In the West of England stands a city surrounded
by hills. Its streets are wide, its
shops fine and plentiful, and there are many
handsome and some stately terraces of houses
in it. In the heart of the city a gem
of ecclesiastical architecture rears its admirable
tower, and this fine old structure is
known everywhere as the Abbey Church.
How am I to convey to one who has
never beheld them the beauties of the scene
when viewed from some commanding eminence—say
on a rich autumn afternoon whilst
the sun paints every object a tender red, and
before the shadows have grown long in the
valley? Orchards colour the landscape with
the dyes of their fruit and leaves. White
houses gleam amidst trees and tracts of vegetation.
The violet shadow of a cloud floats
slowly down some dark green distant slope.
In the pastures cattle are feeding, and the
noise of the barking of dogs ascends from
the river-side. Rows and crescents of buildings
hang in clusters upon the hills, blending
with the various hues of the country and
lending a grace as of nature’s own to the
scene. The river flows with a red glitter in
its breast past meadows and gardens and
nestling cottages.
Many roads more or less steep conduct to
the several eminences, in the valley of which
peacefully stands this western city. One of
them in a somewhat gentle acclivity winds
eastwards, and as the wayfarer proceeds
along this road he passes through a long
avenue of chestnuts, which in the heat of
the summer cast a delicious shade upon the
dust, and here the air is so pure that it
acts upon the spirits like a cordial. The
ocean is not very many miles distant, and
you taste the saltness of its breath in the
summer breeze as it blows down the hill-sides,
bringing with it a hundred perfumes, and a
hundred musical sounds from the orchards
and the gardens.
About a mile beyond this avenue of chestnuts
there stood—I say there stood, but I do
not doubt there still stands—a pretty house
of a modern character, such as would be offered
for letting or for selling as a ‘villa residence.’
I will speak of it as of a thing that
is past. It was situated on the edge of the
hill; on one side the white road wound by
it; on the other side its land of about one
acre and a half sloped into meadows and
pastures, and this wide space of fields sank
treeless, defined by hedges, well stocked in
the seasons with sheep and cows and other
cattle, to the silver line of the river.
Now have I brought you to my home, to
the home in which I was living a little while
before the strange and terrible experience
that, with the help of another pen, I am
about to relate befel me. And that you may
thoroughly understand the story which I
shall almost immediately enter upon, it is
necessary that I should submit a little home
picture to you.
It was a Sunday afternoon early in the
month of October in a year that is all too
recent for the endurance of memory. A
party of four, of which one was a little boy
aged two, were seated at table drinking tea in
the dining-room of the house, which stood a
mile beyond the chestnut avenue. Upon the
hearth-rug, where was stretched a soft white
blanket, lay a baby of eight months old,
tossing its fat pink legs and dragging at the
tube of a feeding-bottle. A lady sat at the
head of the table.
This lady was in her twenty-sixth year—no
one better knew the date of her birth than
I. She was a handsome woman, and presently
you will understand why I exhibit no reluctance
in speaking of her beauty. I will be
brief in my description of her, but I will invite
your attention to a sketch that, in its
relations to this tale, carries, as you will discover,
a deeper significance than ordinarily
accompanies the portraits of the heroes or
heroines of romance.
She was in her twenty-sixth year, I say.
Her hair was dark, not black. I am unable
to find a name for its peculiar shade. It
was so abundant as to be inconvenient to its
owner, whose character was somewhat impatient,
so that every morning’s wrestle with
the long thick tresses was felt as a trouble
and often as a cause of vexatious delay. Her
eyebrows were thick and arched, and, as she
wore her hair low, but a very little of her
white well-shaped brow was to be seen. Her
nose was after the Roman type, but not too
large nor prominent, yet it gave her an air
as though she held her head high, and it also
communicated an expression of eagerness to
the whole countenance. Her complexion was
a delicate bloom, her mouth was small, the
teeth very white and regular. She had a
good figure, a little above the medium height
of women, with a promise in her shape of
stoutness when her years should have increased.
She was simply dressed, and wore
but little jewellery, no more than a thin
watch-chain round her neck and a wedding-ring
and two other rings on the same finger.
Such was the lady in her twenty-sixth year
who sat at the head of the tea-table on that
October Sunday afternoon.
At her side was her little boy, two years
old. He was a beautiful child with golden
hair and dark blue eyes. He sat in a high
child’s chair on his mother’s left, and whilst
he waited for her to feed him he beat the
table with a spoon.
At the table on the right sat the husband
of this lady, a man entering upon his thirty-first
year. He was tall, thin, and fair, and
wore small whiskers, and his eyes were a dark
grey. Handsome he was not, but he had a
well-bred air, and his face expressed a gentle
and amiable nature.
Confronting the lady at the head of the
table was her twin sister. Nearly always
between twins there is a strong family likeness.
I have heard of twins who resembled
each other so closely as to be mistaken one
for the other unless they were together, when,
to be sure, there must be some subtle difference
to distinguish them. There was undoubtedly
a family likeness between these two
sisters, but it appeared rather in their smile
and in certain small tricks of posture and of
gesture, and in their walk and in the attitudes
which they insensibly fell into when seated;
in these things lay a family likeness rather
than in their faces. Their voices did not in
the least resemble each other’s. That of the
lady who sat at the head of the table was
somewhat high-pitched; her accents were
delivered with impulse and energy, no matter
how trivial might be the subject on which
she discoursed. Her sister, on the other
hand, had a sweet, low, musical voice; she
pronounced her words with a charming note
of plaintiveness, and she never spoke much
at a time nor often. Her hair was not so
plentiful as her sister’s; it was a light bright
brown, with a gloss upon it like that of the
shell of a horse-chestnut, but it had not the
rich deep dye of that nut. She wore it with
a simplicity that was infinitely becoming to
her beauty. Beautiful she was, far more so
than her sister; hers was a beauty far more
tender and womanly than her sister’s; you
thought of the meekness and the sweetness of
the dove in looking at her, and the expression
of her dark-brown eyes was dove-like. She
was shorter than her sister, but equally well
shaped, and she was the younger.
These four sitting at table, and the
little baby of eight months tossing its tiny
toes shod with knitted shoes upon a blanket
on the hearth-rug, formed the occupants of
that parlour, and were the living details of
the domestic picture that the curtain of the
terrible drama of my life rises upon. The
rays of the westering sun streamed upon the
windows of the room, and the atmosphere was
warm with crimson light. One window stood
open, but the church bells had not yet begun
to ring for evening service, and the peace of
the English Sabbath lay upon the land outside:
a peace scarcely disturbed by the distant
barking of dogs, by the occasional moaning
lowing of near cattle, and by the drowsy
murmuring hum of bees and flies amongst the
flowers under the windows.
Who were these people, and what was
their name? The name of the gentleman
was John Campbell, and the lady seated at
the head of the table was his wife, Agnes—Agnes
Campbell, whose story she herself now
relates, and the sweet sister at the foot of the
table was Mary Hutchinson.
I had been married at the time when my
story opens a little above three years. My
father was Colonel Hutchinson, of the Honourable
East India Company’s service. He had
distinguished himself in India in a period of
terrible peril, but he had died before he could
reap the reward of his valour and his judgment.
He died a poor man, his whole fortune
amounting to no more than five thousand
pounds; but the pension my mother drew,
conjointly with the interest of my father’s
little fortune, enabled her to live in tolerable
comfort, and after my father’s death we took
up our abode in the noble old city of Bath,
where we dwelt happily, making many friends
and enjoying a round of simple pleasures.
Society in Bath is largely, almost wholly,
composed of ladies; young men are scarce,
and marriage at the best is but vaguely
dreamed of, though hope is sufficiently constant
to support the spirits.
It chanced that Mary and I were invited
one evening to play a round game of cards
at the house of a friend. We went, expecting
to find the company formed entirely of girls
like ourselves, with perhaps one or two old
fogeys. But soon after our arrival a gentleman
was shown into the room, and introduced
to us as Mr. John Campbell. He was the
only young man present; the other gentlemen
were composed of a general, a colonel, and
an admiral, whose united ages I afterwards
calculated would have exactly amounted to
two hundred years. I did not notice that
Mr. Campbell paid me much attention that
evening. Mary afterwards said he seldom
had his eyes off me, but that I did not observe.
On the contrary, I thought he looked
very often and very admiringly at her.
Well, he saw us to the door of our house,
to use the homely phrase, and on the following
afternoon he called upon us; but if it was
love at first sight on his part, I cannot say
that he illustrated his fervour by his behaviour.
He was very polite, very kind, very
attentive; seemed happy in my society, was
a frequent visitor at our house, would steal
an hour from business to find himself an
excuse to meet us in the gardens or park
where we walked; but that was all.
If I had been led by the reading of novels
to suppose that a man looks love when he
means love, I might have searched Mr. Campbell’s
face in vain for any expression of deep-seated
sentiment. Indeed, after three months,
I could not have said that he was more in
love with me than with my sister. But by the
end of that time I must own that I was very
much in love with him. And though so
tenderly did I love my sister that I would
gladly have relinquished him to her, had her
love for him been as mine, yet to no other
woman could I have parted with him without
the belief—which to be sure I used to laugh
at after I was married—that my heart would
break if he did not make me his. But my
heart was not to be broken because of his
not loving me and making me his, for within
six months from the date of our meeting we
were married, and I was the happiest girl in
all England, and my sister as happy as I in
my happiness.
My husband was a solicitor. His practice
in those days was small and would not have
supported him even as a bachelor; but he
had been the only son of a man who was able
to leave him an income of several hundreds
a year. We went abroad for a month, and
I returned to find my poor mother dead.
This loss left my sister without a relative in
the world saving myself. It is seldom that
this can be said of man or woman. To
be without a relative in this complicated
world of aunts and uncles, of nieces and
nephews, and of cousins no matter how far
removed, seems incredible. There may be
plenty of people who are alone in the sense of
not knowing who their relatives are, though
they would find they had relations in plenty
were they to seek them or were they to come
into a fortune; but it is rare indeed to hear of
anyone who out of his or her perfect knowledge
of the family connections can positively
assert, ‘I have not a relative in the world.’
Yet thus it was with my sister and me
when my mother died. But I will not delay
my story to explain how this happened.
Therefore, being alone in the world, my sister
came to live with my husband and me. How
greatly her making one of us added to my
happiness I cannot express. I will not pretend
that it did grieve me to leave my
poor mother: no, nature works forwards;
the fruit falls from the tree, the young bird
flutters from its nest; it is nature’s law that
a child should part from its parent, and deep
as the sadness of separation may seem at the
time, it will show but as a light-hearted grief
at the best when looked back upon and contrasted
with other sorrows of life.
But it was a bitter pain to me to part with
my sister. We had grown up side by side;
we were as blossoms upon one stalk, and the
sap of the single stalk fed the two flowers.
And now as we sat drinking tea in the
parlour of our house on that fine October
Sunday afternoon, our conversation was as
homely as the picture we made. Nevertheless
it involved a topic of considerable interest
to us. My little boy Johnny had been looking
somewhat pale, and his appetite was not
as I, his mother, considered it should be.
The summer had been a very hot one, and
when it is even moderately warm in most
parts of England, it is commonly very broiling
indeed in our city of the Abbey Church,
where there are tall hills to protect the population
from the breeze, where the roads are
steep, glaring, and dusty, and where the width
of many of the streets is quite out of proportion
to the stature of the houses, so that you
do not know where to look for shade.
My husband’s business would not suffer
him to leave home until the early autumn,
and he could not prevail upon me to go away
without him; but now he was able to take
a holiday for a month, and the doctor had
recommended the seaside for little Johnny
and the baby, and as we sat drinking tea we
talked of the best place to go to.
‘It does not matter to me what part of
the coast you choose,’ said my husband. ‘I
only stipulate that you shall not select a town
that is confidently recommended by the
whole of the medical faculty, and whose
medical officer every year sends to the
newspapers a statement that the death-rate
is the lowest in England, and that it is
the healthiest seaside resort in the United
Kingdom.’
‘Then you shut every seaside town against
us,’ said my sister, ‘for every seaside town is
the healthiest in England.’
I named Margate; my husband made a
grimace.
‘No,’ he exclaimed, ‘I should not like to
return to Bath and say we have been to
Margate. It was only the other day I heard
General Cramp swear that Margate was not
the vulgarest place in all England, oh no! but
the vulgarest place in all the world.’
‘Its air is very fine,’ said I, ‘and it is fine
air that we want.’ And here I looked at
Johnny. ‘What does it matter to us what
sort of people go to Margate, if its air is
good?’
‘I will not go to Margate,’ said my husband.
My sister named two or three towns on
the coast.
‘Let us,’ said my husband, ‘go to some
place where there is no hotel and where there
is no pier.’
‘And where there is no circulating library,’
cried I, ‘and where there are two miles of
mud when the water is out.’
And then I named several towns as my
sister had, but my suggestions were not regarded.
At this point baby began to roar,
and my husband rose to ring for the nurse,
but it was nurse’s ‘Sunday out,’ and Mary
and I were taking her place. Mary picked
baby up off the blanket, and holding its cheek
to hers, sung softly to it in her low sweet
voice. The darling was instantly silent. The
effect of my sister’s plaintive melodious voice
upon fretful children was magical. I remember
once calling with her upon a lady who
wished that we should see her baby. The
baby was brought into the room, and the
moment it saw us it began to yell. My sister
stepped up to it as it sat on the nurse’s arm,
and looking at it in the face with a smile
began to sing, and the infant, silencing its
cries, stared back at her with its mouth wide
open in the very posture of a scream, but as
silent as though it had been a doll. When
she ceased to sing and turned from it, it
roared again, and again she silenced it by
singing.
My baby lay hushed in her arms, and the
sweet eyes of Mary looked at us over the
little fat cheek that she nestled to her throat,
and we continued to discourse upon the best
place to go to.
My husband named a small seaside town,
and I could see by the expression of his face
he meant that we should go there. It was
many years since he had visited it, but he
recollected and described the beauties of the
scenery of the coast with enthusiasm. It was
on the Bristol Channel, at no very considerable
distance from the city in which we dwelt,
and he said he wished to go there because,
should there come a call upon him from the
office, he would be able to make the double
journey, with plenty of leisure between for
all he might have to do, in a day, computing
that day from eight till midnight.
‘Oh! it is a beautiful romantic spot,
Agnes,’ said he. ‘Its sands, when the water
is out, are as firm as this floor. It has high,
dark cliffs, magnificently bold and rugged,
and when the breaker bursts upon the sand,
the cliffs echo its voice, and you seem to hear
the note of an approaching tempest.’
‘But it is a cheerful place, John? Cliffs
and sands are very well, but in a month one
wearies of cliffs and sands, and in a month
again how many days of wet will there be?’
‘It is cheerful—very,’ said my husband.
‘Its cheerfulness is inborn, like good-nature
in a man. It owes nothing of its brightness
to excursionists, to steamboats, to Punch and
Judy, and to German bands. It has three
good streets and a number of clean lodging-houses.’
‘Has it a pier and a hotel?’ asked Mary.
‘It has what the cockneys call a jetty,’
answered my husband. ‘I should prefer to
term it a pier. What is the difference between
a pier and a jetty? This jetty is short,
massive, very richly tarred, and just the sort
of jetty for Johnny to fall over the edge of
if he is not looked after. There is a wooden
canopy at the extremity of it under which,
Mary, you will be able to sit and read your
favourite poet without risk of being intruded
upon. The verses of your favourite poet
will be set to music by the rippling of the
water among the massive supports of the
pier, and you will have nothing to do but to
be happy.’
‘Are there any boats?’ I asked.
‘Many capital boats,’ he answered.
‘Sailing boats?’ said I.
‘Sailing boats and rowing boats,’ said
he.
‘I shall often want to go out sailing,’
said I. ‘What is more heavenly than sailing?’
‘You will have to go alone so far as I am
concerned, Agnes,’ said Mary.
‘Yes, but John will often accompany me,’
said I.
‘Not very often,’ he exclaimed. ‘Had I been
a lover of sailing I should have gone to sea,
instead of which I am a solicitor, and I spell
sails with an “e” and not with an “i.” Well,
is it settled?’ he continued, drawing a pipe
case from his pocket and extracting the pipe
from it. ‘I believe there will be time for
half a pipe of tobacco before we go to
church.’
But the nurse being out I could not go to
church, and my sister would not leave me
alone with the children, and my husband, instead
of filling half a pipe filled a whole one,
and took no heed of the church bells when
their happy peaceful chimes floated through
the open window. Indeed it was not settled;
the subject was too interesting to be swiftly
dismissed, yet my husband had his way in the
end, as usually happened, for before evening
service was over we had arranged to spend a
month at the little town whose praises he had
sung so poetically.
Next day he made a journey to the shores
of the Bristol Channel to seek for lodgings.
But the accommodation he required was not
to be found in apartments, and when he returned
he told me that he had taken a house
standing near the edge of the cliff in a garden
of its own. A few days later our little family
proceeded to the sea coast. We left two
servants behind us to look after the house,
and the only domestic we took with us was
the nurse, a person of about my own age,
who had been with me at this time about
six weeks, having replaced an excellent, trustworthy
young woman who had left me to
get married.
I will call the little place from which
dates the story of my terrific experiences,
Piertown.
What with having to change here, and to
get out there, and to wait somewhere else,
the journey was a tedious one, and when we
arrived it was raining hard and blowing very
strong, and I remember as we drove from the
railway station catching sight through the
streaming window glass of the white waves of
the sea rushing like bodies of snow out of
the pale haze of the rain and the spray, and
I also remember that I heard a strange low
voice of thunder in the air, made by the huge
breakers as they tumbled in hills of water
upon the beach and rushed backwards into
the sea in sheets of froth.
It was so cold that we were very glad to
find a cheerful fire in the parlour, that was
rendered yet more hospitable to the sight by
the table being equipped for a two o’clock
dinner. The house was small, but very
strongly built, with thick plate-glass windows
in the lower rooms, against which the wind
and the rain were hissing as though an engine
were letting off steam close by. A couple of
maid-servants had been left in the house.
Never could I have imagined that servants
would be willing to sleep as those two did in
one small bed, in a tiny garret where all the
light they had fell through a skylight window
about the size of a book. But I have noticed
in the country, that is to say, in rural parts
and quiet towns such as Piertown, servants
are grateful and dutiful for such food and
lodging as would cause them to be incessantly
grumbling and changing their places in cities
like Bath.
Baby and little Johnny were taken upstairs
by the nurse, and my husband and Mary and
I went to the window and stood gazing at the
sea. We had a very clear view of it. The
house stood within a few yards of the edge
of the cliff, and the extremity of the garden
between was bounded by a dwarf wall of
flint which left the prospect open.
‘What do you think of that sight,
Agnes?’ said my husband. ‘Would sailing
be heavenly to-day, do you think?’
‘Never more heavenly if one could feel
safe,’ said I. ‘How swiftly a boat would rush
before such a wind as this! Hark to the
roaring in the chimney! It makes me feel
as if I were in the cabin of a ship. It is
delightful. It is like being at sea and enjoying
the full spirit of it without suffering the
horrors of being tossed and bruised, and
without any chance of being upset and shipwrecked.’
‘You should have married a sailor,’ said
my husband dryly.
‘What have you been reading lately,
Agnes, to put this sudden love of the sea into
your head?’ said Mary. ‘You used not to
care for the water.’
