Shall I give it to you in parallels and meridians?’ answered Tom,
with a sort of angry scorn in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t understand me.
Suppose Mr. Bates brings you up a chart, there’s no room for hard upon
two hundred and fifty heads to overhang it at once; and how many of
you can read, that it should be passed around? Now listen: We’re in
the middle of the ocean to the north of the Equator. Yonder,’ said he,
pointing over the port beam, ‘many hundred leagues distant, is the Gulf
of Guinea and the great bight of the African coast from Cape Formosa to
Cape Frio.’

The convicts turned their heads all one way, staring like one man,
some of them getting on their toes to look.

‘Yonder,’ continued Tom, pointing over the starboard beam, whereupon
the heads of the convicts went round as before and all the poor,
ignorant wretches stared as though by looking they’d see the land, ‘is
the great Brazilian seaboard from Cape St. Roque to Rio Janeiro.’

I observed that Abram gazed at Tom with an indescribable smirking grin
of admiration, as though struck by his familiar acquaintance with land
entirely out of sight.

‘But my words,’ continued my sweetheart ‘give only a few who are
educated amongst you any ideas. Yet I can tell you no more than this:
That we are in the heart of the great Atlantic Ocean, and that a
huge world for choice is spread on either hand, away in the Pacific
by rounding Cape Horn and away in the Indian and Southern Oceans by
rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Where shall I carry you to?’

A number of the convicts spoke at once.

‘Wud at a tibe! Wud at a tibe!’ yelled Abram.

‘Let’s go home!’ shouted a man on the quarter-deck.

‘Debate it,’ said Abram.

An uneasy stir ran through the mass of the convicts, and a long, deep
growl of dissent.

‘Home!’ cried Tom, passionately. ‘How’s home called in English? What’s
its name? Is it Newgate or Millbank or her Majesty’s ship _Warrior_?
Is it the Dockyard and the Arsenal and irons and handcuffs, cursing
warders and carbines ready for your brains? You want my advice; I’ll
counsel you.’

Some angry laughter broke from the men.

‘Who’s the madman that talks of home?’ shouted Tom. ‘Shall I sail you
up the Thames and moor ye alongside the hulk? Is Plymouth your port, or
do you choose Portsmouth?’

‘Why not try for the islands about Torres Straits?’ exclaimed one of
the convicts who had been a seaman. Several bawled to know where Torres
Straits were.

‘To the nor’ard of Australia,’ replied the convict. ‘There the sea’s
thick with islands. Plenty to eat and drink, mates, and casting away a
ship is as easy and safe as drawing a cork.’

‘Ain’t Norfold Island hard by?’ exclaimed another.

‘My idea,’ said a ringleader, raising his voice as he overhung the
poop-rail, ‘is to beach the vessel on the West Coast of Africa. There
we breaks up into parties and disperses, and every party has their yarn
ready manufactured to account for theirselves ag’in’ being met with or
falling in with a settlement.’

‘Were you ever ashore on that coast?’ exclaimed Tom.

‘No,’ answered the man.

‘Then put this picture before you, one and all, for I who address you
know what I am saying: Not a patch of verdure; leagues of sand like
glass, glaring and shining; a few half-starved jackals; a few bushmen,
who live on beetles and putrefied seals and go clothed in stinking
sheepskins; a hare or two at long intervals, and a few sand-plants;
the sun at noon like a lantern looming in vapours; here and there
penguins braying; here and there sea-fowls shrieking, and the surf
roaring always. Is that good enough for you? You’d be clean-picked
bones in a week.’

All this while the ocean remained breathless. Far away were the
two black specks of quarter-boats, and beyond was the gleam of the
long-boat’s sail, a point of light under the horizon like the image of
a star. Fortunately for the convicts, the lay of the yards flung the
shadow of the canvas upon the deck. Otherwise it was broiling where
the sun was. The poop was sheltered by the awning that stretched from
the mizzen-mast to the brass rail. Many of the people stood with their
coats over their arms and their shirts open. A mist rose from them. I
figured how it had been at night in their quarters when I saw that mist
and the motionless wind-sails and the main-hatch half sealed with its
cage-like barricade.

‘May I speak?’ cried a man on the quarter-deck, lifting up his hand.

‘To the poi’t,’ answered Abram. ‘Every bad with ad idea bay speak; but
to the poi’t.’

‘Here’s a big ship,’ said the man, in a very fair cultivated accent (he
was about six-and-twenty years of age, had held a situation as a clerk
and had been sentenced for forgery), ‘and we’re a numerous and powerful
company of determined men, needing nothing but the organisation that
Captain Butler’s capable of. I propose that we chase small vessels
and capture them, send their crews adrift like those yonder, man each
captured craft with a number of ourselves, every lot containing a
proportion of those who are sailors or who have followed the sea. This
would disperse us. Every crew would do as they thought proper with
their own craft. I should be for wrecking mine on some safe coast near
a town where we could represent ourselves as castaways.’

The convicts listened with close attention. Abram looked at Tom, who
made no sign.

‘What d’ye say to it, Butler?’ shouted a fellow.

‘Do what you please,’ answered my sweetheart.

‘Advise us,’ said the hare-lipped man.

‘It’s a landlubber’s fancy,’ said Tom.

A number of men talked at once. One of the original crew of the _Childe
Harold_ roared out: ‘It’s smothering rot! The capt’n’s laughing at you!
Chase! In a craft arter this pattern, with twelve or fourteen hands and
a working crew, ne’er a great gun nor a soul saving the capt’n and the
mate as ’ud be capable of navigating them small craft after they was
boarded and taken!’ He spat hard and turned his back in contempt.

‘My notion’s been this all through the blushen piece,’ said a
beetle-browed, flat-nosed, ruffianly looking convict. ‘Sail to an
oninhabited hisland and settle him. A hisland where there’s grub agoing
in fruit-trees and beastesses of fish what crawls upon the beach, all
which there’ll be some here as has heard of. Where water trickles sweet
an’ cold, and the weather it ain’t too hot. There, upon that hisland,
we can concoct and consart, and them what pleases can be took off by
passing vessels. The others will be a-doing as did them mutineers of
the _Bounty_ whose capt’n he was named Bligh. We moors this ship and
keeps her handy. Females ain’t ever fur to look for. In this ’ere ship
wives can be brought from places which ain’t too fur off and where the
colour won’t be wrong, the ’igh seas being vide of choice. That’s bin
my notion all through the fired piece.’

‘Who’s next?’ shouted Abram, impatiently.

One of the remaining crew of the ship--a sailor with a cast eye and a
head of hair so exactly resembling oakum that no convict could look
at it without finding something personal and a sort of reflection in
it--this man, who sat high-perched above the heads of the throng on the
quarter-deck winch, snapped his fingers at the poop and asked leave to
address the gents.

‘What d’ye want to say?’ shouted the hare-lipped man, who, I gathered,
ranked next to Abram as the principal ringleader.

‘Gents, all,’ cried the fellow, ‘man an’ boy, I’ve followed the seas
for two and twenty years, and in that time I’ve sailed all about the
world and there’s scarce a furrin part as I haven’t visited. Now, if I
was you, speaking with Captain Butler’s good leave, what I’d do’s this:
Round the Horn t’other side of South Amerikay there lies what’s called
the Narth Pacific Ocean. From the Sandwich Islands, right away to
this side the Philippines, including of the Ladrones and the Caroline
Islands, it’s all chock-a-block with the sort of little countries ye
oughter visit. A lovely cordial drink they manufactures out of cocoanut
juice. There’s no call for clothes. The natives are friendly disposed.
Them as ain’t are easily knocked over the head. White men like
yourselves live in them islands. If I was you gents, I’d get Captain
Butler to steer the ship into the Narth Pacific, touch and discharge a
score of ye, touch and discharge another score, touch and touch again
till this here multitude was broke up. That’s my notion, gents, and
your chance, and I’ll ask Captain Butler what he thinks.’

‘It’ll do!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘I would propose nothing better.’

On this there was some confusion, owing to a number of the convicts
cheering, whilst others shouted questions to the poop. The silence upon
the sea, and the ship lying as stirless as though she were at anchor,
made this strange council of convicts somewhat ironical to my mind. It
was hard to cast one’s eye over the lake-like ocean and realise the
North Pacific as a part of the world that was to be come at by the
vessel. Tom’s approval of the seaman’s scheme seemed to settle the
matter. Many questions, most of them ignorant and ridiculous, were
bawled. They were answered from the poop, sometimes by Tom, sometimes
by Abram and the ringleaders, and sometimes they were answered by
fellows on the quarter-deck.

After a little, and whilst the decks were a-buzz with the vast noise
of talk, the prize-fighter asked Mr. Bates to produce a chart of the
islands named by the seaman. Mr. Bates fetched a chart. It was a big
sheet with a blue back, comprised a portion only of the North Pacific,
and was very clearly drawn and printed. This chart was laid upon the
skylight and the corners weighted. The principal convicts drew in a
body to it.

I stood near and overheard the talk. They called up the sailor, and he
pointed to three or four of the islands which he said he had visited.
The hare-lipped man asked him if British ships of war cruised in those
seas. He answered that here and there a small surveying-vessel might be
fallen in with, ‘but nothen to take notice of,’ said he, ‘nothen that’s
going to hurt ye. It’s your best chance, gents. Many sorts of vessels
are a-touching at them islands for water, nuts, and sometimes for their
entertainment, and often again for their convenience. The sailors run,
’specially from the South Seamen. You’ll have your yarns ready in case
of questions; but down in them parts curiosity ain’t what you might
call active. Stick to this here scheme, and there’s nothen to hinder
any man as has a mind to retarn home from finding himself arter a year
or two in Lunnon again, with dollars enough in his pocket to keep him
in wittles till something turns up.’

‘All that this man says is very true,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘He’s given us a
good scheme. We’re obliged to him.’

Saying this, he edged out of the crowd about the skylight and, seeing
me abreast of the rail, came and stood beside me.

‘Is it a good scheme?’ I whispered, without looking at him.

‘It will amuse them,’ he answered softly. ‘I must seem in earnest. What
do I care?’

‘You control them wonderfully.’

‘Poor wretches!’ he muttered, and, stepping to the companion-way, took
the ship’s telescope out of its brackets and pointed it at the three
boats upon the sea. Their situation was now determinable to the naked
eye by the dim, tiny gleam of the long-boat’s sail.

‘They’re sneaking westward,’ said Tom, talking low with his eye at the
glass. ‘The American seaboard may give me the chance I want. Eastward
nearly everything afloat is British--curse the name!’

By this time, the convicts on the quarter-deck had got wind of the
chart on the poop and were crowding up the ladders to look. That
all might obtain a sight, Abram bawled a recommendation to them to
form themselves into small divisions. This was done. The chiefs or
ringleaders broke up the mass into little gangs, and one after another
these gangs came to the skylight and overhung the chart. The cast-eyed
sailor with the hair of oakum stood by to answer questions and pointed
out the islands. Some of the educated convicts dwelt upon the chart so
long, musing, running their fingers down the meridians, calculating
distances and so forth, that the waiting gangs howled at them with
impatience. Yet all was now orderly as one could wish--far more orderly
than I had dared expect.

As the gangs passed on from the skylight aft, viewing the chart and
questioning the cast-eyed man, they broke up and hung about various
parts of the poop or returned to the main-deck. The coarse joke, the
loud, brutal laugh was frequent; but there was no horse-play, none of
the former huge, hideous, cart-horse gambolling, shouting, and tipsy
fighting. The heat lay upon the people like a weight. Their spirits
were sobered by the extraordinary oppression of the vast, silent,
roasting calm.

‘Abram,’ called Tom, holding the telescope and still standing at my
side, ‘let some of the men--those responsible for the mess--clean the
cuddy out. Look through the skylight. The deck’s full of broken glass.
And my advice to you and the others is to arrange without delay for
the distribution of the people for the night. You’ll want cooks. Those
who have been cooking so far should continue. They know what’s needed,
where to seek, how to manage. Mr. Bates here will counsel you on
quantities. I wish to see the ship cleared fore and aft, and everything
ready for any sort of weather that may come along. Ay, and there’s more
yet. Suppose an English man-of-war heaves in sight and signals us, we
must know what to do and be in readiness to do it. The pennant’s an
old cure for dull sight. A devilish keen eye that never winks lies
spliced in the fly of every man-of-war’s whip. And d’ye see that,
Abram?’ he cried, pointing at the sea over the starboard quarter.

Twenty or thirty convicts were upon the poop, and they all turned their
heads and stared in a hurrying, eager way in the direction indicated by
Tom’s levelled forefinger.

‘See what?’ exclaimed the prize-fighter, lifting the sharp of his
massive hand to his brow, and straining his black, fiery vision.

‘That dark blue line.’

Tom stepped to the rail and cried out: ‘Stand by, all you seamen aboard
this vessel, to trim sail!’ Then turning to Abram: ‘Tumble the people
to their work of cleaning up, will ye?’ he cried. ‘Put the cooks to
their duty; we can’t starve!’ He then turned to me and, placing the
telescope in my hand, said loudly: ‘Marlowe, replace this, then go to
your berth and carry what belongs to you to my cabin, and wait for me
there.’




CHAPTER XXXVI

SHE SUPS WITH HER SWEETHEART


I went quickly, that the people might see how smartly I obeyed the
new captain. A few convicts roamed about the cuddy, staring as though
out of curiosity into the plundered berths and at the decorations and
lamps, and needlessly crushing the broken glass into the carpet as
they walked. I stepped warily and got to my berth, unlocked the door,
and found all right within. I could not help reflecting upon what had
passed since I was last here; it seemed a week since I was in this
berth, so violent, hurried, and numerous had been the incidents of that
day.

I made one bundle of my woman’s attire, the other clothes and a few
toilet things, and went to the captain’s cabin. Then, thought I, I
shall want a mattress to lie on, so I fetched the convict’s mattress,
pillow and blanket, and shut the door and sat down to wait for Tom, no
one during these journeys having taken the least notice of me.

It was horribly hot, and I opened the large circular port and leaned
with my head in the orifice. I now heard a noise of the rippling
of water, and saw the sea of a deep shade of blue to about a mile
away, where it then gleamed white and polished, the calm being still
unbrushed there. The ship had caught a little air of wind; ropes were
flung down overhead, the soft patter of naked, the sharp beat of shod
feet actively running about sounded through the planks; the silence
upon the water was now broken by the voices of men singing out as they
hauled, and presently at a pistol-shot distance I saw what might have
been a piece of green timber feathered with weed slowly slide past.

I looked around me, and my heart was full of pity when I thought of
Captain Sutherland. I pitied him, I say, and I grieved for the women
and the little children, but the soldiers and the others did not appeal
to me. I took no interest in the fate of the doctor and Captain
Barrett, and I never could forget that one of the soldiers had shot the
poor madman, and that all would have slaughtered every convict at the
word of command with less compunction than the convicts themselves had
sent them adrift.

The captain’s cabin was wrecked; he had slept in a handsome mahogany
bunk, and its mattress was ripped open as though the beasts who did
it hoped to find money or some sort of booty hidden in the hair. Two
little miniatures had been left to hang upon the bulkhead; one was
the captain, the other a lady, doubtless his wife, a rather pretty,
grave-looking woman. I thought of how Tom and I had sat for our
miniatures, and wondered if the captain’s wife were alive, whether she
would ever see her husband again. Should I ever have seen Tom again but
for my resolution to hide in the ship that was to transport him? This
reflection made me mad.

Whilst I sat or walked about, lost in inflaming thoughts, I heard a
great noise in the cuddy and, peeping out, spied some fifteen or twenty
convicts hard at work brushing and tidying up the interior. Abram just
then came in with a little company of the ringleaders; I may tell you
that there were perhaps twelve to fifteen heads in this uprisal, not
counting Tom, whom I never would name as having had a share in it.

On hearing Abram speak, I held the door open by about an inch. The
prize-fighter and his crew stood close against my cabin, talking and
looking on at the convicts at work. They were arranging for their own
accommodation.

‘Butler takes the captid’s cabid, that’s fair,’ said Abram. ‘His y’u’g
fre’d shares it. That’s Butler’s business. Bates a’d adother wud’s
provided for yodder. You a’d be,’ he continued, addressing one of the
convicts, ‘will take the cabid dext to the captid’s. Right aft don’t
soot be; the botion there bakes be ill. The rest of you will fide
pledty of roob. I recobbe’d that the better order abogst us tosses or
draws for the accommodatiod dowd-stairs. We dote wadt to be suffocated
by dumbers in this part of the ship; the old quarters will be thid
(thinned) by those who cub aft; with the hatch oped, the widsails dowd
and the barricade id shivers, they’ll be airy edough; ad thed there’s
the soldiers’ quarters.’

A few minutes later Tom came in. He shut the door and took me by the
hand and kissed me; sat down, and made me sit beside him, still holding
my hand, whilst he gazed at me with the full affection of his dear,
noble heart. He was pale with the heat. His eyelids dropped with the
weariness that was upon him. He was clad, as throughout the day, in his
convict shirt and trousers.

‘There is a little breeze, and we are under way again,’ said he. ‘I
wish it may hold. There is no telling what ship may fall in with the
boats, and the quicker I can push the vessel out of these parts the
better, though I must keep the tropic latitudes aboard to get away in,’
said he, softening his voice. ‘We shall need smooth water and fine
weather, dear one, and God’s care. It may be done to-night. It may be
done to-morrow night. All must be in readiness.’

I told him what I had just overheard.

‘Let them do what they like,’ said he. ‘This cabin’s ours, and by that
I mean that it’s yours. I can rest anywhere whilst you sleep, and can
take a nap here, if you like, when you are out of it.’

I was about to speak. He smiled, and silenced me with his hand.

‘Don’t you remember the lectures I used to give you? Let all things be
as I wish. Will and poor Bates will be safely lodged. It cannot be for
long. A night or two. Nay a week, if you will. But long it must not
be,’ he added, with a note of passion. ‘Could I keep you in this ship?
What have you already heard and seen? Oh, it is not fit! It is not fit!
Such scum as they are! Such foul-mouthed hogs! When I think of what I
used to suffer at night in the hulk--forced to listen, lying sleepless,
though nearly dead with the awful toil of the day!’

Our talk then softly and swiftly ran on many matters which I shall not
tease you with, such as what we should do if we came off with our lives
in the gig; the surest and yet most convenient places in the world
for Englishmen to hide themselves in; my plans as to the disposal of
my house in London; the drawing of my money secretly, so that the law
should not be able to get at him by finding out where I was. These
things and the like we talked of whilst we sat hand in hand, and
sometimes he would break off to kiss me and thank me for my love and
loyalty and to admire me.

I asked him how the gig was to be secretly provisioned and got ready
for lowering.

‘I have arranged for that,’ said he. ‘I told Abram awhile ago on the
poop, and some dozens besides heard me, that it was my practice at sea
to keep my boats provisioned and watered. I then rattled about our
having but three boats, talked of the big number of souls aboard, and
said that in a day or two, when things had settled down a bit, I’d hunt
out the carpenters and handy workmen amongst the people and put them to
making a number of rafts after a design of my own, so that in case of
foundering no man need lose his life for the want of something to float
on. This sort of talk pleased them mightily. Convicts set a high value
on their lives. The bigger the rogue the bigger the price. And of all
the people in this ship Barney Abram is the man who’d be the least
willing to die, be his spirit what it will when he enters a ring. So
then and there I told Mr. Bates that the boats were to be provisioned
and watered the first thing to-morrow morning, and I turned to Will,
who stood by, and significantly ordered him to take the gig under his
own care and see to her.’

‘That was clever,’ said I, clapping his hand with mine.

‘The difficulty I foresee,’ he went on, ‘is the helmsman. Yet it is to
be managed. I wish there was no moon this week; but, fair or foul, I
must have you out of this ship of devils.’

He then looked about him at the nautical instruments, the charts and
books, peeped here and there, and took a sorrowful survey of the
plundered berth. He put my convict mattress and pillow into the bunk
and said that would be my bed by night--for the night or two we were
to remain on board--that he would lock me up out of harm’s way and
release me in the morning. I dared not expostulate; he was my master
if he was not yet my lord; his least command, nay, his lightest wish,
moved me as a powerful impulse. Where would my dear one himself sleep?
Yet I was afraid to ask.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘I want you to keep clear of the convicts. Get away out
of hearing of them. Lodge yourself here closely; you’ll not be missed.
I’ll lock you in, and no one will dare trouble you. I’ll tell them
you’re helping me in the navigation of the ship and acting as a sort of
captain’s clerk. It’ll be but for a day or two. Meanwhile we must eat
and drink. Come forward and see what’s doing in the galley.’

We were leaving the cabin, when he stopped to exclaim: ‘Do you know
what a slop-chest is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there one in the ship?’

‘I’ve heard Will speak of a slop-chest.’

He nodded, and we then left the berth. They had trimmed up the cuddy,
but the starred and splintered mirrors made a ruin of it. Abram was
gone; a number of convicts lounged about the interior. Some seemed to
be preparing the cabins; others were seated with their legs hoisted
on to the table, others sprawled along the cushioned lockers. Most of
them were smoking. A continuous hoarse, sulky growl of conversation,
frequently broken by a short, deep laugh, rolled through the cuddy.

Tom called out: ‘Do any of you know if they’re preparing a meal for the
people?’

‘Ay,’ answered one of the men, ‘the cooks are at work. Some beef’s been
taken out of the cask, and the officer called Bates has sarved out tea
and sugar--the reg’lar muck-mess, pal.’

‘Where are we to eat?’ exclaimed a heavy-faced, coarse-voiced man, who
sat smoking in a lounge-chair near the mizzen-mast.

‘The chief’ll settle that,’ answered Tom. ‘There’s the whole of the
ship for a dinner-table.’

We walked to the galley. The destruction of the barricades had vastly
improved the look of the vessel. The decks ran in a clear sweep. Some
of the men had scrubbed at the stain where the quarter-deck sentry
fell, but the dye was still red in the plank. The mass of the convicts
aimlessly hung about in groups. Numbers overhung the rail, staring out
to sea and talking. Others crouched in clusters under the bulwarks;
some had half stripped themselves. Many were on the poop, where I
caught sight of Mr. Bates walking with Will.

I called Tom’s attention to the general air of listlessness. He
answered: ‘It’s partly heat, partly reaction. They’ve woke up to the
sense of what’s happened, and the loneliness of the sea is upon them,
though they couldn’t give you a name for their sensations.’

This brought us to the ship’s galley. The convicts had partly
demolished their own kitchen, yet, of the two, it had been more
serviceably furnished for so great a crowd as the ship contained.

The sun was now hanging low over the western ocean. I never before
beheld it so vast and so red. Its wake came straight to the side of
the ship from the edge of the sea. I saw no cloud, yet a soft, gentle
wind blew; all the water was dark with it, and it tenderly swelled the
ship’s canvas. All plain sail was set, saving the main-royal, where the
lightning had left no mast to hoist the yard on. These observations I
made quickly whilst Tom put his head into the galley-door and talked to
the people within.

The men who had cooked for the convicts under the doctor were the
cooks now. There were three of them, dressed in clothes stolen out of
the forecastle. Spite of their cropped crowns and a sort of actor’s
bullet-headed appearance, that might owe something to their blue, shorn
cheeks and chins, they looked, in their seamen’s attire, superior to
most of the fellows who had slept before the mast. Tom questioned them.
A large hook-pot of steaming tea was then handed to him. He gave it to
me with a glance which I perfectly understood. They cut off a piece of
beef and put it into a tin dish. With these things and two or three
ship’s biscuits, which one of the convicts took from a dresser-drawer
two-thirds full of that sort of bread, we made our way aft, I carrying
the tea and the beef and walking after Tom, as though he used me as his
servant.

One of a number of convicts at the break of the poop was Barney Abram.
He called down to know what was that I had. Tom answered that it was
his supper. ‘I can’t wait for you people,’ said he. ‘The mate must be
relieved in a few minutes.’ We then passed into his cabin.

We wanted sugar; a ridiculous, trifling matter I should not mention but
for this, that, with Tom’s leave, I went aft into that small starboard
cabin which Mr. Stiles had made a larder of, and which before the
convicts rose had always been richly stocked, hams and sides of bacon
hanging from the upper deck, fine flour and white biscuits in casks,
various sorts of tinned stuffs, with all such necessaries, not to
mention luxuries, which the cabin table demanded--I say, when I entered
this little room to seek for a parcel of sugar, I witnessed a crueller,
more abominable scene of waste than could be invented: Flour-casks
split and the deck covered with dust; broken bottles of pickles; ham
and cheese, as though they had been jumped upon. Indeed, I want
memory to describe this horrid picture of wanton, senseless waste and
destruction. Yet I found what I sought, and took also some cheese, what
I broke from one that lay already broken upon the deck, filled a tin
with white biscuit out of a gaping cask, and so returned to Tom.

We made a good meal. Neither of us had tasted food for many hours. I
asked Tom after he should have gone on deck to send Will to me, as
the lad, being afraid to seek for food on his own account, might be
half famished for all I knew. Mr. Bates I reckoned old enough and man
enough to look after himself. I then saw that there was oil in the
bracket-lamp at the bulkhead. Indeed, the seeing to such things had
been a part of my work under the steward. When Tom had ended his meal,
he got up and said: ‘I shall turn the key upon you and give it to Will,
who’ll let himself in; but see that he locks you up when he leaves you.’

‘Shan’t I see you again to-night, Tom?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll look in--say at nine. You can reckon your time by one
of the chronometers. ’Tis Greenwich time, and our time will be about
----,’ and he named it.

He kissed me, and held me by the hands and looked at me as though his
overflowing heart sought in vain to vent itself; then cutting the air
with his clenched fist as if maddened by a sudden memory, he stepped
out, turned and withdrew the key.

I waited for Will, but he did not quickly come. By this time it was
nearly dark; some while earlier, however, I had thoroughly searched
the cabin for means of making fire, and almost at the minute of giving
up found a tinder-box and flint and matches in a little white box on a
shelf. This apparatus was so like mine that I might have supposed Mr.
Balls had presented it to the captain.

I lighted the lamp and sat listening to the noises in the cuddy.
There was a constant tumult of voices and a clatter of metal dishes;
I guessed that a crowd of the convicts were eating at the table, and,
not easily finding fresh crockery, were employing the prison utensils.
More than an hour had passed since Tom left, when the key was turned,
and Will entered holding a pannikin of tea. When the door opened, the
noise in the cuddy came in very strong and rudely; the wretches seemed
to have gone off their heads again, and were bawling and singing as
though something stronger than tea had filled their pannikins. They had
managed to trim and light the cuddy lamps.

‘It’s time we were out of it,’ said Will, pulling off his coat and
flinging down his cap with a shake of the head that drove the sweat
drops in a little shower from his brow. ‘I’d rather take my chance on a
bare plank than stick another week in this hell--and a hell it is, and
a worse hell it is likely to become, though I hate strong words.’

‘Fall to your supper,’ said I, ‘and give me the news as you eat.’

He went to work and ate heartily. We had left plenty for him. Whilst
he supped, he said that Abram had made Bates show him where the rum
casks were kept. Bates told Tom of this, and Will, standing near,
heard Tom ask Abram what the people intended to do. ‘“Why,” says
the prize-fighter, “they’re going to brew a few bowls to drink one
another’s health in. They mean to make a night of it. Don’t they
deserve a little pleasure? You’ll take the head of the table, Butler,
and give us a song.” “No,” says Tom, “I’m in charge of the ship----”
“There’s Bates,” says Abram. “I’m in charge of the ship,” answered Tom
savagely. “Don’t look to me to countenance this sort of thing. I should
have hoped you and the other leaders valued your safety too highly
to broach a rum-cask for the people.” A number of convicts,’ said
Will, ‘who had drawn near, told Tom that if he interfered with their
pleasures and liberty, they knew their remedy. Tom cursed them, and I
thought would have spat at them,’ continued Will. ‘He grasped one of
the strongest by the arm and, pointing to the boats, asked the man if
he could count. The fellow fell back a step as though Butler had gone
mad, and raised his arm to cover his face. “Count!” roared Tom. “One,
two, three; good to hold about thirty men, leaving about two hundred
and twenty to be roasted alive if the ship takes fire! Thirty to be
picked up and hanged for this job!” he cried, with a laugh that had a
real note of madness in it: “and the rest to be left here to fry or
leap overboard, shrieking like the rats that’ll show them the road!”
His manner, instead of further enraging, seemed to subdue the beasts.
“There’ll be no fire,” said Abram; “why do’t you keep your tepper?”’

‘What followed?’ said I.

‘Butler walked away. Some of the convicts abused him when his back
was turned. Barney Abram stood up for him. He said that Butler meant
well, and that his anxiety for the ship’s safety proved his honesty.
He was bad-tempered and a little mad; he was mad because he was being
transported for what he had never done. Then, fearing I might be
noticed as a listener, I slunk away, and Butler gave me the key, and
told me to go to you and get some supper.’

He stayed until he had had time to make a good meal. We talked in
murmurs, and nearly all our talk concerned our getting away from the
ship. He told me that Bates thought that Tom would have ventured it
this night had the gig been provisioned. Bates, he said, was wild to
get out of the ship. He feared for his life.

Will went on deck after sitting with me for half an hour. He locked me
in as he had been bidden, and when he was gone I felt afraid, for I
thought to myself: What shall I do, locked up below here, if the felons
set the ship on fire?




CHAPTER XXXVII

SHE DESCRIBES A WILD, DRUNKEN, UPROARIOUS SCENE


The noise of many voices had been slowly growing in the cuddy. The
swell and the volume of sound were assurance that the interior was
full. I wondered the people did not drink and revel on the deck,
where there was plenty of room and fresh air and dewy coolness. The
cuddy, perhaps, was like being ashore, and put them in mind of their
old haunts. There was no likeness, indeed, to a tavern in it, yet
the convicts might find something to refresh their memory of the
boozing-kens in the broken mirrors and the low pitch of the ceiling or
upper deck and in the bulkheads, which would answer to their idea of
walls, particularly should the atmosphere become dense with tobacco
smoke and sickening with the fumes of rum and clamorous as a houseful
of shrieking madmen with the songs, jokes, laughter, and the many
humours of the stews and kennels.

The _Childe Harold_ was a very stoutly built ship. The cabin bulkheads
were exceedingly thick and substantial. I could not hear individual
voices plainly; the combined growl of the men’s speech, often rising
into a sort of roar like to the noise of a breaker sweeping back from a
beach after it has burst into froth, overwhelmed the particular notes
and accents which swelled it. Sometimes I thought I could hear Barney
Abram shouting, then there’d happen a sinking in the tumult when I’d
catch a loud, coarse laugh, solitary and startling, or the voice of a
man beginning a song that was quickly drowned by the freshening of the
hubbub.