‘I have been reading nothing to make me
love the sea,’ I answered; ‘but when I look at
such a sight as that I feel that if I were a
man I should consider that the earth was
formed of something more than land, and
that the best part of it is not where trees
grow and where houses are built.’
My husband laughed. ‘One hour of that
would cure you,’ said he pointing. ‘One
hour, indeed! Ten minutes of it. I tell you
what—there is a very heavy sea running to-day.
It must be so, for we are high-perched
here, and look how defined are the shapes of
the waves as they come storming out of the
mist towards the land.’
‘I wish a ship would pass,’ said I. ‘I
should like to see her roll and plunge.’
And for some time after my husband and
Mary had withdrawn from the window I
stood gazing at the bleared and throbbing
scene of ocean, hoping and longing to see a
ship go by, little suspecting that my wishes
were as wicked as though they were those of
a wrecker, for had any ship been close enough
in to the coast to enable me to see her amid
the thickness that was upon the face of the
streaming and rushing waters, nothing could
have saved her from being driven ashore,
where in all probability her crew would have
perished.
But in the afternoon the weather cleared;
it continued to blow a strong wind right upon
the land, but the sky opened into many blue
lakes, and changed into a magnificent picture
of immense bodies of stately sailing cream-coloured
cloud, upon which the setting sun
shone, colouring their skirts with a dark rich
gold, and the horizon expanded to as far as
the eye could pierce, with one staggering
and leaning shaft of white upon the very rim
of the sea.
‘Let us go and look at the town,’ said my
husband; and Mary and I put on our hats
and jackets and the three of us sallied
forth.
We had to walk some distance to reach
the little town, and when we arrived there
was not very much to see. The three streets
were neither spacious nor splendid; on the
contrary, they struck me as rather mean and
weather-beaten. But then people do not
leave cities in order to view the shops and
streets of little seaside towns. Piertown lay
in a sort of chasm. It was as though a party
of fishermen in ancient days, wandering along
the coast in search of a good site for the
erection of their cottages, and falling in with
this great split in the cliff, as though an earthquake
had not long before happened, had
exclaimed, ‘Let us settle here.’ There was a
peculiar smell of salt in the streets, and the
roadways and pavements presented a sort of
faint sparkling surface, as though a great deal
of brine had fallen upon them and dried up.
There was also a smell of kippered herring in
the strong wind, and it seemed to proceed
from every shop door that we passed.
Very few people were to be seen. We
were much stared at by the shopmen through
their windows, and here and there a little
knot of lounging men dressed as boatmen
hushed their hoarse voices to intently gaze
at us.
‘This is what I like,’ said my husband.
‘Here is all the privacy that we could desire,
and the most delightful primitiveness also. A
professional man when he takes a holiday
ought to give crowded places a very wide
berth, and put himself as close to nature—to
nature, rugged, homely and roaring, after this
pattern,’ said he with a sweep of his hand,
‘as his requirements of eating and drinking
and sleeping will permit.’
‘It seems a very dull place,’ said I when,
having reached the top of one of the three
steep streets, we turned to retrace our steps.
‘If the weather does not allow me to have
plenty of boating I shall soon wish myself
home again.’
‘You will not find a circulating library
here,’ said Mary, looking around her. ‘I
should not suppose that many people belonging
to Piertown are able to read.’
‘The place is made up of grocers’ shops,’
said my husband. ‘What a queer smell of
bloaters!’
I amused myself by counting no less than
five grocers’ shops in one street, and I did not
see a single person resembling a customer
in any one of them. I pulled my husband’s
arm to stop him opposite a shop in
whose windows I believed I saw three men
hanging by the neck. They proved to be
complete suits of oilskins, each surmounted
by one of those nautical helmets called
sou’-westers, and at a little distance, as they
dangled in the twilight within the windows,
they exactly resembled three mariners who
had committed suicide.
We now walked down to the pier, and
there the great plain of the ocean stretched
before us without the dimmest break of land
anywhere along its confines, and the white
surf boiled within the toss of a pebble from
us. The pier projected from a short esplanade;
along this esplanade ran a terrace of
mean stunted structures, eight in all; and my
husband, after looking and counting, exclaimed:
‘Five of them are public-houses.
Yes! this is the seaside.’
The pier forked straight out for a short
distance, then rounded sharply to the right,
thus forming a little harbour, in the shelter of
which lay a cluster of boats of several kinds.
The massive piles and supports of the pier
broke the weight of the seas, which rushed
hissing white as milk amongst the black
timbers; but the water within was considerably
agitated nevertheless, and the boats
hopped and plunged and jumped and rubbed
their sides one against another, straining at
the ropes which held them, as though they
were timid living creatures like sheep, terrified
by the noise and appearance of the waters,
and desperately struggling at their tethers in
their desire to get on shore.
We stood looking, inhaling deeply and
with delight the salt sweetness of the strong
ocean breeze. The land soared on either
hand from the little town, and ran away in
dark masses of towering cliff, and far as the
eye could follow went the white line of the
surf, with a broad platform of grey hard sand
betwixt it and the base of the cliff. Here
and there in one or another of the public-house
windows glimmered a face whose eyes
surveyed us steadfastly. We might make
sure by the manner in which we were looked
at, that Piertown was not greatly troubled by
visitors.
There was a wooden post near the entrance
of the pier, and upon it leaned the
figure of a man clad in trousers of a stuff
resembling blanket, a rusty coat buttoned up
to his neck, around which was a large shawl,
and upon his head he wore a yellow sou’-wester.
He might have been carved out of
wood, so motionless was his posture and so
intent his gaze at the horizon, where there
was nothing to be seen but water, though I
strained my sight in the hope of perceiving
the object which appeared to fascinate him.
A short clay pipe, of the colour of soot, projected
from his lips. He seemed to hold it
thus as one might wear an ornament, for no
smoke issued from it.
We drew close, and my husband said:
‘Good afternoon.’
The man looked slowly round, surveyed
us one after another, then readjusting himself
upon his post and fastening his eyes afresh
upon the horizon, he responded in a deep
voice: ‘Good arternoon.’
‘Is there anything in sight?’ said my
husband.
‘No,’ answered the man.
‘Then what are you looking at?’
‘I ain’t looking,’ answered the man; ‘I’m
a-thinking.’
‘And what are you thinking of?’
‘Why,’ said the man, ‘I’m a-thinking
that I han’t tasted a drop o’ beer for two
days.’
‘This, indeed, is being at the seaside,’ said
my husband cheerfully, and putting his hand
in his pocket he produced a sixpence, which
he gave to the man.
The effect was remarkable; the man instantly
stood upright, and went round to the
other side of the post to lean over it, so that
he might confront us. And it was remarkable
in other ways; for no sooner had my husband
given the man the sixpence than the doors
of two or three of the public-houses opposite
opened, and several figures dressed like this
man emerged and approached us very slowly,
halting often and looking much at the weather,
and then approaching us by another step, and
all in a manner as though they were acting
unconsciously, and without the least idea
whatever that my husband had given the
man some money.
He was a man of about forty-five or fifty
years of age, with a very honest cast of countenance,
the expression of which slightly
inclined towards surliness. You will wonder
that I should take such particular notice of a
mere lounging boatman; and yet this same
plain, common-looking sailor, was to become
the most memorable of all the persons I had
ever met with in my life.
CHAPTER II A BOATING TRIP
It was not yet evening, but the sun was
very low in the west on our right hand;
a large moon would be rising a little while
before eight; the breeze continued to blow
strong, and the ocean rolled into the land in
tall dark-green lines of waves, melting as
they charged in endless succession into wide
spaces of foam, orange coloured by the sunset.
‘Do you hear that echo of thunder in the
cliff I told you about?’ said my husband.
I listened and said ‘Yes.’
‘It is like a distant firing of guns,’ said
Mary.
‘You have some good boats down there
dancing beside the pier,’ said my husband to
the boatman.
‘Ay,’ answered the boatman, ‘you’ll need
to sail a long way round the coast to find
better boats than them.’
‘That is a pretty boat, Mary,’ said I,
pointing to one with two masts—a tall mast
in the fore-part and a short mast at the stern;
she was painted green and red, and she was
very clean and white inside, and she appeared
in my eyes the prettiest of all the boats as she
dived and tumbled and leaped buoyantly and
not without grace upon the sharp edges of
the broken water.
‘That’s my boat, lady,’ said the sailor.
‘What is her name?’ inquired Mary.
‘The Mary Hann, he answered. ‘I
named her after my wife. My wife is gone
dead. I’ve got no wife now but she,’ and
he pointed with his thumb backwards at his
boat, ‘and she’s but a poor wife too. She
airns little enough for me. T’other kept the
home together with taking in washing, but
nobody comes to Piertown now. Folks want
what’s called attractions. But the Local
Board’ll do nothen except buy land as belongs
to the men who forms the Local Board,
and the likes of me has to pay for that there
land, and when it’s bought fower five times as
much as it’s worth, it’s left waste. Lord, the
jobbery! Are you making any stay here,
sir?’
‘Yes,’ answered my husband, ‘we are
here for a month.’
‘And when might ye have arrived?’ inquired
the boatman.
‘To-day,’ replied my husband.
‘There’s some very good fishing to be had
here, sir,’ said the boatman. ‘If I may make
so bold, whenever you wants a trip out,
whether for fishing or rowing or sailing, if so
be as you’ll ask for me, my name being
William Hitchens, best known as Bill Hitchens,
pronounced in one word Billitchens—for
there’s parties here as’ll swear they didn’t
know who you vos asking for if you don’t
call me Billitchens—if you ever want a boat,
sir, and you ladies, if you’ll ask for Billitchens,
you’ll meet with satisfaction. There’s nothen
to touch the Mary Hann in sailing, whilst for
fishing she’s as steady as a rock, as you may
guess, sir, by obsarving her beam.’
‘When I want a boat I will ask for Billitchens,’
said my husband, glancing at me with
a smile in his eye. ‘This lady—my wife—is
fonder of the sea than I am. I dare say she
will sometimes take a cruise with you. But
the weather must be fine when she does so.’
‘You trust the weather to me, lady,’ said
the boatman. ‘Man and boy for over forty-eight
year I’ve been a-crawling about this
beach and a-studying the weather. You leave
him to me. Whenever you want a cruise you
ask for Billitchens and the Mary Hann, and if
the weather ain’t promising for the likes of
such a lady as you, you shall have the truth.’
‘What are your charges?’ said my husband.
‘Wan and sixpence an hour,’ answered the
boatman cheerfully, ‘but if you’d like to
engage my boat by the week ye shall have
her at your own price, giving me so much
every time ye takes me along.’
‘Is she not heavy to row?’ said I.
‘Lord love ye!’ he cried, gazing at his
boat with a sour smile of wonder at the question.
‘A hinfant could send her spinning.
‘Sides,’ he added, ‘I’ll take care to ship a
pair o’ light oars for you, lady, what’s called
sculls, nigh as light as this here baccay-pipe.’
‘Well, good afternoon, Mr. Hitchens,’ said
my husband, and we strolled in the direction
of our home, for the shadow of the evening
was now upon the sea, and the strong
wind seemed to have grown very cold on a
sudden.
However, before we retired to rest the
night fell silent, the sea stretched in a dark
sheet, and from our windows, so high seated
was the house, the ocean looked to slope steep
into the sky, as though, indeed, it were the
side of a mighty hill. The moon rode over
it, and under the orb lay a column of glorious
silver which stirred like the coils of a moving
serpent as the swell or the heave of the water
ran through it. The dark body of a ship
passed through that brilliant path of light as
we stood looking, and the sight was beautiful.
My little ones were sleeping well. Johnny
slept in our room and the baby with the
nurse, for my husband could not bear to be
disturbed in his sleep. I looked at my boy,
and asked my husband to tell me if he did
not think there was already a little bloom on
Johnny’s cheek, and I kissed my child’s sweet
brow and golden hair.
But it was long before my eyes closed in
sleep. I lay hearkening to the dull subdued
thunder of the surf beating upon the beach
far below at the foot of the cliffs. It was a
new strange noise to me, and I lay listening
to it as though to a voice muttering in
giant whispers out of the hush of midnight;
and when at last I fell asleep I dreamt that I
was in the Mary Hann, and that Bill Hitchens
was steering the boat, and that she was sailing
directly up the line of glorious silver
under the moon; and I remember that I
asked him in my dream how long it would
take to reach the moon that as we sailed
waxed bigger and soared higher; but instead
of answering he put his knuckles into his eyes
and began to sob and cry, and I awoke to
hear little Johnny calling to me to take him
into my bed.
And now followed days as happy as light
hearts and bright skies and good health could
render them. The weather continued splendid.
Sometimes it was as hot as ever it had
been during the month of July in the city
of the Abbey Church. There was a pleasant
neighbourhood, a country of woods and verdant
dingles and swelling pastures, and we
made many excursions, and in particular did
we enjoy a visit to some old ruins which had
once been an abbey, but now its windows
yawned, its roof was gone, large portions of
masonry had fallen, its floor was a tangled
growth of rank grass and weeds. We listened
to the wind whistling through these ruins:
we listened with bated breath and with raised
imaginations, for the noise of the wind was
like the chanting of friars intermixed with a
thin wailing of women’s voices; and as I
listened I could not help thinking to myself
that it was as though the ghosts of long-departed
monks and chaste and holy nuns
had viewlessly assembled round about us to
sing some solemn dirge, and that if our eyes
were as fine a sense as our hearing—if, indeed,
we could see the invisible as we could
hear it—we might behold the vision of the
building itself spread over our heads and on
either hand of us, in roof, in glorious coloured
window, in sepulchral monument.
Here it was that my little Johnny, in running
from me towards the grass which grew
upon what had been the pavement of this
ancient abbey, tripped and fell and lay
screaming as though fearfully hurt. Mary
took him up: he was not hurt. My husband,
looking into the grass to observe what had
tripped the child, put his hand upon something
grey and picked up a little skull.
‘Good God!’ he cried, casting it from him
with a shudder, ‘let us get away from this
place.’ But Mary remained behind alone for
some minutes, with her eyes bent upon the
little skull, musing upon it.
Though we made several inland excursions
our chief haunts were the pier and the beach.
Those were happy days indeed. My sister
and I would take camp-stools down on to the
sands, and long mornings did we thus pass,
my husband moving indolently here and
there, smoking, examining pools of water,
stooping to pick up a shell; Johnny scooping
with a stick at my side; baby sleeping in the
arms of the nurse. There we would sit and
watch the quiet surface of the sea that melted
into the blue air where the sky came down to
it, and gaze at the oncoming breaker poising
its tall emerald-green head for a breathless
instant, like some huge snake about to strike,
ere tumbling in thunder and snow and roaring
seawards in a cataract of yeast.
We seemed—indeed, I believe we were—the
only visitors in the place. Nobody intruded
upon us; the miles of sand were our
own. Robinson Crusoe’s dominion was not
more uninterrupted.
The boatman named William Hitchens had
called twice at the house early in the morning
to know if we would go for a nice little sail
or row during the day, but the answer I had
sent by the servant was, ‘Not yet.’ I was in no
hurry to go for a nice little sail or a row.
When I was on the sands the sea was so close
to me that it was almost the same as being on
it; and the novelty of having the sea feathering
to my feet in white and broken waters
remained too great an enjoyment for some
days to induce a wish in me for wider experiences.
And then again, neither Mary nor my
husband had the least taste for boating, so
that if I went I must go alone. I was not
even able to have my children with me, for
the nurse declared that the mere looking
from the beach at a boat rocking upon the
water made her feel ill, and I dared not single-handed
take the children, for how could I,
holding the baby, have looked after little
Johnny, who was always on the move, crawling
here and creeping there, and who was
just the sort of child to wriggle on to a seat
of the boat and tumble overboard whilst my
head was turned?
However, after we had been at Piertown
five days we walked down to the sands as
usual after breakfast, and as we passed the
entrance of the pier Bill Hitchens approached
us, pulling at a grey lock of hair that hung
upon his forehead under an old felt bandit-shaped
hat.
‘A beautiful morning for a sail or a row,
lady,’ said he, addressing himself to me as
though he had long before made up his mind
that there was no custom to be got out of my
husband and my sister, ‘why not wenture on
an hour, mum? There’s as pretty a little offshore
wind a-blowing as could be wished. And
look how smooth the water is! Only let me
draw you clear of this here ground swell, and
ye won’t know you’re afloat. Or if you don’t
like sailing, I’ll put a small oar into the boat,
and with me rowing agin ye, lady, ye shall see
how light a boat she is.’
‘Go, Agnes,’ said my husband, observing
that I looked wistfully at the water.
‘Come, Mary!’ said I.
‘No, dear,’ she answered, ‘I am certain to
suffer from headache afterwards.’
‘Why don’t you come along, sir?’ said the
boatman to my husband.
‘Because I am very well, thank you, Billitchens,
and I wish to remain well,’ answered
my husband.
‘I will go,’ said I, and instantly the boatman
was in motion. He ran with uncouth
gestures to a ladder that descended the pier-side,
disappeared down it, and presently
emerged in a little skiff which he propelled
with an oar over the stern. Having arrived
at his boat, which was moored in the middle
of the small harbour, if I may so term the
space of water within the embrace of the
crooked arm of the pier, he freed and brought
her to some steps. I entered, perhaps a little
nervously, sat down, and Bill Hitchens throwing
his oars over pulled the boat out to sea.
Little Johnny screamed and wept, imagining
that I was leaving him for ever. I kissed my
hand and waved it to him, and Mary, taking
the little fellow in her arms, comforted him.
Now out of that simple English scene of
coast life, out of the familiar commonplace
experience of a boating trip, what, if it were
not death, what should be able to shape itself
so potent in all horror as to utterly and absolutely
shipwreck my happiness and make a
frightful tragedy of my life? Death it might
well have been; again and again small sailing
boats are capsizing and their inmates are
thrown into the water and drowned; but
worse than death was to befal me. When I
close my eyes and behold with the vision of
my mind the scene of that little town, and
the terraces of the cliffs, though I am able to
connect the long chain of circumstance link
by link, the memory of the disaster and all
that followed the disaster affects me even at
this instant of time with the violence of a
paralysing revelation. I know the past to be
true, and still I gaze dumbly and with terror
backwards, incapable of crediting it.
But the dreadful misfortune that was to
overwhelm me did not happen at once. No:
my short excursion that morning I thoroughly
enjoyed. All was safe, well, and delightful.
I told the boatman to keep somewhat close in
to the shore, and I held my husband and
sister and children in view all the while. The
boatman rowed leisurely, and my dear ones
on the shore kept pace with the boat until
they had arrived at their favourite spot on
the sands, where they seated themselves and
watched me. I rowed a little and found the
oar the man had placed in the boat for my
use very light and manageable; but I plied
it unskilfully; indeed I was but a wretched
oarswoman. Yet it amused me to dip the
blade into the water however clumsily, and to
feel that the boat received something of her
impulse from the swing of my figure.
Bill Hitchens talked much, and had I
heeded his conversation I might have found
his queer words and odd thoughts and expressions
amusing; but I was too much occupied
with my oar, and with looking at the group
on the sands, and with admiring the coast, to
attend to his queer speech. And, indeed,
we were at just such a distance from the coast
as enabled me to witness in perfection its incomparable
romantic beauties. The cliffs rose
in dark and rugged ramparts, and their
gloomy massy colours were peculiarly defined
by the line of white surf which, the
fall of the breakers being continuous, seemed
fixed as though painted along the foot of the
coast. The windows of the house we occupied
sparkled over the edge of the heights,
but the structure was so high lodged, the
altitude from the sea appeared so prodigious,
that spite of the softening shadow of
trees behind it, and spite of its quaint and
cosy shape, it had an odd, wild, windy look
to my eyes, and I wondered as I gazed at it
that it had not been levelled long ago by one
of the many hurricanes of wind which Bill
Hitchens told me thundered across the sea
and against the land in winter time, blind
with snow and black with flying scud. And
the town made me think of Tennyson’s description
of a coastal village, for there was a
frosty sparkle upon the houses as though they
were formed of blocks of rock salt. The sky
was a deep blue, and I noticed that it seemed
to tremble and thrill where the bend of it
disappeared past the edge of the cliffs, as if
the dye of the cliffs themselves were lifting
and sifting into it, and deepening the beauty
of its hue just there. The water was everywhere
flashful with the light wind that was
blowing from the land. Presently the boatman
said:
‘Lady, let me gi’ you a bit of a sail?’
I consented, and he took my oar from me
and laid it in the boat, then loosed a big sail
that lay upon the seats and hoisted it, and
afterwards he set a little sail at the stern,
and then sat down at the tiller and steered,
making the boat skim along on a line with the
beach. My dear ones flourished their hands
to me.
This was enjoyment indeed. The boat
seemed to me to sail wonderfully fast; I
looked over the stern and perceived that she
left behind her a long furrow as beautiful
with its ornamentation of foam and bubble
and eddies as a length of rich lace. Hitchens
sailed the boat to and fro, and all the time he
was bidding me observe what a beautiful
boat she was, how there was nothing
whatever to be afraid of, how in such
a boat as the Mary Hann, as he called
her, a party of people might sail round
the United Kingdom in perfect comfort and
security.
‘Only make it worth my while,’ said he,
‘and I’d go to Ameriky in this here boat.
Make it worth my while, lady, and I’d double
the Harn in her. Ameriky was discovered
by folks as would have swopped their precious
eyes for such a boat as this here to make
the voyage in. I don’t speak of Australey,
for Cook he had a ship; but I’ve heered tell
of Columbus; there’s one of us chaps as has
read all about that gent and is always a-yarning
about him; and ower and ower I’ve heard
him say that that there Columbus would have
swopped his precious eyes for the likes of
such a boat as the Mary Hann for to make
his discovery with.’
In this manner Bill Hitchens discoursed
about his boat, as he sat beside the tiller
with his head well between his shoulders and
his back rounded like a cat’s at the sight of
a dog.
After this I was continually making excursions
with Bill Hitchens. Having got to
know him, I never would hire another in his
place. Indeed, he took care that nobody
should supplant him, and called for orders
every morning with the punctuality of the
butcher or the grocer. Often I would go out
twice a day, so keen was my enjoyment of
the pastime of sailing and rowing. Twice
my husband accompanied me, but after the
second time he told me he had had enough,
and he went no more in the boat. Once I
coaxed Mary into joining me, and in less than
five minutes the boatman was obliged to put
her ashore, and when I returned two hours
later I found her motionless on the sofa with
a sick headache.
The behaviour of the boatman did not
belie the character I seemed to find written
in his face. He proved a very honest, civil,
deserving fellow, possessed of a quality of
sourness that imparted a particular relish to
his odd manner of speaking. I did not fear
to be alone with this man. I had every
confidence in his judgment and prudence.
He was allowed by his comrades of the beach
to be one of the smartest boatmen on the
coast. My husband ascertained this, and he
also agreed with me in my opinion of the
fellow’s respectability, and day after day I
would enter the boat and my husband would
stand watching me without the faintest misgiving
of any sort in either of us.
On several occasions Hitchens carried
me out to so great a distance that the features
of the land were indistinguishable,
and these long trips I enjoyed most
of all; they were like voyages, and when I
stepped on shore I would feel as though
I had just arrived from the other side of
the world.
We had now been a day over three weeks
at Piertown. The weather had continued fine
and warm throughout—in truth, a more
beautiful October I never remember—and we
had all benefited vastly by the change. But
on the morning of this day my husband received
a letter. He opened it, read it attentively,
and exclaimed to me across the
breakfast table, ‘I shall have to leave you
for a couple of days.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
He passed the letter to me: it was a
business letter, addressed to him by his clerk.
The nature of the business does not concern
us; enough that the call was important and
peremptory. The business, my husband said,
would certainly detain him in Bath until
the hour of the departure of a late train on
the following night, if indeed he should be
able to return then.
I packed his handbag, and Mary and I
walked with him to the railway station. I
kissed him, and we parted.
My sister and I returned home to take
the children to the sands. We passed the
morning under the cliffs, talking and reading
and playing with the children. It was a
bright day, but I afterwards remembered
noticing that the blue of the heavens was
wanting in the beautiful clear vividness of
hue of the preceding days. The azure had a
somewhat dim and soiled look, such as
one might fancy it would exhibit in a
very fine, thin dust-storm. I also afterwards
remembered having observed that
there was a certain brassiness in the glare of
the sun, as if his light were the reflection of
his own pure golden beams cast by a surface
of burnished brass or copper. These things
I afterwards recollected I had noticed, yet I
do not remember that I spoke of them to
my sister.
We dined at one o’clock. The road from
our house to the sands carried us past the
entrance to the pier. As we leisurely strolled,
Bill Hitchens lifted his breast from the post
which he was overhanging, and approached
us with a respectful salutation of his hand
to his brow.
‘Will you be going out this afternoon,
lady?’ he asked.
‘My husband has been called away,’
I replied, ‘and I do not feel as if I should
care to go upon the water during his
absence.’
‘You will find the afternoon tedious, dear,’
said Mary.
‘It’s a beautiful day, lady,’ said the boatman.
‘There’s a nice little air o’ wind stirring.
Couldn’t ask for a prettier day for a sail, lady.’
‘It is somewhat cloudy,’ said I, directing
my gaze at the sky.
‘Fine weather clouds, lady,’ said the boatman.
‘Keep your sight upon ’em for a bit
and you’ll find they’re scarcely moving.’
‘That is true,’ said I.
‘If you go,’ said Mary, ‘I will take
Johnny and baby for a drive.’
‘You’ll soon be leaving Piertown, lady,
worse luck!’ said the boatman, with an insinuating
grin. ‘This here fine weather ain’t
a-going to last neither. It won’t be long afore
we’ll be laying our boats up. It may be
blowing hard to-morrow, lady, and it may
keep on blowing until your time’s up for
retarning.’
I reflected and said, ‘Well, Hitchens, you
can get your boat ready for me by half-past
two or a quarter to three. I’ll be back
by four,’ said I, addressing Mary, as we
walked home, ‘and by that time you’ll have
returned. Do not keep baby out later than
four,’ and we talked of my husband and on
home matters as we climbed the road that led
to the level of the cliff.
At a quarter-past two I was ready to walk
to the pier for a trip which I thought might
likely enough prove my last, and which was
not to exceed an hour and a quarter. I was
dressed in the costume in which I usually
made these excursions—in a blue serge dress,
a warm jacket, and a sailor’s hat of grey
straw. An old-fashioned fly stood at the door
waiting for Mary and the nurse and children.
I took baby in my arms and kissed her, and I
lifted Johnny and kissed him and saw the
little party into the fly, which drove off.
I lingered a moment or two. A strange
sense of loneliness suddenly possessed me. I
cannot imagine what could have caused it if
it were not the silence that followed upon the
fly driving off, together with the thought that
my husband was away. I entered the little
parlour to ascertain the time by the clock on
the mantelpiece, for my watch had stopped
and I had left it in my bedroom. Upon the
table lay a pair of baby’s shoes, and a horse
and cart that my husband had bought for
Johnny was upon the floor. As I looked at
these things I was again visited by an unaccountable
feeling of loneliness. But it could
possess no possible signification to me, and
passing out of the house I closed the hall-door
and walked briskly down to the pier.
The boat was ready. I entered her, and
Hitchens rowed out of the harbour. The
surface of the water was smooth, for the small
breeze of the morning had weakened and
was now no more than a draught of air; but
the sea undulated with what sailors call ‘a
swell,’ upon which the boat rose and sank
with a sensation of cradling that was singularly
soothing to me. The horizon was somewhat
misty, and I observed that the extremities
of the coast on either hand in the distance
were blurred, showing indeed as though
they were mirrored in a looking-glass upon
which you had slightly breathed.
‘It looks somewhat foggy out upon the
sea,’ said I.
‘Nothen but heat, lady, nothen but
heat. I like to see fog myself with the wind
out at Nothe. When that happens with fine
weather it sinifies that fine weather’s a-going
to last.’
The figures of a few boatmen idly lounged
upon the esplanade. A man in a white apron,
smoking a pipe, stood in the door of one of
the public-houses, watching us as the boat
receded. A coastguardsman, stick in hand,
leaned over the edge of the pier, gazing down
at the little cluster of boats which swayed
upon the gently heaving water of the harbour.
The sun shone upon some bright gilt
sign of a cock, or bird of some sort, over the
door of one of the public-houses; and next
door to this sign was another, the painted
head and bust of a woman eagerly inclining
forwards, with the right arm advanced and a
wreath in her hand. It had probably been
the figure-head of a ship.
These little details of the picture I remember
remarking as I looked at the shore
whilst the boat leisurely drew away. What a
dull, motionless place did Piertown seem!
The main street climbing the hill was visible
past the curve of the pier, and only two
figures were to be seen ascending it.
‘I cannot understand how you men get a
living,’ said I to Bill Hitchens.
‘We don’t onderstand it ourselves, lady,’
said he.
‘You are boatmen, but nobody hires your
boats,’ said I. ‘How do you live?’
‘It’s a riddle, mum,’ answered Hitchens,
‘and there ain’t no answer to it.’
‘Yet those boatmen,’ said I, ‘who are
standing upon the esplanade are comfortably
dressed, they appear neat and clean, their
clothes may be rough but they are fairly
good and warm, they are all smoking and I
suppose they have to pay for the tobacco
they smoke; they, and others like them, are
constantly in and out of the public-houses,
and the beer which they drink must cost
them money. How do they manage?’
‘I’ve been man and boy getting on for
eight and forty years upon that there beach,’
said Bill Hitchens, ‘and if you ask me to tell
you how me and the likes of me manages, my
answer is, lady, I gives it up.’
We were silent, and I continued to look
at the shore and to admire the scene of it.
‘The time was,’ said Bill Hitchens meditatively,
‘when I hoped to live to see the day as
’ud find me the landlord of a public-house.
When all’s said and done, lady, I don’t know
that a plain man like myself could ask for a
more enjoyable berth than a public. Take a
dark, wet, cold night, blowing hard and the
air full of snow and hail. Only think of the
pleasure of opening the door just to look out,
so as to be able to step back again into the
light and warmth and all the different smells
of the liquors,’ he added, snuffing. ‘Only
think how pleasingly the time flies in yarning
with customers. Then, if ever ye stand in
need of a drain, there it is—anything ye like
and nothen to pay; ’cos when a landlord drinks
it’s always at the expense of his customers,
whether they knows it or not. Then think
again, lady, of a snug little parlour at the
back, all shining with clean glasses and mugs
like silver, with a warm fire and a kettle of
boiling water always ready—ah!’ He broke
off with a deep sigh.
‘I’ll take an oar,’ said I.
‘Lor’ bless me!’ he cried, running his eyes
over the boat. ‘I’ve forgotten to ship a pair
of sculls for you,’ by which term he signified
the light oars he was in the habit of placing
in the boat for my use.
‘The oar you are rowing with will be too
heavy for me, I fear,’ said I.
I dorn’t think it will, mum,’ he answered.
‘Suppose ye try it. After you’re tired of
rowing we’ll hoist the sail, for we shall find
more wind stirring when we get out furder.’
He adjusted the oar and I seated myself
at it and began to row. He sat in the
bows of the boat near the tall mast and I
upon a hinder seat near to that end of the
boat which I had heard him call the ‘stern
sheets.’ I did not find the oar so heavy as I
had imagined. The boatman had placed it
so as to fairly balance it and I continued to
swing it without much trouble.
But after I had been rowing a few minutes
the pressure of the handle of the oar in my
grasp caused my rings to hurt me. I endured
the inconvenience until it became a pain;
then, tilting the oar and supporting it by my
elbow, I pulled off my rings—that is to say,
my wedding-ring and two others, all that I
wore—and placed them by my side on the
sail, which lay in a sort of bundle along the
seats. I never had any superstitious feeling
about my wedding-ring. Over and over
again had I removed it to wash my hands.
With many women, when once the wedding-ring
is on, it is on for ever. Well would it
have been for me had I possessed the sentiment
of tender and graceful superstition that
influences most wives in this way.
My rings being removed I applied myself
again to the oar, and for about a quarter of
an hour Bill Hitchens and I continued to row
the boat out into the open sea. By this time
we had reached a distance of a mile from the
land. The faint air had been slowly freshening
into a little breeze, and the water was
rippling briskly against the side of the boat.
I was now tired of rowing, and, asking Bill
Hitchens to take the oar from me, I rose from
my seat and sat down near the tiller.
‘May as well hoist the sail now, lady,
don’t ye think?’ said Bill Hitchens.
‘Yes, you can hoist the sail,’ said I, ‘but
I do not wish to go too far from the land.
What o’clock is it?’
He extracted an old silver watch from
somewhere under his jersey and gave me the
time.
‘I wish to be home by about a quarter
past four,’ said I.
He answered that he would see to it, and,
seizing hold of a rope which passed through
the top of the mast, he hoisted the sail. He
then came to where I was sitting, and set the
little sail upon the mast at the stern, and
when this was done he grasped the tiller, and
the boat, feeling the pressure of the breeze in
her broad canvas—for though she was a
small boat she carried a sail that I would
think was disproportionately large for her
size—heeled over and cut through the water
on her side very quickly.
‘It’s a nice soldier’s wind for the land,
lady,’ said the boatman.
‘What is a soldier’s wind?’ I asked.
‘Why,’ he answered, ‘a wind that allows
ye to go there and back wherever ye may
be bound to.’
‘The coast looks a long way off, Hitchens.’
‘It’s vurking up a bit hazy, lady, but
there’s nothen to hurt.’
‘I expect the sky will be overcast before
sunset,’ said I. ‘Do you see that bank of
clouds hazily peering through the air over
the coast there?’ and I indicated a portion of
the land which certainly did not lie in the
direction whence the wind was blowing; so
that it was plain to me, ignorant as I was in
all such matters, though my perception had
been sharpened a little by being much upon
the water, and by listening to Bill Hitchens
discoursing upon the several aspects of his
calling—I say it was plain to me that those
clouds were working their way up over the
land, and that if they did not promise a
change of weather they must certainly betoken
a shift of wind.
The boatman cast his eyes carelessly towards
the coast and said ‘that there was
nothing to hurt in them clouds, that he rather
believed they were settling away instead of
rising,’ and then he changed the subject by
asking me if my husband had gone to London,
and if I had ever seen London, and if it
was as big a place as folks pretended it to be.
CHAPTER III ‘WHO AM I?’
I sat looking about me, now watching the
pretty wreaths of foam spring past the sides
of the boat, now gazing at the land whose
features had blended into a long, dark, compact,
but hazy line, sometimes addressing
questions to Bill Hitchens, and always enjoying
what to me was the exquisitely pleasurable
sensation of the boat buoyantly sweeping
over the little feathering ripples, when, my
eyes going on a sudden to my left hand, I
cried out, ‘Oh, where are my rings?’
‘Your rings, lady?’ exclaimed the boatman.
‘Yes, my rings. Did you not see me take
off my rings? I put them on the sail that
lay near me. Oh, where are they, where
are they? I cannot lose them. One is my
wedding-ring and the other two are my husband’s
gifts. Oh, Hitchens, where are they?’
I cried, and, with a passion of eagerness and
fear, I hunted over the bottom of the boat
with my eyes, peering and straining my gaze
at every crevice and hollow.
‘Now be calm, lady,’ said Hitchens, ‘it’ll
come right. The rings can’t be fur off. Let
me question you. Where did you say you
put ’em?’
‘That sail up there lay along the seats,
and I put my rings on it, on a corner of it
that was close to me. I believed that they
would be safe there. They could not slide off
canvas.’
The man’s face fell as he looked into the
bottom of the boat.
‘If you’ll catch hold of this here tiller,
lady,’ said he, ‘I’ll have a search. They can’t
be fur off, I hope,’ he added in a voice meant
to encourage me.
I put my hand on the tiller, but hardly
knew what more to do with it than to keep it
steady. My distress was exquisite. When I
looked over the bottom of the boat and could
not see any glitter of my wedding-ring and
the other two rings I shivered as though possessed
with a passion of grief. Oh, if I had
been careless in removing my rings, it shocked
me to the heart to think of losing them—of
losing my wedding-ring, that symbol of my
wedded love and happiness.
‘Do you see any signs of them?’ I cried
to Hitchens. ‘I shall not mind the loss of the
other rings, but I must have my wedding-ring—I
must not lose it—I cannot lose my
wedding-ring.’
The poor fellow, with a face of real concern,
groped about the bottom of the boat.
He lifted up a board, and carefully felt about
with his hand in some water that lay in a
kind of well. But I was sure that if the
rings were not to be seen at once they would
not be seen at all, because there were three
of them, and one at least must certainly be
visible: for though there were many crevices
in the boat they were all very shallow, and
the gleam of the rings would be instantly perceptible.
‘I am afraid, lady,’ exclaimed the boatman,
standing up, ‘that they’ve gone overboard.’
I moaned.
‘I didn’t,’ he continued, ‘take any notice
of ’em, and in my sudden whipping up of the
sail they must have been chucked ower the
side. It’s a bad job true-ly,’ and again he
bent his figure to look.
I now realised that I had lost my rings;
it had not been a loss to be instantly felt
and understood. My wedding-ring was gone;
another wedding-ring I might easily buy, but
the one that was consecrated to me by
memory, the ring with which my husband
had made me his wife, was irrecoverably gone,
and as I looked upon my bare hand I wept,
and then for a third time was I visited with a
cold heart-subduing feeling of loneliness.
‘Turn the boat for the land,’ I said to
Hitchens. ‘I am miserable and want to get
home.’
As he came to the tiller he directed a
look out at the west, or rather I should say
in the direction of the coast, for the haze
had thickened magically within the last ten
minutes or so, and though the land was
scarcely above three miles distant it was little
more than a dim shadow, that seemed to be
fading out even as we looked. But I was
still so grieved and distracted by the loss of
my wedding-ring that I had no eyes save for
my bare hand, and no thoughts save for what
was at the bottom of the sea.
‘The wind’s shifted,’ said Hitchens. ‘It
is off the land. You was right, lady, arter all.
Them clouds was a-coming up. We shall
have to ratch home.’
He dragged at some ropes which held the
corners of the sails, and, moving his tiller,
caused the boat to turn; but she did not turn
so as to point the head for the land.
‘Why do you not steer for Piertown?’ I
said.
‘The wind’s come dead foul, lady. We
shall have to ratch home.’