There was a constant scraping and squeezing past my cabin bulkhead, as
though of people coming and going or thrusting to make room, with a
jarring grumble of talk but indistinct to me. This sort of thing may
have gone on for about half an hour. I looked at the chronometer,
and calculated that it was about half-past eight. I longed for nine
o’clock, when Tom had promised to come. The people were fast growing
noisier. Frequent scuffles occurred just outside my door. The cuddy was
densely packed, and the scuffling signified the struggle of some of the
fellows to draw close to the table where the drink was.

It was short of nine by a quarter of an hour when the key was turned
and Tom came in. This cabin-door was close to the cuddy quarter-deck
entrance; yet the interior was so full that when Tom entered and came
in with a sort of run, as though he had helped himself with his elbows,
I saw the crowd, close-packed, pressed hard against Bates’s cabin
opposite, as they were against mine. ‘Hold my arm,’ said Tom. I seized
him, and he took me through the door and shoved to right and left to
make a passage through, the cuddy entrance, that stood but five or six
feet away. He then returned to lock the door.

I was now able to see and hear. The cuddy, as I had suspected, was
packed full. The sailors had joined the convicts, so that there
were over two hundred and forty people in that roasting interior.
The atmosphere was dark with tobacco smoke, through which the large
cabin-lamps loomed like the red moon in a mist. I coughed violently
even on the quarter-deck whilst I looked through the open door, waiting
for Tom to come out. By standing on the coamings of the booby-hatch, I
got a view over the heads of the crowd and saw the whole picture.

Abram sat at the head of the table in shirt and trousers only; his
black, pitted, ugly face shone with sweat; they had put one chair on
top of another for him, and he sat with his legs wide apart and his
feet on the table; between his knees was a pail, out of which he was
ladling drink into pannikins which endlessly travelled his way, or were
extended at arm’s length to him. He seemed half drunk, and occasionally
withdrew the ladle full of the liquor to flourish it over his head,
whilst he uttered a roar like a beast expressing joy and having no note
but a roar; at such times he swayed on his perch as though he must
topple over.

As yet not many of the felons were intoxicated, but anyone could see
how it must be with them presently. The younger amongst the people made
the most noise. Again there was the aimless shouting of the morning,
the roaring chaff, the yells one to another from distant points, the
frequent breaking into songs, with local choruses, swaggeringly chanted
by those near the singer. The heat was frightful; I was amazed that
the wretches could draw breath. At this foremost end of the table,
high-perched like the ruffian Abram, was the hare-lipped convict; he,
too, had a big pail of liquor betwixt his legs, the contents of which
he served out with a pannikin. Nearly every man had a pipe, and again
and again one or another of the convicts rose to get a light at the
lamps. They stood on their chairs with a foot on the table and dodged
drunkenly at the flame, with an open end of rope-yarn or a piece of
wood, and whilst it burnt freely they lighted their pipes, blowing out
dense clouds, and then they’d pass the burning brands to men shouting
for them.

This was shocking to see. Nothing in the behaviour of the malefactors
was so fearfully menacing. All that I here describe I witnessed in the
few moments whilst I waited for Tom to lock the door. He forced his way
out, took me by the arm, and in silence we mounted the poop-ladder.
Oh, the sweetness of the air up there and the peace and beauty of that
gentle tropic night! The moon was up, the dark sky was crowded with
stars to the horizon, the ship was sailing noiselessly before the wind.
Aloft, where the sails swelled stirless as carvings of stone, glowing
in the beams of the moon that shone athwart them, all was silent.
Forward, not a figure stirred. Aft, Mr. Bates walked on one side of the
deck, and by the clear, white light in the air I distinguished Will at
the wheel. Tom spoke no word till we were on the poop. He then said: ‘I
believe we shall be able to get away to-night.’

‘The sooner the better, Tom.’

‘If they don’t set fire to the ship,’ said he, ‘we may be able to get
away easily, and in a quarter-boat. I chose the gig because she hangs
where she may be lowered without much risk of observation; but the
people down there mean to drink themselves dead-drunk. If that happens,
we’ll take a quarter-boat.’

‘Is that Will at the wheel?’

‘Aye. The dog whose trick was up refused to stand any longer when he
understood there was grog going in the cabin. No other man would come
aft to relieve him. So much the better. It all works for us.’

We joined Mr. Bates and went to the helm and stood there. They were now
making a horrible roaring noise in the cuddy. It sounded like a great,
drunken cheering of a ‘sentiment,’ or speech.

‘I’ve been watching them light their pipes,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘We must
stand by, Butler.’

‘Bates, it’s to be done!’ exclaimed Tom, looking round the sea. ‘What
shall we want? Nothing that may not be got and stowed in twenty
minutes. Johnstone, jump forward and try one of the scuttle-butts. If
there’s water, fill a couple of boat’s beakers.’

He took the wheel from the lad, who fled off the poop like the shadow
of a cloud in a gale.

‘Which is the better quarter-boat. Bates?’

‘The aftermost.’

‘See if it’s all right with her.’

The mate sprang upon a hencoop and got into the boat, where his figure
was lost. He came out after a few minutes and reported everything in
its place. Will returned; he said that the starboard scuttle-butt was
half full, took the beaker out of the boat and went forward. When this
was filled he took the beaker from the other boat, filled and stowed it
in the boat we meant to use.

Just then a hush fell upon the people below. It startled one, so
suddenly did it come on top of the noise. The skylights lay wide open;
I stepped to one and looked down. Some of the convicts already lay
with their heads buried in their arms upon the table, motionless in
deep, drunken sleep. Others who were within the compass of my gaze
leaned back, staring in the stupefaction of drink with fixed eyes. A
few lay like dead men upon the deck. But the great mass were still wide
awake, full of the fever of drink and the life of their own hideous
spirits; as many as I could see were all looking aft where Abram sat,
and I had not been watching a minute when Abram, whose deep bass voice,
considerably thickened and deepened yet by the drams he had drained,
roared out the following song (I caught some of the words and long
afterward met with the verses):

The prize-fighter sang it thus:

  As clever Tob Pitch, while the rabble was bawli’g,
  Rode stately through ’Olbord to die id his calli’g,
  He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack,
  A’d probised to pay for it whed he cabe back.

Here broke in a roar of laughter.

  His waistcoat a’d stockids a’d breeches were white,
  His cap had a dew cherry ribbon to tie’t.
  The baids to the doors a’d the balcodies rad,
  A’d said: ‘Lack-a-day, he’s a proper yu’g bad.’

The singer was again interrupted by another great shout of laughter. It
may have been his drunken grimaces and thick pronunciation that amused
the convicts; there seemed not much to laugh at in the words of his
song.

  But as at the windows the ladies he spied,
  Like a beau id the box he bowed low od each side!
  A’d whed the last speech the loud ’awkers did cry,
  He swore frob his cart: ‘It was all a dabbed lie!’
  The ha’gbad for pardod fell dowd od his dee;
  Tob gave hib a kick id the guts for his fee--

Here broke in another shout that lasted some moments. The convicts
beat upon the table with their pannikins; several flaming matches were
passed along and pipes sucked hard. The atmosphere rose through that
open skylight hot as a blast from a furnace and dark with tobacco
clouds. The prize-fighter, in a thicker and deeper voice, proceeded:

  Tob said: ‘I bust speak to the people a little;
  But I’ll see you all cussed here before I will whittle.
  Take courage, dear cobrades, a’d be dot afraid,
  Dor slip this occasiod to follow your trade;
  By codscience is clear a’d by spirits are carb,
  A’d thus I go off without prayer-book or psarb.’
  Thed follow the practice of clever Tom Pitch,
  Who hung like a ’ero ad dever would flitch!

On finishing this song, the prize-fighter bellowed in a loud voice
of thunder: ‘Chorus, pals all! Chorus, pals all!’ And the drunken
mob, in every variety of note, till the chorus was no more than an
ear-splitting, discordant howling, repeated

  Then follow the practice of clever Tom Pinch,
  Who hung like a hero and never would flinch!

The convicts vastly enjoyed their own singing. They shrieked, cheered,
whistled, hammered and roared, and roared again with laughter and
applause. Whilst I looked I saw a man fall dead-drunk from his chair
right under the skylight and lie like a log on the deck. (This was the
lean, grey man who had talked of the devils that swam in a rum-cask.)
I thought of that day when Mr. Barney Abram sat with other prisoners
under the skylight and lifted up his voice in a song of devotion, and
the doctor’s stern face of approval came before me.

Some men on the main-deck laughed loudly and talked uproariously. They
were convicts going to the galley for hot water to mix fresh pails of
rum with. The moonshine lay white on the planks, and you could see the
buckets swaying in the fellows’ hands as they lurched, laughing and
talking, toward the galley, about whose open door hovered the sheen of
a lamp burning within.

‘I hope they’ll not end at this,’ said Tom, standing at my side and
speaking to Mr. Bates. ‘If they don’t get more drunk, they’ll fall to
fighting, and bethink them of the soldiers’ weapons under the poop, and
turn the cabin into a shambles.’

‘The drink takes effect quickly,’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Many of them haven’t tasted a drop for years!’ exclaimed Tom.

The people below fell silent again; a loud, clear voice, that did not
seem in liquor, began to sing. I guessed from the direction in which
the convicts’ heads were turned that the singer was the hare-lipped
man. We came away from the skylight and stood near the wheel, which
Will held.

‘This wind is taking off,’ said Mr. Bates.

Tom looked aloft and then round the sea. He started, peered a little
eagerly and, pointing, exclaimed: ‘Is that a vessel yonder in the flow
of the moonlight?’

Will, who had keen eyes, looked and said: ‘Yes, sir.’

The mate fetched the glass from the companion-way and gave it to Tom,
who said: ‘It’s a little brig, I think.’

The mate pointed the telescope, and when he was done with it I asked
leave to look. He steadied the glass, and I quite clearly saw the
vessel. She lay exactly under the moon in the full stream of the silver
light, where the first of it smote the dark edge and flowed across the
ocean.

‘How is she heading?’ said Tom.

‘She seems to be standing south,’ answered the mate.

‘Would she not receive us?’ said I.

‘We can’t board anything in these clothes,’ exclaimed Tom.

‘She don’t seem to be travelling,’ exclaimed the mate. ‘She hangs
steady under the moon. Perhaps the calm’s about her. The heat’s drying
up the breeze.’

‘Suppose she should have the doctor, soldiers, and the rest of them on
board,’ said Will.

‘Butler,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates with energy, ‘I swear you have nothing to
fear. You are innocent; you have saved life; you have witnesses----’

Tom stamped on the deck and turned his back with a gesture that was
like saying he had settled that question in previous talks with the
mate.

They were again howling out a chorus in the cuddy; the tobacco smoke
rose like steam into the moonshine through both open skylights; shouts
for drink and for pipe-lights were incessant. Tom, hearing a sound
of scuffling coming from the main-deck, went to the rail and stood
looking. He returned and said: ‘A dozen of them have staggered out for
air, I suppose; the freshness has proved too strong, and every man
dropped as though knocked on the head. There they lie, dead-drunk on
the decks.’

‘That vessel sits without life,’ said the mate, looking at the sea
under the moon. ‘I’ve been watching her. She’s either hove to or
there’s something wrong.’

Our own languid motion had drawn the little craft out of the brilliant
reflection. She now hung on the margin of it, scarce distinguishable
but for the faint light her sails made. I suppose she was about five
miles distant; certainly she had not seemed to move to the extent of
her own length since we caught sight of her.

Our canvas was now hollowing in. The white cloths came to the mast
softly and shook the dew upon them on the deck. The sea was grown
glassy under the moon, and round about were ice-like windings of
tremorless water. The breeze was falling fast, and the heat that came
in a sort of fold like a succession of swells out of the gathering calm
was heightened to every sense by a vast play of shooting stars over our
mast-heads. Tom stepped to the skylight to observe the time; it was
something after ten.

The uproar was at its height again below. A hundred voices seemed to
be singing a hundred different songs at once. In the midst of this,
half a dozen figures came into the companion-way. They all talked as
they ploughed up the steps, shoving one another in their drunken
scramble to keep steady. The first of them fell over the coaming and
lay laughing and cursing; the next tripped over him, but recovered
himself, with a mouthful of oaths, and with a stroke of his foot rolled
the prostrate man aside. The fellow laughed like one choking, then lay
motionless, and before the others had come up he was snoring.

One of these men was Barney Abram. He stood in the companion-way,
holding on and looking about him with his figure stooped.

‘Here’s Butler!’ exclaimed a man, talking brokenly and hiccoughing.
‘Come below, my rooster. Ain’t ye longer one of us, old drummer? Come
and drink. Don’t make it all greediness downstairs. Take your whack, my
lobscouser, and let’s hear you sing.’

He extended his hand. Tom put it aside, but without temper.

‘I have drunk enough. I can’t stand the heat down there, and I can’t be
there and here too, and the ship wants watching. Abram, you sing a good
song.’

The prize-fighter came out of the companion and stood in front of Tom,
slightly swaying his body.

‘It’s bit of a cub-dowd!’ he exclaimed. ‘My wife wouldn’t like to hear
of it. I cad fadcy her,’ he said, directing his moist eyes at the moon,
‘saying, “Bardey, ’ow could yer as a public bad?” By adswer would be
exceedingly sipple: “Biriab, it was id bid-ocead, ad there’s dot a
codger abugst the whole blazi’g boili’g of the fagots whose opidiod of
be as a public bad I value at that!”’ He snapped his immense muscular
fingers with the report of the explosion of a cap of a musket-nipple.

‘I’d rather have a shant o’ gatter (pot of beer) to blow an inch
of tripe of nosey-nick-nacker with than a caskful of that devil’s
fire on tap below,’ exclaimed one of the men. ‘It’s gammy for the
head--gammy--gammy.’ He pulled off his cap and sent it with a kick
flying overboard, and, putting his hands to his brow, groaned, swinging
his head from side to side. He then blindly reeled over to a hencoop,
fell against it, kneeling, and stretched his length.

A third fellow, who had stood looking at the moon for some minutes
in silence, with a drunken, imbecile grin, began to cry. He snuffled
and whimpered and exclaimed in broken, tipsy tones, ‘What ’ud my poor
mother think? Ho, yes, she brought me up in the straight ways, and this
is what it’s come to. Never was there a better scholard nor me nor vun
more promising till I fell in with a sneaksman. It was all along of a
footman----’ Here he blubbered and could not go on.

‘’Ark at Sipsod shedding tears!’ exclaimed Abram. ‘What’s ’e got to cry
about? Let the people he robbed cry. Bates, cub-dowd a’d ’ave a drink.’

The convict named Simpson shuffled to the companion-hatch, with some
trouble got his leg over the coaming, and then fell down the steps.

‘I’ve had all that I can stand up under, Mr. Abram,’ answered Bates,
‘thanking you kindly.’

‘I wish you’d sing another song, Mr. Abram; I never heard so powerful
and manly a voice,’ said I, hoping by this to get him below, where a
few more drams would finish him.

‘I studied busic udder the great Jo’d Brahub,’ he answered, wagging his
head with his indescribable leering smirk, that was deepened and made
more repulsive, if possible, by the drink he had swallowed; the moon
shone very clear, and expressions on the face were easily read. ‘If I
car’t si’g, who cad? By lay was Hi-taliad opera, but the ri’g answered
by purpose better.’

This he spoke in the most gentlemanly manner his tipsiness would
suffer. Mr. Bates saw my meaning.

‘I’ll go with you below, sir, and drink your health, and hope to have
the pleasure of hearing you sing another song.’

‘Cub along,’ said the prize-fighter, and both men went down the steps.

The din in the cuddy was still vile and distracting; but it wanted its
former volume. I looked through the skylight and found as much of the
table as I could see thick with the stupefied brutes, who, seated, lay
upon it from their waists in every sort of drunken posture, most of
which not a man amongst them could have put himself into had he been
sober. A score and more lay without life or motion on the cabin deck,
but numbers were awake, and pannikins of grog were being handed along.
The haze of the tobacco smoke hung dark as a river-fog.

I walked to the break of the poop and counted some twenty or
twenty-five dark figures lying helplessly insensible in various parts
of the main- and quarter-deck; men reeled out of the cuddy, as I
looked, fell down, with their hands outstretched, and never moved. It
was as Tom said: the wretches had not tasted liquor for months, and
many of them for years, and now they had been swallowing fiery ship’s
rum, I know not how many degrees above proof.

(I once, in Mr. Stiles’s time, put my tongue to a ‘neat’ dram or ‘tot,’
as it is called, and was burned as though by a flame.)

Numbers, I doubted not, had swallowed the burning poison undiluted.
The spectacle of the quarter-deck, above all the sight of the figures
lurching out and then dropping as though shot, was sickening and
frightful.

I went back to Tom. As I passed the skylight, Abram began to sing;
but his voice was full of drink, very hideously thick and his delivery
tuneless. I was sure, after pausing an instant to listen, that he would
soon be amongst those who were laid low.

‘I shall make for that brig,’ said Tom, ‘when we get away.’

I strained my sight, and then barely distinguished the vessel in the
obscurity some distance from the edge of the flood of moonshine.

‘It’s a dead calm,’ I said.

‘It matters not,’ he answered.

‘Shouldn’t we first contrive to roll those fellows off the poop?’ said
Will at the wheel, meaning the figures upon the deck.

‘It’ll take them all night to sleep off what they’ve got,’ answered
Tom. ‘I hope Bates won’t allow them to make him drunk. He’s afraid of
Abram.’

‘Where are the rest who came up with the prize-fighter?’ said I.

‘Gone below for more drink.’

We stood conversing in whispers. Abram’s singing had subdued, but only
subdued, the noise in the cabin, yet we could hear one another when
we whispered. After twenty minutes, Mr. Bates came up. I regarded him
anxiously. His face shone in the moonshine as though he had just lifted
his head out of a bucket of oil.

‘The heat below! Oh, the heat below! It’s wonderful they’re not all
dead men!’ he exclaimed.

He told us that he had managed to empty his pannikin on the deck before
putting it to his lips. They had handed him pure rum to drink. Had he
swallowed the dose he must have fallen down insensible. The people
close to him were too drunk to observe him. He dexterously, whilst
seeming to watch Abram, as though to catch his eye to drink his health,
poured out the contents of the pannikin, and did not know that the rum
had splashed over a man’s face until he looked down. The man, lying
like one dead upon the deck, received the discharge without a stir. It
seems, however, that Mr. Bates need not have put himself to any trouble
to feign drinking. Abram got on to the double chair and began to
sing, without taking any notice of the mate. In the midst of his song
he stopped to lift a pannikin to his lips, which he emptied, and was
then proceeding, when the upper chair gave way and he fell. After the
prize-fighter had lain a few moments groaning in sickness, he clawed
his way to one of the cabins, and Bates came on deck.

Soon after eleven o’clock, a tipsy figure, approaching Tom, stood
lurching and backing and filling. The man was a sailor. He asked, with
a drunken, broken laugh, if he should take the wheel.

‘Get away to your hammock!’ shouted Tom. ‘We’ll see to the ship. Off
you go, and tell the rest of you to turn in till you’ve slept the drink
off.’

The man went reeling forward, and in a maudlin voice broke into a song
as he worked his way off the poop.

But nothing could be done till the silence of drunken sleep was upon
the ship. I never could have dreamed that of two hundred and twenty
odd convicts, all would have overpowered themselves with liquor. There
were grey-haired men and men of education, people who had filled good
positions ashore. One, as I have said, was a surgeon, another had been
an officer in the army. There were several clerks and young fellows who
had been apprenticed to respectable callings. One had been a harbour
missionary. No need to lengthen the dismal catalogue. A few, at least,
I had thought would have held aloof from the hellish revelries of the
cuddy, have come on deck and breathed the fresh night-air and watched
the beautiful moonlight after a moderate sup or two from Abram’s and
the hare-lipped man’s buckets. Such persons I had looked for, and
wondered how we should be able to get away without their hearing or
observing us. But, it seems that there was not a convict in the whole
living mass of wretches, counting two hundred and thirty souls, less
Tom and the fellows that had lost their lives in the morning, who had
not entered heart and soul into this hideous merry-making.

Tom found out that by going down the companion-steps and taking a view
of the interior. The hour was then about a quarter to twelve. About
half a score of the felons were still awake, but drinking always. They
were too drunk to make much noise, and happily too overtaken in liquor
to be able to light their pipes. The heat was killing, Tom said. He
should not be surprised if several of the people were found dead.

‘Bates,’ said he, ‘get you now down with Will and overhaul the
slop-chest and bring up what you know is needful. They’ll take no
notice of you in the cuddy. They’re nearly blind drunk; they’re at the
aftermost end where Abram was, and the atmosphere’s black with tobacco,
and the cabin lights burn pale. Johnstone, I don’t want Marian to leave
my side. Here’s the key of my cabin-door. Bring up the clothes.’

Bates and my cousin went away. Tom now said he would go the round of
the ship.

‘We must see all the lights out before we leave her,’ said he. ‘Think
of a fire with the people in the state they’re in!’

He walked to the lifeless figures on the poop and moved them with his
foot; they lay as senseless as the plank they rested on. He then
passed down the steps and I lost sight of him. I guessed that the
convicts had been too drunk to climb the poop-ladder, or to attempt the
poop by the companion-steps; that was why there was none on this deck
save those two or three of Barney Abram’s party who had stumbled, and,
being down, had instantly slept.

I looked into that part of the night where the brig lay and dimly
discerned her. I forget where the moon at this hour stood, and with
what bulk she had risen. Silence was gathering on the convict ship.
Occasionally the hoarse, tipsy call of a man in the cuddy vexed the
ear, but those noises were rare, and I was pretty sure that another
quarter of an hour would do the wretches’ business and sink them in
the universal stupor. I wondered if the moon had ever before shone
down upon a more shocking picture of human bestiality. And yet how
exquisitely was the ship painted by the night beam in the midst of
that vast ocean hush! The sails hung like sheets of cloth of silver;
every shroud had a glint that resembled a thread of silver wire; stars
of white fire sparkled in the brass of the binnacle hood and in the
glass of the skylights, and the rail seemed encrusted with diamonds
and precious gems. The whole ship hung pale upon the sea, with never a
pulse to rock her; her spires rose phantasmally to the stars, but her
beauty was ghostly and the horror of sin was in it.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

SHE ESCAPES FROM THE CONVICT SHIP WITH HER SWEETHEART AND OTHERS


Mr. Bates and Will arrived, each bearing a burden of clothes from the
slop-chest. I advised the mate to go behind the mizzen-mast and shift
his convict clothes at once. He seemed unnerved and wanting in spirit,
as though broken down by the scenes and sights of the day and night,
and obeyed me as if I had been Tom or his captain. Will was dressed as
throughout; it had strangely happened that no convict had forced him
to exchange clothes. He went to Tom’s cabin and brought up my bundle
and monkey-jacket; the latter I slipped on, throwing Tom’s convict coat
overboard with passion and loathing. Will told me that only two or
three men were now awake in the cuddy; one had fallen under the table
just as he had passed up through the steerage hatch.

I quitted the wheel to look through the skylight, but the waking men
sat too far aft to be seen; I heard the murmur of their fuddled voices,
and was sure by the tones that the noise must cease in a few minutes.
The picture remained as I have described it; the convicts lay over the
table and in twenty various postures. Under the table, and betwixt the
table and the bulkhead, they were heaped up as though slaughtered. A
dreadful smell rose through the open skylight. Fragments of broken
pipes, shreds of wearing apparel, capsized pannikins and hook-pots,
overset pails of rum covered the deck and table. I was sure that Tom
was right in thinking that when those senseless, beastlike shapes
came to be looked at in the morning, many would be found corpses. Mr.
Bates, having changed his clothes, stood beside me dressed in a suit
of black cloth and a cloth cap. He said: ‘Shall Johnstone and I start
on provisioning the boat? I shouldn’t like to act without instructions
from Butler.’

‘No time should be lost,’ I answered; ‘but where will you find
provisions, Mr. Bates?’

‘We’ll look around,’ he said. ‘I hope it mayn’t come to our having to
break out fresh stores.’

‘We shall want nothing if the brig receives us,’ said I.

‘True; but we must go away well provisioned nevertheless.’

Just then Tom came along the poop. He sprang on to the hencoop and
placed some parcels in the boat, joined us and said: ‘I’ve secured
the chronometer, a sextant, some charts and a tinder-box. All’s quiet
now in the cuddy. What a terrible scene! I was obliged to tread upon
the bodies of men to look into the cabins. Many lie capsized upon
their backs, their legs upon the seats. The light’s bad, yet I made
out Abram on the deck of a berth. There’s a whole hundred and thirty
people below in that cuddy! Would any man credit the story of such a
wholesale drugging and damning by drink? They lie thick under the break
there, and the main-deck’s strewn with them. The forecastle’s empty.
But all’s not quiet yet in the ship,’ said he, speaking very quickly
and softly. ‘A fellow under the bulwarks yonder sat up and called me
by name. I took no notice. Two or three men just now staggered off the
gratings on the main-hatch to seek more comfortable resting-places. We
must wait awhile.’

‘Shall Johnstone and I get the boat provisioned?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Aye, do your best, Bates, and promptly. Provision us as though we were
to be a fortnight afloat.’

He strained his eyes in the direction of the brig. My cousin and the
other left the poop.

The time slipped by. I stepped to the skylight and found the hour ten
minutes to one. Bates and Will came and went and came again, and at
every trip they brought a load. I believe they found ship’s bread in
the forecastle and some raw hams and drum-big tins of boiled meat in
the galley. I asked no questions, however. The time of our departure
was drawing near and I was frightened and nervous. I never could tell
at what moment some of the convicts might get the better of their
stupor and come upon the poop for the whiteness of the planks and for
the airiness of the lodging it offered. I could not persuade myself
that so vast a number of persons should be as drugged and lifeless as
though a strong dose of laudanum had gone to every dram. Yet, whether
I credited it or not, I had but to use my eyes to witness the truth.
I had but to descend the cabin steps, I had but to walk around the
quarter- and main-decks of that now silent shadowy convict ship, to
know there was scarce a man but was stone-senseless with rum. Sometimes
a beastlike cry broke from below, sometimes a drunken shout sounded
forward. These noises were startling, but we speedily found they
signified nothing.

Tom went to the head of the starboard poop-ladder and looked and
listened. He returned, descended the companion-steps, and, after
looking and listening, put out all the lights. It was then about a
quarter past two. The moon had made a deal of westing, and was red and
shone no longer very brightly.

‘Johnstone,’ said my sweetheart, in a whisper, ‘have you a knife?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Cut the gig’s and yonder boat’s falls short off just under where they
are belayed. Quick, my lad! Bates, it must be done.’

‘God help them!’ said the mate. ‘But there are sailors who’ll show them
what to do should it come to a sudden call.’

Will came from his job. The gripes of our boat were then noiselessly
cast adrift.

‘Jump in, Marian! Jump in, Johnstone!’ said Tom.

Will and I sprang into the boat and sat low, and in a moment or two
the dark side of the ship swarmed upward as we descended. The boat
splashed when she floated. Some fellow at that instant halloed long and
dismally. The melancholy, dreadful cry was re-echoed by the sails, and
the voice was as that of a strong man mortally wounded and yielding up
his ghost in a death shout.

‘Some beast shrieking in a dream,’ said Will.

As he spoke, the figures of Tom and the mate leaned to the falls, and
they came down the tackles into the boat, hand over hand. The blocks
were quickly unhooked, and Mr. Bates, with the boat-hook in his hand,
poled us under the huge, dark counter of the _Childe Harold_. Three
oars were noiselessly thrown over and paddled us clear of the ship.

Scarcely were we gone ten lengths when again we heard that strange,
wild, melancholy, halloing cry. Tom said, ‘Is not that a man there on
the fo’c’s’le?’

‘Yes,’ said Will; ‘he is reeling and waving. He’ll be overboard if he
doesn’t mind his eye.’

The fellow let fly a sudden yell.

‘Curse him!’ cried Tom. ‘He sees us. Give way now.’

‘There he goes!’ cried Mr. Bates.

A cry like the scream of a gull came across the silent sea, and we
heard the plunge and splash of the wretch. Mr. Bates and Will tilted
their oars as though to put back.

‘Pull!’ cried Tom fiercely.

‘Won’t you return to pick him up?’ said the mate.

‘Pull!’ hissed Tom. ‘Return to that ship? Pull! Break your backs! A
suicide in delirium. Let them all leap! There’s the peace of God over
the side; there’s the devil’s own hell within board. Pull!’

He strained at his own oar with fury; the others plied with all their
might. The boat buzzed over the smooth surface, the smudge of the craft
for which we were making was dead-on-end over the bow. The moon hung
low, large, and red; the situation of our boat put the convict ship
right over against the satellite, and the vessel was painted upon the
red surface of the orb. Never did the ocean offer a more impressive
night-piece. An awful horror went into the ship out of the fancy of the
man drowning alongside. Her sails showed as though cut out of black
paper against the moon; her rigging ran in fine black lines; the ship
looked to be afloat in vapour, so smoky was the obscurity which moved
over the face of that black, greasy calm in folds like smoke.

There was no more halloing; so still was the breast on which the vessel
lay that never a sound of the flap of canvas, the jar of a wheel chain,
the clank of a topsail-sheet came from her. Slowly she receded to the
impulse of our oars; then sliding out of the sphere of the moon, she
glimmered dimly and hovered like a pale cloud rising off the edge of
the sea.

Tom and the others rowed steadily; they had slackened their rage, and
the boat foamed along to the steady sweep of the blades. They talked as
they pulled.

‘Bates, I wouldn’t have put back,’ said Tom, ‘if fifty of them had
sprung overboard. It was too late. Once away from such a ship as that,
it must be away for ever with us.’

‘You’re in the right. It was just the impulse to save life, Butler.’

‘I smell wind,’ said Will.

The mate turned his head and exclaimed: ‘Yes, there’s a dark line of
wind to the south’ard, Johnstone.’

‘What will happen to the convict ship if a strong wind should catch
her as she lies, without a living creature on the look-out or at the
wheel?’ said I.

‘Let the masts be ripped out of her,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘She’ll be fallen
in with. Lie with dogs and rise with fleas! The mere seeing her
people, the mere listening to them makes a man feel a beast, because
he’s shaped like them. Oh, Bates, Bates, think of months of living with
them! Where’s the brig?’

She was now showing in a big dark blotch at the distance of about
two miles. Already the water was rippling to a light breeze, but no
weight was in it to cause anxiety, by which I mean no vessel could be
propelled by the draught as fast as we could row.