‘What do you mean by “ratch”?’
‘We shall have to tack—we shall have
to beat back.’
I did not understand his language, but
neither would I tease him by questions. Now
I was sensible that the wind had increased
and was still increasing. I lifted up my eyes
and judged that the wind was coming out
of a great heap of cloud which lay over the
land—the heap of cloud whose brows I had
noticed rising above the edge of the cliff;
but the mass had since then risen high, and
there was a shadow upon it as if rain were
falling. The boat lay sharply over upon her
side, and her stem, as it tore through the
water, made a strange stealthy noise of hissing
as though it were red hot.
‘The land is fading out of sight,’ said I.
‘Ay, it’s drawed down thicker than I expected,’
answered the boatman.
‘Is not the wind very high?’
‘It’s blowing a nice sailing breeze,’ he
answered; ‘though it’s a pity it’s shifted, as
you’re in a hurry to get home.’
But as he gazed round the sea I seemed to
witness an expression of uneasiness in his face.
It appeared to me that he was sailing away
from the land. I was alarmed, and questioned
him. He drew a piece of chalk from his
pocket and first marked down upon the seat
the situation of the coast, then the situation
of the boat, and then the process of tacking,
and how we should have to sail at angles in
order to reach Piertown harbour.
‘What time is it, Hitchens?’
He looked at his watch and said, ‘Just
upon the hour of four.’
‘Oh! how the time has flown! Already
four! When shall we arrive, do you think?’
‘I’m afeared,’ he answered, ‘that I sha’n’t
be able to put ye ashore much before five.’
‘But the atmosphere continues to grow
thicker. Look! some parts of the coast
are invisible. If you should lose sight of
the coast, how will you be able to steer
for it?’
‘We’ll find our way home all right, lady,’
he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘Don’t be afeared.
The loss of them there rings has worried ye,
as well it might, and I’d give half the worth
of this boat to be able to fish ’em up.’
I sat silent and motionless, gazing at
the slowly dissolving line of coast over the
gunwale. The water was now streaming in
lines, and every line had its edging of spray,
and often from these little foaming ridges
there would flash a handful of glittering crystals,
as though some hand within were hurling
diamonds and prisms through the curling
head of the brine. The thickness of the atmosphere
lay around the sea, and so shrunk
the plain of water that it looked no more than
a lake in size. There was also the gloom of
gathering clouds in the air, not only of
the clouds which were rising off the land,
but of vapour forming overhead and sailing
athwart the course of the boat in dirty shreds
and rags of the stuff that is called by sailors
‘scud!’
‘Will you hold the tiller for a moment,
lady?’ said the boatman. ‘There’s summat
wrong with——’ and he pronounced a technical
word which I do not remember.
I grasped the tiller and he rose and went
into the bows of the boat, where he paused for
a moment, looking up; he then got upon the
gunwale of the boat and stood with his back
to the sea, with one hand upon a rope that
ran from the front mast down to the bowsprit.
He preserved that posture of standing
and supporting himself and looking upwards
whilst one might count ten; then let go of
the rope, brought his hands together over his
heart and, with a kind of short rattling groan,
fell backwards.
The boat sat low on the water, and as the
poor fellow therefore fell from no height, he
rose to the surface before the boat had gone
past him by her own length; he floated on
his back, and made no effort to swim; I do
not remember witnessing a single struggle in
him; whence I judged, when I was able to
think, that he had fallen dead from the gunwale
of his little vessel; and the manner in
which he had seemed to clutch at his heart,
and the short rattling groan that he had
delivered, confirmed me in this belief.
When he fell I sprang to my feet with
a shriek of horror. For some moments, which
would have been precious had he been alive
and struggling, I did not know what to do.
My heart stood still, I could not draw a
breath. Then with lightning speed there
swept into my head the thought that if he
were drowned I should be alone, and, being
alone, I should be absolutely helpless; and
this thought electrified me, and not only
enabled me to reflect, but gave me power
to act. For, far more swiftly than I can relate
what I did, yes, even though I was
talking to you instead of writing, I grasped
one of the long heavy oars and launched it
towards the figure of the man as a spear is
hurled. I needed, indeed, the strength of
terror to accomplish this; at another time
it would have taxed my strength to merely
drag the oar to the side and let it fall.
The boat had been sailing fast when the
poor man dropped from the gunwale, but
when I sprang up I released the tiller, which
I had been holding steady, having no knowledge
whatever of steering, and the boat
being released from the government of her
helm, flew round into the wind, but not until
she had left the body of the man a long
distance behind; and then she stood upright
upon the water, with her sails angrily shaking.
Wild with thought and fear, wild with despair
and terror, I kept my eyes fastened upon the
body of the man. Oh, I cried to myself, can
he not swim? Will he not attempt to reach
the oar? And I screamed out his name,
pointing to the direction where the oar lay.
But as I continued to point and scream out
his name the body sank. It vanished instantly,
as though it had been desperately
jerked under water by some hidden grasp or
fang below. I stood straining my gaze, not
knowing but that he might rise again, and
then it was that the boat, being pointed a
little away from the wind by the beat of the
small, short waves, was smitten by the blast
in her forward canvas; she turned and rushed
through the water, whitening it, and lying
dangerously down under the weight of her
sails; but after she had started she, of her
own accord, wound round into the wind again
and sat upright, plunging quickly with her
canvas rattling, and time after time this process
was repeated, whilst I stood staring round
me, seeing nothing of the land, beholding
nothing, but the contracted plain of the ocean,
around which the haze or fog stood as a
wall, whilst overhead the sky was of the
colour of slate, shadowed by speeding wings
of scud.
It was raining, and when I looked in the
direction whence the wind was blowing, the
rain that drove aslant splashed in my face.
I thought to myself, What will next happen?
The boat will overset, and I shall be drowned!
What am I to do?—what am I to do?
And as I thought thus, weeping bitterly, and
wringing my hands in the extremity of my
grief and fright, the boat heeled over and
depressed her side so low that the white foam
she churned up flashed and roared to the
level of the line of her gunwale. I grasped
the opposite side to save myself from falling,
by which I no doubt saved my life, because,
had I slipped and staggered to the depressed
side, my weight must certainly have capsized
the boat. She rushed like an arrow round
again into the wind and then stopped dead,
plunging yet more sharply.
I wrung my hands again and cried aloud,
What am I to do? But, happily, I had sense
enough to understand that the very first
thing to be done was to lower the sail, and
as I had repeatedly observed poor Hitchens
hoist the tall sheet of canvas, I knew what
rope to undo, and, stepping over the seats, I
released the rope, and, the boat being at that
moment with her head pointing into the wind,
the sail fell, but in falling it enveloped me
and threw me down, and it was some minutes
before I succeeded in extricating myself.
This, to be sure, was a trifling accident, for
I was not in the least degree hurt, but the
being thrown down and smothered by the
canvas immeasurably heightened my distress
and terror; I trembled from head to foot, my
knees yielded under me, and I was forced to
sit. It was raining hard, and the wet made
the wind feel cruelly cold as it rushed athwart
the boat, whipping the crests off the waves
into an angry showering of spray. But after
a little I began to find some faint comfort in
the belief that the boat was stationary. Alas,
how great was my ignorance! Because she
did not appear to sail, and because she no
longer lay dangerously over, I believed she
was stationary. Yet two little sails were still
set, a triangular sail at the bowsprit and a
small square sail at the stern, and I must
have been crazed indeed not to guess that
whilst this canvas remained exposed the light
fabric would be blown along by the wind,
either sideways or forward, and that, as the
wind blew directly from the west, every
minute was widening my distance from Piertown.
But not understanding this, I found some
heart in the belief that the boat was stationary,
and I tried to comfort myself in other
ways. I said to myself, this rain may be a
passing shower, the weather will brighten
presently, the boat will be in view from the
coast, my situation will be guessed at by the
boatmen who hang about the Esplanade, and
they will put off to rescue me. And I also
said to myself, even if this weather should
not clear up, even if I remain out here invisible
from the land, yet when my sister finds
that it grows dark and I have not returned, she
is sure to go down to the harbour and offer
rewards for my rescue, and I may count upon
several boats coming out to search for me.
Thus I thought, striving to give myself
heart. But oh, the desolation of that mist-environed
stretch of steel-grey water—chilly,
leaping, and streaming in froth! Oh, the
cruel cold of the rain-laden wind pouring
shrilly past my ears and penetrating my wet
clothes till my breast felt like marble! Not
even now could I realise my situation. I
knew that I was alone and that I was helpless,
but the horizon of my fears and wretchedness
was contained in these simple perceptions. I
did not believe that I should perish. I was
sure that succour would come, and my sufferings
now lay in the agony of expectation, in
the present and heart-breaking torment of
waiting.
The time passed, the shadow of the
evening entered the gloom of the afternoon.
It continued to rain, and the horizon lay
shrouded close to the boat, but I believe there
was no increase in the wind: I noticed no
increase. But indeed I was too ignorant,
too despairful, too heartbroken to heed the
weather, unless it were to observe, with eyes
half-blind with my own tears and the flying
rain that the sea was darkening, that the
thickness lay close around the boat, and that
nothing ever came out of that thickness save
the dusky shapes of waves.
‘Am I to be out in this boat all night?’
I thought to myself. ‘If so, I shall die
of cold and exhaustion. I cannot pass the
whole long night alone in this open boat
in the rain, and in the bitter cold wind, wet
through to the skin as I already am, without
anybody to speak to, without food or drink,
without a ray of light for my eyes to find
comfort in resting on. O God! O God!
I cried, and I went down upon my knees in
the boat, and, clasping my hands, I gazed
upwards into the grey, wet shadow of the sky,
under which the naked mast of the boat was
reeling, and I prayed to God to be with me,
to watch over me, to bring help to me before
I expired of fear and cold, and to return me
to my sister, and to my little ones who were
waiting for me.
And now I scarcely know how to proceed.
What followed was a passage—a horribly long
passage—of mental suffering incommunicable
by the pen, nay scarcely to be remembered
or understood by the sufferer herself. It fell
dark, and the black night came, the blacker
because there was no moon and because of
the rain and the mist. I had gathered the
wet cloths of the sail about me as a sort of
shelter, and I sat with my head above the
line of the gunwale, for ever looking to left
and to right, and to right and to left, and
never seeing more than the pale, near gleam
of froth. At times thought grew maddening,
and I shrieked like one in a fit or like a
woman insane. It was not the fear of death
that maddened me, it was not the anguish of
the cold and the wet, nor even the fearful
loneliness of my situation, a loneliness that
cannot be imagined, for what magic is there
in ink to figure the impenetrable blackness
of the night, to imitate the snapping and
sobbing sounds of the water and the hissing
of the wind? No, it was the thought of my
husband and my children; and it was chiefly
the thought of my children. Again and
again, when my mind went to them, I would
catch myself moaning, and again and again I
shrieked. With the eye of imagination I saw
them sleeping: I saw my darling boy slumbering
restfully in his little bed, I saw my baby
asleep in her little cot; I bent over them in
fancy; I kissed the golden hair of my boy,
and I kissed the soft cheek of my baby; and
then the yearnings of my heart grew into
agony insupportable.
And there was a dreadful fancy that again
and again visited me. Amid the crawling and
blinking foam over the boat’s side I sometimes
imagined I saw the body of Hitchens.
It came and went. I knew it was a deception
of the senses, yet I stared as though it were
there indeed. Sometimes there would come
a sound in the wind that resembled the groan
he had uttered when he fell overboard.
At some hour of the night, but whether
before or after midnight I could not have
told, I was looking over the right side of the
boat when a large shadow burst out of the
darkness close to. It swept by wrapped in
gloom. It was a vessel, and she whitened
the throbbing dusky surface over which she
passed with a confused tumble of froth. There
was not a single spot of light upon her. Her
sails blended with the midnight obscurity,
and were indistinguishable. Indeed she was
to be heard rather than seen, for the noise of
the wind was strong and shrill in her rigging,
and the sound of her passage through the
water was like a rending of satin. She was
visible, and then she was gone even as I
looked.
All night long it rained, and it was raining
at daybreak in a fine thin drizzle. The
sea was shrouded as on the previous afternoon.
When the cold and iron grey of the
dawn was upon the atmosphere, I feebly
lifted up my head, marvelling to find myself
alive. I looked about me with my eyes as
languid as those of a dying person’s, and
beheld nothing but the streaming waters
running out of the haze on one side and vanishing
in the haze on the other side. Had I
then possessed the knowledge of the sea that
I afterwards gained, I might have known by
the character of the waves that during the
night the boat had been swept a long distance
out. The billows were large and heavy, and
the movements of the boat, whose sails were
too small to steady her, were wild. Yet she
rose and fell buoyantly. These things I afterwards
recollected.
I was without hunger, but the presence of
daylight sharpening my faculties somewhat I
felt thirsty, and no sooner was I conscious of
the sensation of thirst than the perception
that it was not to be assuaged raised it into a
torment. There was water in the bottom of
the boat; I dipped my finger into one of the
puddles and put the moisture to my lips. It
was brackish, almost indeed as salt as the
water of the sea. I pressed my parched lips
to the sodden sail, which I had pulled over
my shoulders, and the moisture of it was as
salt as the puddle I had dipped my finger
into.
And now, after this time, I have but a very
indistinct recollection of what followed. All
my memories are vague, as though I had dimly
dreamed of what I saw and suffered. I recollect
that I felt shockingly ill, and that I
believed I was dying. I recollect that during
some hour of this day I beheld a smudge in
the grey shadow of mist and rain on my right,
that it kindled an instant’s hope in me, that I
held open with difficulty my heavy wet eyelids
and watched it in a sickly and fainting way,
believing it might prove a boat sent in search
of me. I followed it with my gaze until it
melted away in the thickness. I recollect that
the day passed, and that the blackness of a
second night came; but, this remembered, all
else is a blank in my brain.
I opened my eyes and found myself in gloom.
A few inches above me was a shelf; I supposed
it to be a shelf. Dim as the light was, there was
enough of it to enable me to see that what was
stretched just above me was not part of a
ceiling. I lay looking at it. I then turned
my head on to my right cheek and beheld a
wall. I touched it to make sure. I passed
my hand slowly over it, and then looked
up again at the shelf that was stretched
over my head. I then turned my head
and perceived a little circle of greenish
light. I stared at this strange glimmering
disk of light for a long while, again looked
upwards, and again feebly passed my hand
over the wall.
I did not ask myself where I was; I felt
no curiosity. I was as one in whom an intellect
has been suddenly created, and who passively
accepts what the sight rests on. I lay
turning my head from cheek to cheek for
some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour,
during which my eyes, having grown used to
the gloom that was faintly touched by that
circle of greenish light, began to distinguish objects.
And first I saw that I was in a very little
dark room, lying upon a sort of shelf which,
with the upper shelf, resembled a long box, of
which one side was wanting; and scarcely had
I perceived that I was in a little dark room
than I became sensible that I was upon the
water: for, as I lay on the shelf, I felt that my
body was rolled from side to side, and I also
felt an upwards motion and then a downwards
motion, and I knew that I was at sea.
Then I thought to myself, I am in the
cabin of a ship. But how did I get here and
who am I? Having said to myself Who am I?
I repeated the words over and over again;
but as yet without surprise, without terror.
The question haunted my mind with languid
iteration, but it induced no emotion. I felt
sick and extraordinarily weak. Something
irritated my brow, and, lifting my hand, I
found my right temple and the eyebrow and
a portion of the nose as far as the bridge of
it pasted over with some hard substance. I
ran my fingers over this substance, but without
wonderment, and then my arm fell exhausted
to my side, and feebly turning my
head on to my left cheek, I stared at the
glimmering green disc, whilst I kept on thinking
to myself, but without agitation or fear,
Who am I?
It did not strike me as in the least degree
strange that I should not know who I was.
I lay looking, and I saw a man’s coat swinging
by a nail near the little circle of dim light.
I also saw a common cane-bottom chair and a
dark chest, which I have since learnt to call by
its proper name of ‘locker.’ From the ceiling
of this little room there swung, suspended
by thin brass chains, a strange-looking lamp,
formed of a globe of metal with a glass chimney.
I continued to watch that lamp swing
until my eyelids closed, but whether I fainted
or slumbered I am unable to say.
When I awoke or regained consciousness
the glimmering circle of glass had changed
from dim green into bright yellow. It rippled
with brilliance as from the reflection of sunshine
upon water, and there was daylight in
the little cabin. I heard the sound of a fiddle
and the voice of a man singing. The sounds
were on the other side of the wall which I
had felt over with my hand when I first
awoke. Presently the music ceased, and
almost at the moment that it ceased I heard
the rattle of a door-handle and what looked
to be a shapeless bulk stood at my side.
On straining my dim sight I saw that the
figure was that of an immensely fat man. He
stood with his back to the circular window,
and for some while I was unable to discern
his features. Meanwhile he stared at me as
though there was nothing in my fixed look to
satisfy him that I was alive or dead. His face
was perfectly round and his cheeks puffed out
as if he were in the act of blowing. Upon
his upper lip were a few short straggling
hairs, iron grey; his hair was scanty and
grizzled; his complexion was a brick red,
apparently from exposure to weather. Yet
his fat face was deprived of the expression of
stupid good nature that one commonly finds
in such countenances by a pair of heavy,
shaggy, almost white eyebrows, which, coming
close together over the top of his nose,
stamped the look of an habitual frown upon
his forehead. His eyes were small, black and
piercing, and his age might have been anything
between fifty and sixty. He wore a red
cap, the tasselled point of which fell over his
ear, and his dress consisted of a soiled and
well-worn pilot-coat hanging loose over an
equally soiled and well-worn velveteen jacket.
A large shawl was wound round his neck, and
there were gold hoops in his ears. These
points I afterwards witnessed. All that I
now observed was his large round face of a
dusky crimson and the small black eyes in it
fixed upon me.
At last he exclaimed, in a deep voice:
‘Tiens, vous voilà enfin éveillée, après trois
jours de sommeil! Eh bien, j’espère que
maintenant vous soyez en état de prendre
quelque nourriture et de me dire ce que vous
êtes. Peste! que n’avez-vous donc échappé!
C’est vrai les femmes peuvent supporter plus
que les hommes. Elles ne sont pas si facilement
écrasées que nous autres pauvres
diables.’
I listened to these words and understood
them, but I did not know they were French.
Yet though I could not have given a name to
the tongue in which the man spoke I knew
what he said. My knowledge of French
suffered me to read it and slightly understand
it when spoken, but I was unable to converse
in it.
What he had said was: ‘So then you are
awake at last! Three days of sleep! Well,
now you will be able to eat and drink, I hope,
and tell me who you are. Peste! what an
escape! But women have more endurance
than men. They are not so easily destroyed
as us poor devils.’
I gazed at him without answering. He
addressed me again in French.
‘What do you say?’ I whispered.
‘Aha! you are Angleesh,’ exclaimed the
man in his deep voice, and he added in
French, ‘Stop! I will go and fetch Alphonse.’
His shapeless bulk moved away from the
side of the shelf and I lay motionless, with my
eyes fixed upon the bright circle of glass
upon which the reflection of sunny waters
without was dancing. But I do not know
what I thought of. I cannot remember that
any sort of determinable idea visited me.
My mind seemed empty, with one strange
question for ever dully echoing in it: Who am
I? Yet I also seemed to know that I was not
mad. I could not tell who I was, but I felt
that I was not mad. I do not say that my
instincts assured me of this; I seemed to be
sensible of it passively. It was a perception
independent of all effort of mind, a knowledge
wholly involuntary as the action of the heart
is involuntary.
In a few minutes I heard the door-handle
rattle again and two figures came to the side
of the shelf on which I lay. One was the
same stout personage that had previously
visited me; the other was a clean, fresh-looking
young man of the age of four or five and
twenty, smoothly shaven, with coal black hair
and eyes, his face of a pronounced French
type. He was fairly well dressed in a suit of
grey, and his white shirt collar was buttoned
low so as to expose the whole of his
long throat and even a portion of his chest.
His posture suggested an air of habitual attention
and respect, and after he had peered
a while and observed that my eyes were open
he removed his cap.
‘Speak to her Alphonse,’ said the large
stout man.
‘How do you do, madame? How do you
now feel?’ said the younger man in good
English, pronouncing the words with an excellent
accent.
I answered faintly, ‘I believe I am dying.
Where am I?’
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed quickly, ‘you have
not eaten, you have not drunken. It is impossible
for people to live unless they eat and
drink.’
He then addressed himself hurriedly to
the fat man, who acquiesced with a grunt and
a gesture of the hand. The young man went
out, whilst the other remained at my side,
fixedly staring at me. Even had I been able
to exert my mind for conversation I could
not have found my voice. It pained me to
whisper. The stout man addressed me once
in barbarous English; I languidly gazed at
him in silence through my half-closed eyelids,
and no more was said until the young man
returned, bearing in one hand a cup and
saucer and in the other hand a tumbler. The
cup contained some warm soup; the tumbler
some weak brandy and water. Now ensued
a brief discussion between the two men as to
whether the brandy should be administered
before the soup or the soup before the
brandy. The younger man’s views prevailed
and, correctly judging that I was unable to
feed myself, he drew the cane-bottom chair to
my side, seated himself and fed me.
The fat man stood with a stolid countenance,
looking on. When I had swallowed the
soup the young man applied the tumbler to
my lips and I slowly drank.
‘Now,’ said the young man, ‘do you feel
more comfortable?’
I whispered that I felt better.
‘That is right,’ said he. ‘You must keep
quiet whether you sleep or not. I am not a
doctor, but I know a thing or two. I will
visit you again in two hours with more soup
and eau-de-vie.’ And he said to the fat man
in his native tongue, ‘Come, uncle, she will
do. She will not die. Let us leave her.’
They then withdrew.
CHAPTER IV ALPHONSE’S CONJECTURES
I turned my face to the wall and closed my
eyes, and two hours, and perhaps more than
two hours, passed, during which I did not
sleep. I then opened my eyes and looked
about me. I had intelligence enough to observe
that my skirt and bodice had been
removed and that I was wrapped in coarse,
thick blankets. Then, feeling a kind of pricking
pain about the forehead, I raised my hand
to my brow and stroked with my finger-nails
the strips of parchment-like stuff with which
it was plaistered. What can this be? I
thought; and then a most awful and terrible
feeling of bewilderment possessed me. ‘Who
am I?’ I cried in a voice that was still no
louder than a whisper, ‘and where am I?
And—and—and——’
The young man whom the stout person
had called Alphonse entered, bearing a bowl
of soup and a glass of weak brandy and water
upon a tray.
‘Have you slept?’ said he. I feebly
shook my head. ‘Well,’ he exclaimed with
the characteristic drawl of the Frenchman
when he speaks English, ‘it is not to be expected
that you should sleep or that you
should require sleep. You have been asleep
for three days, and now you shall drink this
soup and afterwards this cognac,’ and, seating
himself, he fed me and gave me to drink as
before. He placed the tray upon the deck of
the little cabin, and sat contemplating me for
a while with an air of respect that seemed a
habit in him, mingled with an expression of
commiseration.
‘You will get on,’ he said, ‘you will recover.
You will be strong by the time we
get to Toulon.’
‘Toulon?’ I said, speaking faintly.
‘Yes, madame, Toulon. We are going to
Toulon. This brick is now proceeding to
that port.’
‘Toulon?’ I exclaimed.
‘Madame knows without doubt where
Toulon is?’
I gazed at him in silence.
‘Does it fatigue you to speak?’ said
the young man whom I will hereafter call
Alphonse, for by no other name did I ever
know him.
‘No,’ said I in a whisper.
‘Then tell me, madame, how it happened
that you were in the miserable condition from
which we rescued you?’
I tried to think, but I could not think. I
forced my gaze inwards, but beheld nothing
but blackness. I strained the vision of my
mind, but it was like straining the balls of
the sight at a dark wall in a midnight of
blackness.
‘You do not remember,’ said the young
Frenchman, shaking his head, ‘the circumstances
that brought you into the miserable
condition from which we released you?’
‘I can remember nothing,’ I whispered.
‘What was my condition?’
‘Stop till you hear me tell you the story,’
cried Alphonse, holding up two fingers, ‘and
then you will remember it all. This ship is
what is called a brick [brig], and her name is
Notre Dame de Boulogne. She belongs to the
port of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Her owner and
captain is Pierre Regnier. He is my uncle.
He is the gentleman that was here with me.
I, madame, by occupation am a waiter. I
am a waiter at the Hôtel des Bains, Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Our customers are nearly all
English, and we garçons are expected to speak
English. My native town is Toulon. My
uncle Regnier, hearing that I had a holiday,
says, “Come with me, Alphonse, in my brick
to Toulon. That is my first port of destination.”
I consented, and that, madame, explains
how it is that I am here. Well, it was
three mornings ago—only think! It was a
dark morning, and the hour was between five
and six. It was foggy, and there was a little
rain. One of the sailors saw a boat; it was
close to us; before he could give the alarm
we had struck it—slightly only, very luckily,
or, madame, where would you now be? Our
ropes tore down the boat’s mast, and our
sailors looking cried out that there was somebody
in the boat. In some way the boat was
entangled, and she was drawn along at our
side, but the brick was sailing very slowly
and the sea was not rough. My uncle Regnier
commands the sailors to get into the
boat, and they find you lying there. They
bring you on board, and by this time there
is a little daylight, and we see that there is
blood upon your face, and that you are hurt
here and here,’ and Alphonse, as he spoke,
pointed to his brow and to his nose, above
the bridge of it. ‘No sooner have we taken
you on board than the boat liberates herself;
she breaks away, and my uncle says, “Let
her go.” Well, we carry you into the cabin,
and I put a mirror to your mouth and find
that you breathe. I am not a doctor, but I
know a thing or two. I ask my uncle for
sticking-plaister, and first I wash the wounds
and then I strap them up, and they cease
to bleed. No doubt, madame, you were
wounded by the boat’s mast falling upon you.
You reclined insensible in the boat when the
mast fell. Was it so? Or was it the blow of
the mast that made you insensible? No, naturally
you would not remember. But it was
certainly the mast that produced these
wounds, for you lay with the mast upon
you, and the sailors said they saw blood
upon the mast. Luckily for you, madame,
the side of the boat prevented all the weight
of the mast from hitting you, or——’ he
shrugged his shoulders with a grimace and
extended his hands. ‘That now is all I can
tell you.’
‘You found me in a boat?’ I said.
‘Oh yes, madame; certainly, yes.’
‘In a boat? Why was I in a boat? I
cannot remember. Oh, what has happened
to me? I have no memory! It has all
gone! Where am I? What is this that has
come to me?’
I raised myself upon my elbow, and instantly
fell back, weak, sick, with an overwhelming
feeling of horror upon me.
‘Be calm, madame, be calm. I am not a
doctor, but I know a thing or two. What is
the memory? Tut! It will return. Chut!
Before you arrive at Toulon you will have
your memory. Let me hear your name,
madame?’
‘My name?’ I exclaimed, and I thought
and thought, and my mind seemed to wrestle
and struggle within me, like something living
that has been buried alive.
A light effort to recollect speedily grows
into a sort of pain. This is true of trifles—as,
for instance, a name, the recollection of
which is not important, but you desire to
pronounce it; the mind explores the gallery
of the memory in vain for it, and the failure
to find it grows into a worry and presently
into a torment. Think, then, how it was with
me when this young Frenchman asked me for
my name, and I could not recall it! Recall
it! Oh, that is to speak too mildly. Why,
when I turned my mental gaze inwards it
was like looking into a black abysm of a profundity
impenetrable, upon the unreachable
bottom of which was strown the wreckage of
my past, were scattered the memorials of my
life, for ever to be hidden from me, as I then
believed.
‘Let me hear your name, madame?’ said
the young Frenchman.
I thought and thought and answered, ‘I
cannot remember my name.’
‘Not remember your name! But that
is droll. Does it begin with A? Does it
begin with B?’ and he ran through the
alphabet.
I listened, and all these letters sounded
as idly upon my ear as the noise of the wind
or the sound of passing waters.
‘But you are English?’ said he.
Again I thought and thought, and replied
in a whisper, ‘I cannot tell.’
He ejaculated in French. ‘Will you not
ask me some questions?’ said he. ‘Perhaps
whilst you ask questions you will be able to
recollect.’
‘What shall I ask?’ I answered, ‘I remember
nothing to ask.’
‘Ask about the boat we found you in.’
‘Yes, tell me about that boat,’ said I.
‘Aha!’ cried he, ‘you remember then.
You know there was a boat?’
‘I remember that you have told me that
you took me from a boat.’
‘Bravo! What does that signify? I am
not a doctor, but I know a thing or two.
Madame, if you can recollect what I say,
memory you must have. Is it not so? The
faculty you have. It is like a snake: all its
body is asleep to the tip of its tail, but it
is awake with its eyes. What do you think
of that illustration, madame?’
I listened to him and viewed him in
silence. I felt terribly weak and ill, but far
worse to support than this feeling of weakness
and illness was the horror that was upon
me—a horror I could not understand, an inward
presence that was made the more
dreadful by my not being able to find a
reason for it.
‘Do you ask me about the boat?’ said
Alphonse. ‘She had two masts, but one was
broken by us. Beyond that——’ he shrugged
his shoulders. ‘She slipped away when it
was still dark. That was a pity. There
would no doubt have been a name upon
her.’
He ceased, and I observed that he fastened
his eyes upon my hands. Then, after looking
for some little time with attention at my face,
he struck his forehead and cried, ‘What a
fool am I not earlier to have thought of it!
An instant, madame. I will go and bring
you your memory.’
He departed, and in a few minutes returned,
holding a large oval handglass.
‘Now,’ he exclaimed, smiling, ‘look at
yourself, madame, and, though I am not a
doctor, I pronounce that all will return to
you.’
He elevated the glass and I looked at
myself. But what did I see? Oh, reader,
turn back to the description, in the opening
pages of this story, of the lady seated at the
head of the tea-table in the parlour of the
house past the avenue of chestnuts; turn to
it, and compare that face with what I saw
reflected in the mirror held before me by the
young Frenchman. The hair was snow-white;
one eyebrow was snow-white; but the
other eyebrow was concealed by a wide strip
of white sticking-plaister. There were several
such strips, which intersected each other
upon the right brow, and one of them extended
to the bridge of the nose, entirely
sheathing the bone or cartilage, and leaving
but little more than the extremity of the nose
and the nostrils visible. The dark eyes were
sunk and dim. The cheeks were hollow, and
the complexion a dingy sallow, and as much
of the brow as was left exposed and parts
of the flesh of the face were covered with
thin lines, as though traced by the point of
a needle.
This was the face that looked out upon
me from that hand-mirror. I stared at it,
but I did not know it. Yet it did not terrify
me, because I was unable to remember my
former face, and therefore no shock of discovery
attended my inspection. No, the sight
of that dreadful face, with its milk-white hair
and plaistered brow, with here and there a
stain of dry blood upon the plaister, did not
terrify me. I gazed as though beholding
something that was not myself, and still I
knew that the face that confronted me was
my own face, and this it was, and not the face
that deepened the indeterminable feeling of
horror by quickening within me the awful
silent question, ‘Who am I?’
‘Now, madame,’ exclaimed Alphonse, ‘look
steadily, and you will be able to pronounce
your name and to remember.’
I closed my eyes, and when I opened
them again he had removed the glass. I tried
to speak, but though he inclined his head he
seemed unable to hear me. On this he put
his finger to his lips, and, after viewing me
a while with an expression of pity and astonishment,
he went softly out.
During the greater portion of the day my
condition was one of stupor. Yet there were
intervals when my mind was somewhat active.
In these intervals I questioned myself, and I
became acutely sensible of the indescribable
feeling of horror that was upon me, and at
such times I beheld, painted upon the gloom
of the shelf on which I lay, the strange face
that had gazed at me out of the hand-glass,
and again and again I saw that head of a
woman whose snow-white hair lay in long
thick tresses about her shoulders and upon
the rude bolster, though a portion of it was
looped up and fastened in coils on the top of
the head by hairpins, whose dark eyes were
weak and without light, whose cheeks were
hollow, and the skin of them and of her brow
finely lined with innumerable wrinkles, whilst
the whole countenance was rendered wild and
repulsive by the lengths of white sticking-plaister
that striped her temple.
Thrice during that day I was visited by
the young Frenchman, who, on each occasion,
brought me soup and some red wine. He was
accompanied on his third visit by the great
fat man, his uncle, and by a short man with
an immense moustache and several days’
growth of beard—a fierce-looking man, with
dark knitted eyebrows, and gleaming black
eyes with the savage stare of a gipsy in their
intent regard. He was swathed in a coarse
coat of pilot cloth, the skirts of which descended
to his heels, and on his head was a
fur cap which he did not remove as he stood
viewing me.
They watched Alphonse feed me; I was
scarcely conscious of their presence, and even
if I heeded them, which I doubt, their inspection
caused me no uneasiness, so languid were
my faculties, so sick even unto death did I
feel, so profoundly bewildered was I by the
questions I asked myself, and by the blackness
which lay upon the face of my mind
when I turned my gaze inwards and searched
it.
The fat man, Regnier, addressed Alphonse,
who nodded and said to me: ‘Well, madame,
have you yet thought of your name?’
I answered, ‘No.’
‘And you cannot positively tell me that
you are English?’
‘I am speaking English; I speak no other
tongue; I am English, then.’
‘No,’ he exclaimed, smiling, ‘you might
be American. And you say you do not speak
any other language than English? How can
you tell? You may have forgotten other
languages in which you could converse. For
example: you might be a German who speaks
English excellently; and now by some caprice
of the intellect you forget your German, and
express yourself in English. I am not a
doctor,’ he added, wagging his head, ‘but I
know a thing or two.’
And, turning to the others, he addressed
them swiftly and with great energy.
At some hour of the night I fell asleep.
When I awoke, the sunshine was streaming
brilliantly upon the little circular porthole.
I lifted up my head and then raised myself
upon my elbows and found myself stronger.
I also felt better; the feeling that had been
like approaching death was gone and the
sickness was passed. I heard the sounds of a
fiddle and of a man’s voice singing in the next
cabin. I listened to the voice and knew it to
be that of the young Frenchman, Alphonse.
The motion of the vessel was comparatively
quiet. She was sailing somewhat on her side,
but she rolled very lightly and the upwards
and downwards movement was trifling. I
felt that I had strength enough to sit up, but
the upper shelf was too close to my head to
suffer me to do so. I lay still and tried to
think, and my thoughts ran thus:
Who am I? The face that I saw in the
mirror yesterday is mine, but it begets no recollection.
I do not recognise it. It is mine,
yet it is a face that I have never before seen.
How, then, can it be mine? But since that
unknown face must be mine, who am I? I was
found lying insensible and wounded—and here
I laid my fingers upon the sticking-plaister
upon my brow—in an open boat. She had
two masts and that is all they can tell me.
How was it that I was in that boat? When
did I enter her? I have been in this ship
four days. How long was I in the boat, and
from what part do I come? And then there
was such a struggle of my mind that drops of
perspiration started from my brow. I cannot
express the agony that inward conflict caused
me. I said to myself, Am I mad that I do not
know who I am? What has happened to kill
in me the power to recollect? What has
happened to extinguish the vision in the eyes
of my mind? All is black! I remember
nothing down to the hour of my waking in
this cabin; but since then everything that has
happened, everything that has been said I
remember. I can repeat the conversation of
Alphonse, I can describe the appearance of
his uncle and of the man who accompanied
him; yes, and I can also describe accurately
the face that I yesterday viewed in the glass
which the young Frenchman held up before
me. Therefore memory is not dead, neither
can I be mad to be able to reason thus. Why
then will not memory pronounce my name
and give me back my past that I may know
who I am, that I may know to what place to
return? And I covered my face with my
hands and wept.
Presently my tears ceased to flow. The
strains of the fiddle and the voice of the
singer were silent in the adjacent cabin.
What is there to assist me to recover my
memory? I thought; and I turned my eyes
upon my figure as I lay stretched upon that
sleeping-shelf, and looked at my ringless hands;
and then my gaze ran with wildness over as
much as I could see of the little cabin, but no
suggestion came. My mind seemed torpid, unable
of itself to receive or to produce ideas.
Somewhat later I heard a knock on the
door. I exclaimed ‘Come in!’ and found that
I had my voice again; yet there was nothing
in the tone of it to help my memory. Alphonse
entered and bade me good-morning.
‘You look better, madame,’ said he; ‘do
you feel better?’
‘Yes; I feel stronger and better this
morning.’
‘Now, what did I tell you? Perhaps to-morrow
you will be able to get up. Are
you hungry?’
‘I believe I can eat,’ I said.
He snapped his fingers and instantly went
out. When he returned he brought with him
a cup of chocolate, some biscuits, marmalade
and butter, and a boiled egg.
‘What think you of this breakfast,
madame, for a little brick? We have six
hens on board, and this is the only egg this
morning. Can you eat without help or shall
I feed you?’
‘I think I can eat without help if I sit up.’
On this he put his hand into the shelf over
my head and took several boards out of it.
I could now sit up; he placed the tray on my
knees and I ate and drank.
‘You are very good, you are very kind to
me,’ said I. ‘What return shall I be able to
make—what acknowledgment——’ and I
ceased eating to press my hand to my brow.
‘Continue your breakfast,’ said he. ‘We
will not talk of acknowledgment here. At
Toulon you will obtain excellent medical
advice. And now shall I tell you something?’
added he, with a smile.
I looked at him.
‘You are a lady. Your accent is that of
the English lady of birth. I cannot mistake.
I have waited upon many English ladies, and
can always tell a lady of title. Do I assist
your memory when I say that you are a lady
of title?’ Seeing that I shook my head, he
continued: ‘I call you madame. Perhaps I
should say milady, or perhaps I should say
miss. I beg your pardon, but you have no
rings. A lady like you will have rings. Are
they in the pocket of your dress? I ask,
because if you saw your rings you might
remember.’
‘Where is my dress?’
‘It is here,’ and he stepped to a part of
the cabin near the door and held up the
dress.
I fastened my eyes upon it, but it suggested
nothing.
‘Has it a pocket?’ I said.
He felt, and answered, ‘Yes, and there is
something in it,’ and slipping in his hand he
brought out a pocket handkerchief and a
purse. ‘Aha!’ he cried. He examined the
handkerchief and said: ‘Here are two letters—“A.