Tom said: ‘Bates, you will leave it to me to explain. You and Miss
Johnstone and her cousin will hear me spin my yarn. There’ll be little
to say. Only let this be understood: You’re the mate and I’m the second
mate.’

‘Do you know, Tom,’ said I, ‘that you are still wearing the convict
trousers and shirt?’

‘By Heaven, I had forgotten!’ he cried, jumping up. ‘Marian, take my
seat and hold this oar.’

He went into the bows. Often had I pulled an oar upon the Thames and
loved the diversion. I rowed now heartily with the others, and little
was lost by Tom leaving his seat. He shifted with a sailor’s smartness
in a few minutes, and hove his abominable convict apparel overboard.
His dress was composed of such slops as the mate was attired in, black
cloth and a cloth cap. He took the oar from me, and I seated myself
again in the stern-sheets.

‘That brig is hove to,’ said I. ‘Look at her. She seems to be waiting
for us.’

I said this when she was half a mile off. She was then plain in sight;
a small brig under topsails and maintopgallant-sail; the squares of
those sails were outlined against the stars. She showed no light and
hung visionary and silent in the voidlike gloom, the sea and the night
being blent into a sort of flowing darkness by the blowing of the wind.
We drew close, and Tom, throwing in his oar, stood up and hailed her.
He got no answer. He hailed her four or five times, but all remained
deathlike on board.

‘The look-out sleeps well,’ said Mr. Bates.

‘She is derelict,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been thinking so ever since soon
after I first saw her. Shove alongside; get aboard and trim if there’s
no one to do it for us; this breeze’ll help to put the _Childe Harold_
behind the horizon before dawn.’

The vessel had, as most craft had in those days, platforms called
channels at her side, for spreading her lower rigging. She was a little
brig. The channels sat low and were but a step from our gunwale. I
easily got over the side with the others, and Will took a turn with the
boat’s painter to secure her. The low moon gave no light now to see by,
the starshine was faint, and the decks of the brig ran dark fore and
aft. We made out a house running the length of the quarter-deck. The
door was closed. Tom threw it open and shouted long and loud. No voice
answered. Not a sound was returned in answer. You heard nothing but the
rippling of the breeze-stirred waters along the bends. The mate went
forward and beat upon the forescuttle and bawled, and still we got no
answer.

It was sure we had lighted on an abandoned ship, so far as life went;
that she had been the theatre of a tragedy and was yet freighted with
some secret horrors remained to be discovered.

‘Has she a boat forward, Bates?’ called Tom.

‘No boat, sir.’

‘Jump into the quarter-boat, Johnstone, and hand the things out of her.
She’ll tow astern till daylight.’

‘There is the hand of God in this, Butler,’ said Mr. Bates, solemnly,
whilst he received the things from Will out of the boat.

‘Is the hand out yonder amongst those drenched sleepers?’ answered
Tom, sullenly and gloomily. ‘Who the devil are we to sail away with
Providence? You flatter yourself, Bates. Is everything out of that
boat, Johnstone?’

The lad answered, ‘Yes,’ climbed over the side, gave the tinder-box and
matches to Tom, then helped the boat astern with the painter.

‘We’ll trim sail,’ said Tom.

‘What course, sir?’ said the mate.

‘Oh, south--south!’ cried my sweetheart. ‘A sure course for somewhere
by-and-by; but to the south’ard now--to the south’ard now!’

The wind was about north-east. Tom put me to the wheel, which was
fixed in the old-fashioned style in front of the after-deck house. My
sweetheart tried the helm, then bade me hold the spokes, and the three
of them squared the yards on the fore and the main masts.

It was the blackest of the dark hours, and the brig slowly floated
forward in deep shadow. The only noise was the rippling and jerking of
the _Childe Harold’s_ quarter-boat in our wake. Will asked if he should
light the binnacle lamp. Tom said no; he’d show no light on deck. The
next thing to be done, he said, was to sound the well and make a light
secretly in the deck-house cabin to read the rod by. They left me at
the wheel, steering by a bright star at the starboard fore-topsail
yardarm, and after they had searched a while gropingly for the rod, the
mate put his hand upon it. They were obliged to draw the pump to sound.
Tom and Bates then carried the rod into the deck-house, where they
chipped a light and read the rod by the small glare of a sulphur match.

Tom came out and said to me, ‘There are eighteen inches of water in
the hold--nothing to take notice of, if she’s been long abandoned.
Johnstone, you and I will take first spell at the pump.’

They drew their coats off, and in a very little while the pump was
pulsing steadily to their muscular, sailorly strokes, and the water
sobbed as it gushed to the scuppers and spouted into the sea.

‘I don’t care what Captain Butler says,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates, standing
alongside of me, ‘there’s the finger of God in this!’ And he pulled off
his cap and turned his face up to the stars. ‘There is something solemn
and wonderful to me in this escape. Look how it all seems to have been
planned. The drunken revelry of the convicts; the light air of wind
blowing us into sight of this craft, then falling, as though to leave
her within reach of us; then this brig herself, instead of an open
boat--not the better for being abandoned, though but for that she’d
not be here. I say it’s solemn and wonderful, and I’m grateful!’ And
he again upturned his face.

I made no answer.

After a bit, the mate went to the pump, which they plied for some
twenty minutes before dropping the rod again, when such a sensible
decrease of water was observed as to satisfy Tom and Bates that the
brig was tight. At the expiration of half an hour they came to the
wheel to rest. Will fetched chairs out of the deck-house and we sat,
the mate keeping the wheel steady, though he was seated; indeed, the
brig, with square yards and a sea nigh as smooth as a plain of ice,
wanted little or no steering.

‘There’s a big sheet of paper lying on the cabin table,’ said my cousin.

‘A chart, perhaps,’ said Tom.

‘How did this abandonment come about?’ exclaimed Mr. Bates.
‘Everything’s right aloft; I reckon the hull’s sound; she looks a
staunch little craft. What drove the men out of her?’

‘Are they out of her?’ said Tom.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I once boarded an abandoned schooner when I was second mate,’ he
answered; ‘she was deep with wheat. Everything was as right with her as
it is with this brig. I looked into her forecastle and found five men
dead on her deck, and in the cabin lay a sixth corpse. Bates, sailors
hear and see so much that they soon forget to wonder and they never ask
questions.’

‘True, Butler. A deal’s happened since yesterday. And I don’t see the
end of the traverse yet.’

‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘you are frightfully tired. Oh, Bates,’ he cried
passionately, ‘think of what this lady has undergone for me and is
still undergoing! So good, so loyal, so--so----’ His voice broke, he
ceased, and I put my arm round his neck. ‘Dearest,’ he said, after a
minute or two, ‘we’ll find a spare sail and make you a bed in that
house there.’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Let me be with you till we are sure that all’s well.’

‘All is well.’

‘I’ll wait for daybreak,’ said I. ‘I want to know the convict ship’s
out of sight.’

Will went to the rail to look for her. The rippling of the waters,
parted by the brig’s bows, was sweet as music; it was easy to guess our
speed at between three and four knots; unless some convict’s good angel
should steer the _Childe Harold_ she’d come aback and float motionless
till the self-drugged creatures and the sailors awoke and arose and
looked around, so that by daybreak, which was yet two hours off, we
should have added a full six miles to the five at which the brig had
been stationed when we sighted her. But then by daybreak would there be
ever a man of the whole sodden mob equal to lifting his eyelids, and
realising how we had served them? There was nothing to fear from that
ship and her freight; and still I would not rest, for I wished to watch
with Tom and to behold the daybreak and view the scene of ocean it
disclosed, with my own eyes.

The waiting until the light of the morning glimmered in the east was
long and weary. Yet through that time the weak breeze blew and the
brig stemmed softly onward with a now steady swaying of her trucks
and a pendulous flap of her canvas, for on a sudden a heave of swell
had come rolling through the ocean; it was out of the north-west, and
Mr. Bates thought there would be wind behind it. We talked of the
people who had been sent adrift yesterday morning, wondered how they
had fared throughout the night, whether they would be picked up, what
would become of them. We talked of the convicts. Tom told the mate
that for three weeks the conspiracy had been maturing; by a single
word he could have preserved the ship and the lives of those who had
been slain, and he sooner would have torn out his tongue. I related my
own experiences; exactly acquainted Mr. Bates with Will’s share in my
stowaway adventure, and described my sufferings in the store-room under
the forecastle. Thus we conversed; we had much to tell.

Mr. Bates said that by the convicts’ uprisal he had lost about two
hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of property. Tom laughed low and
savagely.

‘How do I stand?’ said he. ‘Would two hundred and fifty pounds buy me
back what has been taken from me?’ Then, giving a loud unnatural laugh,
he clapped the mate on the back and cried, ‘There’ll be more than two
hundred and fifty pounds in this brig for you as a salvage job. You
came off with your life yesterday morning. That was good. This morning
you clamber aboard more than the value you have been plundered of.
That’s good still. Why, Bates, cheer up. Did I ever ask if you were a
married man?’

‘I have a wife and two children, Butler.’

‘Where do you live when you’re with them at home?’

‘Rotherhithe.’

‘D’ye remember, Bates, that I boarded the _Childe Harold_ with Miss
Johnstone and this lad in the docks? You were at the main-hatch, and I
shook hands with you, and you asked me who was that fine girl. We’ve
seen some changes since then.’ He sighed heavily and put his hand
upon mine. ‘Yes, I should have known you were married, Bates. I think
you told me--was it at Callao?--of the birth of a little one whilst
you were away. A sweet, noble and manly calling is the sea. How it
does promote love between husbands and wives by long separation! How
faithful are sailors’ wives to their husbands ashore! How loyal their
husbands when abroad! And how munificently does the calling of the
sea reward us, Bates! How many volumes would be needed to contain the
names of the rich sailors who live in mansions in England and ride in
coaches! How gentle, virtuous, religious, are the hearts which the
ocean slips into the hairy breasts of mariners! I was a good friend to
Rotch. I never knowingly spoke an ill word to Nodder. I am innocent as
surely as Christ sits on the right hand of God! Oh, the devils! the
devils!’ He started up and walked to the bulwarks and stood motionless
and silent for many minutes.

None of us spoke till he rejoined us. I longed to go to stand beside
him with my arm round his neck, but there had been a fierce cry for
loneliness in his final words, an impassioned appeal to be left to
himself in his manner of going from us which I must have been deaf and
blind not to have heard and seen.

The dawn broke in a faint lilac all along the eastern seaboard. We
stood up to look around. It was quickly a shining morning, and the rim
of the sea ran round the brig flawless. Not a feather-tip of distant
topmost canvas broke the continuous sweep of the horizon. My cousin, at
Tom’s command, trotted up into the maintopmast crosstrees, and at that
elevation surveyed the great expanse of sea. He looked and looked, and
then shouted down that there was nothing in sight. A few clouds in the
north-west, whence the swell was running; but the breeze was still out
of the north and east--a light wind that, with the small canvas the
brig expanded, gave us about four knots.

When we saw that the ocean was bare, we gazed with curiosity at the
little ship we were aboard of. Tom told Bates that he reckoned her
about two hundred tons. I have her before me as though I stood on her
deck at this moment. She was brig-rigged. Her lower masts were painted
white. Her bulwarks were tall and pierced for six guns, three of a
side. She carried, however, but two small carronades, one on either
hand amidships, and a small pivoted brass piece on her forecastle. The
inside of her bulwarks was painted green; the planks of the deck were
white; and she looked a very staunch, strong, clean little ship. A tiny
caboose stood just abaft the forecastle. Her long-boat was gone, and
she was without a boat. The after-part of her deck was filled with a
long house, with a narrow gangway on either side to enable you to pass
aft. This house sparkled with little windows; it was painted white and
green, and a short flight of steps conducted you to the roof, that was
somewhat elegantly protected by a brass rail. Everything that met the
eye was fine and smart. The harness cask, for instance, was handsome
and hooped with brass; the binnacle was as pretty a quarter-deck
ornament as ever I saw; the rigging was good, the sails fairly new, and
all things in their place. The keen eyes of Tom and Mr. Bates found
nothing amiss anywhere. Yet she had a somewhat mildewed look, as of a
craft that had been for some time drifting about without men, and in a
short hencoop on the main-deck lay eight or nine dead cocks and hens.

Tom overhung her side, and said that she was black, with a gilt line
running her length. He sounded the well when the light came, and found
the water exactly at the height at which it had stood when they had
left off pumping.

‘Bates,’ said he, ‘we’ll get that quarter-boat aboard presently. First
let’s overhaul the vessel and see what sort of yarn about herself she
can spin us. Will, hold the wheel. My lad, you look half dead; you used
not to look so when we went our walks with Marian. You shall take rest
soon--but there’s something to be done first.’

He picked up my bundle of clothes off the deck, and I and Mr. Bates
followed him into the deck-house.

Here all was as bright and clean as though the brig were fresh from
the hands of the artificers. The sunshine streamed through a central
skylight. I counted six cabin-doors, three of a side. The furniture
consisted of an oblong table, chairs, a couple of lamps, a tell-tale
compass, and other such matters. The first thing that took our sight
was a large square of paper nailed to the table. It was the back of
a white chart, and upon it was a quantity of writing in a large,
sprawling hand. Tom twisted it round without pulling it from the nail,
and the mate and I stood beside him and gazed at the giant missive.
Close to where the paper was perforated was the drawing of a coffin;
upon the coffin lid in relief was sketched the figure of a man. The
face of the man was undoubtedly a portrait. It was a rude performance,
but good. To the left was a skull, well done; to the right,
cross-bones. Under ‘To all concerned,’ Tom read aloud:

‘This brig is the _Old Stormy_, of Liverpool, bound to Cape Town with
a small general cargo. John Wilson, master (his portrait’s on the
coffin); William Nash, mate, now mince-mate, and thanks be to God for
the smallest kindness shown to sailors.

‘We sailed out of the Mersey. Our ship’s company was five seamen and a
cook. The provisions were middling good till we got out to sea, then
the little that was sweet had been scoffed, and what came next was rot
and stench--rot in the bread-bag where the worms were and stench in the
harness cask where the meat was.

‘We had been promised a daily allowance of rum. Clear of Soundings the
rum gave out. The captain said there had been a mistake in the shipping
of the stuff, and we got no more.

‘But what was this to his and the mate’s usage of us? To you, if it
concerns you, the bleeding mongrel, half-stripped by the mange, gone
mad and chased with pitchfork and brickbat, was tenderly served,
compared with us forecastle hands.

‘Yet we kept all on turning to, and we endured till patience dropped
dead and Cain stepped aboard. It happened just to the nor’ard of the
Equator, and when it was over there were six pale men left, but never a
thumb-nail width of mess. No, and there’d been no noise. No, and swift
was the job. Next thing to be done was to get away out of it. Vom-us!
was the word. Not a man could measure the sun’s height, so we’ve
agreed to go. And our reasons are twenty. You, if you’re concerned,
find them out. So here I sit, on a Friday night, writing this down as a
warning with a moral in its tail: Take heed, all you ruffian skippers
and mates, how you ill-treat good men.

                                                           ‘W. M., A.B.’

Tom ceased, and we looked at one another.

‘The man who wrote that never sailed in a ship’s forecastle,’ said Mr.
Bates.

‘Why not?’ said Tom. ‘There was a University man before the mast in one
of my ships. Is it the education here that palls ye? I believe every
word of it.’

‘Butler, the brig’s been boarded,’ said Mr. Bates, ‘and found
abandoned, and some joker scrawled out this piece of humour before
leaving.’

‘I believe every word of it,’ repeated Tom, running his eye over this
huge ocean address to those concerned. ‘How long would it take you to
draw those things and think and write this out? No man would come
prepared with it. Where’d he get the facts? We’ll look for the papers.’
He tried to draw the nail, broke the sheet from it, glanced at the
other side (the Portuguese coast) and rolled it up.

The foremost berth on the port side had been the captain’s. Seemingly
nothing had been touched. Some clothes hung against the bulkhead;
there was bedding in the narrow fore and aft bunk. All the necessary
appliances for the navigation of the vessel were here: Two good
chronometers snugly stowed in hair in a locker, a sextant and a
quadrant, mathematical instruments, such charts as the voyage might
demand, and the needful navigating books. A little hinged table stood
open in a corner; upon it was a plain writing-desk with the key
in the lock, and inside a parcel of letters in a woman’s writing,
some note-paper and a bag of sovereigns, which Tom counted and made
twenty-two.

‘Where’s the log-book?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Here’ll be her papers,’ said Tom, after opening a locker.

He pulled out a tin box and read the papers with the quickness of a
man used to such documents.

‘This is the brig _Old Stormy_,’ said he. ‘Two hundred and twelve
tons--cargo consigned to Cape Town--a rich freight!’ he added,
whistling low, ‘pianos, pictures, vases, books, furniture, clocks,
ornaments, clothes, and linen.’

Then he read out by whom the goods had been shipped, and to whom they
were consigned. The name of the master was John Wilson, of the mate
William Nash, and W. M. might be the seaman down as William Metcalfe.

The berth opposite had been the mate’s; here was found the vessel’s
log-book, from the last entry in which we discovered that the _Old
Stormy_ had been abandoned about a fortnight since, a few leagues
north of the Equator, so that she had drifted in that time to the
southward through several degrees of latitude. This might very well
have happened, seeing the canvas she was under. Two berths on the port
side were empty, though equipped for use. I mean there were bunks and
the other berth furniture. On the starboard side the two cabins abaft
the mate’s we found respectively fitted as a store-room and pantry.
All the provisions for cabin use appeared to have been stowed in the
store-room, and the little pantry was as well-stocked in crockery,
glass, and the like as the _Childe Harold’s_ before the convicts broke
it up.

This survey was quickly made. Tom said:

‘There’s plenty to eat for four people and good rooms to sleep in.
What’ll be the stock of fresh water? That’s next with us, Bates. Then
pump her out and whip the quarter-boat aboard.’

‘It’s a solemn and wonderful deliverance,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates.

‘It’s lucky,’ said Tom, coldly. He looked at the mate and burst out
fiercely: ‘Get sentenced as an innocent man to the hulks, and all the
gratitude you’ll be capable of afterward shall fill the skin of a
flea.’ Then controlling himself he added: ‘You’ll have been a reader
of the shipping papers in your day, Bates. There’s nothing of the
miraculous in the derelict. How many after this and bigger patterns
are fallen in within a year?’ He then said to me: ‘Marian, here are
your clothes. Which cabin do you choose?’

‘Choose one for me, Tom.’

‘The best,’ said he; and he carried my bundle into the cabin which we
had first explored.

I said nothing; his will was my law; he could have broken my heart by a
fierce look or an angry speech.

‘You have worn this masquerade too long,’ said he, putting his hand
upon it. ‘It unsexes my noble girl. Here is everything for comfort. I
will fetch you water. I want to see my Marian refreshed and dressed--my
proud and handsome girl again--as she was when I deserved her.’

‘Tom, you thank me sadly for following you. Deserve me! Never was man
loved as you are now. And you reproach me for following you? Suppose I
had taken the next ship. The outbreak has happened in the meantime. We
should have been separated for ever.’

‘I’d have found you! I’d have found you!’ he cried, passionately
pulling me to him and kissing me, heedless of Mr. Bates, who stood in
the open door looking about him; but, indeed, I minded as little as Tom
that the mate should see us.

My sweetheart went out, and presently returned with a bucket of
sparkling brine.

‘Now, Marian,’ said he, ‘see to yourself whilst we see to the brig.
Come along, Bates. She’s but two hundred and twelve tons, and there are
three of us.’




CHAPTER XXXIX

SHE RELATES HOW HER SWEETHEART RESOLVES TO HIDE IN AN ISLAND


The salt water refreshed me greatly, and my cheeks burned like roses
and my eyes shone when I had dried myself. A square of mirror hung
near the washstand. I had thought to see myself looking ill and yellow
and wretched; and my breast swelled at sight of my handsome, sparkling
face, so proud did my beauty make me feel for Tom’s sake.

And yet I was now grown so used to my male attire that when I had
clothed myself in my Woolwich dress, as I call it--and scarcely less
strange than my own were the fortunes of this bundle of apparel--I
found myself very uneasy. I missed the freedom of my legs. I don’t
wonder that women should struggle from time to time to invent a dress
that gives their limbs the liberty which men enjoy. However, I clothed
myself very carefully, and when I had put on my hat I thought I looked
the saucier and more piquant for my hair being cropped short. Do not
call this egotism. It is my way of telling the story. I who relate it
am old, and my youth and beauty are as the dust of half a century.

When I was dressed I stepped out to be of help. Will was at the
little wheel in front of the house. He gave a jump and his dear face
brightened up.

‘Hang me,’ he cried, ‘if that dress don’t bring Stepney close aboard!
It is but a step to the Tower, surely! And when my trick’s up we’ll go
a-rambling Epping way.’

Tom and the mate were at work at the pump. Tom kissed his hand and the
mate lifted his cap. A few minutes later the water ceased to flow.

‘A tight little ship!’ cried Tom; and he and Mr. Bates came to me.

‘D’ye remember her now, Bates?’ said my sweetheart, looking at me
proudly and with love.

‘Yes. And to think that I should have bullied you on the poop, Miss
Johnstone, when your cousin brought you to ask me for a bed! I beg your
pardon now,’ said the worthy fellow, and he slowly bowed low.

‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘I wished you to rest; but you look so brisk I’ll
allow you to keep awake for another hour. Hold this little wheel and
keep the brig’s head just as it is. There’s much for the three of us to
do, and, chiefest of all, there’s breakfast to get.’

I took the wheel and they went to work, and first they got the
quarter-boat’s sail out of her and stretched it over my head as a
shelter from the sun. This done, they hoisted the quarter-boat.
Will found the carpenter’s chest, split up some wood, went into the
fore-peak for coal and lighted the galley fire. Whilst this was doing
Tom and Bates searched the brig and found her stock of fresh water in
a considerable quantity just under the main-hatch. They explored the
forecastle, but met with nothing to tell them whether the story on the
cabin table was true or not. The sailors had left their blankets, but
taken their traps. They were British sailors, and the weight of their
clothes was not very likely to imperil the safety of the boat.

The morning was brilliantly beautiful; the breeze almost astern, the
swell on the quarter, and the brig softly and silently rippled onward,
gently heaving and breathing as she went, as she lifted with the long
ocean folds flowing in pale blue out of the north-west. I found it
easy to steer. The little vessel, like a thoroughbred to the lightest
pressure of its rein, answered to a movement of the spokes; I held the
course as I found it dead to the lubber’s mark; indeed, I think it is
easier to steer with a wheel than a tiller.

I sank into a deep reflection over what had passed since
yester-morning. Did I feel grateful for the mercies vouchsafed--mercies
linked like miracles, so wonderfully and inexpressibly fortunate to us
had the incidents since the outbreak proved in their succession down to
this, our lighting upon an equipped, well-stocked, sound, and abandoned
vessel? I fear I was not grateful. I did not lift up my heart in a
single syllable of thanks. My spirit was savage with memory, spite of
our gracious and consoling fortune; my passion for Tom overmastered
me; as he felt, so I felt; what was in his mind that I could find in
his eyes and speech instantly filled and possessed my own mind. Had he
knelt in prayer I should have knelt; but he had told Mr. Bates that
gratitude lay dead in him, so it slept in me. Luck had befallen us;
but so much had gone before which was not luck, except it were of the
devil’s sort, that I raged when I thought of it, and felt that nothing
ever could happen good enough to thank Heaven for.

Will, who acted as cook this first morning, prepared a tolerable
breakfast. Coffee had been found and marmalade; the lad fried a dish
of the _Childe Harold’s_ ham, and these things with biscuit and sugar
furnished us with a meal. The provisions we had brought with us from
the convict ship had been stowed by Bates and Tom in the store-room.
Had we met with nothing on board, that stock we had come with would
have lasted a month or six weeks.

I spied three eggs amongst the dead hens in the coop, and told Mr.
Bates of them; they were the last efforts of the poor, unhappy,
starved poultry. The mate wondered that the rats had spared them and
the birds. He picked them up and Will cooked them, and they proved--ah!
I laughed to see Mr. Bates holding his nose and throwing the cocks and
hens overboard; such work fitted ill with the dignity of a man who was
just now chief officer of one of the finest of the Blackwall liners.

That we might break our fast together whilst one of us steered, the
dishes and cups were set upon the deck and we used our knees for
tables. The brig went along so quietly that you could let go of the
wheel for minutes at a time, without a quarter-point of deflection
in the compass bearing. We were hungry and thirsty; the boat’s sail
overhead cast a pleasant shade upon us; the breeze blew through the
little gangway on either hand of the house and fanned us whilst we
breakfasted.

Mr. Bates and Will talked much of the convict ship, of the chance of
her people, and the like. Tom sat quiet, and I thought moody. Often he
fastened his eyes upon me, but with a look as though he saw something
beyond. I feared that he was overwrought and dead wearied, and I longed
to pillow his head on my arm that I might watch him sleeping. All on
a sudden he flushed up and, with a hard, small, satiric smile, whilst
his eyes seemed to brighten into fire as though taking light from the
contrast of the blood in his cheeks, he cried:

‘Bates--but what right have I to call you Bates? I should “mister” you,
hey?’

‘Oh, Tom, dear!’ I exclaimed.

‘Why, see here, now,’ he continued, and he spoke fiercely: ‘I’m a
convict, Bates. There’s no getting away from that. Do you call this
liberty? No more than the liberty of a wretch who breaks from a hulk,
who’s a convict while he swims, who’s a convict when he lands, who goes
to his grave a convict, though he keeps free.’

The mate looked at me with alarm.

‘You’re a good fellow. I believe,’ Tom went on, ‘and you think me a
wronged, innocent man. But I’m a convict always. Why, haven’t you
watched me whilst I tramped in a gang to the tune of a fiddle, watched
me at a felon’s work about the deck of the ship you were chief mate of,
watched me with the irons upon my legs as I shuffled out of the hatch
to the cries of a brother-convict? You’re a respectable man--oh, very
respectable! So was I once, but they swore my liberty and honour away
and broke my heart. Doesn’t this association with a convict and his
familiar accost of you as “Bates” shock your respectability?’

I could not bear his wild looks nor to hear more. I flung my arms round
his neck and burst into tears.

‘Butler,’ said the mate, ‘this is uncalled-for. What you were when I
first knew you, you still are. A more honourable heart never beat in a
sailor’s breast. Did they make me a convict yesterday by clothing me as
one? No more they made you a malefactor by sentencing you. Soothe the
poor lady and give me your hand, old man.’

I drew my arms from Tom. He took the mate’s hand and stooped his head
to it. Will, whose face worked with sympathy and distress, motioned
to me as though he would have me give my sweetheart time to rally.
Presently Tom lifted his face. Tears were in his eyes, likewise an
expression that warned me not to seem to heed him. The mate, with the
tact of a gentleman, talked to Will about Captain Sutherland, whose
lady he knew. He named certain ships which Sutherland had commanded.
Thus he gossiped on, meanwhile proceeding with his breakfast.

Tom got up and walked to the bulwarks, and stood looking at the sea
over the rail. I watched him with impassionate anxiety. I could not
gauge his mood, and knew not what dreadful impulse might suddenly
govern him. He rejoined us, and said, looking at the mate:

‘Your wish, of course, is to return to your wife and children?’

‘No unnatural wish, I hope, Butler,’ answered Mr. Bates, forcing a
laugh.

‘What is to be done?’ exclaimed Tom, measuring a short length of deck
with swift paces. ‘There’s no home for me to return to. I hate the
thought of England. Let me establish my innocence, and still I detest
England.’

‘Establish your innocence,’ said the mate, ‘and they’ll grant you a
free pardon, and the old country would be as it ever was to you.’

‘Grant me a free pardon!’ cried Tom, stopping in his walk and looking
at the mate. ‘What am I to be pardoned for? Sins I never committed!
Pardon me? Curse them! Where would I go? I must think. Give me a globe
of the world. Stab through England--through the heart of that little
bog of land that bands and irons and exiles its honourable toilers--and
where the point comes on out t’other side is the spot I’d choose, if
you grant me but a rock there to live on.’

‘My dear Butler,’ exclaimed Bates, ‘there is no need for me to assure
you, I hope, that I quite see how you are situated. You have your
liberty, and you must keep it.’

‘Aye, indeed!’ cried I.

‘You must sail to some place where you’ll be safe,’ continued the mate.
‘I owe you my life, and with your leave I’ll stick to you till I see
you safe. We’re brother-sailors, Butler. I know what’s expected of me,
and I know my own heart.’

‘Mr. Bates, I thank you,’ said I.

‘It won’t be human to carry you where I shall wish to go!’ exclaimed
Tom. ‘They’ll get news of the convict ship at home, and your wife will
think you dead. And, then, here’s Johnstone.’ He placed his hand upon
the lad’s shoulder. ‘Must I carry him about with me till I’ve fixed
a spot? He’s got a good home and fond parents. And then there’s his
calling. Why, what kind of a precious outlook is this sort of thing for
man, boy, or beast?’ he exclaimed, with a sneer.

‘It’s seeing the world,’ said Will.

Tom laughed, but with no face of merriment.

‘What place is in your mind, Butler?’ said the mate.

My sweetheart made no answer; his eyes were fixed upon me. Bates
repeated his question, and still Tom gazed at me in silence.

‘Marian,’ said he presently, ‘you are with me, dearest. Is it your
wish to remain with me?’

‘Where you go I must go, if you would not break my heart.’

‘What’s there to prevent your living in England, Captain Butler?’ here
interrupted Will. ‘Aren’t there wilds and solitudes in England in which
a man could burrow as secretly as in the loneliest island in the ocean?’

I frowned, observing Tom’s face, and bade the boy hold his tongue.

‘I’d run no risks if I were you, Butler,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘Would ye
take a suggestion or two amiss?’

‘What d’ye want to say, Bates?’

‘You’ll want a place where there are no English. No need to lift the
Southern Cross into view to find it.’ He looked at me. ‘There are
scores of villages in Spain, away over in Austria and Hungary, down in
Italy and other Mediterranean nations, in any one of which, under any
sort of colour you choose to fly, you’d flourish as secure--you and
this lady as your wife--as if you mined a lodging for yourselves in a
Galapagos rock.’

‘We’ll not live in Europe,’ said I; ‘London is always too close there.’

‘London’s the safest place in the world to hide in,’ said Will.

‘Don’t talk of hiding,’ cried I, angrily.

‘Bates,’ said Tom, turning his eyes from me to the mate, ‘it’s under
the Southern Cross you named just now that I mean to seek my lodging
for life. Since it’s come to this, I would to God this lady were my
wife. But it’s to be brought about. Patience! Patience! Oh, Bates,
how often have I whispered this word “patience” to myself! But the
consideration kinks the line for running, Bates. Long ago my mind was
resolved that if ever I stole or got my liberty and had this true heart
at my side, I’d dwell in the middle of the ocean in the very loneliest
of the islands that are washed by salt water. D’ye know Tristan
d’Acunha?’