C.” Pronounce them.’ I did so.
‘Now what do they signify?’
I turned them over and over and over
again in my mind. ‘They suggest nothing,’
I said.
‘Patience!’ he exclaimed, and opening
the purse he looked into it. ‘Nothing but
money,’ he said, after examining the two or
three divisions. ‘Here is one pound; and
here,’ he continued, turning the money into
his hand, ‘are two half-crowns, sixpence, and
some pennies. Is there nothing more?’ He
looked again, and exclaimed with a stamp of
his foot: ‘Nothing but money!’
CHAPTER V ON BOARD ‘NOTRE DAME’
On the afternoon of this second day of my
rescue, I found myself sufficiently strong to
rise and repose in an old stuffed arm-chair,
which the young Frenchman brought from
an adjoining cabin. My limbs were weak
and I trembled exceedingly. Nevertheless, I
contrived to put on my dress, which had been
thoroughly dried, so Alphonse told me, at the
fire in the fore-part of the ship where the
sailors’ food was cooked.
This obliging and most humane young
Frenchman also supplied me with certain
toilet requisites of a homely kind indeed; yet
the refreshment of washing my face and
hands and of brushing my hair seemed to
give me new life. The young Frenchman
hung his oval hand-glass upon the cabin wall,
and when he was gone I surveyed myself.
For a long while I could not lift the brush
to my hair. I could only gaze and dumbly
wonder with memory writhing sightless within
me. I took the glass to the circular window;
there was a strong yellow glow in the air outside,
and the afternoon light focussed by that
circular, tube-like window, lay upon my face.
I intently examined my countenance, but I
witnessed nothing that gave me the least hint
of the past. I beheld a great quantity of
snow-white hair, languid and lustreless dark
eyes, the lids of which were half closed,
hollow cheeks, a skin scored with innumerable
fine lines, and the whole rendered repulsive
by the stripes of stained plaister. When
presently, having washed my face and hands,
I began to brush my hair, many hairs came
out on the brush. I passed my fingers
through my tresses, and my hand came away
with a quantity of white hair in it. I sighed
and wondered, and trembled with weakness,
and with the miserable horror that again
visited me.
But now, instead of wearily thinking over
and over again ‘Who am I?’ my mind was
haunted by those two letters ‘A. C.,’ which the
young Frenchman had found in the corner of
my handkerchief. I uttered them over and
over again, fancying that the initials might
suddenly expand into the full name, for I
believed that if I could remember my name
I should be able to recollect everything else.
When I had brushed and dressed my hair
I drew forth my purse, and held it in my hand
with my gaze riveted to it. But the black
conflict in my mind grew too violent for my
strength. I put the purse into my pocket
and rocked myself in my chair, crying and
crying until you would have thought my
heart must break.
The Frenchman punctually brought me
food and drink. He repeated that he was
certain I was a lady of title; he had waited
on too many female members of the British
aristocracy to mistake. ‘You will see
that I am right, madame,’ said he, and
with this conviction his politeness increased,
though more respectful his manner
could not be.
During the evening I was visited by the
uncle, whose speeches the young man translated.
‘You are better,’ exclaimed this large, fat,
stolid man, who could not speak without
nodding. ‘Take the word of Captain Regnier,
who is not often mistaken in his opinion.
You are better, and you will soon be well.
But you must recover your memory before
we arrive at Toulon, that the British Consul
at that port may be in a position to forward
you to your friends.’
‘But if I cannot remember, what is to
become of me?’ said I.
‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘that will be the
affair of the British Consul. Why should not
a Consul earn his salary? These gentlemen
have very easy times.’
‘It is settled,’ said Alphonse, ‘that you
are English. It will be the British Consul’s
business to find out all about you.’
‘But if I cannot remember?’
‘It will still be his business,’ said Captain
Regnier, who understood me, ‘to find out all
about you. My nephew is right. You are
undoubtedly an English lady of distinction,’
and he bowed to me with a strange motion of
his bulky form.
The conversation continued in this strain
for some time. They then left me.
The next afternoon the young Frenchman
persuaded me to leave my cabin for the living
room in which Captain Regnier, his nephew,
and the mate Hénin took their meals. The
young man gave me his arm and conducted
me to the living room with the grace and
tender attention of a perfectly well-bred
gentleman. I found myself in a cabin many
times larger than the tiny berth I had quitted,
yet it was a very small apartment nevertheless.
It is necessary that I should describe
this interior that you may be able to understand
what befel me later on. Figure a small
square room, the ceiling within easy reach of
the hand, the walls of a grimy colour that
might have been either brown or yellow. In
the centre of the ceiling was a large window,
or rather several windows in a frame not
unlike those glass frames in which cucumbers
are grown. This window, as I afterwards
came to know, would be called a skylight.
There was a square opening in the deck a
little distance behind this skylight, with a
short steep flight of steps ascending to it.
This opening would be called the hatch, and
the deck was gained by passing through it.
Close behind this ladder or flight of steps
were the doors of two berths, one of which I
occupied, and under the steps I observed a
large cask, one end of which came very close
to the door of my berth. Do not suppose
that I immediately noticed these details.
When I first entered that grimy and somewhat
gloomy living room I took heed of little
indeed. There was a small square table in
the middle of the cabin and on either hand
were rough dark fixed boxes termed lockers.
A lamp of a curious pattern swung under a
beam overhead. Such was the cabin of the
brig Notre Dame de Boulogne.
Alphonse brought the arm-chair from my
cabin and placed it near the table. He then
placed a bundle of old numbers of the Charivari
on my lap, and I turned the pages with
a mechanical hand, incessantly saying to myself,
‘What can the letters “A. C.” stand for?’
I might know that it was a very fine
evening by the clear crimson light that
tinctured the glass in the frame overhead.
The motion of the brig was easy and the
lamp under the ceiling or upper-deck swung
softly and regularly. I heard the murmur of
hissing waters, and occasionally the voice of a
man calling out abruptly echoed through the
little opening that conducted to the deck.
I sat alone for some time. After I had
been sitting alone for about half an hour,
viewing the French comic paper with an eye
that beheld nothing, since it was for ever
inwards turned, Alphonse came out of the
cabin next to mine with a fiddle in his hand.
‘Now madame,’ said he tapping it with
the bow, ‘tell me what this is.’
‘It is a fiddle,’ said I.
‘Is not this a proof of memory?’ cried he.
‘How could you call it a fiddle if you did not
know it to be a fiddle? and in this case to
know is to remember.’
‘You reason well,’ I said smiling, and a
sad smile I fear it was that I gave him.
‘You converse as one who has been well
educated.’
‘I was very well educated, madame,’ he
answered. ‘Those of our condition in England
are not so well educated as we of
France. We owe much to the priests. There
are no such schoolmasters in the world.
Otherwise I do not love priests. I am an
infidel, and my opinions coincide with those
of Voltaire and Volney. What is your religion,
madame?’
I was unable to answer him. He put his
fiddle against his shoulder and asked if he
should play me a tune and sing me a song.
I begged him to do so and forthwith he
played and sang. He sang some merry
French rhymes and the air was very lively
and pretty.
Hardly had he ended his song when a lad
with a dirty face and a quantity of brown
hair hanging over his eyes came shambling
down the stairs, bearing a large teapot and a
dish of fried ham. Alphonse surveyed him
with disgust, and withdrew to his cabin to put
away his fiddle. The boy prepared the table
for a repast that I afterwards understood was
called supper by the Frenchmen. He lifted
the lid of one of the large dark fixed boxes
and brought out some plates and cups and
saucers which he placed upon the table. He
breathed hard and idled in his business of
furnishing the table that he might stare at
me. The meal, when ready, consisted of tea,
ham, large brown biscuits, marmalade, and a
great piece of cold sausage. Alphonse returned
and stood looking at the table.
‘This would not do for an English milord
to sit down to,’ said he, ‘it would make him
swear, and certainly your English milord
knows how to swear. I should not like to
wait upon company at such a table as this.
But it is the sea—that sea which the English
people love, but about which they know less
than the French, though they talk much of
their dominion maritime. Is there nothing
on the table,’ he added with a comprehensive
gesture of the hand, ‘that gives you an idea,
madame?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Can you pronounce the names of what
you see?’
‘Yes.’
‘How droll! how incredible! Mon Dieu,
what a thing is the human intelligence!
Because one little nerve or cell in the brain
perhaps is wrong,’ here he tapped his forehead,
‘all is gloom. It is like turning off the
gas. You go into a corner downstairs, you
move a key no longer than that, and a
great hotel of seventy bedrooms and thirty
sitting-rooms is instantly plunged in darkness.’
He was interrupted by the arrival of his
uncle, who, pulling off his red cap, gave me a
bow and seated himself. I drank a cup of
the tea; there was no milk, yet I found the
beverage refreshing. I also ate some biscuit
and marmalade. The conversation was all
about myself. Captain Regnier’s speeches
were translated by Alphonse, and my mind
was stimulated by what was said. I found
myself capable of asking questions; but few
were the questions I could find to ask. I
had nothing to base them upon save the story
of my rescue from an open boat, as it had
been related to me, and the Frenchman had
nothing more to tell me than that she was a
boat with two masts.
‘Was I alone in her?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, you were alone,’ answered
Alphonse.
‘How is it possible that I should be alone
in an open boat?’ I exclaimed.
‘It was a pleasure-boat,’ said Captain
Regnier; ‘without doubt you sailed on an
excursion from some port, and were blown
away to sea.’
‘But alone!’ I cried.
‘You were alone, madame,’ said Alphonse,
and, eagerly addressing his uncle as though a
fine idea had occurred to him, he exclaimed;
‘Could you not tell by the build of the boat
what her nationality was?’
Captain Regnier shrugged his shoulders
until his ears were hidden. ‘What is there
of nationality in a boat of that size?’ he
answered. ‘The boats of France, of England,
of Europe in general—are they not very
much alike—especially in the dark?’
‘How long will it take you to arrive at
Toulon?’ I asked.
Again Captain Regnier, when this inquiry
was translated, shrugged his shoulders and
answered that it was a question for the wind.
‘I will fetch the chart,’ said Alphonse,
‘and madame shall remark our situation for
herself.’
He arose and walked to the forward part
of the living room. I had supposed that
that part was wholly walled off from the
other portion of the ship. But the young
Frenchman, putting his hand upon a ring in
the middle of the wooden wall, drew open a
sliding door. Captain Regnier said in broken
English: ‘My cabin is there.’
In a few minutes Alphonse returned with
a large map or chart, which he unrolled upon
a part of the table that he cleared to receive
it. It was too dark, however, to read the
small print on the chart, and Captain Regnier,
breathing short and heavily with the exertion
of moving his vast shapeless form, lighted the
lamp. My feebleness would not suffer me to
rise and bend over the chart, and perceiving
this the two Frenchmen held open before me
the wide sheet of cartridge paper.
‘There,’ said Captain Regnier, pointing to
a part of the chart with a large fat forefinger
on which glittered a thick silver ring, ‘there,’
said he, ‘is the situation of Notre Dame de
Boulogne at the present moment.’
‘That point of land,’ exclaimed Alphonse
after translating, ‘is Finisterre. The brick
then is off Finisterre. Does the name of
Finisterre give you any ideas?’
I continued to think, with my eyes rooted
to the chart, and then I answered, ‘None.’
‘Here is Toulon,’ said Captain Regnier,
‘and this is the course of the vessel to that
port,’ and he ran his fat finger down the
chart, past the coast of Spain and through
the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf of
Lyons.
‘It is a long way to Toulon,’ said I.
‘Yes,’ answered Alphonse, ‘it is a voyage.’
Captain Regnier addressed his nephew.
‘Superb! Admirable!’ cried the young Frenchman.
‘Ah, my uncle is a clever man! What
do you think he proposes? That you shall
look at the coast of England and read the
names upon it, and if you are an English lady
who, as my uncle says, has been blown away
in a pleasure-boat from a port in England,
why——’ and with great excitement he pulled
the end of the chart out of his uncle’s hand,
rolled it up until only that portion which contained
the English Channel was left open, and
then placed the chart thus rolled up upon
my knees.
I looked, and the two Frenchmen stood
viewing me. I trembled with eagerness and
fear, for I thought to myself, ‘Here may be the
spark that will flash up the whole of the
blackened galleries of my memory—and yet
it may not be here!’ and shiver after shiver
ran through me as I looked.
I read aloud; name after name I pronounced,
taking the towns one after the other,
from the Thames to the Land’s End, and then
with trembling finger and whispering lips I
traced the coast on the western side, even to
the height of Scotland; and then I continued
to read down on the eastern coast until I came
to the River Thames.
‘Ah, my God! my God!’ I cried, and I
hid my eyes and sobbed. The chart rolled
from my knees on to the deck.
‘Patience,’ exclaimed Captain Regnier.
‘The memory will return. Give her some
wine, Alphonse.’
I drank, but though I recovered my composure
there had happened such a deadly
struggle within me, so fierce and rending a
conflict—betwixt, what shall I say? the spirit,
shall I call it, grappling with eyeless memory?—that
I lay back in my chair, prostrated, incapable
of speech. And how am I to convey
to you, who are following my story, the effect
produced by the words I read—by the names
of the towns I read aloud—upon my mind?
This was the difficulty I foresaw when I undertook
to relate my experiences. But let me do
my best. The effect was this: the names I
uttered—that is to say, the names of those
towns which I had heard of; for some little
places which I had never heard of were marked
upon the chart—the names, then, of places
which I had heard of and known sounded as
familiarly to my ear as my own name would
have sounded before my memory went. But
that was all. I could associate no ideas with
them. They presented no images. They were
perfectly familiar sounds and no more. Though
the chart was of French, or at all events of
foreign manufacture, all names in Great Britain
were printed as they are spelt by us. Therefore
I could not console myself with reflecting
that the words I had read were spelt in the
French way, and without suggestion to one
whose memory was gone. No, every word
was in English. Often have I since wondered
whether Piertown was included in that chart.
Probably it was not. So insignificant a place
would not be deemed worth marking down.
‘The lady is undoubtedly English,’ said
Captain Regnier to his nephew. ‘Only a
native of her country could pronounce its
tongue as she does.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ answered
Alphonse. ‘I have known Germans and
Danes, and I have known Dutchmen and
Swedes who have spoken English as well as
madame. Uncle, I know a thing or two. Be
a waiter and you will learn much to astonish
you. But I agree that she is an Englishwoman,
yet not because she speaks English
well. Her style is English, and you will find
that she is a lady of rank.’
This conversation I was able to imperfectly
follow. I felt too ill, too miserably sick at
heart to sit in that cabin conversing, and
begged Alphonse to conduct me to my berth.
He did so with the same gentleness and
courteous attention with which he had led
me from it. Before leaving me he said, ‘If it
is fine to-morrow I shall have the pleasure to
take you on deck. The fresh air will do you
a great deal of good. And, who knows? your
memory doubtless left you while you were in
the boat. It is, therefore, in the sea, and when
you look at the sea it may come up to you
out of it.’
I enjoyed some hours’ sleep that night and
awoke refreshed and stronger. I tried to remember
if I had dreamt. Before I fell asleep
it entered my head to fancy that if I dreamt of
even a little bit of my past—that even if in a
vision, the merest corner of the black curtain
would rise to enable me to catch a glimpse of
what was behind when I awoke—then by remembering
that I should end in remembering
all. But when I tried to think if I had dreamt
I found that my slumber had been without
visions. I dwelt upon those dark hours of
sleep, but they had been dreamless, and there
was nothing to evoke.
It was a fine bright morning. The vessel
was sailing along almost upright, with a
regular succession of floating falls and risings
of that hinder part of her in which my berth
was situated. The glory of the ocean morning
was upon the waters; they flashed in
blueish silver windily, and the dazzle rising
off them streamed in trembling splendour
through the porthole, and filled the little
coarse and homely berth with ripples of
lustre.
Alphonse brought me some soup, biscuit,
and a new-laid egg from the hencoop in which
were stocked the few hens which the brig
carried. When I had finished the repast I
arose and dressed myself, and entered the
cabin or living-room, where sat Alphonse
playing the fiddle, whilst the mate, Hénin,
seated on one of the chests or lockers, with
half a tumbler of claret in one hand and a
biscuit in the other, kept time by nodding.
‘Very good, indeed, madame; very good,
indeed!’ cried Alphonse, putting his fiddle
down and clapping his hands. ‘I did not
believe you would get up until the afternoon.
Come! you are better, and you will be well
before we arrive at Toulon, where you will
find your memory waiting for you.’
‘I do not understand,’ exclaimed the
fierce-looking mate Hénin, staring at me with
gleaming eyes, though he addressed Alphonse
and spoke in French, ‘why it is that the lady
does not remember. Can she recollect yesterday?
Undoubtedly,’ he exclaimed with a
savage gesture. ‘Then the brain that can
recall yesterday should be able to bring back
as many yesterdays as it needs. Let the
lady try, and she will remember.’
‘Bah!’ said Alphonse. ‘Do not mind
this man,’ said he. ‘He does not understand
English, and I can say what I like. Do not
suppose him fierce because he looks so. He
has a tender heart, and weeps easily. Yet
there is not a more excellent sailor in the
French marine; at least my uncle says so,
and my uncle is a very clever man. Shall I
now conduct you on deck?’
‘I should like to go on deck,’ said I.
‘Let me see; you will want a chair. You
are not yet able to stand long or walk very
far, and you have no covering for your head.’
I put my hand to my hair and exclaimed,
‘Was I without covering to my head when
you found me?’
‘No. You wore a straw hat. It was
crushed by the fall of the mast. When the
sailors raised you to bring you on board, the
hat fell off, and they left it in the boat. One
of the men in the bad light saw a dark mark
upon the straw, and he said it might be
blood.’
‘It was a straw hat?’ said I. ‘A straw
hat?’ and I mused until I began to think
myself into one of those black and frightful
conflicts of mind which had before prostrated
me with their unspeakable anguish. I
checked the horrible internal struggle by
forcing myself to speak, and so diverting my
thoughts.
‘What is there that I can wear to protect
my head?’
The mate Hénin, who continued to stare
at me with fiery eyes, said, ‘What does the
lady say?’ Alphonse explained. ‘Wait,’ cried
Hénin fiercely, and, putting down his glass
and biscuit, he went to the ring in the forward
wall of the cabin, slided the door open,
and disappeared. In a minute he returned
with a long cloak hanging over his arm. He
ran his eye over my figure, then held up the
cloak to compute its size. It was a dark
green cloak, of a very monkish pattern; it
had a large hood, and was comfortably lined
with some sort of delicate fur.
‘Let the lady wear this,’ exclaimed the
man. ‘It is almost new, and therefore clean.
She is welcome to it,’ and he flung it into the
outstretched hands of Alphonse, and, with a
fierce countenance, resumed his seat.
I put on the cloak; it was loose, and
completely enveloped me. I then drew the
hood over my head, and, assisted by the
young Frenchman, painfully ascended the
steep steps and gained the deck. The first
sweep of the fresh sunlit wind almost overpowered
me; I reeled and closed my eyes,
but this swooning sensation speedily passed.