‘Tristan d’Acunha!’ muttered Will, staring at me.

‘It’s inhabited,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been ashore there, talked with
Corporal Glass, sat in his house, made him presents.’

‘An Englishman?’ said I.

‘Once an English soldier, getting on to be an old man now, Marian; ill
of a cancer that will kill him; an honest man who’ll welcome us. But
there’s no clergyman; there was none in my time.’

‘The Cape isn’t many weeks off,’ said Bates.

‘No, and that’s in my mind, too. There are parsons there,’ said Tom,
‘and vessels to carry us to the island again; you and Will ’ll take the
salvage you’ll get on this brig at Cape Town, and so home.’

‘English men-of-war touch at Tristan,’ said Will.

‘One in about eighteen years; whalers often enough, Marian, to find
us fresh safety in the South Seas should a fit of flitting take us.
There are goods under here,’ said he, stamping the deck, ‘that’ll earn
us a cordial hand-grip at Tristan. They’ll represent my share of the
salvage. Why, it’s right that a convict should take what he wants,
hey, Bates? My life will be in your hands, of course.’

‘I wish there was no other risk,’ said the mate.

‘Marian, this is not my scheme of this moment,’ said Tom, sitting down
beside me. ‘I found it there,’ said he, pointing to the sea and meaning
the convict ship. ‘But a new thought has come out of Bates’s words;
we’ll touch at the island and I’ll have a talk with Glass, get help to
carry us to a port, and we’ll return in a hired craft man and wife.’

I gave him my hand to hold; I could have wept with happiness to hear
him talk thus. I had feared throughout that, loving me too well to yoke
me to his fate, he would oblige me to go home with Will and the mate,
and hide himself alone.

‘Are you in earnest, Butler?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Brutally in earnest.’

‘Saints, Marian! What’ll father and mother think to hear of you as
living on Tristan d’Acunha?’ cried Will.

‘That’s where it is!’ exclaimed Tom fiercely, rounding upon the boy, ‘I
shan’t be safe!’

‘Not as my cousin’s husband?’ said Will. ‘Who’d talk?’

I frowned to silence him. I wanted no ill feeling between these two.

‘Who’s this Glass you speak of, Butler?’ said the mate.

‘When Cloete’s garrison was withdrawn, Glass was left as a volunteer in
charge of a wreck and some military stores. That was in ’24. Two seamen
of the St. Helena squadron settled on the island with him. You know,
of course, that Tristan was occupied by a detachment of our artillery
while Bonaparte was at St. Helena?’

‘Where did they find wives?’ said the mate.

‘Glass brought a mulatto woman from the Cape; the other settlers got
negresses from St. Helena. The population was about forty when I was
there; though some of the women are well-built and handsome, their
complexions run from milk to chocolate.’

‘Suppose the convicts steer foul of the island,’ said Will.

‘Any houses?’ said the mate.

‘Cottages. They build them with blocks of lava.’

‘What’s to eat there?’ inquired the mate, who listened with a sober
face of interest.

‘I can’t tell off-hand; fish and potatoes, I know; there’s a little
fruit; they grow crops, and Glass told me of a number of wild goats and
spoke of so many heads of cattle belonging to some of the people, along
with poultry and pigs.’

‘We shan’t starve,’ said I, laughing.

‘There’s over eight thousand feet high of rock for me to hide under,
Marian; and away down in the mightiest of all ocean solitudes
too--’twixt the two Capes--and the climate’s delicious.’

‘Who’ll cash cheques there for you, Marian?’ said Will.

‘Tom,’ said I, ‘one question I’ll ask--what’ll be your story to the
Governor Glass?’

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘that’ll be for you and me to think out. Bates, there
may be fifty respectable reasons why a man should loathe what’s called
his native country and expatriate himself. Or call it a whim. My wife
and I,’ said he, fondling my hand and faintly smiling as he looked
at me, ‘have a mind to live in mid-ocean. Whose business but ours is
that? I’ve lost my ship. I’m a broken-hearted bankrupt. Who’ll give me
the lie? My brave girl loves me, and nothing must separate us. And so,
Governor Glass, I say, with your good leave, I’ll sail away and get
married, and come back to you with my bride. Eh!’ he cried, looking
eagerly and hotly from Bates to Will. ‘There’s no lie there, I believe?’

‘Why, sir, you have the yarn!’ exclaimed my cousin.

‘Johnstone spoke of cashing a cheque at Tristan,’ said Bates, with a
grin, which vanished in an earnest look. ‘I shall get home, I hope, and
if I can be of the least use----’

‘Oh, thank ye, Bates; thank ye,’ interrupted Tom. ‘We’re bound to
go to civilisation to get married, you know, and there’ll be Miss
Johnstone’s opportunity for making the arrangements she may think
proper.’

The mate gravely bowed his head.

‘Marian, get to your cabin, dearest, and rest,’ said Tom.

He rose, and I rose instantly with him. He took me by the hand, and we
entered the berth he had bid me use. He tossed the bedding out of the
bunk, leaving the mattress, which was new and clean.

‘Sleep, dear one,’ said he. ‘God knows you need it.’

I was about to speak. He checked me, and said that rest was needful;
that there was work to be done outside; that if he began to talk he’d
keep me waking for hours, so full was his mind; then kissed and left
me.




CHAPTER XL

SHE HELPS TO KEEP WATCH


I got into the bunk, but it was long before I fell asleep. The light
was brilliant. The port was open, but the wind was aft and breezed
through the gangways, and but little entered the cabin. I lay thinking
over Tom’s talk with the others, and my spirits danced and my heart
beat with happiness. Isolation! There could be none where Tom was.
And then we should be man and wife before he settled down upon that
wonderful, remote, heaven-kissing island of the South Atlantic. My
imagination made a paradise of it. I figured a handful of quaint
cottages, a little community of people simple of heart, pure of
life; I dreamed of wild-fowl gaily painted, of the huge breakers of
the Atlantic roaring in foam and ramparting our ocean hiding-place,
of sweet, cold fruit in volcanic hollows, and a monstrous mountain
marble-topped with snow. A hundred like imaginations made up the
picture. But above all--but above all--was the promise of Tom’s safety
in that mid-ocean island; no other visitors than rough whale-men; in
eighteen or twenty years but one man-of-war, and always the world on
either hand, the Capes for choice of fresh retreats, any one of them as
happy as a dream of Heaven to me whilst Tom should be at my side.

I awoke exceedingly refreshed. I guessed by the colour of the light
that the afternoon was far advanced. The door of the cabin opposite
stood hooked open, and in the bunk in that berth lay Tom sound asleep.
I crept to his side and gazed at him. His expression was wild, as
though some violent dream troubled his brain; his lips stirred and he
breathed hard and short, frowning sometimes, with a tremble in his
eyelids as though he was about to look at me. I put my lips to his
forehead, whereupon he sighed deeply, ceased to mutter, and his face
took an expression of repose.

Fearing to break his rest, I softly stepped out.

Some cold meat, biscuit, and other food were upon the table. Through
the deck-house window I spied the head of Will standing at the wheel.
I was hungry, and cut some beef and quickly made a meal, meaning to
relieve Will at the wheel. A bottle of wine stood on a swing tray. I
drank half a wine-glass of it. It was an excellent cordial sherry or
Madeira brought from the store-room, where I had observed a number of
such bottles.

When Will saw me he exclaimed, ‘You have had a fine sleep! Your cheeks
are red with it.’

‘How long have you been standing here?’

‘About an hour. I relieved Butler, who is lying down in one of the
cabins.’

Mr. Bates at that moment came out of the caboose. He grinned as he
walked aft and said, in his slow way, ‘I never expected to turn cook
when I shipped as chief officer, Miss Johnstone. But the galley fire
must be seen to if we’re to have hot water for a cup of tea. You seem
the better for your sleep.’ And he stationed himself alongside of me,
first casting a look upon the compass and then glancing aloft.

The breeze had freshened whilst I slept; the swell was no stronger,
but now the wind was freckling it with little featherings and dartings
of foam. The brig was making good way, and hissed smartly onward. The
west was rich with hot colours, and the sun hung there in a rayless,
swollen mass, not distorted, but so huge that it filled me with wonder.
Many little clouds, coloured to the complexion of blood, sailed across
our mast-heads into the deepening violet of the east, where the ocean
flowed like a sea of gilt--a marvellous contrast with the blue it
brimmed to. ‘It reminds me,’ said Mr. Bates, pointing to it, ‘of a
Chinese plain in the rice harvest.’

‘We are under the sail of the morning,’ said I.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘But I expect we’ll roll up the topgallant-sail and
mainsail when Butler wakes up.’

‘Shall the four of us be able to manage till we reach Tristan?’ said I.

Mr. Bates gazed at me thoughtfully without speech.

‘Marian,’ said my cousin, ‘can’t you get this island scheme out of
Butler’s head?’

‘I like it!’ I cried quickly.

‘The island’s a long way off,’ said Mr. Bates.

‘How far?’ said I.

‘About two thousand miles, Miss Johnstone.’

‘How long will it take us to get there?’

‘Perhaps a fortnight, perhaps a month,’ answered Mr. Bates.

‘I’m jolly sorry now,’ said Will, sinking his voice, ‘that we fell in
with this brig. Not but that she isn’t deucedly useful and the very
bucket to pray for--with such a cargo in her hold to salve, too, not to
speak of the hooker herself--if it wasn’t for that smothering island of
Tristan. But you’re never in earnest in deciding to settle there?’

‘Shall we be able to manage without further help, Mr. Bates?’ said I.

‘Why,’ said he, ‘it’ll be a tight fit. You’re pleased to speak of four
of us.’ He smiled and gazed up at the masts. ‘Call us three sailors
and four helmsmen. But at sea what must be done often will be done.’

‘If Captain Butler will let me wear my boy’s clothes,’ said I, ‘I’ll
go aloft and try to be of use. But you can’t climb in petticoats, Mr.
Bates.’

‘Marian, Butler will do anything for you,’ said Will. ‘Clap a purchase
on his love and rouse this beastly island scheme out of him. We want to
get home.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Mr. Bates and I.’

‘I am pledged to stand by Captain Butler, Johnstone,’ said the mate.
‘He saved my life, and I’ll stick to him till he sees his way to let me
go.’

I seized the worthy man’s hand and pressed it.

‘Will,’ said I, ‘were you to live to be a hundred, the whole of the
wishes of your long life would weigh with me no more than a grain of
sand against Tom’s safety.’

‘But will he be safe at Tristan?’ cried Will.

‘Where would you carry him?’

‘Anywhere but to Tristan,’ answered the lad. ‘Won’t the man, Glass,
that he talks of, discover who he is? Everything leaks out, even
away down on a mangy rock in the middle of the sea. You’ll blab in a
nightmare. They’ll not keep a convict----’

‘Never call him that, Will, or I’ll kill you!’ I shrieked, rounding
upon him in one of my old swelling fits of rage, breast heaving, eyes
sparkling, cheeks on fire.

‘I meant no insult!’ exclaimed Will. ‘Butler’s as innocent as I. I
spoke of him as they’d think of him down in that island if they found
out who he was. Or, let him hide there if he chooses. Is such an island
as Tristan fit for you to live and die on----’

‘Oh, Mr. Bates,’ I exclaimed, passionately, ‘Will knows what I have
sacrificed, what I have suffered, and he talks now as if I did not love
Tom!’

‘Come and take the air on top of this deck-house, Miss Johnstone,’ said
the mate. ‘We shall disturb Captain Butler if we stand here.’

My temper, however, soon cooled. I loved my cousin too heartily to be
long angry with him. He was little more than a boy, too. He believed in
Tom’s innocence, and had not meant to pain me. Mr. Bates and I walked
with soft tread on the roof of the deck-house that Tom might sleep.
Up there we got the full sweep of the breeze and a wide sight of the
sea. I watched the magnificent picture of the dying day, the perishing
glories in the west, the liquid gloom in the east with a trembling
star just above the water-line shining like the white lantern of a
lighthouse, and I conversed earnestly with the mate on Tom’s scheme,
explained that in any case he and I must go into hiding, and that the
safest retreat must be the best, even though it should be a barren,
melancholy rock in the middle of the ocean.

‘He was sentenced to fourteen years,’ said I. ‘If he returns before his
time is up, and is caught, he will be transported for life.’

‘Yes,’ said the mate, ‘he told me that. And not long since it was a
hanging offence.’

‘But what would be his punishment if they caught him now?’ said I.
‘He, a convict, consents to take charge of a ship seized by convicts!
They’d prove him a ringleader and kill him.’

I walked and talked for about half an hour with this kind and worthy
man, told him a great deal about my early days, of my first meeting
with Tom at Uncle Johnstone’s, and entered at large upon my reasons for
sailing in my sweetheart’s ship as a stowaway instead of following him
in a passenger vessel. I then got him to talk about his own life and of
his wife and his children, and whilst we walked the evening drew down.

The brig was now rushing forward at a fine pace. Her topsails were
large sails and her maintopgallant-sail was set, the weather clew of
the mainsail was up, the lee clew aft, the staysails were down, the
trysail brailed up, and the only sail aforemast was the fore-topmast
staysail. The wind had quartered the brig, and under her wide wings and
over the smooth western heave that was now shrilly ridging the vessel
drove along.

‘She is a fine little ship,’ said Mr. Bates, standing with me at the
after end of the deck-house. ‘Our lighting upon her is a wonderful
and solemn thing, and perhaps, after all, we shall one day learn that
she was derelict for the reasons related in that queer letter we found
below.’

Just then Tom came up the ladder. He held my hands whilst he asked me
if I had slept well.

‘My nap has made a new man of me,’ he said. ‘What’s the weather going
to be? Bates, there’s a frisky spit in the water, isn’t there? But
there’s no weight of wind as yet to hurt. Let’s give her all she’ll
take. She walks, by Jericho! A fortnight of this will be bringing the
corporal aboard.’

‘What shall I do? Make me useful, Tom. Shall I get supper?’ said I.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Is the galley fire in, Bates?’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘Tom,’ said I, ‘I’d like to shift these petticoats for my _Childe
Harold_ dress. You want seamen; I’ll make you one.’

‘You’ll keep dressed as you are, Marian,’ said he.

‘Very well, dear, but don’t rate me for being slow.’

I then went down the steps to the little caboose. The fire made a light
here. I lighted a lamp, returned to the cabin for some tea, lighted the
lamp there and also lighted the binnacle lamp for Will, who told me he
was growing confoundedly sick of steering. I told him I’d take a spell
at the helm when I had got supper ready. My labours aboard the convict
ship had thoroughly qualified me, and no old hand as a steward could
have gone to work more adroitly and with a clearer perception of needs.
I brought a large pot of tea to the table, rearranged the food that was
already there and added to it, and by eight o’clock all was ready and
the interior of the deck-house as shining and comfortable a sea-picture
as the eye could wish to rest on--quite hospitable and civilised,
with a white cloth, good cutlery, and glass and crockery equal to the
_Childe Harold’s_.

Before I was done, however, Tom and Bates had clewed up the
maintopgallant-sail and furled it. They had also hauled the mainsail
close up to the yard, and I was in the cabin when Tom asked me to
hold the wheel that Will might help him furl that big sail. This they
accomplished smartly; they were three sailors and strong, and after the
rig of the convict ship the brig’s fabric of yards and spars seemed no
more than a long-boat’s.

Having got hold of the wheel, I would not let go till one or all of
them had supped. I was not hungry, and was much refreshed by my sleep,
and I found a sort of pleasure in grasping the spokes and controlling
the meteoric flight of the little vessel through the star-clad blowing
darkness. I steered her as easily as I had steered a Thames wherry,
and was proud and thankful to be of so much importance and use at such
a time as this. And there was another feeling that swelled my heart
whilst I held that wheel. It was as though Tom were mounted behind
me, and I, with the reins in my hand, was thundering him to safety
away from all risk and possibility of pursuit, across a boundless dark
plain.

Presently Will, with a pipe in his mouth, steps out and lays hold of
the wheel.

‘You again,’ said I.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘but not for long. Get you in, old woman. They’re
scheming watches and want you.’

‘Will,’ said I in his ear, ‘not another word against Tristan.’

‘Such a rat-hole to choose!’ said he. ‘No post-office, no bank, no
docks, no tea-gardens! He’ll let me get home some day, I hope! But I’m
mum on the matter from this moment. I don’t like your looks when you
threaten me. You’d slit my throat to please Tom!’

I boxed his ear and entered the cabin.

I sat down beside Tom, who gave me some tea, and I made a light supper.
He told me that he and I would keep watch till midnight, and Bates and
Will till four. They would then relieve us. We did not sit long. Whilst
I ate, our talk was all about Tristan. He seemed very resolved.

‘We’ll heave-to off the island,’ said he, ‘and I’ll go ashore or send
for Glass. There may be a parson on the island by this time. I hope
so. It won’t do to go away to the Cape and get married, Marian. Table
Bay is all too public. The town’s full of English, and then this brig’s
consigned there, and they’ll want the story of our falling in with her
and how it came about.’

‘They’ll print what they hear; they have newspapers,’ said the mate.

‘We’ll see what help the islanders can give us. I’d sooner head west
than east for a parson, Marian.’

‘One should go west to get married. Heading east makes time, and the
less time the better when the job’s over--occasionally,’ said the mate
with a dull smile.

‘We’d return in the brig to Tristan,’ continued Tom, who seemed not to
know that the mate had made a joke, ‘and Bates and Will would proceed
for the Cape with a yarn of falling in with the _Old Stormy_ that’ll
utterly sink my name out of the matter.’

So saying, he went to his berth, and returned with a seaman’s jacket
and a good, almost new, shawl for the neck. He wrapped me up, saying
that I’d be obliged to stand sometimes at the wheel, whilst he looked
about him; and that of a night, though a man be under the Line, yet, if
it blows, he’ll need plenty of clothes at the helm.

I took the wheel from Will, who went to a cabin to sleep. Bates lay
down in the berth he had chosen; and Tom’s and my watch began. It was
then drawing on to nine o’clock. There was no moon as yet. The wind
blew somewhat strong off the quarter, but it came warm. The dew was
very heavy; and every time the brig rolled the reflection of a large,
beautiful star just past the maintopsail yardarm shot like a summer
flash of lightning along the wet deck. The brig was under very easy
canvas, though the whole topsail and foresail swept her along in foam.
The sea throbbed black over the rails, with here and there a little
burst of phosphoric light in some head of curling yeast.

Sometimes Tom came to the wheel and held it, and then we talked
shoulder to shoulder for half an hour together. Sometimes I’d sit in
the cabin for rest and shelter, then steer the brig whilst Tom mounted
to the roof of the deck-house to take a view of the sea.

About ten I think the moon rose and shone very yellow; the sea looked
vast, dark, and lonely when the orb floated clear of the dusky
atmosphere over the edge of the ocean, and cast a sickly flickering
wake upon the black tremble of waters under her. There was a little
clock in the cabin; it had been set right at noon that day: when it was
midnight by it I roused Will and the mate, and Tom and I went to sleep
in our respective berths.




CHAPTER XLI

SHE VIEWS THE ISLAND OF TRISTAN D’ACUNHA


I fell asleep quickly and my slumber was sweet, for it was one long
dream of Tom. Earnest and full of passion at times had been our talk
whilst we stood together at the wheel, and the imaginations of my
slumber were richly coloured. At four Will awoke me, and I rose with
the promptitude of a sailor, and had relieved Mr. Bates at the wheel
before Tom came out of his berth. It was very dark. My cousin, instead
of going immediately to his bed, went up the steps to the top of the
house; he stayed two or three minutes, then putting his head over that
we who stood below might hear him, for Tom had now arrived, he cried
out: ‘I guess I was right; now I’m sure of it. Captain Butler, there’s
a sail dead in our wake, and she seems to be overhauling us hand over
fist.’

Tom and the mate ran up; presently Will looked over and called down:
‘Marian, starboard--d’ye understand me?’ I answered by immediately
putting the helm over.

‘Steady!’ shouted Tom. I whirled the little wheel back and kept the
brig’s head straight at about two points off the course we had been
pursuing.

‘Take the wheel, Johnstone,’ Tom cried, ‘and keep your ears open, my
lad.’

I surrendered the spokes to my cousin and mounted the steps with
eagerness and expectation; I had caught a note of excitement in my
sweetheart’s voice. The shift of helm had brought the wind almost
directly over the stern of the brig; I looked along the white line
of her wake, thinking to see the ship at the extremity of it, but,
beholding nothing, I asked Mr. Bates where the sail was. He pointed
over the lee quarter, and there to be sure hung a big dim cloud of
canvas.

The moon was low and without power; the stars had grown wan since
midnight, as though to the approach of dawn or as if to a gathering of
windy thickness; the ship astern was visible by a kind of light of her
own in her canvas--she showed as an iceberg might by night, or a tall
snow-covered hill. I stood near Tom, the mate joined us, and we watched
the white shadow growing out of the gloom.

Our change, of course, so postured the stranger that in a manner of
speaking she was crossing our stern, so that she’d pass on our weather
quarter close to.

‘I believe it’s she--I believe it’s she!’ Tom muttered, speaking to
himself.

Nothing was said for some time. The foam broke from under our counter
in a trail of light like the glittering scar left by a meteor in the
sky. We were washing through it at seven knots, and the great dim cloud
of canvas astern at eleven or twelve. She had now shaped herself into a
clear outline against the thin stars, and I could see the white water
boiling at her forefoot.

‘Captain Butler,’ exclaimed the mate, in a voice of agitation, ‘that’s
the _Childe Harold_!’

‘Yes! She’s the convict ship,’ said Tom, catching me by the hand. ‘Do
you see that her main-royal lies furled? Whither away? Whither away?’
cried he, looking at the ship.

‘Fore and maintopmast stu’n’sails!’ exclaimed Mr. Bates. His voice
quivered, now he recognised the ship he was first officer of but a
little while gone.

She loomed up upon our quarter in a thunderous heap of pallid flying
shadow, and the low red western moon and the lean stars and the throb
of black waters, flashful with foam, ridging southwards, were the
fittest setting the night could have contrived for her; and that deep
spirit of desolation which in the dark hours of the ocean morning
spreads out of the gloomy distance was present and abounding. She
showed no light, but the foam which broke in masses from her bows and
fled along her sides swift as smoke touched the fabric of the noble
ship’s hull with its own radiance, and we viewed her as though by
moonlight.

She was about a quarter of a mile distant when she swept past us. All
that way off I heard the drum-like roll of the wind in the high white
spaces of her canvas, and the sullen, continuous roar of the water
she parted. And all the time she hung to windward, drawing ahead and
opening out the squares of her sails till their hollows, blackening
upon us, showed like a growing thunderstorm upon the sea-line, but with
never a wink of light from cabin window or binnacle-stand. Tom and the
mate commented upon her; my sweetheart in a rapid, fierce voice; Bates
sulkily.

Tom said: ‘The devil’s in command there, and he has stocked her
forecastle with a troop of devils.’

‘They’ll be no worse than their shipmates,’ said the mate.

‘How they’re driving her! Our escape has woke them up! There’s fear and
there’s meaning, too, in that press. Where are they bound to, and who’s
to carry them there? Are they lying drenched and drugged and damned
again as last night, thick as poisoned rats one atop of another? Oh,
the beasts!’

‘I guess what’s happened,’ said the mate, in a gloomy voice. ‘That chap
with a cast eye, who put the scheme of the Pacific Islands into their
heads, has taken charge of the ship. There’s a sailor’s hand in that
spread of cloths. Butler, they’ll know where they started, from what
you told them; that cast-eyed rogue’ll heave the log and plump foul of
what’s nearest and split. Lord, what a beautiful ship to run away with!
And they’ll lose her, they’ll lose her!’

‘They’re steering straight for Tristan d’Acunha,’ said I.

‘Aye, straight as a fly crawls up a pane of window!’ exclaimed Tom.
‘She’ll make no Tristan. They’ll head off for the Horn, and continue
their navigation with a chart they can’t read and a dirty forefinger.’

‘If Barney Abram but knew we were in this brig!’ I exclaimed.

Tom left the top of the deck-house and let go the maintopsail
halliards. The big sail bellied out from the yard on the cap, losing
its driving power, and in a few moments the brig’s pace sensibly
diminished.

‘Let her get out of sight,’ said he, returning. ‘There’s no horizon
wide enough to divide us. Why, Bates, think of daylight coming along
and a stark calm falling, and yonder ship of devils, with Nick at the
helm and Barney at the prow, lying stagnant within an easy boat-row!’

‘Here’s a wind to blow her clear of us, sir,’ said the mate.

They continued to talk; I, with my eyes fastened upon the fading
shadow, sank into deep thought. Was that ship out there the vessel Tom
and I and Will had boarded in the East India Docks? Was she the craft
into whose black-hole under the forecastle I had crept, when all was
silent in her prison ’tweendecks, while she lay at rest alongside the
_Warrior_ hulk? Was she the theatre of the tragedy of the convicts’
uprisal, of their nightmare carousals? Was it yonder shadow fast
blending with the gloom upon the waters, whose fabric had re-echoed
the obscene songs, the blasphemous jokes, the insane yells of the
self-freed felons?

No more for a time than a wonderful horrible dream did it all seem to
me as I stood looking--a frightful vision from which I must awaken and
find myself in my bed at home, starting up to grieve and yearn for Tom
as of old, and saying to myself: This dream came to me by thinking,
before I fell asleep, of what his life would be on board the convict
ship and how I was to make sure of joining him in the country he was
transported to.

The shadow vanished. It was the last we ever saw of the convict ship.
It was the fittest of all disappearances for her. The folds of the
morning darkness swallowed her up as though she had been thundered at
headlong speed into the blackness of death’s dominions, whose obscurity
was thickened yet by the vapours of the inextinguishable fires.

I started, sighed, and passed my arm through Tom’s.

At about eight o’clock this morning there was a lull in the wind; it
then shifted suddenly into the south-east, blowing small at first, but
freshening afterwards until it had settled into the steady pouring
of the trade gale. I held the wheel while the three braced the yards
forward, and soon the little brig was humming along on what sailors
call a taut bowline with her fore and main royals set, and as fair
a prospect of fine weather to windward as ever the noble commercial
breeze of the South Atlantic painted in clouds and dyes of clear pure
blue.

This same morning, after breakfast, I still steering the little ship,
Tom and the others overhauled the vessel afresh. They lifted the
main-hatch and took a look below. They entered the lazarette, searched
the fore-peak, closely again examined the crew’s sleeping-quarters.
They met with everything essential in the equipment of a small
brig--suits of sails, carpenter’s tools, boatswain’s stores in plenty.
Indeed, Tom said she was the best found craft of her sort he had ever
seen.

He found a brace of pistols and ammunition for them in the captain’s
cabin. There were no other small-arms on board.

When the brig had been trimmed for the trade-wind, they went to work to
chock and secure the _Childe Harold’s_ quarter-boat in the place where
the brig’s long-boat had stood; afterward, Will mixed a pot of paint
and painted out the name ‘_Childe Harold_, London,’ in the stern of
the boat. Mr. Bates then carefully gauged the stock of fresh water and
found a handsome supply, sweet and good.

And now, till we made the island of Tristan d’Acunha, there befell
nothing worthy to detain you. We found no difficulty in managing the
brig. Larger ships than the _Old Stormy_ had been handled and safely
worked across the wildest and widest breasts of ocean in the world
by crews at least as small as ours. My share consisted in cooking,
preparing the cabin table for meals, steering when my watch came round
and when Tom was weary of standing at the wheel or wished to get upon
the deck-house top to look about.

Both Will and Bates fell very quiet. They read Tom’s resolution in his
face and they heard it in his voice, and they came into his scheme of
touching at Tristan as though they themselves had been escaped convicts
eager to hide.

Many a long talk did I have with Tom over his project, and I know that
I never breathed a syllable in opposition to his wishes. Particularly
do I recall a conversation we held one night in the first watch; he
steered, and I, who was tired, sat on a chair close beside him. The
trade-wind sang shrill betwixt our leaning masts; regularly as the beat
of a clock the brig heeled to the slant of the windward surge and bowed
her lee side till the froth spat and snored along the very line of her
bulwark-rail.

‘No, Tom,’ said I, answering him; ‘don’t call it banishment. Banishment
for me must be where you are not.’

‘I’ve tried, for your sake,’ said he, ‘to think of another and a better
plan, but Tristan in my mind for ever stands steadily best and first.
Let Bates and Will believe we mean to settle there. Our imprisonment
shall be just as short or long as we choose.’

‘We can leave when we please?’

‘Whalers are constantly calling at the island; they fish in many seas,
and they’ll give us a wide choice of retreats.’

‘Yet I wish Corporal Glass didn’t know you.’

‘Why? By knowing me he’ll the more readily believe in my story. What
have I to dread? Suppose news reaches the island of the seizure of
the _Childe Harold_, would Glass and the few simple families of the
place imagine me a convict? Not surely in the face of the story I must
relate, Marian.’

‘When the news gets home they may send men-of-war to search for the
convict ship.’

‘My dear, I am a sailor first of all; put it thus: The _Childe Harold_
will be fallen in with; no need to search for her in that case. Or she
may founder. Never imagine that of so great a company every soul will
perish; she has boats, but a single survivor would suffice to acquaint
them at home with her fate. And how must the yarn run as regards
myself? The convict who took command got away in a boat. What became of
him? Let them find out.’

He cried out vehemently after he had said this, ‘Oh, my own, that I
should be forced to hide! But it has come to it. You are with me and of
me, Marian; but what sort of future lies before you?’

I arose and kissed him, and, with my arm about his neck, held my cheek
pressed to his. He calmed down quickly, and I got him to talk to me
about the island. He told me that when the British troops landed in
1816, the only person on Tristan was an Italian. He was in possession
of a large sum of money; but they never succeeded in finding out who he
was, how he came by the money, or what had become of his companions.
Tom said that the idea of seeking a refuge in that island had occurred
to him in the time when the convicts were planning the seizure of the
ship. His long chat with Corporal Glass on the occasion of his visit a
few years before occurred to him, and he remembered many things that
he had seen and heard, such as the little group of cottages situated
on the tabled tongue of land, the scanty stock of domestic furniture
and utensils, the abundance of English farm-produce, bread, bacon,
eggs, butter, milk, poultry, and the like. For groceries and clothes,
he said, the families depended on a passing emigrant ship or American
whaler. They used no money. Ships were glad to exchange what the
islanders wanted for potatoes and such fresh provisions as the island
yielded. This is what I can recollect of what Tom told me of that
island.