The huge fat figure of Captain Regnier
stood near the wheel; Alphonse called to him
to give me the support of his arm until the
chair was brought on deck. After the comparative
gloom of the cabin the brilliant
morning sunshine nearly blinded me, and for
some while I was forced to keep my eyes half
closed. In a few moments Alphonse came up
the stairs with the arm-chair, which he placed
in the sunshine, but in a part of the deck that
was sheltered from the wind by the box or
hood that was fitted over the little hatch that
conducted to the cabin. And now, my sight
having grown used to the dazzle, I looked
about me.
I found myself on the deck of a small
vessel, whose shape resembled that of a box
rather than that of a ship. She had two
masts, across which were stretched sheets of
patched and discoloured canvas. On the
top of the hinder mast was a small red
streamer, surmounted by a little brass ship
that shone like a ray of white fire in the air
as it pointed with its red streamer attached
directly in the path along which the brig
was being steered. The planks of the deck
were dark, and every object that the eye
rested upon suggested dirt and neglect. I
remarked a boat painted white standing upside
down near a little wooden house like
a sentry-box, whose roof was pierced by a
chimney from which a trail of dark smoke
was blowing over the bows. I gazed earnestly
at that boat; it seemed a familiar object
to me; all else was strange—the tall masts,
the wide-spread sails, the straight black lines
of rigging, the dingy green paint of the bulwarks,
the twenty details of rope hanging in
coils, of pumps, of skylight, and I know not
what else, for how should a woman be able
to give names to the strange furniture of the
sea? All else was new. I searched my
dark mind, and the picture of this brig sailing
along with the wind blowing over her
stern into her dingy wings was as novel
as though she were the only vessel in the
world, and I was beholding her for the first
time.
But the boat seemed familiar. I could
not take my eyes off it for some minutes.
Why should this be? I asked; and then my
sightless memory began to struggle, and I
addressed the young Frenchman, who stood
at my side, for the relief to be found in
speech.
‘I seem to have seen that boat before.’
‘Impossible, madame.’
‘What does the lady say?’ exclaimed
Captain Regnier, who leaned against the bulwarks
with his hands in his pockets opposite
me.
Alphonse repeated my words. The large
fat man pulled one hand out of his pocket to
emphasise his speech with gestures.
‘My uncle says no. You cannot remember
that boat,’ said the young Frenchman.
‘He has owned this brick twenty years, and
the boat is twenty years old, and in all that
time she has belonged to the brick.’
‘Why, then, should she seem familiar to
me?’
He reflected, and then put his forefinger
to the side of his nose.
‘I think I know. We took you out of a
boat; all your sufferings were in a boat; the
idea of a boat has been burnt in upon your
mind by pain and misery; and now when you
see a boat you cry out—“Ah! surely I know
her.” You will say that of any boat. It is
a very good sign. I say it is a very good
sign that you should think you know that
boat.’
He then volubly addressed his uncle, who
nodded, and grunted, and shrugged, and appeared
to agree.
I remarked two or three men about the
deck in the fore-part of the brig. They
were ill-clad, lean and yellow, and grim, dark
and forbidding for want of the razor. They
stared very hard at me, ceasing in their work
to do so, and certainly their curiosity was
more than justified, for I can well believe
that I made an extraordinary figure with my
plaistered and withered face, and white hair
showing in the twilight of the large hood,
and the rest of me draped by the cloak to the
very plank of the deck.
It was a beautiful morning, the hour about
eleven. The ocean was of the colour of
sapphire, and it flowed with the brig in long
and regular lines, and here and there the
froth fitfully flashed and faded. The sky on
the left was shaded with a high delicate network
of cloud, but elsewhere the firmament
was of purest blue, graced and relieved by
widely scattered little bodies of pearl-like
vapour, all sailing our way. The wind was
sweet and mild, and now every breath that
I took of it seemed to give me a new spirit.
‘Look there, madame,’ exclaimed Alphonse,
‘you have not yet seen that beautiful
sight,’ and directing my eyes over the bulwark
on the right, I beheld a stately ship, a large,
lovely, and radiant fabric, with sail upon sail
of the milk-white softness of sifted snow
swelling and diminishing one above another
to an altitude that made one think of the
little gold buttons on the top of her masts as
stars. She was passing us swiftly. A small
white line of foam throbbed along the long
red streak that rose up her side a little above
the level of the water. Soft flames of white
fire broke from many parts of her as she
swept her windows and the glass upon the
deck and many ornaments of furniture of
polished brass into the direct flash of the
sun.
‘Oh! that is a beautiful sight, indeed,’
said I.
‘Does it give you no idea, madame?’ said
the young Frenchman; then finding that I
continued to gaze without answering him, he
exclaimed: ‘Look now at the sea. Is there
not something in the sight of that sea to
make you remember? Figure land yonder,
and imagine for yourself a town upon it.
What sort of town shall it be? Come, it
must be the town you sailed from in the boat
with two masts. And see now if we cannot
create it. It will have a pier—there will be
sands: or say it has no pier, and the cliffs
are white——’
‘Oh God, my heart will break,’ I cried.
Another day and yet another day passed.
And now I had been a little longer than a
week on board the French brig.
It was Sunday. The day had broken in
gloom, and when I arose and dressed myself
at ten o’clock I could scarcely see in my
cabin. There did not seem to be any wind.
The vessel was rolling somewhat heavily, and
alternately she plunged the circular window
of my cabin under water, and then the dusk
turned black with nothing but a green glimmer
where the porthole was; and then as she
rolled away on the other side and lifted the
little window weeping and roaring out of the
swollen hill of green water, there was a noise
as of the explosion of guns; but no foam flew
about the window, whence I judged that the
vessel was not making any progress.
By this time I had grown accustomed to
the motions of a ship at sea. I moved without
difficulty, and poised myself to the slanting
of the deck under my feet with something
of the ease of habit. When I had dressed
myself on this Sunday morning I put on the
cloak that the mate Hénin had lent me,
and entered the little state cabin or living
room. The young Frenchman, Alphonse, sat
at the table with an open volume before him.
He looked up as I approached.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘is it as bad as you
feared?’
‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘if my hair goes on
falling out as it now does, I shall be bald
before we arrive at Toulon.’
He smiled and said: ‘Oh no! You have
a great deal of hair. Many ladies have I
seen, but never one with such abundance of
hair as you.’
‘I am losing it fast.’
‘It will grow again. It is not as if you
were very old.’
‘Very old!’ I exclaimed, ‘what is my age?
What do you think it is? Tell me. I
earnestly wish to guess.’ Then, observing a
certain expression to enter his face, I added
with vehemence: ‘Do not attempt to flatter
me. Tell me exactly what you believe my
age to be. Even out of that may come an
idea to me.’
‘It would not be fair to you to guess,’ said
the young man, with the little French smirk
that had entered his face swiftly fading out of
it; ‘look how your forehead is bound up!
Figure yourself in good health—your face
entirely visible—bien coiffée besides—but you
ask me for the truth, and I will tell you what
I suppose. You are, madame, about forty-five
years old.’
‘It may be so,’ I answered, and my head
sank, and for some moments my senses seemed
to leave me, so benumbing was the bewilderment
that possessed me as I tried to think,
wondering why I could not remember my
age, wondering why I could not remember
my name, wondering whether the sable curtain
before which the hand of calamity had
placed me would ever rise.
‘The French,’ said Alphonse, ‘are hair-dressers
in perfection. There is a hair-dresser
of genius at Toulon. He is my friend. I
will speak to him, and it will be strange if he
does not possess the secret of preventing your
hair from falling out.’ He closed his book
and continued: ‘I believe you will not much
longer require to wear that plaister, yet I
would advise you to keep it on until you are
able to consult a physician. A friend of mine
at Toulon is an excellent doctor. I will speak
to him about you. But how gloomy—how
gloomy is this day! I hope there will
not be a storm. Would you like to go on
deck?’
I mounted the steps and looked about me.
The scene of ocean was indeed a melancholy
one. The sea was running in large heaps of
ugly green, and there was not a breath of air
to wrinkle the polished slopes. The sky was
a wide and sullen shadow of grey, nowhere
broken, and the sweeping folds of the water
worked and throbbed all round the base of
that mighty stretch of shadow as though
they washed the foot of a vast circular wall.
The vessel rolled from side to side, and at
times her canvas slapped the mast with a
noise like a sudden clap of thunder. At a
distance lay a ship rigged as ours was. She
had very little canvas set, but what she
showed was white, and it glared out like the
breaking head of a sea as she swayed her
masts.
Mate Hénin was on deck. He stood at
the bulwark, and supported his rocking figure
by holding a rope, and the scowl upon his
face as he ran his gleaming eyes over the sea
was as dark as the scowl upon the sky.
‘How is this weather to end?’ called
Alphonse to him.
‘In wind,’ he answered.
‘Will it be a fair wind?’
‘The devil alone knows. But better a
hurricane than this.’ He uttered a malediction.
‘Is it to be Toulon with us? Or is it
to be six months of the Bay of Biscay? Are
we to run short of water and provisions? I
am no oyster, I. Give me a hurricane sooner
than six months of the Bay of Biscay in this
tumbling shell.’ He uttered another malediction,
and scowled even yet more fiercely as
he looked up at the sky and then around
him.
Alphonse translated his speech with a
smile. ‘Do not mind him,’ he exclaimed; ‘he
has a tender heart and no man sheds tears
more easily.’
It began to rain and I returned to the
cabin. I removed the cloak, seated myself
on a locker and gave myself up to thought.
If I could not remember who I was, what
was to become of me? When this brig
arrived at Toulon whither should I proceed
for shelter and protection? Captain Regnier
had spoken of the British Consul; but I was
a stranger to the British Consul. I had
nothing whatever to communicate to him
about my past, saving that I was found far
out at sea in a little sailing-boat, and rescued
by the people of the brig Notre Dame de
Boulogne. Would he house me or elsewhere
find shelter and food for me until he had discovered
who I was? But how would he be
able to discover who I was? And when he
found that inquiry was futile would he go on
sheltering and protecting me? My thoughts
filled me with terror. I was ignorant of the
duties of a Consul, and I could not understand
that there might be anything to hope
or to expect from him. Then, again, my
memory being gone, I was as much at fault
when I reasoned forwards as when I directed
the eyes of my mind backwards. I could
not conceive, for instance, that on my landing
at Toulon, and representing my dreadful and
helpless condition to the British Consul, he
would take steps to send me home, because
I had no imagination of home. I could not
positively affirm that I was English; I was in
the condition of a mute—nay, I was far worse
off than a mute, because a mute has his
memory, and can express what is in his mind
by writing or by dumb show; whereas I had
nothing to tell. I could speak, and the words
I pronounced were English; but that was all.
However my tale might run, it would be
without meaning: and when I thought of
myself as landing at Toulon, of arriving at a
place where I had not a friend—though if
there had been twenty friends there I should
not have remembered them—when I thought
of the few shillings my purse contained, that
all the wearing apparel I possessed was upon
me, that I should not be able to say who I
was, where I came from, in what part of the
world my home was situated—when I thought
thus I trembled in every limb, my heart felt
cold as stone, and I strove to ease the agony
of my mind by weeping; but no tears flowed.
I had wept so often of late throughout the
days, and in the dark hours of the nights, that
the source of my tears seemed to have been
dried up.
The good-natured Alphonse, observing the
dreadful and insupportable misery in my face
and posture, thought to cheer me up; he sat
beside me, entreated me not to fret, and
spoke cheerfully of the future. But my inward
anguish was too extreme to suffer me
to listen to him, and after awhile he withdrew
to his cabin and played somewhat
stealthily upon his fiddle, thinking, perhaps, I
could not hear him, yet wishing to divert
himself.
Shortly before the cabin dinner hour, that
is to say, a little before one o’clock, there was
a sudden commotion on deck, a noise of ropes
hastily flung down, the sounds of men running
about, accompanied by Captain Regnier’s
bull-like bawlings. In a few minutes I heard
a strange hissing, and the vessel leaned over
and continued to lean down until she had
arrived at so sharp an angle that I was only
saved from sliding off the locker by pressing
at the whole length of my arms against the
table. The shouts of the men on deck were
confused and incessant. Every man seemed
to be roaring out orders on his own account.
There was likewise an alarming noise of canvas
violently shaken. The vessel was plunging
heavily, and every now and then she received
a blow from a sea that thrilled through
her as a house shakes when a loaded van is
passing the door, and every blow was followed
by a fierce noise of seething like the sound of
water poured on fire.
The young Frenchman’s cabin door
opened and Alphonse crawled out on his
hands and knees. He climbed up the slope
of the deck to the side of the table at which
I sat, and gazed at me with an ashen countenance.
‘This is terrible!’ he cried.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
‘A frightful storm has burst upon us!’ he
answered. ‘Blessed Virgin! why does not
the brick lift herself out of the water?’ and
here he made the sign of the Cross upon his
breast, which led me to suppose that, like
many other Frenchmen, and like many other
people who are not Frenchmen, Alphonse was
an infidel only in fine weather.
We remained seated, hearkening with terrified
ears to the uproar on deck and to the
thunderous beating of the sea against the
little vessel. After some while the brig grew
more upright, the halloaing above ceased,
and there was nothing to be heard save the
creaking of the old structure as it pitched
and wallowed, and a subdued noise of angry,
raving, foaming waters.
The light in the hatchway was eclipsed,
and the immense mass of Captain Regnier
descended the steps. His coat was streaming,
and on his gaining the cabin he pulled
off his sodden red cap and flung it with a
furious gesture into a corner.
‘Oh, uncle, what is the matter?’ cried
Alphonse, clasping his hands.
‘Matter!’ answered Captain Regnier,
‘why here is a dead foul wind blowing strong
enough, if it lasts for twenty-four hours, to
lose us every league we have gained in the
last three days.’
‘Is there any danger?’ asked Alphonse.
The large fat man eyed him in silence for
a moment, then, pulling a big silver watch
from the waistband of his trousers, he roared
out: ‘Let us dine or there will be plenty of
danger.’
This said he ascended the steps until his
head was in the air above the cover, and
having delivered himself of a bull-like shout
he returned, pulled off his great overcoat, and
seated himself in his shabby velveteen jacket.
‘But you will tell me if there is any
danger?’ said Alphonse.
‘I will tell you nothing until I have
dined,’ answered Captain Regnier.
The young man sat with a white face
viewing his uncle wistfully. There was expression
enough in the fat Frenchman’s stolid
face to reassure me; moreover, I could not
suppose that he would think of his dinner
and apparently of nothing but his dinner
in a time of danger. Yet, had he informed
Alphonse that the brig was in peril I should
have listened to the news with indifference.
My dejection was heart-crushing. I was
wretched to the inmost recesses of my spirit
with the despair that comes of hopelessness,
and never before had I felt so lonely.
The brig’s movements were horribly uncomfortable.
It was blowing very hard and
the sea was growing. I do not know whether
the vessel was sailing—that is to say, whether
she was making any progress through the
water—but they were steering her so as to
cause her side to form an angle with the
gulfs of the foaming billows, and the dance of
the light structure was as though she must
at any moment go to pieces.
Despite the jerky, convulsive, dislocating
movements, the grimy French lad who waited
in the cabin contrived to place the dinner
upon the table. The meal was composed
largely of soup, and I cannot conceive how
the youth managed. I drank a little soup
and ate a piece of biscuit, and this with a
small draught of red wine formed my dinner.
Alphonse ate nothing; he continuously gazed
at his uncle, who addressed himself to the
meal with both hands, gradually lying back
as he drained the contents of a large tin dishful
of soup, and then placing a bottle half full
of wine at his lips and emptying it, and then
grasping a large piece of sausage with one
hand and a whole biscuit with the other and
rapidly devouring them.
‘This is not a moment to think of knives
and forks,’ said he; ‘if we are to perish let us
meet our end well lined.’
‘To perish!’ cried Alphonse.
‘Bah!’ exclaimed Captain Regnier, with
his mouth full. ‘Did you not tell me the
other day that if I were a waiter I would
know a thing or two? Well, I now imagine
myself a waiter, and am talking as one. As a
waiter I pronounce that we shall perish, but
as a sailor I say no! no! we shall not perish
this time. There are many napkins remaining
for you to fashion into fans and cocked-hats
before you are drowned by shipwreck.’
The young Frenchman’s vivacity immediately
returned to him.
‘It is inspiriting to even think of napkins
at such a time,’ said he. ‘They awaken
fancies of the hotel, the table-d’hôte, of a
thousand agreeable things. After Toulon—the
deluge. You do not catch me returning
to Boulogne with you, uncle. Give me the
railway. I now detest the sea. Ciel! how
the ship leaps. And remark this poor lady.
How has the sea served her?’ He snapped
his fingers, and extended his hand for a piece
of the sausage.
Both men spoke in French, but I understood
enough of their discourse to enable me
to repeat the substance of it.
‘If this wind holds,’ said Captain Regnier,
‘it will be the deluge before Toulon. A
thousand thunders! To think that it should
come on to storm dead ahead! What virtue
is there in patience when there is no end to
waiting?’
‘Why not sail the ship to a convenient
port,’ said Alphonse, ‘and wait there in comfort
and serenity until the weather changes?’
‘Go! you are a sot,’ responded Captain
Regnier, scowling at him.
The motion was so excessive that it pained
me to sit upright. I spoke to Alphonse, who
addressed his uncle, and the captain, going
to my berth, brought the mattress from the
sleeping shelf, and placed it on one of the
chests or lockers on what is called the ‘lee
side’—that is, on the depressed side of the
vessel—and when he had fetched the bolster
I lay down.
The afternoon slowly passed away. The
skylight was shrouded with wet, and the
shadow of the storm-coloured sky was upon
it, and in the cabin it was so gloomy that
Alphonse told the lad who waited at table to
light the lamp. I was not sea-sick, but the
swift risings and fallings of the brig gave me
a dreadful headache, and so dimmed my sight
that I could scarcely see.
You who read this may very well know
the sea as it is to be experienced in large
ships. You may have rolled and plunged
over mountainous waves in a steam-vessel of
vast bulk, whose cabin is radiant with mirrors
and lamps of polished metal, and with furniture
as sumptuous as that of the drawing-rooms
of a palace! You have had a luxurious
berth to withdraw to, attentive stewards
or stewardesses to minister to you, and all
the while you have been comforted with a
sense of incessant progress, with the assurance
of the pulse in everything that you touch,
in everything that you feel, that the noble
engines are magnificently doing their work,
and ruthlessly forcing the crushing and shearing
stem of the powerful metal structure
along the path that leads to your destination.
But exchange such a ship as this for a
brig of small burthen; exchange the brilliant
interior of the great ship for the dingy, snuff-coloured
living-room of a little brig with
scarcely light to see by, and with the air full
of the thunder of the warring without. Often
the lamp swung so violently under the beam
from which it dangled that I languidly
watched to see it extinguish its own flame
against the upper decks. There was a sickening
sound of sobbing waters over my head,
and there were many furious discharges of
spray or wet upon the planks, the noise of
which was like the abrupt fall of a terrible
hailstorm liberated from the black breast of a
tropical electric cloud.