The days passed quickly; the work of the brig kept our hands full, and
when, of an evening, I looked back on the hours, I’d marvel at the
swiftness of their flight. The south-east trades failed us; we then
took a strong wind out of the west, which drove us along with the speed
of steam. There was small doubt now of our making the island within
the fortnight, computing from the day when we fell in with the brig.
At long intervals a sail hove into view, but we never sighted anything
within speaking distance, nor would Tom have had anything to say to a
ship, though she had come close enough to be within hail of the voice.

It was Sunday morning. I was aroused by Will, who beat upon my
cabin-door. He asked me if I was awake. I answered, ‘You may hear me.’

‘Then,’ said he, ‘step out and take a look at the island Butler’s to
make you queen of, for I’ll be hanged if the heap of cinder isn’t right
over the bows.’

I clothed myself in a breathless hurry, and, coming out, found Mr.
Bates at the wheel and Will on the bulwarks, looking ahead, and Tom
on the deck-house roof, pointing the brig’s telescope at the sea. The
morning was bright and silent. A light north-easterly wind held the
canvas hushed. Long lines of swell were flowing out of the south-east.
For leagues northward and eastward the sea was full of the light of the
sun.

I looked directly ahead, and instantly beheld a large, dim, violet
cloud upon the horizon.

‘Is that Tristan d’Acunha, Tom?’

‘Yes!’ he exclaimed, turning quickly. ‘That’s our island, Marian.’

‘A noble hiding-place!’ I cried.

Indeed, that point of shadowy land lying upon the mighty face of the
deep was such a revelation of loneliness that, when you viewed it and
thought of the measureless leagues of ocean stretching from it west
to the South Pacific, east to the Australian meridians, you thought
that here only in this prodigious liquid waste was earth’s deepest,
wildest, most awful secret of solitude to be learned and solved.

Tom’s eyes were upon me. He brought his face close and whispered,
‘They’ll never think of us as being there.’

‘It’s as lonely as a star.’

‘We’ll be getting a better view presently. I hope there’s nothing lying
off. If there is, I’ll push on and heave-to behind the horizon till I
think it’s gone.’

‘Is there a harbour, Tom?’

‘Oh, no,’ he replied, with a shake of his head and a faint smile.
‘No other harbour than a two-mile offing. That heap is about eight
thousand feet tall. You see but a little of it. The mass from midway’ll
be wrapped up in a cloud. The inshore wind strikes and rebounds in
offshore gales. I’ll not leave the brig. They’ll put off, and if
they’ll lend me two or three hands to work us, then, after I’ve
introduced Glass to you, if he’s well enough to board us--and spun my
yarn to him with you as the only listener’--and here he glanced at
Will, who still overhung the rail, looking ahead--‘we’ll proceed.’

I did not ask where to; we had talked the thing over and over again,
and the four of us were agreed that nothing could be settled till
we were off the island and saw how affairs stood there. It was just
possible that a missionary parson had settled in Tristan since Tom’s
visit; in that case we could be made man and wife out of hand and so
spared a new voyage in search of a church. Then, again, nothing could
be decided until we knew that the islanders would lend us two or three
of themselves to help work the brig.

The wind scanted as the day advanced, and we were further hindered by
a heavy, long-drawn swell off the port bow. There was no chance of
our reaching the island before dark within communicating distance. At
sunset the huge mass of towering rock was about two leagues away, and
even then a most wonderful sublime sight. Bodies of orange-coloured
mist clung to the mountain, whose snow-crowned peak, piercing the
sun-touched vapour, gleamed in a soft rose in the delicate evening
blue. We saw no vessel under the island or upon the sea-line. The
lofty land swiftly darkened into the liquid dusk when the sun sank, and
over it, where it stood invisible, hung the stars of the Southern Cross.

The cabin barometer promised fair weather; the brig flapped onward
through the darkness, bowing deeply to the swell; but somewhere between
eight and nine, Tom considering we should need the offing we then had,
the three backed the yards on the main, and the vessel was brought to
a stand. The lighter sails were clewed up and furled, and the mainsail
snugged by its gear.

Whilst Tom and the others were aloft and I was at the wheel, I heard
a strange hissing noise close to. It was like a locomotive blowing
off steam. The rolling of the brig depressed the bulwarks and gave me
a sight of the sea, and I spied, at the distance of a pistol-shot,
the great black body of a whale, with a jet of water, bright with
phosphorus, sparkling plume-shaped out of it. Tom from aloft called
down to me to look, but the monster sank almost immediately, and if it
reappeared I neither heard nor saw it.

This trifling incident somehow wonderfully accentuated the vastness and
solitude of the ocean to the mood that was then upon me. I strained my
eyes in the direction where I guessed the island to be and pictured
myself upon it, gazing upon the dark plain of the deep, sensible that,
saving two adjacent rocks, no land was to be come at for hundreds and
hundreds of leagues. The shadow of the mighty ocean mountain was upon
my spirits, not in a depressing or a despondent weight, but with an
influence that subdued and awed me. I thought of that part of London
in which I had dwelt, the streets filled with the noise of people
in motion, the lighted shops, the ceaseless rattle of wheels, the
docks complicated as a giant cobweb with rigging and masts pointing
in silence into the gloomy river sky, the flash of lanterns on the
water, the starry lines of lamps on either bankside, of my house at
Stepney; and I beheld my father and mother again with my mind’s eye,
and Mr. Stanford’s strange, sickly child; my unloved dead sister; I
thought of my aunt’s cheerful house near the Tower, the pleasant,
hospitable rooms above the offices, the piano at which I had sung, the
supper-table round which we had gathered; and then I searched the dark
distance for the shadow whereon I was to dwell, and said to myself,
if there should be a clergyman there, by this time to-morrow I may be
Tom’s wife.

I shivered and pressed my head. A sense of the unreality of my
existence came upon me; it was a sort of madness whilst it lasted.

Tom had descended the rigging and came to my side, and, unable to
control myself, I threw my arms round his neck and burst into tears.

He held me to him and called to Will, who had just sprung from the
bulwarks, to take the helm, and led me into the deck-house and seated
me.

‘What is it, Marian?’

He eyed me anxiously, his face almost stern with gloomy apprehension as
he asked the question.

‘We have gone through so much, Tom, and the end is at hand. Let me
cry;’ and I hid my face and wept again.

He held his peace till I looked at him, and then said, ‘Marian, it’s
not too late.’

‘What is not too late?’

‘Bates and Will will take care that you reach home safely.’

‘Oh, Tom, it’s not in your heart. You don’t mean it.’

‘Marian, my love for you makes me feel a villain for permitting you to
have your way. Why did you cry?’

‘Because I was afraid.’

‘Afraid! Oh, yes! Such a home even for a year, even for a month, might
terrify a stouter heart than yours into more than tears.’

‘I was afraid because I thought to myself, standing alone just now
and recalling the past and looking into the darkness where the island
lies, all this must be a dream--I shall awaken from it and find Tom a
prisoner and away from me, and my heart aching for him.’

He viewed me with impassioned earnestness; his face lighted up; he
smiled with one of those looks which brought him before me in the days
of his glowing, manly beauty, when I had first met him, when calamity
was still afar and all was well.

‘Dearest!’ he said, and coming to me he tenderly rested my head upon
his shoulder; and thus we sat with our hearts too full for speech.

The brig being hove to, the helm needed but little or no attention. The
wheel was secured, and the vessel lay in the hollow of the large, wide
swell, rolling as regularly as the breast rises and falls in sleep. It
was decided that the three should divide the watches, one keeping a
look-out at a time and the others lying near, handy to arouse. Tom told
me to rest throughout the night, and I obeyed him; but my rest was very
broken, and when I slumbered I dreamed strangely.




CHAPTER XLII

SHE MEETS THE TRISTAN ISLANDERS


I was awakened shortly after daybreak by Tom. He called to me that it
was a fine morning, with a pleasant air of wind, and that I was wanted
at the wheel whilst he and the others trimmed sail. I passed through
the cabin-door to the wheel, and found the morning fair and bright
indeed, the air delicate and soft as a tender day in May at home; the
wind was north, blowing directly for the island, which, when I went on
deck, was off the starboard beam, a giant lump of land, truly, and more
imposing than Teneriffe, as I have heard sailors say, because of its
colour and loneliness, though the mighty Canary peak soars to nearly
double Tristan’s altitude.

It stood at a distance of seven or eight miles. The upper half of the
mountain was clothed in motionless lines or wreaths of steam-white
cloud, but the snow-clad summit sparkled in the early sunshine and
looked like the moon, but more brilliant, soaring out of vapour. The
base was of a dark and sullen hue.

Will loosed the lighter sails, the yards were squared, and the brig
floated slowly toward the island. I saw no ship, and was mightily
thankful. We got breakfast; and when that meal was ended, Tom bid me
prepare the table for company; he said some of the islanders would come
aboard when we hove to again, and must be hospitably welcomed. I made
the best show to be contrived out of the brig’s larder, and put some of
the _Old Stormy’s_ wine on the swing trays. Whilst this was doing, Tom
went into his cabin and carefully shaved and dressed himself. They had
found clothes belonging to the murdered master and mate of the brig,
and neither Tom nor Bates had scrupled to wear them.

When my sweetheart stepped out, he was more like his old self in
appearance than I had seen him for many a long day. He wore blue cloth
trousers and waistcoat, and the round jacket that had come from the
_Childe Harold’s_ slop-chest; the collar of his sailor shirt lay open
and exposed his finely shaped throat above the black silk handkerchief
carelessly tied there. He had found and put on a sealskin cap, which
suited him admirably well.

‘This is a good, hospitable spread,’ said he, looking at the table.
‘This will warm the cockles of the corporal’s heart. The poor fellows
are not always dealt with as though they came off hungry--at least by
French and Yankee whalers.’

He took up the brig’s glass, and I followed him to the top of the
house, wishing Will good morning with a kiss of my hand as I passed
him at the wheel. Bates, on top of the house, stood soberly surveying
the island. He said to Tom: ‘The yarn’s to be left to you, I take it,
Butler, and my part’s to nod?’

‘That’s it,’ said Tom.

He pointed the glass and carefully swept the island and the sea on
either hand of it, then bade me look. The huge volcanic rock was now
between three and four miles off. The base was of perpendicular cliffs
of lava, about fifty feet high. Beyond was a level strip of land,
backed by the mountain, which rose abruptly to about four thousand
feet, then shelved peakwise to its star-searching height. The swell
burst against the iron foot of the island and boiled in a wool-white
line. Thick heaps of white cloud clung to the towering eminence, but
the summit remained visible, a delicate white, glittering like a
sugar-loaf in the rich morning blue.

‘D’ye see the houses, Marian?’ said Tom. ‘Look away to the left, low
down.’

I pointed the telescope, and presently saw a number of little cottages,
situated on the north extreme of the long level strip of land. I did
not quickly distinguish the buildings. They were of the colour of the
mass of rock, and mingled with the background.

You’ll suppose I gazed with passionate interest. There before me, large
in the lenses of the telescope, lay my new home. I wondered which
of the cottages might fall to Tom and me--whether we should have to
build for ourselves. How was life spent upon that island? How did the
slender community occupy and amuse themselves? Tom had talked to me of
farming, seal-hunting, fishing, cultivating fruit-trees in the sunny
and sleepy hollows of the several little craters. But surely the days
were peaceful and to be happily spent; and if that lovely island did
but give Tom the safety and heart-ease I prayed for, I’d be willing to
pass my whole life upon it, and share a grave in it with my dear one.

Thus ran my thoughts whilst I looked. I put the telescope in Tom’s hand
again; he eyed me inquiringly and anxiously. I answered his look by
saying, ‘It is beautiful and calm and grand; I can imagine no spot I
would choose before it.’

When we were come within two miles of the shore, the brig’s topsail was
backed and her light sails furled; by the time this was done I, who had
secured the helm and gone to the deck-house top to take another view of
the lava-coloured swelling places, spied a white boat making for us;
by help of the glass I counted four men in her. She came along quickly.
We went to the gangway to receive the boat, and Will stood by with a
line.

Tom, looking through the telescope, exclaimed, ‘The corporal’s not one
of them! I believe I recollect the stroke oar--it’s Peter Green, a
Dutchman.’

‘The corporal may be dead,’ said I.

‘It will not matter,’ he answered.

The white whale-boat swept alongside; the coil of line flung by Will
was caught; three of the fellows scrambled aboard by way of the
main-chains, and the fourth followed quickly after thrusting the boat,
secured by the line, clear of the brig. Three of them were elderly
men, and one middle-aged; they were dressed in large grass hats, blue
jackets, and two of them in trousers of a fearnought. Tom stepped up to
the man that had pulled stroke, and, giving his hand, said:

‘You’re Peter Green. Do you remember me?’

The fellow had an old homely Dutch face, withered by the wear of
weather, the smallest eyes I ever saw in a man, lodged deep in mere
gimlet-holes under the grey and white of his shaggy brows. I was
pleased, however, by his look of simple kindness and good-nature. He
stared with a wrinkled, smiling face at Tom, and said, ‘Yaw, we hov
met; vhas it on dot island?’

Tom named the date of his visit, the ship, and was recalling one or two
incidents, when Peter Green again shook hands: ‘To be sure! I remembers
you now. And how vhas you, sir, after all dis time?’ and he cast his
little eyes around the decks as though in search of the crew. ‘Dis vhas
your lady, I expect?’ said he, looking at me and touching his hat.

Tom slightly inclined his head and said: ‘This is Mr. Bates, chief
mate, and yonder young gentleman, Mr. Johnstone, this lady’s cousin.’

‘Und dese,’ said Peter Green, waving his hand toward his three mates,
who stood near him, ‘vhas my goodt neighbours and friendts--Mr.
Alexander Cotton, dot vhas long in your Royal Navy; Mr. Andrew Hagan,
dot hails from Boston; and Mr. William Daly, dot vhas likewise of your
navy.’

Each man, as his name was pronounced, saluted with a deep sea-bow. I
regarded them earnestly; they were to be neighbours of mine soon. What
was the colour of their wives, and how many children had they?

‘You’re in time for dinner,’ said Tom. ‘Step into the cabin, will you?
Johnstone, my lad, give an eye to the brig whilst I entertain our
friends here.’

We entered the deck-house in a body.

‘Bit short-handed, capt’n, ain’t ye?’ said old Cotton, gazing about him
with slow motions of the head.

‘We’ll come to that soon,’ said Tom. ‘Friends, seat yourselves and
fall to. Marian, there’s a chair for you next Peter Green. Bates, I’ll
trouble you to uncork some of that wine on the swing trays.’

My presence seemed to embarrass the poor islanders; they did not speak
whilst their plates were being heaped. They eyed me shyly and would not
eat after they had been served.

‘This is good ham--this is middling beef, Mr. Green,’ said Tom. ‘It’s
the best welcome our little ship will allow us to give you.’

Peter Green bowed his head with the courteous gesture of a fine old
gentleman, and then, observing that everybody was served, he stood up
and, with a countenance of great devotion, said grace. The others hung
their heads in a posture of prayer. Mr. Bates was greatly impressed;
Tom and I exchanged looks--I saw that he was well pleased that I should
have witnessed so soon this little illustration of the islanders’
habits. Grace said, the three old fellows and the others ate heartily,
and conversation then flowed.

‘How is Corporal Glass?’ asked Tom.

‘He vhas not very well to-day,’ answered Peter Green. ‘Dot cancer
troubles him. But I tell him he vhas goodt for many years.’

‘Please God!’ said William Daly.

‘Anything called off you lately?’ said Tom.

‘Nothing for five weeks,’ answered Hagan, with a nasal accent, ‘and
she was a French whaler.’

‘Got a clergyman yet?’

‘Nein,’ answered Peter Green. ‘Der governor wrote by a South-Seaman to
der Bishop of Cape Town. Der vhas no reply yet.’

‘Parsons ain’t penguins,’ said Cotton. ‘I tell ’ee, captain, the
clergyman as comes to live amongst us ’ll be a-dedicating of his life
to his Maker, arter a fashion you may overhaul the lot of your parishes
at home afore finding the like of.’

‘Are there many young children among you, Mr. Green?’ said I.

‘Why, yaw, considering, marm. Dere vhas t’ree generations of us;’ and
he named the number of children.

‘Don’t time hang a little heavily with you?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Well, we gets up early and we turns in early,’ answered Daly, ‘and
what’s between somehow seems to slide out unbeknown. We turns a day up
as you turns a sandglass up, and the stuff runs so fast and sly that
it always seems to be time to go to bed or time to be getting up.’

‘It vhas eighteen hoondred and twenty-four dot Corporal Glass vhas
governor,’ said Peter Green. ‘Dot vhas joost fourteen years; und a
leetle while ago, when we keep his birthday, he vhas saying it vhas all
der same as fourteen days, so queek vhas time.’

‘Any of you left lately?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Two men took on home-sick last year,’ answered Hagan.

‘How’s the school getting on?’ inquired Tom.

‘Foorst class,’ answered Green. ‘But I tell you vhat ve wants. Ve want
more young men. Dere vhas too many fimmen.’

‘Too many of either will eat you up!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘When I was last
here, Glass told me that the island could never be got to support more
than two hundred people.’

‘Vell, dot vhas right.’

‘Will the corporal be able to come aboard? I want to see him.’

‘Not to-day, I expect,’ said the grey-haired old man-of-war’s man
named Daly. ‘That there lip of his is a-worriting him. We’ll put ye
ashore, capt’n. The governor’ll be glad to welcome ye.’

‘We’re well off for potatoes,’ said Hagan, ‘and there are a few stones
of prime beef at your sarvice. Goats grow scarce. Water-casks want
filling?’

‘Why, perhaps. I must see to it,’ said Tom.

‘Vhat might der be in your holdt to barter mit?’ asked Peter Green.

‘Much that’ll prove useful to the island,’ said Tom; ‘and that’s one of
the matters I wish to see Governor Glass about.’

‘Come ashore with us, capt’n,’ said the Dutchman.

‘I can’t leave the brig,’ answered Tom. ‘We’re short-handed.’

‘So! I vash vondering where der crew vhas.’

‘Gone dead?’ inquired Hagan.

‘No. They took the boat and ran from the brig in mid-ocean. There were
five of them and a cook. The beauties left a note behind them to let
us know what had become of them, that we shouldn’t feel uneasy. Mr.
Peter Green, your British merchant seaman slowly and steadily improves,
morally and intellectually. He has hauled down his bloody flag and
chucked his blunderbuss to the mermaids, and now ships as a respectable
man under a house flag and is rarely guilty of worse crimes than
swearing away his captain’s liberty and life, or slitting a windpipe in
the middle watch and making off in the ship’s quarter-boat.’

‘I do not exactly understand you, sir,’ said Peter Green, who had sat
straining his withered, good-natured Dutch face to catch Tom’s meaning,
his few black fangs of teeth slowly masticating the while, as though he
chewed the cud.

‘There ha’n’t been no blood shed, I hope?’ said the old fellow Cotton.

‘The aforemast crew of the brig consisted of five seamen and a cook,’
said Tom. ‘They said that stuff there,’ and here he pointed to a piece
of salt beef, ‘wasn’t sweet enough for such choice gums as theirs,
so they stole the boat and made off--a new way of running from a
ship, Mr. Cotton, eh?’--the old man-of-war’s man gravely inclined his
wrinkled face--‘and left us too short-handed to enable me to go ashore
with you now and visit Governor Glass. But he’ll come aboard, I hope?’

‘Vhere vhas you from, capt’n?’ inquired Peter Green.

‘The brig’s from the Mersey.’

‘How’s the Mersey a-looking?’ exclaimed Daly, with an expression of
eagerness in his old eyes.

Peter Green thrust in again.? ‘Vhere vhas you bound?’

‘The cargo’s consigned to Cape Town.’

‘Dis vhas a leedle out of your road.’

‘Why, yes. But I’ve called to see Corporal Glass.’

‘Dere vhas t’ree shipwreckt men on der island,’ said Peter Green, ‘dot
ve vhas glad to get rid of, und dot vhas very thankful to ship mit you.’

‘Call ’em two,’ said Hagan; ‘the sick man’s no use.’

‘Dot vhas a very bad look-out for der ship und her people!’ exclaimed
Peter Green, whose glass I had filled with wine. ‘Tell der story, Mr.
Hagan.’

‘Why,’ said Hagan, speaking through his nose, ‘it was like this: I had
stepped out of my cottage just as day was a-breaking to take a look
’round; away out nor’-west I see something black--just a black speck.
Wal, I borrows the governor’s glass and makes out a ship’s boat, with
an oar stepped and something white flying from the head of it. Three of
our people, Miller, Riley, and Swain, agree with me to go and have a
look at the boat. So we launches, and what do we find? A boat with four
men in her; one man dead, another seemingly dying, t’other two too weak
to sit up. We got ’em ashore, buried the body, and brought the others
to. Him that seemed dying is a bit better, but he looks queer, and, to
my mind, ain’t a-going to last. He hurt himself somewheres insides when
the scramble happened in the fire. The other two are all right, and all
three want to get away.’

‘Survivors of a fire. I take it?’ said, Tom.

‘Yaw,’ answered Green.

‘Smart little barque,’ said Hagan; ‘burned to the water’s edge. The
people got away in two boats. Them that’s ashore is the skipper and
mate and an able seaman.’

‘Who’s the sick man?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Der mate,’ answered Peter Green.

‘How long have they been with you?’ I asked.

‘T’ree weeks, marm. Captain,’ exclaimed the Dutchman, turning to Tom,
‘did you know the leedle ship? She vhas called--she vhas called--ach,
my memory!’

‘The _Arab Chief_,’ said Hagan.

‘The _Arab Chief_!’ exclaimed Tom, speaking slowly.

‘Did you know her, sir?’ asked Peter Green.

‘A fine clipper barque of six hundred and thirty tons,’ said Tom,
speaking deliberately, with so sudden a change of voice that the
islanders looked hard at him.

‘That’s the vessel,’ exclaimed Hagan.

‘You have her master and his mate on the island?’

‘Aye,’ replied Green.

‘Bates, hand me that bottle,’ said Tom. He poured out a quarter of a
tumblerful of rum, mixed a little water with it, and swallowed the
draught. ‘Do you know the names of the master and mate?’ he inquired,
after a pause.

‘Very vell indeed, if dey vhas not pursers’ names,’ answered Green.
‘Von vhas Captain Samuel Rotch. Der odder vhas Meester Nodder. Der man
vhas John Collins.’

‘I’ll return in a minute. I must look to the brig,’ said Tom, and
walked out of the deck-house.

I was thunderstruck. I could not credit my senses. I looked at Mr.
Bates, who looked at me, and I felt my face as white as the cloth
upon the table. Rotch and Nodder on that island! The two fiends who
had sworn away Tom’s liberty, made a felon of him, ruined, degraded,
shipwrecked his life, forcing him down here to hide his guiltless head
in the shadow and solitude of the towering ocean mountain upon whose
shore calamity had cast them--those two incarnate devils within reach
of an easy boat’s row, and themselves willing to ship in the brig and
sail away in her! I thought my heart had stopped breathing. I could
scarcely fetch a breath.

Peter Green looked hard at me and said: ‘Poor lady, I hope you did not
feel ill, marm?’

‘Take no notice of the lady,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘These attacks are
passing, and due to the heavy rolling. Drink a little wine,’ said he.
He passed me a small glassful. He then added: ‘The fresh air will
revive you; I recommend you to join the captain on deck.’

I rose, and so did Peter Green, and offered me his hand as though to
conduct me. I had now my voice, and, forcing a smile, begged him to
keep his seat, and went slowly to the door. I found Will standing near
the wheel, which was secured, and said to the lad: ‘Go in and get your
dinner and hear the wonderful news. But say nothing. Be satisfied to
listen, and answer no questions, lest the villains ashore get scent of
us, and keep themselves out of Tom’s power.’

He gazed at me as though he believed me mad. I advanced a little way
along the deck, so as to command a view of the top of the house.
Up there stood Tom, grasping the brass rail, motionless, just as I
recollected his figure once in the convict ship, his eyes rooted on
the island. He was bare-headed. I re-entered the cabin for his cap,
which lay on the deck beside his chair, and then went up the ladder.
My sweetheart took the cap and put it on. The motions of his arms and
head were mechanical, as though he had been mesmerised and moved only
when commanded, but never before had I seen on his face the expression
it now wore. It was a look of fierce, savage delight; his whole
countenance was dark with a scowl, in which lurked a faint, terrible
smile. But how is my weak tongue to express the outward aspect of his
mood then? I dared not speak to him till he had addressed me. He turned
his eyes presently from the island and said, with a voice and manner
as fierce as his face:

‘What do you think of this? There is a God and there is a devil, and
God always wins.’

‘Are they your men?’

‘Rotch and Nodder! Rotch and Nodder! The one the captain, the other
mate of the _Arab Chief_! My men? What other man’s if not mine?’

‘Tom, you look mad. I feel as you do, but this is a moment for
passionless thought. The islanders will be coming on deck in a moment
or two; they’ll carry the story of your sudden strange agitation
ashore. Rotch, if Rotch it be, may ask questions, get your description,
and stop where he is. Do you mean that to happen?’ cried I; and when I
had said this I felt the blood mount like fire to my face. I stretched
out my hands toward the island, and in the fit of uncontrollable wrath
that possessed me motioned like a mad woman, as though I beheld an
apparition which my delirium compelled me to seize and drag. Again I
could hardly breathe; and though my heart was bursting to counsel him,
I could not utter a word. The sight of me in this state did him good;
I mean it made him see the folly and uselessness of wild temper and
raging words at such a time.

‘Yours is the passion, not mine,’ said he. ‘I have made up my mind. I
know exactly what to do. I am glad to have you here to speak to. Words
give relief--a little relief.’ And, clasping my arm, he led me to the
extremity of the deck-house.

‘It’s too swift, startling, wonderful to bear!’ I cried, squeezing my
brows to ease the vile ache of throbbing there. ‘What do you mean to
do?’

‘Bring them into this brig and keep them in her till they confess,
though I should have to sail about the world with them till the vessel
goes to pieces,’ he answered.

‘Then you won’t settle upon that island?’

‘Not now--not yet awhile, not until I have received Messieurs Rotch and
Nodder on board and dealt with them.’ He added: ‘I want time to think.
My brain’s in a whirl. If Rotch hears that I’m the man who has charge
of this brig, he’ll not come.’

‘Peter Green knows your name.’

‘I believe not. He has not called me by my name. Did he ask it below?’

‘Not in my hearing.’

‘Butler is no uncommon name, and I’m changed--too changed to be
recognised by the scoundrel in any description of me Peter Green is
capable of.’

‘But Corporal Glass may recollect you, Tom, and name the ship you
arrived off the island in.’

‘That won’t help Rotch. He wouldn’t identify me as his man by hearing
the name of a ship he’s not likely to have heard I sailed in.’ He
looked at the island, and cried: ‘My scheme is wholly changed. But I
have not yet formed a resolution. We’ll talk it over when the islanders
are gone. Bates shall counsel me as well as you. Let me but get hold of
them here, and by my heavenly Maker, Marian, they shall swing if they
don’t sign a confession of my innocence.’

‘Tom, be calm now, dear. The islanders are leaving the cabin. Keep
your feelings under. They stared at you at table. Here now may be God’s
own gift of a chance to establish your innocence. Don’t risk it, don’t
spoil it, by want of self-control.’

‘See to yourself,’ said he, almost smiling. And as he spoke these words
the head of Peter Green showed above the top of the ladder. The four
islanders, accompanied by Mr. Bates, came on to the deck-house roof.

‘Vell, und how vhas you now, marm?’ said the Dutchman.

I answered that the fresh air had made me feel well again.

‘Und you, captain? Vhat vhas your hurry? Vhas you afraid of der vetter?
Der vetter vhas all right.’

‘Had any rollers here lately, Mr. Green?’ said Tom, in his ordinary
voice.

‘I think dere vhas no rollers,’ answered the Dutchman, ‘since six
weeks.’

‘You’re in for a spell of quiet weather, captain,’ said old Cotton.
‘We’re obliged to you for a first-rate blow-out. Dunno how it is;
there’s a sweetness in wittles at sea which my old teeth never can
find in grub ashore.’

Hagan, who had stepped to the end of the deck-house to see if the
whale-boat rode safely, now joined us and exclaimed: ‘If you’d care to
go ashore, capt’n, I’ll remain in the brig in your place.’

‘No, I won’t go ashore; it isn’t as though I hadn’t visited your
island. Perhaps you’ll bring Glass off to-morrow.’

‘Vhat vhas your name again, captain?’ said Green. ‘Dot I may tell der
governor vhen he asks who vhas his old friend in der brig.’

‘Don’t you tell him,’ exclaimed Tom, with a loud, forced, unnatural
laugh. ‘There is sometimes pleasure to be got out of surprise, Mr.
Green. Besides, curiosity may coax him into paying me a visit; name
me, and the corporal will say, “Oh yes, I remember,” and stop ashore.
I propose this,’ he continued, speaking rapidly as though to overwhelm
immediate thought in his hearers by crowding new ideas upon them.
‘First, what can you let us have?’

Old Daly answered that they could supply the brig with a small quantity
of fresh beef, plenty of potatoes, a little fruit, eggs, poultry, and
goats’ flesh.

‘We shall want to fill our water-casks. Will the islanders do that for
us if we send that boat?’ said Tom, pointing to the _Childe Harold’s_
quarter-boat chocked in room of the brig’s long-boat.

‘Oh yes; that shall be done,’ said old Cotton.

‘We’ll take all you can let us have,’ continued Tom. ‘And, by way of
exchange--Mr. Bates, be good enough to carry our friends into the hold
and break out some cases of wearing apparel. They shall value the stuff
for themselves.’

‘At once, sir?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘At once,’ responded Tom, stepping to the skylight to look at the time.
‘It’s a quarter to three. I shall want a wider offing for the night,
and don’t want to tow that boat out to sea.’

The mate and the islanders went away in a body. Tom began to pace the
deck, often gazing at the island, his brows knitted, his face very
fierce and dark. I guessed by his looks he wished to be alone, and
quietly descended the ladder, at the foot of which stood Will smoking a
pipe.

‘Marian,’ he cried, ‘this is an amazing thing to happen!’

‘Aye, but you mustn’t look amazed. We mean to get the wretches in our
power. Sooner than come aboard they’d climb to the top of that island
to escape Tom if they suspected who we were.’

‘What does Butler mean to do?’

‘I can’t tell you, because he doesn’t himself know.’

‘Bringing those fellows aboard doesn’t look like your settling on the
island, does it?’

‘Tom won’t settle on that island now, not if two of the castaways there
are Rotch and Nodder and we can tempt them into the brig.’

‘And a precious good job for you!’ exclaimed the lad, with his eyes
fixed on the island. ‘Look at it! Imagine living out your life there!
You’ve dined with specimens of its male society. What are its ladies
like? The worth of Butler’s love for you has sunk hideously in my
esteem ever since he planned such a rat-hole as that for you to live on
merely because he’s got to hide his head.’

‘Hold your tongue!’ I cried. ‘Your esteem! What sort of tape do boys
like you measure the love of such a man as Tom with?’

The dear fellow puffed at his pipe with a little temper, but,
controlling himself, said: ‘When the rogues come off they’ll see Butler
and shout to be set ashore again.’

‘We are not fools,’ said I; and my head beginning to ache again, and
this sort of talk being profitless, I went into the deck-house cabin
and sat down.




CHAPTER XLIII

SHE SEES CAPTAIN ROTCH AND MR. NODDER AGAIN


Mr. Bates and the others were a long time in the hold; they found
trouble in getting at the goods they wanted. I cleared the table and
tidied the cabin, hot with thought all the time I worked. If Rotch and
Nodder were truly on the island and we got them into the brig, how
would this amazing venture end?

Meanwhile I held off from Tom; I heard him walking overhead; the scheme
he himself lighted on was sure to prove the best, and I guessed when he
wanted me he would seek me.

At last Bates and the islanders came out of the hold. Tom descended the
steps to talk with them, and I walked out to hear what passed.

‘Captain,’ said Peter Green, ‘ve vhas very glad to exchange mit a
leedle of what ve hov seen. Dere vhas some goodt useful shirts, und ve
find der boots und flannel joost vhat ve’ll be thankful for in a month
or two.’

‘Very well,’ said Tom, who now had himself wholly under control. ‘The
arrangements will stand thus, Mr. Green: I’ll take a three-mile offing
and heave-to till daybreak. You’ll then come off in your whale-boat
with all you’re able to load, and bring some hands to carry our boat
ashore for fresh water. Is the hose still connected with the cascade?’

‘Ay, sir,’ said old Daly.

‘Boats water lying outside the surf?’

‘Dat vhas so,’ said Peter Green.

‘Well, when you’ve victualled and watered us, you’ll bring off the
three men who want to get away.’

‘Vhere vhas you bound to again, captain?’ said Peter Green. ‘Ach, my
memory!’

‘To Cape Town,’ answered Tom, quick in his answer as the report after
the flash. ‘Will that suit them?’

‘Dey vhas very grateful. Und so vhas ve. Der language of dot Captain
Rotch does not always please Governor Glass. He vhas impatient, und
vhas not enough thankful to Gott for his life. But, den, poor doyfil,
he has a wife und shilds at home, und den again he has lost his ship,
mit a goodt deal of property for a hard-verking seafaring man.’

After a little more conversation to this effect the islanders got their
boat alongside, shook hands with us all, and went away. It was hard
upon five o’clock. All day long a light breeze had been blowing. Now
and again the water crisped friskily close off the island, as though
to a down-rush of cold breeze from the giant mountain slopes; but the
spread of air was local, and no break of it came within a mile of the
brig. The sky was pure, cloudless blue--the rich sky of the Antipodean
summer; and the ocean, flowing stately in majestic folds of swell,
was at this hour of a most lovely violet colour. The beautiful tint
of sea and sky was in the atmosphere, and tinged the lofty mass of
mountain to its snow-line. The vapour of the morning had dissolved upon
that eminence. It now stood in naked, lovely grandeur. The westering
sunshine flung a faint, delicate dye of rose upon the snow on its top,
and the same fair tint lived in the line of foam that boiled the length
of the whole base of the bit of solitary land. The white whale-boat
making for the island showed like a melting snowflake, as she rose and
sank upon the blue heave.

‘We’ll head out three miles, Bates,’ said Tom, ‘and then sit down and
talk.’

The maintopsail was swung, and the brig’s jibbooms slowly rounded into
the north. I went to the galley to see to the fire and boil water
for tea. There was nothing in sight--no feather-tip of remote ship’s
canvas--nothing but that mountain of Tristan d’Acunha, now darkening
low down, then strangely glowing out in snow with gleams here and there
as of waterfalls.

The helm was secured. The brig was under topsails and foresail only;
small need for a constant look-out on such a bright, calm, sweet
evening as this. We seated ourselves at the table, but neither Bates
nor Will nor myself broke the silence till Tom spoke.

‘Some wonderful things have happened,’ said he, ‘since the convicts
seized the ship, but nothing so wonderful as those men being on the
island I meant to hide myself in.’

‘It’s God’s doing,’ said the mate.

Tom inclined his head.

‘There’s no doubt of their being the right men, d’ye think, sir?’
exclaimed Will.

‘The _Arab Chief_, my lad, and then Rotch and Nodder! Oh, no doubt,
Johnstone.’

‘You’ll not take it amiss, Butler,’ said the mate, ‘if I ask what
notions you’ve formed--what resolutions may have come into your head?’

‘First, as to receiving them on board,’ said Tom, speaking quietly and
leisurely, though there was a look in his face which put an accent and
meaning into his words that the ear with the eyes closed would not have
caught. ‘I must be out of sight. Glass may come off. I’ll lie up in my
cabin, and sham indisposition. Should Glass come, I’ll talk to him in
my berth. You’ll receive the men and attend to all that needs looking
after until the islanders go and sail’s trimmed. I’ll then show
myself.’ He looked at me as he said this, and smiled.

‘I quite understand,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘You can leave everything to me.’

‘Bates, I would trust you with my life.’ He paused, with his eyes fixed
upon the mate. ‘Afterward, you’re thinking?’ he continued. ‘Well,
that may be as it shall turn out; but I’ve sworn this by my heart, by
that lady there, and by my Maker, that, having them, I’ll not let go
of them, Bates, till they’ve signed a declaration of my innocence and
their own villainy, witnessed by all hands; that, having them,’ he
repeated, with the blood mounting into his face and his eyes glowing
as though he were in a high fever, ‘I’ll keep them on the high seas to
give them time to sign; failing which I’ll hang them at the yardarms of
this brig, though it should come to my going to the South Sea to find
savages for their executioners.’

The fire, the passion, the intensity with which he spoke these words
made his delivery tragically startling and impressive. Bates’s
countenance fell; Will was pale and alarmed; my own spirit was in hot
sympathy with Tom’s--I felt all his rage, and his resolution to give
the two devils the alternative of confessing the truth or of being
hanged worked in me like a strong and flaming drink, and ran my blood
in fire to my very finger-ends.

‘You’re never in earnest, Butler?’ said the mate in a low voice.

Tom scowled at him.

‘Why, man, consider; put your respectability on one side and reflect.
Those two fellows swore me into jail, into the hulk, into the convict
ship, into long months of association with felons, whose crimes--many
of them--barely stopped short of murder. It is to their training of me
they’ll owe their hanging, if it comes to it. They’ve made a devil of
me. They shall find me a devil.’

Mr. Bates glanced at me somewhat nervously and said: ‘Well, Butler,
first let’s get them: then we shall be sure they’re the men, and when
we’ve got them we must hope they’ll confess.’

‘They’ll not go out of this ship alive unless they confess,’ said Tom.

‘If they confess under terror will their confession help you, sir?’
said Will.

‘Johnstone is the son of a lawyer, Bates,’ said Tom.

‘But there’s good sense in the question, Butler,’ said the mate. ‘They
may swear their confession was a lie, that they were forced into
telling it by your threats to hang them.’

‘The terms of the confession shall provide against that, and every man
in this ship shall witness it. Let them confess; I’ll take my chance of
what may follow.’

‘Will Rotch and the other be free here, Tom?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Then we remain short-handed as before?’ said Will.

‘There’s a seaman along with the two--you’ve forgotten him,’ exclaimed
Tom. ‘He’ll make four, and Marian five.’

‘Where do you propose to head when you start?’ exclaimed the mate.

‘North, Bates; I can’t keep you and young Johnstone at sea. Not likely!
You’ll help me to work the brig as far as Soundings; then go ashore
in whatever will take you, along with the yarn that we’ll manufacture
before that time.’

‘What’ll you do?’ said the mate.

‘Oh, keep the sea--keep the sea until Rotch and Nodder confess. Eh,
Marian? This brig’s a tight little home for us, as safe a retreat in
its way as the island, helping us to such an issue of truth or justice
or retribution as we should never be able to work out in Glass’s
settlement. Eh, my brave girl? As lief be here as on a rock; and then
the delights of a devil’s cruise with our two Old Bailey witnesses
under hatches! Why ’twould be like one of our old river and suburban
jaunts--so pretty and lively that we may grieve when the rogues’
confession ends it.’

‘We’ll take Miss Johnstone ashore with us,’ said Bates, ‘when the time
comes for us to go.’

I looked at him with a frown; Tom’s eye was upon me, and he laughed,
but with little merriment.

‘You and Marian’ll never handle this brig alone,’ said Will.

Tom was looking at me, and pretended not to hear him. Bates left the
table to see that all was right with the little vessel. By the time
he returned Tom’s mood had changed. He spoke quietly, and without the
least temper, of the morrow’s arrangements. It was dark by the time the
talk had ended. I lighted the cabin lamp, Will the binnacle lamp, and
Tom and Bates walked the roof of the deck-house in earnest talk. Will
beckoned me out of the cabin to where he was standing, near the wheel,
and said softly: ‘Marian, beware of Tom; he’s been driven mad.’

‘No more mad than you are,’ said I.

‘What does he mean by talking of swinging the two men?’

‘I’ll help him if he asks me,’ said I.

‘And be hanged. This is what comes of following a convict’s fortune. He
speaks of himself as a devil. He talks like one, anyhow. Worst of all,
he’s making you one. There shall be no hanging if I’m here to stop it,
though Butler should pistol me for interfering.’

‘You’re excited, and I’ll not talk with you.’

‘Mustn’t he be mad,’ he exclaimed, careful, however, to keep his voice
sunk, ‘to threaten to sail about with you alone in this brig till the
fellows under hatches, as he calls it, confess? Suppose they make up
their minds to see which will tire first? Besides, how are two of you
to sail a brig of this bulk? Why, his island scheme was beautiful
sanity alongside this last bit of roaring madness.’

‘I’ll ask you to mind your own business,’ I cried. ‘Have you a heart?
Have you any capacity of feeling? Did those two fellows spare Tom?
Look what they’ve brought him to. And shall we not right ourselves
in our own fashion if the chance offers? Wear irons as Tom has,
sweat in forced labour in a convict’s dress, be ruined, degraded,
broken-hearted, yet innocent as Tom is, and imagine the villains who
falsely swore you into ruin, misery, exile, in your power. Would you
damp their pale brows with lavender water, wash their weary feet, offer
them your forgiveness with caresses, promise to plead for them in your
prayers? Chaw! You’re no man, Will!’

I swung on my heels in a passion, and left him.

That evening, until ten or thereabouts, we sat in the cabin. I believed
Tom guessed what was in Will’s mind. The lad had a bright, handsome
face. A little thing would bring his heart into his eyes, and all
that he felt he looked, with colour, with paleness, with wild stares
(as when he came to me after seeing Lieutenant Chimmo murdered), with
a fine light of merriment when he was amused. For the first time I
could recollect, my sweetheart went carefully, and with scarce any
temper, through the story of Rotch’s accusation. He related how he
had punished the man for rudeness to a young lady at a South American
fandango; how he had reported him and lost him his berth for sleeping
whilst on duty, and for other reasons. He exactly described how the
treacherous, shocking conspiracy against him had been worked out and
executed by Rotch, with the help of Nodder; how the holes had been
pierced by Rotch, the auger hidden in his (Tom’s) cabin, the lazarette
entered by Rotch when there was no sort of stores in it at that time
to warrant the visit. He said he never understood why Nodder conspired
against him. He supposed Rotch had tempted the beast with drink, with
an offer of money, and the promise of a mate’s place in the barque, if
he (Rotch) got command. With his eyes fixed upon Will, he drew a few
pictures of his sufferings in jail, and of his life in the hulk.

Bates listened closely; the worthy fellow was stirred to the heart by
Tom’s simple recital of his wrongs and sufferings. Will’s face flushed
with sympathy and temper as he listened; I see his looks now as he
leaned on the table under the cabin lamp, with his eyes moistening at
intervals. As for me, I sat quiet till Tom had done, though I was half
distracted by the passion and grief, the wrath and wild regrets which
arose as my sweetheart proceeded, until, on his ending with a sob in
his voice and his hands to his brow, I could bear myself no longer,
and, springing up, I flung my arms around him and held him to me with
my lips pressed to his cheek, down which my own tears ran.

‘Curse them!’ cried Will, starting up; ‘they shan’t live for the want
of a hangman, if they don’t confess!’

He made the sentence violent by a strong forecastle oath, and, striking
the table with his clenched fist, walked out of the cabin, talking
loudly to himself out of his overwrought feelings.

The rest of the night passed quietly. Tom bade me go to bed, and I went
to my berth, but not before I had paced the deck for a quarter of an
hour with him. The weather was wonderfully silent, and the darkness
beautiful with stars. The light wind held; the four of us prayed it
would hold till after daybreak, though Tom said the islanders at this
time of the year made nothing of putting out to sea to vessels six or
even eight miles distant. The large black swell rolled soundlessly;
off the ocean no noise came save the low, faint thunder of the surf
whitening afar at the base of the giant shadow. I slept but little;
all the most tragic and startling incidents of this passage of my
life, from the hour when news of Tom’s imprisonment was given to me
at Ramsgate by my aunt, were as naught--were as trifles lighter than
thinnest air--alongside this, our lighting upon Rotch and Nodder in
yonder island, hidden away in the heart of earth’s mightiest stretch of
waters.

The instant I heard a movement on deck I sprang out of my bunk,
apparelled myself for the day, and, going forth, found a streak of
granite-coloured dawn in the east, the night still black and full of
stars over our mast-heads and in the west, and Tom and the others
squaring the yards to a light northerly wind that would directly float
us toward the island.

The sun rose; the day flashed out blue and cloudless to his beam.
Will took the helm, and the island soared directly over our bow, rich
with the morning dyes, to where it vanished in motionless masses of
steam-white vapour. I lighted the galley fire and got breakfast. Having
hove the brig to within a mile and a half of the settlement, we made
a meal on deck, Tom every few minutes levelling the telescope at the
beach where the whale-boat lay.

At about eight o’clock the island boat put off. She came slowly,
floating deep, and looked pretty full of men. When she was midway,
Tom, after talking quietly and earnestly with Bates, withdrew to his
cabin to feign sickness, as had been arranged. On the boat drawing
alongside, I observed that all the people were strangers, saving old
Daly. There were eight men, some of them young. Daly made the ninth.
I had supposed whilst the boat approached that Rotch and Nodder were
amongst the little crowd in her, but no faces answered to theirs, which
I recollected as clearly--the handsome features of Rotch, the red locks
and wall-eye of the curled, sour, drink-sodden carpenter Nodder--as
though I beheld their likenesses.

The boat was handsomely laden with potatoes, pieces of fresh beef,
poultry, eggs, and other produce. Daly came over the side with a little
bright tin can in his hand. He immediately stepped up to me, and with
a quaint old sea-bow and a sea-flourish, said he had taken the liberty
to bring me off a drink of milk; ’twas fresh from one of his own cows
that morning, he assured me. There was no sweeter draught, said he,
than a can of new milk after a few months of salt water. I thanked him
heartily. Of all delicious draughts, the delicatest that I remember
in seventy-seven years was that drink of new milk from the island of
Tristan d’Acunha.

Daly told Mr. Bates that Corporal Glass was still too unwell to come
off; he sent his compliments to the captain, and begged a visit. Bates
answered that the captain was poorly and confined to his bed. Then Daly
brought the islanders up to us and introduced them; two of them were
sons of the corporal, others sons of Cotton, Swain, and Green. Daly’s
own son was a man of about thirty, strong, active, and good-looking,
tinctured with the blood of a mulatto mother. They swiftly discharged
their whale-boat, got the _Childe Harold’s_ quarter-boat, stowed casks
for filling with fresh water, and pulled away for the island.

I went to Tom and gave him the news. He came out of his berth on
hearing the islanders were gone, and walked about the deck, and looked
at the stuff that had been brought off; then went with Bates and Will
into the hold, where they passed up one to another a number of parcels
of clothing till as much was on deck as the provisions which had been
brought off were worth.

It was past one o’clock when the boats put off for the brig. The
whale-boat came along with ours in tow. It was blowing a soft steady
air of wind out of the north; the sky was cloudless; the rippling of
water made you think of a gentle noise of girlish laughter, and the
heave of the swell shouldered in stately volumes out of the west, wide
drawn and round-backed, so that the movements of the brig were like
a pulse. Tom rested the telescope on the bulwark-rail and looked at
the approaching boats. He continued to gaze; I feared the boats would
draw near enough to enable the people to see him. He suddenly turned
to me with a pale face that was yet dark with a frown, and exclaimed:
‘Marian, Rotch and Nodder are there!’ With that he gave the telescope
to Bates, and merely adding, ‘Report when the islanders are gone and
you’ve trimmed for the start,’ he walked to his berth.

My heart now began to beat wildly, and I felt faint and sick with
excitement. Will and Bates looked at me. I said: ‘I’ll withdraw to the
end of the deck-house. Does not my face tell a story?’

‘You look like a ghost,’ exclaimed Will, ‘and your eyes are like live
coals! Go right away aft, and keep quiet, and take time to screw your
fiddlestrings of nerves into tune. Mr. Bates and I’ll manage better
without you.’

I mounted to the roof of the house and posted myself at the extreme
end. There was a chair there. I placed it so that I could command
a view of the gangway, and there I sat, still very sick and faint,
detesting myself for this weakness, yet excusing myself, too, for
surely never could there happen a moment in a woman’s life more charged
with supreme tragic interest than this.

The two boats drew alongside, the quarter-boat laden with casks of
fresh water. The first to step on deck was Rotch. I knew him instantly.
His face, whilst he stood in the witness-box, giving evidence against
Tom, had burnt itself into my memory. I should have been able then,
as I should be able now, to pick him out in a moment from amongst a
thousand. He sprang into the main-chains and got over the bulwarks
actively. He was dressed in blue cloth and a blue cloth cap with a
naval peak. His face was sallow, as though he was newly recovered from
an illness. He was of Tom’s height, without my sweetheart’s manly
breadth and inimitable sailorly carriage. But he was an exceedingly
handsome man. Many might have thought him handsomer than Tom.

After he had come on board there was some delay. Two or three vigorous
islanders then climbed over the side, and, with much trouble and no
little peril--for the swell hove the boat very high and sank her very
low, whilst the brig leaned heavily away and then depressed her other
rail till you thought she had submerged the line of it--the carpenter
Nodder was lifted through the gangway. He stood with difficulty and
leaned upon an islander’s arm. He was at some little distance from me,
but my sight was good; he seemed ghastly ill, the ghastlier because
of the length of his greasy, carroty locks of hair and the villainous
aspect he took from his deformed eye. He was dressed in old canvas
trousers, an old monkey-jacket, and a fur cap.

I had lost sight of Rotch. Bates spoke to Nodder. Whilst this was
doing, a third fellow came on board; he was John Collins, the seaman
who had been saved with Rotch and the carpenter. He took hold of Nodder
and led him slowly forward and helped him into the forecastle through
the scuttle.

I’ll now tell you what happened as straight-forwardly and briefly as I
can dictate it. The islanders went to work to get the water on board
and stow the casks. They sprang like goats, so fleet were their sure
feet, as mountaineers. Collins came out of the forecastle and helped
them. I walked toward the fore part of the deck-house to observe that
man; he was just a plain, average example of the foremast-hand,
freckled, yellow-haired, a mat of reddish beard upon his throat, big,
silly, wandering eyes; his clothes, duck breeches, flannel shirt, and
old Scotch cap. I drew back, hearing the voice of Rotch, and returned
to my chair.

Presently they had whipped all the water below and were busy in
hoisting the quarter-boat aboard. Whilst this was doing, Rotch came up
the deck-house steps; he looked at the island whilst he mounted the
ladder, and did not observe me till he was on the roof of the house.
He came to a stand very abruptly, and, after staring with many tokens
of astonishment in his posture and looks, lifted his cap. I turned my
head. No doubt he was surprised to find a well-dressed woman sitting on
the deck-house top of that little brig of two hundred tons.

Well dressed I was, as dress then went; to be sure, I had worn my gown
every day during the fortnight we had been on board the _Old Stormy_,
but then it was almost a new dress when I took it off and packed it up
at Woolwich, and it still looked new. I remember that gown very well;
it was of black merino with a velvet cape, long sleeves for which I
had no wristbands, the bodice with an embroidered collar and bound to
the waist by a band. My hat was narrow-brimmed with curled feathers;
this sort of headgear had not long been in fashion when I purchased
the thing. I was without jewelry and other finishing details, but the
fellow Rotch, at a little distance, would detect no omissions; he found
a well-dressed, nay, I may almost call the figure a fashionably-dressed
woman viewing the proceedings of the islanders, and his bearing and
prolonged stare expressed his surprise.

I was unable to look at him; that is, whilst he looked at me. The devil
that was in Tom was in me too. I could have shot the horrid villain
as he stood there. But now, in the corners of my eyes, I beheld him
approaching. I trembled violently; the throbbing of my heart made
me feel ill again. Yet I thought to myself, if the man accosts me I
must answer and be civil. Times are when the human instincts are
preternatural in divination. The contagion of our secret may have
been in the air. Such must be that villain’s conscience that, let him
suspect a trap, no matter how dim and faint his suspicion, he’d fling
himself into the whale-boat while she was still alongside, and Tom
would lose him.

Rightly or wrongly, thus I thought, in the few seconds of his approach;
and now he stood close and was addressing me.

‘May I inquire,’ said he, lifting his cap again, ‘if I have the
pleasure of speaking to the wife of the captain of this brig?’

I knew that my face was of a milky whiteness, my mouth was dry, my
breathing laboured. I answered low and tremulously, ‘I am not the wife
of the captain.’

Do not believe that I was afraid. I was sick and cold and shivered with
the passion I hid. I dared not lift my eyes, lest beholding the dog
with his smile and bland looks I should leap to my feet, spit in his
face, strike and curse him.

‘You are, perhaps, a passenger, madam?’ said he.

I slightly inclined my head, keeping my eyes fastened upon the island.

‘I understand,’ he continued, ‘that this brig’s destination is Table
Bay. It is very fortunate for me that you have called here. Ships’
visits grow scarcer and scarcer, and a man might easily be imprisoned
for a whole twelvemonth in yonder wretched but hospitable little
colony.’

At this instant Will came up the ladder and stood at the head of the
steps, astounded to observe me talking with Rotch.

‘My misfortunes have been overwhelming!’ exclaimed the villain,
speaking in a tone that let me know he preserved his courtesy-smile,
though I never turned my eyes from the island save when I glanced at
Will. ‘My beautiful ship, the _Arab Chief_, a vessel I was as proud of
as a man of his handsome wife, was burned to the water’s edge through
two or three scoundrel seamen broaching the cargo with a naked light.
Our sufferings in the boat were terrible. We put off with barely a
day’s allowance of fresh water and a handful or two of biscuits. The
islanders may have told you in what state they found us. My mate
Nodder is very ill. He injured himself somehow when leaving the ship. I
hope your captain will not be disappointed. He probably counts upon the
help of three working men. I shall be very happy to do my share. I am
sorry to hear that he is not well. Pray, madam, what is his name? The
islanders who were off yesterday did not get it.’

I rose, saying, under my breath, ‘Excuse me. I want to speak to that
young gentleman,’ and walked to Will, panting, as though a poisoned
arrow had pierced me, with an anguish of emotion I could no longer
support.

‘He came and spoke to me,’ I whispered. ‘I must have torn his eyes out
had I listened longer.’

I went down the ladder and stood near the wheel. Mr. Bates stepped over
from the gangway to tell me that he believed the carpenter Nodder was a
dying man. ‘He has only shipped himself for us to bury him,’ said he.
‘He’ll pull no more ropes in this world.’

‘God won’t let him die till he confesses, I hope,’ said I. ‘The villain
Rotch addressed me just now, and has made me sick and mad, Mr. Bates,
with his talk of his beautiful ship, the _Arab Chief_. When will those
islanders let us get away?’

There remained, however, little to be done. They had chocked and
secured the quarter-boat, and were now gathered in a group round the
parcels of clothing they had agreed to take in exchange for watering
us and for provisions. Bates left me to join them. Daly said they were
well satisfied. The old man then told the others to pass the bundles
into the whale-boat. Just over my head stood Rotch talking with Will.
He was speaking of me, asked if I was a relation of the captain, if I
lived at Cape Town, and so forth. He also said, ‘What’s your captain’s
name?’ to which Will responded, as I had, by running down the ladder as
though he had not heeded the inquiry because of some sudden call upon
his attention.

The islanders now went away. Before going, Daly and the others shook
hands with us. The old man-of-war’s man, holding my hand, exclaimed,
‘Bless your pretty face, miss! It calls up my old home to me. Ye’ll
not take an old man’s blessing amiss. May God be wi’ ye, and my prayer
shall go along wi’ ye for your safety.’ He then, with the others,
called a farewell to Rotch, who remained on top of the deck-house,
looking down, and in a few minutes the white whale-boat, with her
simple, hearty, honest crew, was pulling away for the lonely, towering
island.

Mr. Bates bade the new hand Collins ship the gangway. Rotch came down
and looked at the compass that stood before the little wheel; I was
nigh, and he took but a peep on seeing me.

‘Johnstone, take the wheel,’ said the mate, ‘whilst we swing the yards.’

He and Collins walked to the maintopsail brace; Rotch followed and
pulled with them.

They braced the yards fore and aft, and whilst they were belaying the
ropes in the waist I heard Rotch say, ‘This is a taut bowline, isn’t
it, for a northerly wind and an east-by-north course?’ The mate did not
answer.

The brig was at this time under topsails and foresail only and some
fore and aft canvas. The wind had scanted, but blew a weak air; the
breasts of the sails lifted, and the stem of the brig drove ripples
from the bows, and the giant mass of land on the starboard quarter slid
almost imperceptibly into the wake.

‘Collins,’ cried Bates, ‘take the wheel from that young gentleman.’

The mate then stepped up to me, leaving Rotch in the waist, that is,
near the little caboose.

‘Now,’ said he, looking somewhat pale, ‘what’s next to be done?’

‘Call Rotch aft,’ said I; ‘I’ll bring Captain Butler out.’

‘Collins,’ said the mate, ‘keep her just as she goes. Captain Rotch,
will you please step this way into the cabin?’

I went in first; Bates and Will followed. I saw Rotch coming as I
knocked on Tom’s door and entered. My sweetheart stood against his
bunk, one hand gripping the edge of it, and his head inclined forward
in a strained, hearkening posture. His face was colourless, the
expression hard and set; his eyes shone under the shadow of a frown of
fierce determination.

I said, speaking with difficulty, so great was my agitation: ‘The
islanders have left the brig. We have started, and the man’s in the
cabin.’

‘Bates and Will? They must hear and see.’

‘They, too, are in the cabin.’

‘Where’s Nodder?’

‘Lying ill in the forecastle.’

On this he opened the door and went out; I was at his heels. Rotch
stood on the other side of the cabin table, Will at the foot, and near
him Bates; Rotch was at that instant addressing the mate. When he saw
Tom the movement of his lips was arrested as though he had been shot
through the heart. He stared in a sort of gaping way--the expression
is not to be described. Let me call it chilling, benumbing amazement,
with horror and fear, like a sort of life, creeping into it. I had
read of men changing colour under mental tension of an extravagant
kind; I witnessed this now; whilst Rotch looked, gaping, the blankness
of amazement taking a vitality from the incrawling horror, his balls
of sight strained as though he beheld his fate in the form of some
frightful phantom, his complexion changed colour; not from the white
of fear to the crimson of rage; it turned, whilst I looked, into a
sort of dim, blueish purple, as if he had been poisoned. His lips then
moved and he stammered out, in a voice that was half a scream--the
words bursting from him--‘You here!’ The next instant he sprang toward
the door. But Tom stood close to the entrance; with a single stride he
blocked the way, and said, ‘Stand back!’

‘Let me go!’ cried Rotch, suddenly recovering the full use of his
lungs. ‘Mr. Bates, help me to signal the island boat. She’s not ashore
yet. That man means to murder me. You’re not going to stand by and
allow him to take my life? Let me go! There’s time to recall the boat.
That man means to take my life. I call upon you to help and save me. I
never suspected this!’

He plunged afresh at the door. I don’t doubt that terror and rage gave
him the strength of two or even three men at that moment; yet Tom met
him as he came, caught him by the throat and hurled him against the
bulkhead from which he had run, driving him against the solid wooden
wall with a crash which you’d think should have beaten him in recoil
senseless upon his face.

‘No violence, no violence, I beg, gentlemen!’ shouted the mate.

‘But a step and I’ll strangle you!’ said Tom, making a single stride
toward Rotch.

‘Collins,’ roared the villain, ‘they’ve brought me into this ship
to murder me! Help! I’m your captain! Quick, Collins! Signal to the
whale-boat! Port your helm for the island----’

Will rushed to the door.

‘Stop where you are!’ he shouted. ‘There’s no murder being done here!
Nobody’s going to be hurt! Keep your luff! If you’re just a little bit
off your course you will be sent to hell!’

‘Marian, Bates, Johnstone,’ exclaimed Tom, pointing at Rotch, ‘that’s
the man you have sometimes heard me name! He is called Rotch--Samuel
Rotch. He was my chief mate aboard the _Arab Chief_. I gave you the
story last night. You saw how I dealt with him just now. It was in that
way I served him at Valparaiso when the toad insulted a lady of my
acquaintance at a dance there. That was the man who slept in his watch
on deck when the sea was thick with shipping. He lost his berth, but
I got him another; and I let him serve under me in the _Arab Chief_,
when he was named as chief mate. You, Rotch!’ He drew a pistol from his
pocket--one of the brace we had found in the brig--and put it upon the
table. For some while he eyed Rotch steadily in silence. I believed he
meant to shoot him. Had he offered, I, standing close beside, should
have struck away the hand that attempted to hinder him.

Rotch looked ghastly. He trembled from head to foot. His hands worked
with a strange, spasmodic motion, as though he would lift and clasp
them in entreaty.

‘You Rotch,’ repeated Tom, after a silence that had lasted at least
a minute--a minute that seemed an hour; ‘we were on very good terms
during the first part of our voyage. I talked to you somewhat freely,
told you of my engagement with this young lady, of my venture in the
barque, and to what extent I had protected it, and I spoke hopefully of
the voyage to you. And all the time you were plotting my ruin. Was it
that you hated me for that little affair at Valparaiso? For reporting
you and losing you a berth? For holding command in a ship which you
supposed you’d obtain charge of if you could get me out of the road?
Surely, you Rotch, these provided but shabby foundations for the heavy
weight of villainy you constructed upon them.’

At this point he picked up the pistol and replaced it in his pocket.

‘What was your scheme? Nodder was second mate and carpenter. What
you promised him, how you bribed him, I don’t know. He’ll tell me
before he dies. But what you did was this: You took an auger from his
tool-chest. You and he pierced the skin and side in the lazarette. You
plugged the inner skin, hid the auger in my cabin--you found it easily
enough afterwards!--took men to listen to the water flowing, brought
them into my berth, searched for the auger, charged me with attempting
to scuttle the ship, and made a prisoner of me. Was this so?’

Rotch stood listening, with his eyes fixed upon the deck. He made no
answer.

‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘you were present at my trial. You remember how
glibly he gave his evidence and answered questions on his oath. Will he
take his oath now that his story was true? You Rotch, here stands my
friend Bates, who has judged me throughout a wronged man; here stands
Miss Johnstone’s cousin, who believes me innocent; here stands that
Miss Johnstone about whom I have so often talked to you. They hear me.
They will listen to you. Is it true that I attempted to scuttle the
_Arab Chief_?’

Rotch kept silence.

‘Bates, Johnstone,’ continued Tom, ‘you see how it is? He swore it on
the Bible. He made a felon of me. He ruined my life--broke my heart.
He’s mute now. Observe him. Does he fear to speak because I’m armed?’

He whipped the pistol out of his pocket, pointed it down and fired it
into the deck.

‘Now, take courage! Speak! Did I attempt to scuttle the _Arab Chief_,
or was the charge yours and Nodder’s conspiracy against me?’

The man, with an ashen face, now folded his arms, but made no reply,
keeping his eyes still rooted to the deck.

‘Captain Rotch,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates, ‘it’s clear to my mind--it’s
been clear to me all through--that you’ve done this gentleman such
a horrible wrong that no fiend could imagine anything worse or more
cruel! Act the man now and own to it. Clear him, and by so doing
sweeten your own conscience against that call which’ll be coming to you
from God sooner or later. You’ll fare less ill by shelling out than by
keeping silent. Look, man, how you are in our power!’

At these words Rotch lifted his eyes and gazed steadily at Tom. Never
could I have imagined such an expression of hate in the human face. He
gazed, then sank his eyes again, but never spoke.

‘Rotch, you shall have time,’ Tom said. ‘In this brig you remain till
the confession you dictate has been signed by you and witnessed by
those who are in the vessel. Time you shall have. Its duration Mr.
Bates and I will settle. If at the expiration of the time I allow you
refuse to prove me the innocent man you know me to be, then, by the
Eternal God of heaven and justice, I’ll hang you at the yardarm!’

This said, he strode to the after end of the cabin, and opening the
door of the last berth on the port side, he cried out, ‘Walk in here!’

Rotch raised his head and slowly looked around him. A wonderful change
had happened in the man’s countenance. He was bloated and swollen.
Parts of his face were livid, and parts a ghastly white. His eyes had
a strained appearance and seemed to project. I once saw a man tumble
down in a fit near my house at Stepney, and Rotch’s face reminded me of
that man’s when they turned him over and lifted his head.

‘Walk into this berth!’ cried Tom.

This time the villain obeyed. He moved slowly, supporting himself by
the table as he went. He entered the little cabin, and Tom shut the
door and locked it.

‘He’s as much astounded as frightened,’ said Bates. ‘Surely he’d
have thought to meet any one down here sooner than you. Where would
he reckon you are, Butler, if not across the seas? Not afloat and in
charge of a smart little brig, anyhow.’

‘Tom,’ said I, ‘he’ll hang rather than confess. He looked at you with a
horribly malicious, wicked eye.’

My sweetheart came to the table and leaned upon it to breathe and
rally. He was very pale, but his eyes glowed with the light of a savage
satisfaction, and his general expression was one of sullen, wrathful
exultation. The hour was now about four o’clock. We had made no
mid-day meal. I asked Tom if I should get some dinner for the little
company of us.

‘Aye,’ said he; ‘but first I want a word with our new hand. Take the
wheel from him, Will, and send him in.’

The man Collins entered, dangling his Scotch cap. He was scared; the
pistol report had no doubt frightened him heartily. The wheel stood
right in front of the house, the door and little windows were open, and
the man would need to be deaf not to hear what had passed.

‘What is your name?’ said Tom.

‘John Collins, sir.’

‘What was your rating aboard the _Arab Chief_?’

‘Able seaman, sir.’

‘I’m master of this little brig till I find an owner for her,’ said
Tom. ‘We’re going to work her north so as to get Great Britain handy
aboard, should any of us turn sick of the sea and want to go ashore.
We’re not bound to the Cape, as you’ve been led to believe. It’s all
the same to you, I suppose?’

‘I’d rather make a straight passage home, of course,’ answered the man.

‘We’re not pirates, as what you’ve been listening to might lead you
to fear. You can cheer up, my lad, reckon that you’ve got a good
berth, and that all will go well with you. See here, now: I commanded
the _Arab Chief_ when Rotch was her chief mate and Nodder second and
carpenter. Those two scoundrels swore that I attempted to scuttle her
to defraud the insurance offices; they brought me before the court
and got me sentenced to a term of transportation. I happen to be here
in this brig off the island of Tristan d’Acunha when they, along with
you, are sent aboard me as shipwrecked men wanting to get away. This
is the act of God, Collins! Collins, it’s a large and beautiful mercy
shown to a broken-hearted man, and an opportunity he’s been made too
much of a devil by Rotch to despise. Before my two villains leave this
brig they sign a confession, declaring that their charge against me was
a shocking, horrible lie; that they themselves made the holes in the
barque and hid the auger in my cabin. Rotch is the bigger villain; the
other’s an illiterate, drunken scoundrel. Rotch shall have time granted
him if he----’

‘Tom,’ I interrupted, ‘Collins wants to speak.’

I had been watching the fellow whilst my sweetheart addressed him, and
observed his face take a sort of colour and grow full of meaning. Tom
arrested his speech. Collins, twisting his Scotch cap in both hands,
exclaimed:

‘Captain, it’s come upon me now! I had a sort o’ fancy o’ ’t whilst I
stood a-listening. You’ll be the party meant, and I’ll just give you
what’s in my head whilst I’ve got it. I was at the wheel one night from
ten to twelve, about a fortnight afore we was burnt out of the ship.’

‘You mean the _Arab Chief_?’ said Mr. Bates.

‘Oh yes!’ I cried wildly. ‘For God’s sake, don’t interrupt him, Mr.
Bates!’

‘Well, as I says,’ continued the man, after a pause and a slow,
unintelligent stare at me, ‘I was at the wheel. Nodder, he had charge
of the deck. He’d been drinking. I’ll say here that that there Nodder
was never off drinking. I don’t believe he was sober two hours together
down to the moment when we was burnt out. He gives me a certain course
to steer by. ’Twarn’t the course the chap I’d relieved had named. The
capt’n--that’s Rotch--comes up, looks into the binnacle, calls Nodder,
and hazes him for being off his course. Nodder gives it him back. I
reckon that the capt’n had taken a drop too much himself. They clenches
fists, and snorts all kinds of insults at each other. Nodder says:
“I’ll gibbet ye yet for a bloody conspirator against an honester man
than ever slept in your fired skin. ’Twas you who put me up to that
job. I ha’n’t had no peace since, and where is my fifty pounds?” Here
Rotch whispers through his teeth and takes him by the arm, and falls
a-shoving of him out of my hearing. And still Nodder sings out whilst
t’other was a-shoving: “I’ll gibbet ye yet. The lie was yourn, the
whole b’iling of it was yourn. Who hid the auger? Who told me to spin
that yarn to the crew about the capt’n coming for’ards to ask me to
lend him an auger?”’

Tom struck the table a furious blow with his clenched fist.

‘Tell us all you know, Collins,’ I cried.

‘Why,’ said he, picking up his cap and fastening a nervous eye on Tom,
‘that’s pretty nigh all I do know. They shut up arter this and went
below for a drink, then walked the deck. Capt’n Rotch seemed to make
nothen of my overhearing him, as though ’twasn’t a business the likes
of me was going to trouble his head over. And he was right. I don’t
recollect mentioning what I’d heard except once, about a week afore we
was burnt out, when there was some trouble over the starboard watch’s
allowance of sugar; then I tells one of my mates that the capt’n and
Nodder had got some dirty secret between them, and that each seemed in
t’other’s power. But nothen was made of this, and then comes the fire.
It whips into my head whilst I stood a-listening to ye just now, and,
capt’n, I’ve told ye the truth.’

‘This should be taken down,’ said Bates.

‘Can you write, Collins?’ asked Tom.

The man, with a grin, answered ‘No.’

‘Give Collins a glass of grog,’ said Tom.

I mixed a draught, and the man drank our health. Tom then said:

‘Collins, will you dictate to this lady the yarn you’ve just spun us?’

‘Willingly, sir.’

‘I thank you,’ said Tom.

He then bade me procure writing materials whilst he and Bates went to
the forecastle to look at Nodder. I told Collins to sit, and wrote
down just as he talked. I felt heartily grateful to the man; here,
now, was a piece of valuable testimony in Tom’s favour; this sailor,
when he told his story, did not even know the name of the man he was
addressing; and then, how could he have invented that stroke about the
auger and that other point which had made Tom strike the table--I mean
the statement that Captain Butler had asked Nodder for the loan of the
auger?

I was so pleased that, guessing he might be hungry, I put before him
the best cold meal I could hastily collect, and made him drink some
wine. Indeed, I waited upon him as though this poor, plain, silly-eyed
sailor had been Tom himself. I asked many questions about Rotch and
Nodder. He had nothing very ill to say of Rotch; Nodder he called a
drunken, bungersome nughead. (He was of Somersetshire.)

When he had finished eating he relieved Will. I told my cousin to see
to the galley fire and laid the cloth for a late dinner, and whilst I
was thus busy, Tom and Bates, talking together very earnestly, came
along the deck and entered the cabin. I showed my sweetheart what I had
taken down; he said: ‘Let the man put his mark here, and the three of
you witness it whilst I hold the wheel.’

Bates read the deposition aloud, and then Collins made a cross, and we
signed our names. This was a precious document. I would not have parted
with it for all I was worth. I put it carefully away in the desk we
had found in the cabin I occupied, and then returning I eagerly asked
Tom what he had to tell me about Nodder.

‘He’s a surly, stubborn hound,’ said he; ‘very ill, and, in my opinion,
dying. We lighted the forecastle lamp; we found him lying in the dark
and groaning now and again. I stood apart while Bates spoke to him.
Bates asked him how he did. He answered, with an oath, that he felt
very low. Bates long-windedly put further questions to him. He then
said: “D’ye know what brig you’re aboard of?” “The _Old Stormy_, ain’t
it?” says Nodder. “Yes,” says Bates; “and d’ye know who her captain
is?” “No,” answers the carpenter. “He’s Captain Butler,” says Bates,
“who was in command of the _Arab Chief_, that you and Rotch charged
him with attempting to scuttle.” The man lay silent a bit, and then
said: “I don’t believe it.” “Rotch does,” said Bates; “he’s locked
up, and Captain Butler means to hang him if, after a given time, he
doesn’t confess that you and he conspired together to ruin him.” Here
Nodder, who had been lying on his back all this while, sat up and
said: “There’s no Butler in this ship. I heered him sentenced, and he
was lagged for fourteen year.” On this I stepped out of the eyes of
the forecastle, where I had stood unobserved, and coming under the
lamp, where he could see me plainly, I said: “D’ye know me? Your memory
should be as good as Rotch’s.” The scoundrel looked, shut his eyes,
looked, blinked and looked again, cursed awhile, and lay back. I’d made
up my mind to head on a new tack with this fellow--that is, to trim him
differently from my handling of Rotch. I said quietly: “Nodder, you’re
a sick and a dying man. How did you serve me who never injured you? You
ruined me, made a convict of me, broke my heart. You were a tool in
Rotch’s hands, and I believe you’d have undone the mischief before we
reached England had you found courage. Rotch was the villain, you were
his instrument.” He now turned his head to look at me, and lay like a
corpse with his eyes fastened upon my face. I couldn’t swear that he
had his mind, that he clearly understood; the fright and wonder of
seeing me stirred the mud in his soul and thickened his brain. Still I
talked on. I told him that I had Rotch under lock and key, and should
hang him if he didn’t confess. I repeated what Collins had told me.
I then said that my enemy was Rotch; that he was the man I meant to
get at and punish. “If you’ll dictate the truth to me,” said I, “tell
us the full story of the diabolical plot, and sign it, that your
signature may be witnessed, I’ll let you go. If you live to get north,
I’ll put you ashore, and you shall be no more troubled, unless you are
willing to turn Queen’s evidence so as to help me to bring Rotch to
his trial.” This was, in effect, what I said. I spoke quietly, even
kindly. Like Rotch, he made no answer; he lay looking at me, and when I
had done, still looked; and I waited for him to speak. Bates implored
him to confess. The fellow, silent as a ghost, turned over in his bunk
and gave us his back. But it was early times. I was resolved not to
threaten him. After waiting, I said to Bates, “We’ll go.” As we passed
through the hatch, he called out in his harsh, hideous voice, though
feebly enough: “Won’t you send me a drop of sperrits? I don’t want
nothin’ to eat.” “You shall be attended to,” said I, and we came away.’

‘What hopes of him have you?’

‘He may be brought to confess.’

‘Would his unsupported confession suffice, Tom?’

‘Suffice for what?’

‘To obtain a full pardon.’

He looked at me gravely, then, with a slight smile, said: ‘We’ll think
of the navigation of the brig for the present, and talk of full pardons
by-and-by.’




CHAPTER XLIV

SHE WITNESSES NODDER’S CONFESSION


The islanders had brought some fresh meat on board; I fried a steak,
also boiled some eggs, potatoes, and vegetables. Taking the _Childe
Harold_ first, and now this _Old Stormy_, we had been keeping the sea
many weeks. Tom’s fare in the convict ship had been the prison’s, Will
had fed upon forecastle food, Mr. Bates and I had done just a little
better--he at the cabin table and I at the scrap basket. The island
produce, then, must make us a delicious meal.

The island was about three hours astern of us, distant about ten or
twelve miles, a pile of sapphire, and the sea was of the same beautiful
hue. The sky in the north was frosted with snow-white cloud running
in links like chains, with a little plumy shooting as of mares’ tails
along the advanced brow of the delicately compacted stuff. The wind
blew out of that quarter; it was a dead-on-end wind for us; but the
brig, under topsails and foresail, looked well up; and now that Will
had loosed the fore and main topgallant-sails, which had been sheeted
home and the yards hoisted whilst I was in the galley, the little
vessel was beginning to buzz over the wide blue heave of swell, and the
wrinkles from her cutwater broke into thin lines of snow abreast of the
gangways, as her nimble and metalled forefoot ate its way to windward.

I spied a white sail down in the south-west. She looked to be standing
for the island. It was as likely as not we had been just in time to
secure Messrs. Rotch and Nodder.

The discipline of the little ship had been settled by the hour I had
done with my cooking. We were now four sailors and a girl who could
make herself generally useful.

Whilst I was dishing the dinner, Will told me he had carried a pannikin
of rum and some bread and meat into the forecastle. Nodder drained the
pannikin, but refused the food. Will accosted him civilly, having
received his cue from Tom. The brute, after drinking, sat up and asked
how it was that Captain Butler was out of quod. ‘He was transported
for fourteen years,’ he said. ‘He’s got eleven or twelve year to sarve
yet. Who’s the smothered bloke that was down here a-calling of hisself
Captain Butler?’ Will answered: ‘Rotch knows.’ ‘What’s been done to
him?’ ‘He’s locked up just now,’ says Will. ‘Are they a-going to hang
him?’ ‘If he don’t confess.’ On this Nodder lay back and turned his
face to the brig’s side, and Will came away.

When we sat down to dinner, Collins being at the helm, Tom cut some
beef and filled a tumbler half full of wine, and sent the meal by Mr.
Bates to Rotch. Bates was some time in the cabin with the villain;
indeed, his own dinner was cooling. Suddenly Tom jumped up, and,
going to my berth, which he used when he worked out his sights,
the navigating instruments and charts being there, fetched some
writing-paper, pen and ink. Bates at that moment appeared at the end of
the cabin; Tom called to him, ‘Oblige me by putting these things into
Rotch’s berth.’

Bates did so, locked the door, sat down, and fell to his meal.

‘Did he speak?’ said Tom.

‘Yes,’ said the mate. ‘He has an evil eye. He’s aged ten years, too.
He said: “Captain Butler talks of hanging me. Does he mean it?” “Yes,”
said I; “but you know how to save your life.” “He hang me! That ’u’d
be murder! Curse him! You’re a brother sailor. Would you stand by and
allow it to be done?” “I’m no brother sailor of yours,” said I. “Right
the man you’ve diabolically wronged by making a clean breast of your
wickedness. If you don’t, there’s never a brother sailor aboard this
brig that won’t pull all his beef into the rope that yardarms ye!” I
thought he’d fling himself upon me. His face was as full of devilish
malice as you could have squeezed out of all hands aboard the convict
ship. I put down his grub and came away. He didn’t speak when I took in
the paper and ink.’

The subject was changed, and the talk that followed mainly concerned
the routine to be adopted.

When I had cleared the table I stepped out to look at the island, and
saw no more than a large, faint shadow seventeen or eighteen miles
away. The wind had veered a trifle, and we were making a better course
for the northern climb, though where we were bound to I no more knew
than how this wild, strange adventure was to end. I felt weary, and,
entering the deck-house, sat down at the foremost end of the table
close to Tom’s cabin-door. I leaned my cheek on my hand and gave myself
up to thought. Strange as it may seem, I was sensible of a secret
grievous disappointment that the island scheme was closed. I longed
to be Tom’s wife. Had we arranged with Governor Glass to settle at
Tristan, I might in a few weeks have been Tom’s bride. At this rate,
when were we to be married? If my sweetheart waited for Rotch to speak,
the villain might keep us sailing about for months; unless, indeed, Tom
hanged him, which was less likely to happen as time cooled his blood
and mine. And, certainly, to hang the man would be to murder him, as
already I understood; though assuredly had Tom put the yardarm rope
into my hand and bade me pull, I’d have dragged--on that or on any
other day--with less compunction than I’d have squashed a spider.

Whilst I thus sat thinking over such matters as these, in stepped Will;
he looked about and sat down. I heard a noise of feet overhead, and
guessed that Tom and Bates walked the deck together. The sailor Collins
steered; the sunset glowed like a sheet of burning gold upon the
skylight.

‘Marian,’ said Will, ‘how long is this roaming to last?’

‘I wish I could tell you,’ I answered.

‘Butler’s one goading idea just now is revenge. But I want to get
home--rig out afresh--sign for a new ship--and start again. This sort
of thing is merely pickling one. It will qualify me as a lobscouser, I
dare say, but I’m learning nothing useful, never have a quadrant in my
hand, and get no jobs of seamanship to do.’

‘Tom told you he’ll steer the brig straight for England, and put you
and Bates in the way of getting home. What more do you want? But for
him you’d have been murdered by the convicts. Or you might be lying
dead in an open boat along with Captain Sutherland and the others. But
you’re safe, and Tom’s steering you home.’

I spoke hotly and raised my voice. He stammered; he had not before
taken this view of his deliverance perhaps.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘but look here, Marian; granted that Butler sends
Bates and me home; you stay behind, what’s to become of you?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Not yours only. I’m closer to you than Butler till you’re married.
I’ve a right to consider your safety, anyway. You’re here through my
help; your convict ship adventure was of my bringing about. It’s my
duty to see you safe out of the mess your romancing love has carried
you into.’

An angry answer was on my lips when the door of the berth close beside
me was opened, and Tom stepped out. I had not imagined he was there.
Will changed colour. My sweetheart, with the pleasantest smile I had
yet seen on his face, put his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and exclaimed:

‘I couldn’t help overhearing you, Johnstone. But I’m in time, I hope,
to stop more from being said than you’d wish me to catch. I admire
your devotion to your cousin and thank you for it. It is what I should
expect of one with Marian’s blood in him. Step this way, that our
friend in the after-cabin yonder may not hear me.’

He led us into the berth I slept in, and closed the door.

‘Johnstone,’ said he, ‘I’ll ask you a question or two. How do you know
that I didn’t attempt to scuttle the _Arab Chief_?’

The lad looked startled, and answered: ‘I don’t know, yet I’ll swear
you never made the attempt.’

‘You wish to think me innocent, but you can’t be sure?’

‘On the top of Collins’s story I am sure,’ said Will.

‘Chaw! What is that evidence? Mere hearsay; the talk of a scoundrel
seaman perhaps against his captain, and it’s two to one still even at
that. How is Bates to know I’m guiltless? How is Marian, except of her
great love and noble devotion and faith in me, to hold me innocent of
a charge on which an intelligent jury and a sagacious judge condemned
me, imprisoned me, expatriated me? Now,’ said he, talking with perfect
temper, ‘I’ve a right to prove myself an honest man to you all, haven’t
I? The machinery of proof, by a marvellous ordering of Providence,
happens to be on board; I’m a little at a loss how to handle it; advise
me, Johnstone.’

I seated myself at this point, and he put his arm round my neck, with a
light, sarcastic smile as he looked at the lad.

‘There’s nothing to be done but wring the truth out of the beast,’ said
Will.

‘How? As you wring a swab! Advise me, Johnstone.’

My cousin coloured, looked down, and was silent.

‘My lad,’ said Tom, after a pause, ‘you cannot counsel me. Of course
not. Neither can Bates. What’s the key, then, to fit this lock? Why,
patience. And patience means that I must keep my brace of villains
aboard this brig till they confess, or sicken and die, never parting
with them till I’ve torn the jewel they’ve robbed me of out of their
black hearts. If I send you home you’ll have nothing to complain of!’

‘No, sir. But Marian----’

‘Marian shall accompany you.’

‘Never!’ I cried, flinging his arm from my neck to look at him.

‘Marian,’ he said tenderly, ‘you will do what I wish when the time
comes. No man could swiftly strike out of such an amazing business as
this a full and satisfying plan. You’ll do what I wish, and help me by
obeying.’

‘But you mean to hang Rotch, Captain Butler?’ said Will.

‘In time I may, Johnstone, even if I have to carry him to the South
Seas to do it. But the villain’s span, you see, is not yet allotted, as
far as I am concerned.’

‘Captain,’ said Will, ‘I’m sorry I interfered or spoke to Marian.
You’re a man of honour; you’ll do what’s right by my cousin.’

Tom smiled at him.

‘You will never get me to leave you!’ said I, jumping up and grasping
my sweetheart’s arm.

‘You’re tired, dear; the air is soft on deck, the evening is cloudless
and beautiful. Wrap yourself up and I’ll carry a chair for you on to
the deck-house roof.’

But matters were to come to a head more swiftly than ever I had dared
dream. We had left Tristan five days behind us. In all this time the
brig had gnawed her way to windward on a taut bowline, the breeze
holding fresh and steady off the bow, the blue seas flowing in long,
deep lines. Rotch throughout was waited upon by Mr. Bates. And first as
to this man Rotch.

I frequently questioned the mate about him, and gathered this: He spoke
little and ate poorly; he craved for drink as though he burnt with a
perpetual thirst of fever; and Bates put plenty of fresh water into
his cabin, and rum enough to poison him out of hand, if ever he should
have a mind for what I would now call a Barney-Abram drench. Bates told
us the fellow was growing very thin in the face and falling away in the
body; already his clothes were fitting him ill. He was restless, and
Bates seldom entered his cabin without finding him pacing the little
square of deck. It was Tom’s wish that Bates should attend to the man;
he was afraid to trust himself with him; and Will was young and green,
and might by some well-meant whisper balk my sweetheart’s scheme to
terrify the man into a confession of truth.

Once, when Bates went in with the prisoner’s dinner, Rotch, leaning
against his bunk with his arms folded--so the mate described him--asked
where they were sailing the brig to. Bates answered plainly, ‘To
England.’ Rotch said: ‘What does the man Butler mean to do with me?’
Bates replied: ‘He means to keep you with him till you prove his
innocence; time will be granted; if you then fail, he’ll hang you. He’s
a man of his word; when you made a convict of him, you made a devil of
him. He no longer holds human life in value. He’d shoot you through the
head with as easy a heart as a felon brains a warder.’ ‘Suppose I do
what he wants--what then?’ asked Rotch. ‘I don’t know,’ answered Bates.
‘Find out,’ said the man. (When this was put to Tom, he said: ‘Let him
confess, let the document bear his signature and be properly witnessed,
and I’ll hand him over to you, Bates--to you and to Will along with
this brig and cargo--I’ll leave you in the Channel by the first
Frenchman who’ll put me ashore in his country; what Miss Johnstone will
do we’ll consider. First let the man confess.’) This was repeated to
Rotch, who said to the mate: ‘What would you do with me?’ ‘Establish
Captain Butler’s innocence,’ answers the mate. ‘The sooner you do it,
the better you’ll be used.’ Rotch made no answer.

From this time, during the days I am now dealing with, he continued
obstinately silent, a sullen, scowling figure of a man as Bates
pictured him, losing flesh as though he fasted, asking for nothing but
fresh water to mix his rum with; for nothing but that. The brig had a
few books; the mate placed two or three in Rotch’s berth; they were
never touched. Thus it was with Captain Samuel Rotch, whom I never once
set eyes on after the day when he had been ordered into his berth and
locked up by Tom. He was perfectly quiet; I’d sometimes fancy I heard
a noise like a muttering, and I’d creep to his door to listen, hoping
to hear him babble about Tom in a fit of delirium or out of the liquor
which Bates told us he swallowed in quantities. But it was always
imagination on my part; his berth was for ever as silent as a coffin.

As for Nodder--Mr. Bates waited upon that man for the reason that he
waited upon Rotch. Tom distrusted his own temper, and was advised by me
and Bates never to go into the forecastle. It was the mate’s own wish
to attend upon Nodder; he told me he was gaining a sort of influence
over the fellow, who was miserably ill and suffering fearfully from
some internal trouble, and who, attempting once at Bates’s suggestion
to quit his bunk and come on deck for fresh air, was in such agony when
he stood that he fell down in a swoon, and Bates had to put his head
through the scuttle and bawl to Will to help him pick the man up and
put him into his bunk again.

I never can forget Mr. Bates’s kindness at this time. The tears stand
in my eyes, and I find myself loving his memory as that of a dear
friend when I recall his unwearied anxiety and efforts to get the
truth from the two villains. He was a person of a religious cast of
mind, and in that, I think, strange as it may seem, lay his influence
over Nodder, who seemed fully sensible that he was a dying man, and
found a sort of consolation in conversing with the mate. It luckily
happened that there were one or two points of sympathy between them.
For example, Bates’s mother had been a native of Nodder’s birthplace;
he knew the seaport well, and mentioned names, street’s, shops, and the
like, with which the man of course was well acquainted. Then the mate
had sailed with a man who commanded a ship in which Nodder had made
a voyage, and this man was the only person for whom Nodder had a good
word.

This and much more the mate would tell Tom and me on his return from
his forecastle visits. But all the while the villain answered no
questions as to my sweetheart’s guilt or innocence. He was too wary
to say a word about Rotch, though Bates directly challenged him on
one occasion about that point in Collins’s statement, when during the
drunken quarrel Nodder had asked the other what had become of the fifty
pounds he had promised him.

‘Yet,’ said the mate to me, in the course of a long earnest talk, ‘I
honestly believe, Miss Johnstone, the fellow will shell out before he
dies. How long he’ll take in sinking I don’t know. His looks aren’t
sweet and lively; I’ve known pleasanter minutes in my time than talking
to that carroty head, bolstered up, flickering out to the slush lamp
with a dirty old blanket drawn to its throat. Yet he’s now fallen into
the trick of a wall-eyed look that makes me hopeful. I seem to see the
truth rising like a whale coming up to blow, though before it touches
the surface it settles again.’

‘How long do you give him to live?’ said I.

‘Why, a sea-dog of his cut,’ said he, ‘often holds on with such a grip
as disappoints the most humane calculations. It isn’t so much dying as
drying out. Nature kind of embalms him, as a Yankee would say. It’s
salt and sun that does it. This chap might live to be sent ashore in
the English Channel. Just the sort of a man he is to walk slowly, in
shiny cloth and a face of tallow, out of a hospital, and sign articles
a month afterwards for a warm voyage.’

Now, as well as I can remember, it was two days after this talk with
Mr. Bates that I was in my berth mending my dress with a needle and
thread from a sailor’s housewife that had been found in the forecastle.
I don’t recollect that we had taken the south-east trade-wind; the
yards were square, a fresh, merry, sparkling breeze blew over the
quarter, and the brig floated fast before it, sitting very upright,
with a slow, small, majestical curtseying motion in the length of her
as she was underswept by the Atlantic swell that ran with the breeze.

Suddenly, someone knocked in an agitated manner upon my door; I cried:
‘Who’s there?’

The voice of Mr. Bates, not less indicative of excitement than his
knuckles, cried: ‘I want paper and ink as quickly as possible, Miss
Johnstone.’

Here in my berth, which had been the captain’s, was kept the brig’s
small stock of writing materials. Somehow I guessed what the mate
wanted paper and pen for. I whipped on my dress and opened the door.
He took what he needed, just saying, ‘Nodder’s offered to confess!’
and hastened away. My heart at this news leapt up and half choked me
with a sudden transport. It was drawing on to four o’clock in the
afternoon; Tom was in his cabin resting. I put on my hat and went on to
the deck and found Collins at the wheel. Will, who was in Tom’s watch,
according to the disposition of our little company, was lying down.

Collins exclaimed: ‘If you’re seeking Mr. Bates, he’s in the
forecastle.’ I paced up and down in what is called the gangway between
the deck-house front and caboose, and still, as I turned my back on
the fore part of the brig, I’d for ever be looking behind me toward
the fore hatch, through which Mr. Bates must emerge. Saving that time
that I waited for the decision of the jury in the Old Bailey, I had
never suffered such agony of suspense. Was Nodder dictating to Mr.
Bates at this instant? If so, what was he saying? Convicting himself
and Rotch of as shocking a perjury as any in the criminal records, or
declaring that the evidence he and the other had given was true? Would
the sullen, drunken, dying animal dictate at all when Bates sat beside
him ready to write? These were distracting thoughts, and I walked the
deck like one distraught. I did not want to see Mr. Bates too soon; I
dreaded his emergence, for that would signify the villain had fallen
stubborn and mute, and yet my impatience was an anguish; again and
again I’d stop in the cabin-doorway to look at the clock. Collins, who
could see the time through the window, exclaimed: ‘It’s after four.
Will Mr. Johnstone relieve me?’

‘Wait for Mr. Bates,’ said I; and I started off afresh on my gangway
march.

At last, on a sudden, I saw Mr. Bates’s face in the hatch; he gravely
motioned me to approach; when I had drawn near he said: ‘It’s all
right; I have it down. It’s a complete acquittal. What a piece of
villainy! Pray run aft now, put Captain Butler to the wheel, and bring
Johnstone and Collins into the forecastle to hear what’s been written,
to witness Nodder’s signature, and to sign their own names.’

I sped to the cabin and ran breathless into Tom’s berth. I put my hand
upon his shoulder and shook him violently. He opened his eyes and
instantly started up, collecting his wits with the nimble dexterity of
one used to instant and urgent calls.

‘Nodder has confessed!’ I cried. ‘Bates has it down in writing; he
wants Will and me and Collins in the forecastle as witnesses. Jump up
and take the wheel whilst I call Will.’

Before the words were fairly off my lips he was out of his bunk,
pulling on his coat. I rushed to Will’s cabin and dragged the dear boy
half out of bed in my eagerness to awaken and get him forward quickly.
His berth was next to Rotch’s; the bulkhead between was stout, but a
voice exerted strongly was easily to be heard through the partition.
I cried out in loud, clear tones that Nodder had confessed Tom’s
innocence, that Mr. Bates had taken his statement down in writing, and
that he (Will) was instantly required in the forecastle.

Tom was at the wheel. He had sent Collins forward. Will and I ran to
the forecastle hatch and descended. I found myself in a small, gloomy,
wooden cave; a lamp burning with a large, dim, smoky flame swayed at
the end of a lanyard under a grimy central beam. Some bunks were built
on either hand of this forecastle. The place contained a sea-chest
or two left by the sailors, some remains of bedding, a few odds and
ends of wearing apparel. Mr. Bates sat upon a chest under the lamp; a
bunk-board he had used as a writing-desk stood before him. He held a
sheet of foolscap paper.

In a bunk immediately abreast lay Nodder. I could not distinguish much
of the man. An old blanket partially covered him. His arms, clothed in
a sleeve-waistcoat, lay outside the blanket. His colour was sickly,
dingy, hideous. His long red hair, like peelings and slicings of
carrots, stood harsh and stiff about his brow and coiled wire-like
upon the bolster. His wall-eye seemed to be fastened upon me; the
other looked straight up. Collins stood near the mate, who, on our
descending, exclaimed:

‘I’ll read this confession aloud, that Nodder may hear it’s all right.
He’ll then sign, and we four’ll witness.’

Here Nodder turned his head and said: ‘Who’s that female?’

‘The lady Captain Butler’s to be married to,’ answered Mr. Bates.

‘Didn’t know there was e’er a woman aboard,’ said Nodder, speaking
as though his throat was raw with drink. Nothing so harsh, rasping,
sawlike, did I ever hear.

I got my disgust under and stepped close to the villain. ‘I hope you
don’t suffer much?’ I said softly and kindly.

‘I do, then,’ he answered. ‘When there’s hell in the belly and hell
in the heart, there’s bound to be suffering. It was all along of that
Rotch. Toon up, Mr. Bates, and let’s get the gallus job over.’

I drew back. The having such a face as his near me made me feel sick.
Then, again, the atmosphere of his bunk was charged with a smell of
spirits, and reminded me of the fumes which rose through the _Childe
Harold’s_ skylights that night we left her.

Mr. Bates, standing up, read aloud, in a solemn and emphatic manner, as
follows:--

  ‘September 27, 1835, Samuel Rotch, mate of the barque _Arab Chief_,
  comes to me, Benjamin Nodder, carpenter of the said ship, then
  sitting in my berth forward, smoking a pipe, and asked me if I’d
  give that matter he’d talked to me afore on another thought. I says
  yes, and in consideration of his promises I was agreeable to help
  him, but he must contrive the job so artfully as to make sure I
  shouldn’t get into trouble. He answers that there could be no risks
  at all; him and me would be witnesses, and we would take some of the
  sailors into the lazarette to hear the water running in, and then
  carry them to Captain Butler’s berth, where we’d find the treenail
  auger, the sailors looking on. Captain Thomas Butler was master of
  the said barque _Arab Chief_. The understanding was this: If the plot
  answered and Rotch got command he was to use his interest and make me
  mate under him. He was likewise to pay me fifty pounds on our return
  to England. This money’s still a-owing: he was always putting off
  the payment with promises, and swore when we started that he’d tell
  down the money in Spanish dollars at Callao, to which port the _Arab
  Chief_ was bound when she was burned. It was likewise agreed that
  I was to have the run of the spirits after we had confined Captain
  Butler to his cabin. Rotch told me that the punishment for scuttling
  a ship was light, not like the punishment for actually sinking of
  her. I didn’t suppose it would come to a term of transportation, or
  I swear by the blood of my heart I’d never have done it. It was to
  be a small punishment, Rotch says, that would put Butler out of the
  way for a spell--long enough to enable Rotch to get command and to
  give me a berth at good wages. I made the holes and plugged the inner
  skin, and Rotch hid the auger. It was all Rotch’s planning, and I
  helped. I’d have owned up several times when we were going home in
  the ship-of-war along with Captain Butler for the trial, but Rotch
  told me it was too late, that I’d already committed perjury before
  the Consul at Rio, and both him and me stood to be transported for
  life if I confessed. Captain Butler was nothing to me one way or the
  other; I never liked nor disliked him. Rotch, he hated the man; never
  said why. I allow he was ate up with jealousy; from his toes to his
  hair he was fired with it. I’ll make no excuses for myself. Drink
  was at bottom and not caring. I never reckoned it would have come
  to fourteen years’ transportation. I hope this here confession will
  clear Captain Butler’s character, and set him right again in the eyes
  of the world. And now, willing to sign this document in the presence
  of witnesses, I’ve got nothing more to say.’

Bates ceased to read.

‘Some one fill my pannikin,’ said Nodder. ‘Hearing that yarn over
again’s taken it out of me.’

Bates pointed to a bottle; Will mixed a draught, and Nodder, sitting
up, lifted the pannikin with both hands, trembling violently.

I had listened with a mad heart; recollection of what Tom had been made
to suffer by that foul, drunken, hideous scoundrel rushed upon me. The
villain had owned it was drink and not caring; he had done it for a
promise of fifty pounds and the run of the rum casks and a mate’s berth
at some hundred shillings a month! I could have torn the poisonous
rat’s eyes out as he lay, and turned my back upon him to hide my face.

He threw the pannikin he had emptied on to the deck: and said: ‘Gi’ me
hold of a pen whilst I’m setting up; it’ll be a bruisy queer scrawl.
What music’s a-playing that these hands keep dancing?’ He looked at his
fingers with a horrid grin.

Bates put the bunk-board on the fellow’s knees, and called to Will to
hold the lamp close. My temper was under control again, and I looked
at the man as he sat up in his bunk, fearing that even now he might
cheat us by refusing to sign, though I supposed that, in any case, the
confession made to Mr. Bates, and heard read aloud by us in Nodder’s
presence, would be counted good evidence.

The man’s hand trembled so violently that twice or thrice he let
fall the pen. ‘Hold my wrist,’ said he, with a vile oath. Helped by
Mr. Bates, he scrawled his name; we then signed as witnesses, Bates
leading, Collins ending with a cross; the date was added, the name of
the brig, her situation at noon.

Nodder had fallen back, and lay watching us while we signed. As Mr.
Bates handed me the written confession, the fellow in his raw,
squawking voice exclaimed: ‘Mix me another pannikin, one of yer; then
clear out. You’ve got what you want, ha’n’t you?’

I passed through the hatch quickly, fearful of the man’s language; Will
accompanied me. I glanced at him in the bright western daylight; he
looked shocked, almost stunned.

‘I always knew he was innocent,’ he exclaimed.

But I was mad to join Tom. I held up the paper as I ran towards the
wheel, at which stood Tom’s fine commanding figure, solitary on the
brig’s decks. He was pale, and the shadow of bitter expectation lay
like a scowl or frown upon him.

‘Has he confessed?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

Will took the wheel, and I followed my sweetheart into the cabin. He
put the paper upon the table, and bent his head to read the precious
document. I watched his face with impassioned intentness. I thought he
had read to the end of the writing when he lifted his head; he rubbed
his eyes and pressed his temples betwixt his hands, bent his head to
the paper again, and now I was very sure he had not read a quarter down.

Mr. Bates came along the deck and entered the cabin-door; I put my
finger to my lips, and he halted close behind Tom, who seemed not to
have heard him come. In this manner three or four minutes passed,
neither Bates nor I speaking, and Tom appearing to read. My sweetheart
then fetched a deep breath, and, looking round to me without seeing
Bates, he said: ‘That such a man should have had it in his power
to injure me so!’ I saw a mist in his eyes, and his breathing was
laboured; then perceiving Bates he grasped him by both hands.

‘Dear friend,’ he cried, ‘it is a ruined, broken-hearted convict sailor
who thanks you!’

‘No more of that, Butler, for my sake,’ answered the mate. ‘You are no
convict, and your heart’s not broken. All’s well with us now, and I’ll
be dancing at your wedding very soon.’

‘I was innocent! I was always innocent! I told you so!’ cried Tom.

‘Did I ever doubt it, Butler?’ exclaimed the mate. ‘And this lady’s
marvellous devotion! Match me such perfect faith, such beautiful
loyalty.’

Tom stretched out his arms, and in a moment I was locked to his heart.




CHAPTER XLV

SHE CONCLUDES HER STORY


Presently the mate told us of the trouble Nodder had cost him; how at
one moment the sulky villain bade him fetch paper and pen, for that he
meant to confess; how, as Bates sprang to the hatch, the fellow rasped
out that he had changed his mind--bruised if he was going to confess.
Butler had never offered him an extra glass of grog all the time they
were together; it was for Rotch to own up, not him. First let him hear
what Rotch had to say. This went on till Bates, losing his temper, told
him he had as good as confessed already; if he refused to dictate the
confession civilly asked of him, he (that is, Bates) would quit the
forecastle, clap the hatch on, leave him to crawl about in the dark,
stop his supply of rum, and in every way abandon him to a dreadful and
miserable fate. ‘You’ve no friend on board but myself,’ Bates told
him. ‘But for me you’d get nothing to eat or drink. If Rotch confesses
first, he’ll put in a claim as Queen’s evidence, the whole burden of
this enormous crime will be laid upon your shoulders, and whilst I’ll
take my oath that the punishment for it is nothing less than the hulks
and transportation for life, I’ll not swear, as I’m no lawyer, that it
isn’t a hanging offence. Then I bade him think of Rotch’s promise of
fifty pounds, and of the horrible mess that villain had got him into,
and by degrees so worked upon him as to bring up his meanderings at
last with a round turn. “Jaw me no more!” growled the beggar. “Go and
fetch the smotherin’ writing-gear!” And there it is,’ said the mate,
with a smile, pointing to the table.

In this while the sun was beyond north-west and reddening rapidly, and
now whilst we listened to Mr. Bates the wind breezed up in a shrill
puff that heeled the vessel and despatched Tom and the mate with a
little run on deck. I took Nodder’s confession and stowed it carefully
away along with Collins’s deposition. My heart was full of fire and
rejoicing; I raged at the thought of Tom having been ruined by two such
detestable, contemptible villains as Rotch and Nodder, and I exulted
in knowing that it was now in our power to bring both men to justice
whether Rotch confessed or not.

Whilst they looked after the brig I prepared the evening repast in the
galley. A little before six we sat down to supper. It was then blowing
no more than a pleasant fresh wind; a long swell hurled the brig
forward, and she drove along under a maintopgallant-sail, whitening out
twice her breadth of water as she sped curtseying onwards. Tom, Bates,
and I seated ourselves, Collins steered, and Will kept a look-out on
the top of the house.

I got ready a small tray of food for Rotch; Bates was carrying it to
the fellow’s berth when Tom stopped him to say: ‘Tell him that Nodder’s
confessed, but add little or nothing to that, Bates. Let the fact sink
with him. Whilst we sup we’ll talk things over.’

The mate returned after a very short absence, and quietly took his
place at table.

‘Did you tell him?’ said Tom. Bates answered, ‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He eyed me with a wicked look and made no reply. His eyes have
gone bloodshot and shine queerly. There’s a hardness in that chap’s
countenance that makes me believe he’ll never shell out.’

‘It will not matter,’ said I, ‘we have evidence enough. They’ll never
refuse us a free pardon on what we have.’

‘A free pardon!’ exclaimed Tom, looking at me.

‘Yes--certainly,’ said Mr. Bates, gravely cutting himself a piece
of salt beef; ‘your innocence is already established; nothing to go
through now but a sort of form which the lawyers will put you up to.’

‘Uncle Johnstone will do everything for us,’ said I; ‘and, oh!’ I half
shrieked, clapping my hands, ‘the joy I shall feel in seeing him read
Nodder’s confession!’

Tom’s face was moody and dark.

‘I’ll not ask for nor would I accept a free pardon!’ he exclaimed. ‘For
what am I to be pardoned, and what to me would be the particular virtue
of a pardon?’ he added sarcastically. ‘When I sailed out of the Thames
in a convict ship, I left England for ever. What could induce me to
dwell in a land I abominate, among a people I detest?’

‘A very natural prejudice, Butler,’ said Bates, ‘under the
circumstances; but it will wear off.’

‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘whatever else I may do, whatever else may happen
to me, I shall never again live in England.’

‘Be it so, dear.’

‘I could rant and talk like a stage-tragedy man on that subject,’ he
continued. ‘We’ll hold Nodder’s, and, if we can get it, we’ll hold
Rotch’s confession. We’ll take very great care of them indeed. Oh, yes;
they shall be as precious--as precious--as what, Bates? Well, let’s
say Bank of England notes of the highest value; because they might yet
prove serviceable by enabling me to deal with that ruffian blunderer
called British law, should its blind-guided hand make for my throat
again in the distant place where you and I may settle, Marian. But I’ll
have no asking for a pardon.’

‘We’re a long way from home yet,’ said Bates. ‘The sight of the north
star is bound to work a change in your humour, Butler.’

‘Bates, you don’t know what you’re talking about!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘Keep
this in mind, that under any circumstances I’d sooner cut my throat
than sue for pardon for sins I’m guiltless of. But when you talk of
Nodder’s confession you forget this: First, if I return to England,
I’m a returned convict at large during sentence, which is a felony
punishable by transportation for life. Next, they’d charge me with
piracy and bloodshed as being concerned with others in seizing the
transport _Childe Harold_. Those are what Johnstone’s father would call
“counts,” I suppose. Is Nodder’s confession going to carry me clear of
them?’

‘I was mate of the transport. Butler,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘Then there’s
young Johnstone, who was an apprentice. Would not our evidence weigh?
We could prove you innocent of complicity in that seizure, and tell a
story that should do you honour--how you saved my life; how you forced
the convicts to yield up the women and children.’

‘I want no pardon! I’d take none!’ cried Tom, striking the table with
his fist. ‘I’ll never live in England again. I’ll take a new name under
any flag that flies, and the flag whose people hate the English most is
the flag I’ll love best.’

‘Then,’ said Mr. Bates, looking at me, ‘I don’t see what’s the good of
Butler troubling himself to extort a confession from Rotch.’

‘Rotch! yes!’ cried Tom, shouting his words in a sudden fury. ‘He’ll
have to confess! He must confirm Nodder’s statement and whitewash me
with another coat for your edification, and to enable young Johnstone
to put a bit more of accent and colour into the yarn he’ll spin his
father and his mother. I’ll keep him till he does, and, by God’s
thunder, I’ll hang him if he doesn’t!’

‘Mr. Bates,’ said I, ‘you have managed marvellously well with Nodder.
Surely you’ll bring the other wretch to confess.’

‘Read Nodder’s statement to him,’ said Tom.

‘He might snatch it from me and destroy it,’ said the mate. ‘There
should be two of us.’

‘Will’s too young!’ I exclaimed.

‘I’ll go with you,’ said Tom.

They settled it so, and fixed six o’clock for the visit.

We were so slender a company in that brig that I was often put to the
wheel; I never regularly stood a trick, as sailors say; when they were
all wanted I steered till one of them relieved me. I went to the helm
to send Collins on the deck-house top that Will might get his supper.
As I quitted the cabin Bates and Tom went to Rotch’s berth. There was
some noise in the wind at this hour; the breeze blew fresh, the short
seas ran sharp and burst shrilly, the race of foam on either hand sent
up a note of boiling, there was much merry whistling in the rigging,
and a faint small thunder of wind sweeping out of the hollows through
the curved foot of the sails.

So it happened that I could hear but little of what passed in the
cabin. The wheel was small; I gripped it strongly; I put my mind into
the binnacle-stand and watched the card very earnestly, that the brig
should not run away with me.

Twenty minutes might thus have passed when I heard noises that rose
high above the sound of the sea and the cries in the rigging. Will
shouted, ‘Marian, there’s murder doing!’

I dared not let go of the wheel lest the vessel should broach to and
lose her spars. I shrieked with all my might to Collins, who came
running headlong down the steps.

‘Take the helm,’ I cried, and I sprang through the cabin-door.

At that instant Tom and Bates came out of Rotch’s berth. The mate
turned the key and thrust his shoulder against the door to make sure
all was fast. Tom held a handkerchief to his jaw. He removed it to look
at it; it was stained with blood.

‘What has happened?’ I called out.

‘He jumped upon me, threw me down, and his teeth met in my cheek--a
true hound of hounds, a very dog of very dogs,’ said Tom.

I drew his hand from his face and witnessed the marks of a severe bite
above the right jaw; a little blood flowed.

‘It is nothing at all,’ said he. ‘But how consistent is his trick of
fighting with the nature of the animal!’

I hastened to the galley for some warm water, carefully bathed the
wound, and bound it up. Mr. Bates, whose face was very pale, had gone
on deck to look after the brig; he now returned and found Tom at the
table with his face swathed.

‘Has the villain gone mad?’ said I.

‘Butler,’ said the mate, ‘the sight of you and your talking to him
drove him mad. I feared it. That man’ll never confess.’

‘He’ll hang then,’ said Tom in a fierce, muttering voice.

‘In the face of Nodder’s confession,’ cried Mr. Bates, with more
excitement in his manner than I had ever before witnessed, ‘the
scoundrel swears that Butler was guilty of the attempt. When we entered
I addressed him quietly, almost soothingly; Butler did not speak, he
stood in readiness to prevent Rotch from snatching Nodder’s confession
out of my hands. I read the carpenter’s statement. He listened with
his head hung. When I had ended, Butler said to him: “You see now how
it has worked out. When do you intend to make your declaration to Mr.
Bates?” The man in an instant leaped upon Butler and bore him to the
deck. I got hold of his throat to drag him away, and saw the devil’s
teeth in Butler’s cheek. I’m an old sea-going hand, Miss Johnstone,
and have been forced to listen to some bad language in my time, but
never heard I the like of what left Rotch’s lips after I had choked
him off Butler and flung him aside. His brain’s giving way,’ said he,
addressing Tom.

‘If he’s mad,’ I exclaimed, heartily frightened, ‘his bite may have
poisoned you, Tom.’

‘He’s dog-like enough,’ said he, ‘but I don’t fear his teeth. Bates,
you forgot to tell Miss Johnstone that before he sprang upon me he
called out, “You made the attempt,” using one of the choicest of his
diabolical expressions.’

‘We have Nodder’s confession,’ I exclaimed.

‘But he shall confess--he shall confess,’ said Tom, with deep and
thrilling intensity of tone; ‘I have him--he can never escape me. He
shall confess, or he swings for it by my hand as surely as God’s his
judge.’

Saying this, he left the table and went on deck.

‘Mr. Bates,’ said I, ‘how is the man to be brought to own his crime?’

The mate looked at me earnestly and slowly and shook his head.

‘He’ll go out of his mind,’ said he. ‘That’s often how God punishes the
like of such wretches. He may confess as a madman, but never while his
wits yield light enough to hold his hate in sight. Hate! Why, with him
the deadliest of human passions lives wrapped up, pure and unalloyed,
in flesh, stalking on two legs, and calling itself Rotch.’

He left me, and for many minutes I stood alone, leaning with my hand
upon the cabin table, lost in deep and distracting thought.

It so befell, however, that we were not long to wait before this
degrading, loathsome and maddening business of Rotch was settled
for us, and this without any demand upon our own ingenuity, though
the thing worked out to its issue in strict correspondence with the
inhuman devil’s nature and with all that is base and wretched in this
narrative. Whether the man had been a little mad at the root all
through; whether he really feared that Tom would execute his threat and
hang him; whether he supposed that, taking it that Tom did not hang
him, he would be fearfully punished for the conspiracy and perjury
which Nodder had deposed to; or whether his conscience, working like
a fiend, grew too strong for him during his long, solitary hours of
imprisonment, he, one day, fulfilled the prediction of the mate and
went mad.

We were then in the northern verge of the south-east trade-wind,
sweeping smoothly toward the Equator. I was asleep in my cabin, and was
awakened by a great disturbance and shouts. The hour was some time
in the afternoon. By the time I had put on my dress and run out, the
cries and sounds of scuffling had ceased; but on stepping a few paces
aft, I heard a strange noise of moaning and snapping yells proceeding
from Rotch’s cabin. It was such a noise as might be made by a couple of
dogs, who, though half dead with worrying each other, still fight on.

I ran to the wheel, where I found Will, who told me that while Bates
was in Rotch’s cabin, whither he had carried some drinking water,
Rotch, giving a loud shout, whipped a table knife out of his bunk; he
lunged at Bates, who very nimbly tripped him up, got the knife out of
his hand, and lay wrestling on the deck with Rotch, bawling for help.
Tom and Collins rushed to his assistance, and amongst them dragged the
villain into his berth again.

Whilst Will was telling me this, Tom and the others came out of Rotch’s
cabin. And now I heard that the man had gone mad, and that to prevent
him doing himself or us a mischief they had secured his legs and bound
his arms to his side.

This was a very great calamity; had he jumped overboard or cut his
throat all would have been well, but here now was a madman to watch.
Our little ship’s company was miserably few, and the requirements of
the brig totally prohibited our telling off any one of us to look after
the lunatic fiend. Then again, being mad, his confession (whatever
might prove the delirious gabble he chose to regale Mr. Bates with)
could be of no use to Tom, who would thus be balked in his iron-hard
resolve of carrying him to some part of the seas where he could hang
him if he did not confess.

But it was not a thing to be mended by lamentation; whilst madness
raged in the unhappy, wicked wretch, he was to be kept bound, and
rendered as helpless by cords and lines as Tom in his sanity had been
by leg-irons and handcuffs. Mr. Bates from time to time looked in upon
him, cut up his meat, fed him, and gave him drink. I never went near
the monster’s cabin nor set eyes upon him. If Tom looked in, Rotch
spat at him, howled, expressed by contortions and grimaces a hundred
hellish passions, and struggled with fury and with the power of a giant
to liberate himself that he might get at him. The madman’s cabin-door
was in various ways strengthened to provide against all possibility of
his breaking out. Otherwise he lay lodged as securely as if his prison
had been the sentinelled and barricaded ’tweendecks of the _Childe
Harold_.

This was his condition for about a week, dating from the hour of his
going mad; Bates then told us that the fellow was cooling down and
exhibiting some return of mind; a small light of intelligence was in
his eyes, and the fire of insanity was waning in them. He begged for
the freedom of his limbs, and Bates gave him the use of his arms. One
morning the mate came out of Rotch’s berth, and said to me, who was
sitting at the cabin table:

‘A strange change has come over that miserable creature. He cries like
a whipped boy, and his mind seems in a state of panic terror. He lay
hold of my hand just now and wriggled as though to fall upon his knees,
and implored me not to let Captain Butler come near him. “He’ll hang
me,” he whimpered; “that’s what he’s keeping me here for. Why don’t
he send me ashore? I’m not fit to die. I’ve got a wife and children
dependent upon me.” Then he blazed out: “But he dursn’t hang me. It
would be the bloodiest of all murders to swing a poor sick man like
me!” And he muttered about having a house of furniture and a little
money at home, all of which he’d give me if I’d smuggle a knife into
his berth, and then send Captain Butler to him alone on pretence of
hearing him confess.’

It was on Friday that Bates told me this. On the following Sunday we
sat down to dinner as usual at one o’clock. It was a very quiet day,
clear and bright; the brig was flapping leisurely along clothed to her
royals before a small air of hot wind blowing almost directly over
the stern. Tom put a slice of pork on a plate, and Bates cut it up to
carry it with biscuit, a pannikin of rum and water, and other matters
to Rotch’s berth. The mate went to the door of Rotch’s cabin, and put
the tray down to turn the key and shift one of the uprights which
protected the entrance. My eye was upon him; he opened the door, cried
out, and sprang back, tossing his arms with a gesture of horror and
consternation.

‘What is it?’ called Tom.

‘Come and look, Butler! Come and see for yourself!’ cried the mate.

Tom rushed aft and stood beside Bates. In a moment or two he turned
his face toward me and said, whilst he pointed to the cabin, with his
finger a little elevated: ‘Marian, he has hanged himself!’ He then went
in. Bates, with a white face, came running to the table for a knife,
and then joined Tom. I sat quite still. I had not the courage to view
an object which I guessed would haunt my memory as a phantom of ghastly
horror whilst life lasted. My heart beat with sick, fast throbs whilst
I waited. They were ten minutes in cutting him down and making sure he
was dead. They then came out, closing the door behind them, and drew
slowly to the table.

‘Miss Johnstone,’ said the mate, ‘he’s stone dead.’

‘Is it not God who wins, surely and always, in the end?’ exclaimed Tom.




POSTSCRIPT


When the venerable lady--the Marian Johnstone of the preceding
narrative--had arrived at this point, she declined to proceed. She said
she had told enough. If a sequel was necessary, it must be invented.
She had several grandchildren, and she did not choose to vex or
distress them by unnecessary candour.

With much coaxing, however, and during repeated visits, she let fall
enough to admit of a truthful ending to her strange tale, and the few
things material omitted by her were supplied by Admiralty records and
certain files of shipping papers.

It seems that amongst them they safely carried the little brig _Old
Stormy_ to the English Channel, where, hauling in close to the French
coast, they spoke a French smack, and Captain Butler went ashore to
await Marian Johnstone in some French or Flemish town that had been
agreed upon. The brig then stretched across to the English coast and
landed Nodder, who died twenty-four hours after his arrival in England.
Then, with the assistance of a few ’longshoremen, the vessel was
carried to the Thames.

Miss Johnstone at once called upon her uncle. No particulars of an
interview, which surely must have been memorable and remarkable, were
to be procured. Though Captain Butler had sworn that he would not
accept a free pardon if it were granted, nor ever again set foot in his
native country, Miss Johnstone went to work nevertheless to render him
what is called by the lawyers an unattainted person. It might have been
that Captain Butler knew the law better than she; it is certain that
her uncle, Mr. Johnstone, a shrewd old lawyer, gave her neither hope
nor encouragement. His reasons are probably indicated in an ‘opinion’
he obtained from one who stood high as a legal authority in his day.
The following extract may be given:

‘The unfortunate master has apparently been guilty of no less than
three different felonies within the jurisdiction of the Lord High
Admiral, _i.e._ on the high seas. The three felonies are (1) scuttling,
of which he is wrongfully convicted and transported; (2) being at large
during a sentence of transportation without lawful excise--felony
under 5 Geo. IV., c. 84, s. 24; and (3) of being concerned with other
convicts in piracy with bloodshed, under 18 Geo. II., c. 30, s. 2.
As to pardons: All convictions are to be presumed, of course, to be
correctly made until the contrary be shown. By 7 Geo. IV., c. 28, a
warrant under the royal sign manual is equivalent to a pardon under
the great seal, and this only as a pardon as to the specific felony
committed by the pardoned, and does not avail as to any offence
committed subsequently to that pardoned and not mentioned in the
pardon.’

The seizure of the _Childe Harold_ had occurred subsequently to
Butler’s conviction for attempting to scuttle the _Arab Chief_. He
was also at large whilst still a convict. Miss Johnstone, with much
spirit, but with a good deal of wrong-headed obstinacy also, persisted
in struggling in the direction of a pardon for her sweetheart until
certain convincing representations finally determined her to desist.
Having made all necessary arrangements with regard to her property, she
joined Captain Butler abroad and was married to him. They ultimately
went to the United States, and it is understood that for some years
Captain Butler had command of a fine clipper ship flying the Stars
and Stripes and trading between Boston and the western South American
seaboard.

The award for the salving of the _Old Stormy_ made a considerable sum.
The cargo proved to be exceedingly valuable. Some of the pictures were
by great masters, and the consignment of china alone was valued at
eleven thousand pounds. Captain Butler, through Miss Johnstone, refused
to touch one penny of the award; the money was therefore paid in sums
proportioned by the rating to Mr. Bates, Will Johnstone, and the man
Collins.

It is remarkable that the cabin story of the abandonment of the _Old
Stormy_ proved absolutely true. A single survivor of the crew was
rescued; he was carried to Sierra Leone, where he died; before he
died he detailed the facts of the mutiny, murders, and abandonment,
precisely as they were recited in the document found in the brig.

The _Childe Harold_ was fallen in with by a large heavily armed
Portuguese man-of-war, thirty leagues west of the island of Tristan
d’Acunha. She had been wrecked aloft in a gale; the convicts were in
terrible distress, they were short of water, they had wantonly wasted
the ship’s stock of provisions. The commander of the Portuguese ship
perceiving the vessel’s character sent a number of armed men on board,
and then, strangely enough, towed her for a supply of fresh water
to Tristan d’Acunha, where both ships arrived three weeks after the
departure of the _Old Stormy_ from that island. The transport was then
conveyed to Table Bay, refitted, placed in charge of a new captain
and officers along with a strong crew, and despatched on her voyage
to Hobart Town, where she safely arrived. How the ringleaders were
punished has not been ascertained.

The long-boat, containing Captain Sutherland, Captain Barrett, the
soldiers, women and children, was fallen in within seven or eight
degrees north latitude, and the people, who were all in good health
in spite of great sufferings from exposure--one death only, a child,
having happened--were carried round the Horn before there occurred an
opportunity to tranship and send them home. But the quarter-boats in
which the seamen had been sent adrift were never accounted for.

This, then, is the true sequel of the extraordinary adventures of the
remarkable young woman who has been styled in this narrative of her
experiences Marian Johnstone.


THE END


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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64321 ***