The afternoon passed and the evening
came, and when Captain Regnier descended
from the deck to eat his supper he told his
nephew, who had hidden himself in his berth
during the afternoon, that the weather was
moderating, and that, though he expected
the night would be very dark, the wind
would enable him to make sail. It befel as
he had predicted. By seven o’clock the wind
was no more than what sailors would term a
moderate breeze, and the sea was fast going
down, though at this hour the brig was still
plunging heavily. It was pitch dark, however,
on deck. When the mate Hénin came
into the cabin to fetch a warm coat to keep
his watch in, or, in other words, to wear
whilst he took charge of the brig from eight
o’clock until some late hour of the night, he
addressed a number of sentences with great
vehemence and impetuosity to the young
Frenchman, who, on the mate withdrawing,
informed me that Hénin declared that in
twenty-eight years’ experience of the sea he
had never remembered such blackness as was
at this time upon the ocean.
‘Would you believe it, madame?’ cried
Alphonse. ‘Hénin swears that the very foam
which breaks close alongside the brick is not
to be seen. What do you think of that?—I
will go and look at the night for myself.’
He ascended the steps, but speedily returned.
‘It is raining,’ said he, ‘and it is
cold too, I can tell you. And does Hénin
call it black? Black is too weak a word.
I will tell you what it is like: it is like the
blackness of a stormy night, when you look
at it after your eyes have been fearfully
dazzled by a flash of lightning.’
All this while I remained extended upon
the mattress upon the locker, covered by
mate Hénin’s cloak, and with head pillowed
on the rude bolster that had been withdrawn
from my sleeping-shelf. Soon after the mate
had gone on deck, Captain Regnier came
down the stairs. He took his seat at the
table under the lamp, and Alphonse produced
a box of dominos. The captain, who on a
previous occasion had learnt that I did not
object to the smell of tobacco, filled a strange
pipe formed of a great Turk’s head and a
long curved stem, and smoked. He likewise
put his hand into an adjacent locker and
mixed himself a tumbler of white liquor
which, that it might not upset, he placed
upon a small tray that was oscillating above
the table. The two men then played with
singular gravity, the fat man smoking with
stolid deliberation, whilst the young man
watched the game with impassioned intentness.
The little brig groaned and pitched and
tossed; the skylight glass overhead lay in
panes of ebony, and duskily and gleamingly
reflected the figures of the two domino
players; through the open hatch that conducted
to the deck came the roaring and
hissing noise of conflicting waters and the
whistling of the wind in the rigging. It was
raining hard; the rain-drops lashed the glass
of the skylight. I gazed at the two men, but
I did not know that I watched them. All
the while I was asking myself, What can the
letters ‘A. C.’ stand for? And I tried to recollect
the names of women, but in vain.
Then I said to myself, Am I English, or is
it likely that the young Frenchman was right
when he said that I might be a German who
spoke English with a perfect accent, and who
now, by some caprice of the reason cruelly
afflicted by suffering, is compelled to speak in
the English tongue, forgetting her own?
Many extraordinary thoughts or fancies
of this kind visited me as I lay watching
those two domino players. Imagine yourself
without memory, not merely unable to recollect
in this or in that direction: no. But
imagine your mind without power to suggest
a single idea to you, to submit a single image
to you that had existence previous to an hour
comparatively recent!
At nine o’clock I withdrew to my berth.
By this hour the two men had finished with
their dominos. Alphonse replaced the mattress
and bolster in my sleeping-shelf, and
whilst he was thus occupied I said to him:
‘I feel a strange horror upon me to-night.
There is a sense of loneliness in me that seems
to be breaking my heart.’
‘Madame must cheer up. She will find
her memory at Toulon.’
‘My mind is hopelessly dark and silent.
I have been all this evening trying to think,
and the struggle has made me ill.’
‘I will fetch you some brandy and
water.’
‘No, thank you. What you gave me half
an hour ago is sufficient. It is not that—I
dread the darkness of the long night—the
fearful solitude—oh, the fearful solitude!
Will not Captain Regnier permit me to burn
a light.’
‘He is timid, and very properly timid,’
answered Alphonse. ‘Conceive a fire breaking
out. A fire at sea, and on such a night
as this!’ He shuddered, and then looked up
at the strange globular lamp that depended
from the centre of the ceiling of my cabin.
We conversed with the door open, and the
lamp that burned in the living room shed
a faint light upon the interior of my berth.
‘But it is lonely,’ the young Frenchman continued
in a voice of pity. ‘I dare say my
uncle will not mind—at all events he need
not know.’ He raised his hand to the lamp,
and with a twist removed the metal bowl or
compartment for the oil and mesh out of the
globe. ‘I will fill this, and bring it back to
you,’ said he.
He returned after a short absence, lighted
the wick, and turned it down that it might
burn dimly, then screwed it into the globe.
I felt deeply grateful, and took his hand and
held it whilst I thanked him. He left me,
and putting on mate Hénin’s cloak to keep
me warm, I got into my miserable little sleeping
shelf and lay down, grateful for, and
feeling even soothed by, being able to see.
CHAPTER VI A TERRIBLE NIGHT
I may have slept for an hour or two; but for
the light of the lamp, I believe, I should not
have closed my eyes in rest, so unendurable
would my spirits have found the heavy burthen
of the darkness of the night. I opened my
eyes. The lamp burned dimly. The vessel
was rolling somewhat briskly, and I seemed
to hear a louder noise of wind than I had
noticed before falling asleep. The creaking
throughout the cabin was ceaseless and distracting.
The rudder jarred heavily upon its
hinges, and every time a billow smote it I
felt a shock as though the brig had struck on
a rock.
On a sudden I heard a cry. It came faint
and weak to my ears through the deck and
through the door; but I heard it, and I caught
the note of horror in it, and never shall I forget
that cry! Whenever I recall it I think of
the wailing scream of some strange wild tropic
beast, wounded to the death and faltering to
the edge of a river, and there sending its
death cry into the quiet Indian night.
The sound was re-echoed over my head,
followed by a hasty rush of feet. A few
moments later there was a terrific blow. The
concussion was as though the brig had blown
up. I heard the rending and smashing and
splintering noises of falling masts and of bulwarks
crushed. The brig heeled over and
over, and yet over; one might have supposed
that some mighty hand had grasped her side
and was slowly swaying and pressing her upside
down. Fortunately for me the wild and
inexpressible slope of the vessel to one side
laid me against the wall to which my sleeping-shelf
was fixed, and so I could not fall out.
Had it been the other way about I must certainly
have been flung from my bed, when, in
all probability, I should have broken a limb
if not my neck.
Whilst the brig was in the act of heeling
over, something heavy immediately outside
my berth gave way, struck the door, which,
opening outwards, was not burst, though the
blow it received might well have demolished
the whole of the wooden wall in which the
door was hung. I tried to get out of the
sleeping-shelf, but the slope continued so
sharp that I could not stir. There were many
noises, but my cabin was situated in the stern
of the brig, and the confused sounds reached
my ears dully. When the vessel leaned over
immediately after she had been struck, the
cargo in the hold gave way, raising an
instant’s thunder of rattling and clattering,
and shaking the whole structure to its heart.
I strained my ears for human voices, but
caught but a dim far-away shout or two. I
could not get out of my sleeping-shelf, and,
believing that the brig was sinking, I screamed
to the young Frenchman, who I supposed was
in the next cabin, but got no answer. I
screamed again and yet again, but no reply
was returned.
What had happened? Ignorant as I was
of the sea, how could I imagine what had
happened? Was Captain Regnier wholly
wrong in his calculations, and had he run
his brig ashore? The sea was leaping
angrily over the sloping side in which the
little porthole of my cabin was fixed. It broke
over the window as though the hull of the
brig had been an immovable rock, and every
billow roared and hissed as it fell back after
its furious leap shattered and boiling. Presently
the vessel regained a somewhat upright
posture, but her movements were terribly
staggering. She rose and fell, and rolled
from side to side convulsively. She appeared
to be labouring in the heart of an angry sea
that was ridging towards her from all points
of the compass.
I was almost out of my mind with terror,
and the moment the decreased slope of the
brig enabled me to stir, I sprang from my
shelf, and hastily putting on the few articles
of raiment which I had removed, and clothing
myself in mate Hénin’s cloak, I made for the
door, too terrified to appreciate the blessing
of having a light to see by or to guess what
my sensations would have been had the berth
been in darkness. I grasped the handle of
the door, but the door would not open. I
pushed it with all my might, but it would not
stir an inch. I looked to see if, when I turned
the handle, the latch shot back. Yes! the
latch shot back, and if it depended upon the
handle, the door was to be easily opened.
Something pressed against it outside, something
that would not yield by the fraction of
an inch though I pushed with the strength of
frenzy.
I continued to push and to scream until
I was seized with faintness; my arms sank to
my side and my knees gave way. Oh! am I
to be left to drown, locked up in this berth?
I cried to myself, and I reeled to the arm-chair
and sat down in it incapable of standing.
The noise caused by the lashing of the
sea just outside and the sounds of cargo rolling
about in the hold overwhelmed all that I
might else have heard sounding from above.
Whilst I sat panting and half-swooning a man
cried out at my door.
‘Oh, help me! help me!’ I shrieked, and
new strength coming to me with the sound of
his voice, I staggered to my feet.
‘Oh my God!’ cried the voice of Alphonse
in French, ‘I cannot move this cask. Help!
help!’
Then I could hear the voice of Captain
Regnier roaring in the distance as though he
had put his head into the hatchway and was
crying to his nephew through it.
‘Oh, Alphonse, release me, save me, I
cannot open the door!’ I shrieked.
He answered in a voice of agony, but
what he said I could not catch, and this was
followed by a sound of furious wrestling outside.
Another wild and frantic cry from
Captain Regnier rang through the cabin, and
now the words uttered at the top of his
powerful voice reached me. They were, ‘If
you do not come instantly we must leave you
behind to perish.’ Again I caught a noise of
desperate wrestling. It ceased.
‘Oh, Alphonse, do not leave me!’ I
screamed. ‘Do not leave me to be drowned
in this dreadful berth!’ and I strained my
ears but I heard nothing to tell me that the
young Frenchman was outside; nevertheless
I stood listening, supporting my tottering and
swaying figure by holding to the handle of
the door, for though I had heard his uncle
call to him to hasten on deck or he would be
left to perish, I could not believe that he
would leave me to drown—that Alphonse
would abandon me to a dreadful fate though
all the others should quit the brig. I thought
to myself, he has rushed on deck to remonstrate
with Captain Regnier; he is now imploring
his uncle and the others to descend
and help him to remove the cask and liberate
me, for I had heard him exclaim that the
door was blocked by a cask, and I recollected
that one immense cask or barrel had stood
under the ladder which conducted to the
deck; and remembering this I supposed that
when the brig had violently leaned over, the
cask had torn itself from its fastenings and
been hurled by the slant of the deck against
the door of my berth, where it lay jammed,
immovably holding the door.
I stood listening, I say, but the minutes
passed and I heard nothing—nothing, I mean,
that resembled a human voice or the movements
of men; otherwise there was no lack
of sounds—horrible, dismal, affrighting noises,
a ceaseless thumping as of wreckage pounding
against the sides of the brig, a muffled, most
melancholy whistling and wailing of wind, a
constant rattle and roar of cargo in the hold,
a frequent shock of sea smiting the window
of my cabin and filling the air with a sharp
hissing and boiling, as of the foot of a great
cataract.
But when, after waiting and listening, I
began to understand that Alphonse had fled
with the rest, that there was nobody in the
brig to come to my assistance, that I was imprisoned
in a cell from which I could not
break out and which might be slowly settling
under water even as I stood, then was I maddened
by an agony of fear and horror. I
uttered shriek after shriek; I dashed at the
door with my shoulder; I wept, and cowering
to the chair sank upon it; then I shrieked
again, and falling on my knees upon the chair
I buried my face and lay motionless.
I lay motionless, and after many minutes
had passed I lifted up my head and gazed
round the cabin, and a feeling of calmness
suddenly settled upon my spirits. Whence
came that feeling of calmness? Not surely
from any faint hope that my life would yet
be preserved, because I had not the least
doubt that the vessel was sinking and that
the final plunge must happen at the next
moment or the next. The feeling of calmness
came from the Spirit of God. From what
other source could it proceed? But it never
occurred to me that the Spirit of God was
present in that little berth; it never occurred
to me to pray to Him for succour, or, seeing
that I was convinced I was a dying woman,
to pray to Him to make my last struggles
easy and to forgive me for my past, whatever
it might hold—for hidden as that past was, it
was human, and must therefore need forgiveness.
It could not occur to me to pray,
because I was without memory and my mind
was unable to suggest the thought of God.
But as though I had prayed and as though
my prayer had been answered my mind grew
tranquil.
I arose and seated myself afresh in the
chair, and clasping my hands and leaning
back my head I fixed my eyes on the lamp
for the comfort of the companionship of the
little flame in it. My intelligence was horribly
active, but the singular tranquillity within me
was not to be disturbed by the most dreadful
of the imaginations which arose. I remember
that I calmly figured the moment when the
brig would sink, and I imagined a noise of
thunder as the water roared in through the
hatchways; and then I had a fancy of the
water taking a long while to drain into the
stoutly-enclosed berth, and of my sitting and
watching the flood slowly rising, washing in
foam from side to side to the rolling of the
brig, but steadily rising nevertheless. All
this I figured, and many more frightful pictures
passed before my inner vision. Yet I
continued calm and sat waiting for my end,
supported by a strength that had come to me
without a prayer.
The hours passed and the brig still
lived, and still did I remain seated awaiting
the moment that I believed inevitable. No
stupor was upon me: I took heed of what
was passing. I remarked that the brig rolled
more gently, that the seas lashed my cabin
windows less spitefully, that the dreary pounding
as of wreckage smiting the side penetrated
the fabric with a more softened note.
At last, turning my eyes in the direction
of the window, I observed that the gleaming
ebony of it had changed into a faint green,
and it glimmered now as it had glimmered on
that morning when I first opened my eyes on
board the brig. I knew that the storm had
broken; but if the vessel had been deserted
by her crew, what would daylight signify to
me, who was locked up in a little berth, the
sole living creature on board a wreck—as I
knew the brig to be—which passing vessels
would glance at without visiting, and which
could not much longer remain afloat?
I watched the disk of glass change from
dim green into clear yellow, and whilst I continued
to gaze, I heard a sound resembling
the voice of a man outside. Before I could
make sure that it had been a human voice,
I heard it again. It was the voice of a man
calling to another. My strength returned to
me as though I had been electrified, and
springing to my feet I rushed to the door and
beat upon it. I smote the door with all my
strength with both hands clenched, and
shrieked ‘Help! help! Save me! Release
me!’ in notes preternaturally shrill with the
maddening excitement of the tremendous
hope and the desperate fears which possessed
me. In a moment the door was thumped
outside, and a man called out:
‘All right! we’ll see to you—we’ll release
you;’ and then I heard him shout in a roar
that was even louder than the bull-like tones
of Captain Regnier, ‘Wilkins, there’s a woman
locked up here. For God’s sake bear a hand
and jump on deck, and bring a couple of
hands out of the boat to clear away this cask.
Here’s a cask that’s gone adrift and has got
slewed, and it is jammed betwixt the door
and the ladder.’ The man then thumped
again upon the door, and cried to me, ‘Are
you alone?’
‘Yes, I’m alone,’ I answered.
‘Keep up your heart; we’ll soon have you
out of it,’ he cried. ‘How long have you
been locked up here? I cannot hear you.
What! all night? Oh, my God! and a
woman too, and alone!’
A distant voice sounded in a sort of
halloa.
‘This way,’ cried the man outside my
door. ‘Bear a hand, my lads; here’s a poor
woman been locked up in this drowning brig
all night.’
This was followed by some hearty English
heave-ho’s! and then a voice cried out, ‘Jump
for a handspike, Bill!’ and several strange
exclamations ensued, such as ‘Heave, and
raise the dead!’ ‘All together, now!’
‘Another heave and the waggon’s started!’
I heard a crash—the rolling of some
heavy body—a strong English oath—and the
door flew open.
Four men stood in the doorway in a
group staring into the berth. One of them
standing a little forward was a fine, tall,
sailorly-looking young man of a ruddy complexion.
He wore small whiskers, and was
dressed plainly in a suit of pilot cloth with
brass buttons, and around his naval cap were
two thin bands of brass. The other three
were ‘common sailors,’ as they are called,
rough and sturdy fellows, any one of whom
would have been a match for the whole of
the four or five poor, half-starved French
seamen who had formed the working part
of the crew of the brig.
The young man with the brass upon his
cap stared at me for some moments, as though
dumbfounded with astonishment and pity.
‘Well, well!’ he cried, ‘to think that if
I’d been content to merely sing out to know
whether anyone was aboard, I should have
overlooked you!’
‘Regular French job it seems, to leave a
poor lady locked up alone down here arter
this fashion,’ exclaimed one of the sailors in
a deep growling voice. ‘Couldn’t they have
found time to have shoved that there cask
out of the road of the door?’
The excitement of desperate emotions that
had rendered my voice shrill beyond recognition
of my own hearing had passed. The
strange tranquillity which had visited my
spirits during the night and possessed them
throughout the awful hours had returned
to me. Without agitation I extended my
hand to the young officer, as I took him to
be, and said to him in a quiet voice:
‘Take me away. I have been locked up
here all night.’
He took my hand and brought me into the
living-room of the little brig.
‘There is no hurry,’ said he; ‘this craft is
going to make a good staunch derelict. I am
here to find out if there is life to be saved.
One of you men open the door of that berth
there and overhaul it.’
My knees trembled and I sat down. The
young mate ran his eye over the cabin, and,
as though directed by peculiar oceanic instinct,
walked to the locker in which Captain
Regnier had been wont to keep a little stock
of spirits and wine for present use, lifted the
lid of the locker, and took out a bottle which
he uncorked and applied to his nose.
‘This will do,’ said he. ‘Simmonds, I
noticed the scuttle-butt abreast of the main
hatchway. Bring the dipper full of water
here.’
This was done. The young officer mixed
a glass of white spirits—gin or Hollands—and
I drank. Then searching the locker
afresh he found a biscuit which he handed to
me. ‘This will serve you,’ he exclaimed,
‘until we get you aboard, and then we will
give you something warm and nourishing.’
I ate a little of the biscuit, but it was
dry as saw-dust and I swallowed with difficulty.
The three sailors stood at the table gazing
at me, and their rough weather-darkened faces
were full of sympathy and wonder. There
was nothing to surprise me in their astonishment.
My right brow and the upper part of
my nose were still wrapped up with sticking
plaister. Over my head was drawn the hood
of mate Hénin’s cloak, and the skirts of this
ample garment enveloped me. My snow-white
hair was disordered, and tresses of it
fell past my ears on to my shoulders. And
then I might also suppose that the agony of
the night had wrought in my countenance
and made of my face even a stranger mask
than that which had looked out upon me
from the handglass which the young Frenchman
had held before it.
‘Can you tell me,’ asked the young officer,
‘how many people were in this brig last
night?’
I reflected and gave him the number.
‘There is no doubt,’ said he, earnestly
looking about him and making a step to peer
into the berth which had been occupied by
Alphonse, and which one of the sailors had
already examined, ‘that all hands of the men
took the boat and made off after the collision,
leaving you, the only woman aboard, to sink
or swim.’
‘One of the Frenchmen tried to save me,’
I answered; ‘he had a good heart and would
not have abandoned me, but he could not remove
the cask, and his uncle, the captain,
called to him to make haste and come on deck
or they would leave him behind.’
‘There are some berths yonder, aren’t
there?’ said he, pointing to the forward wall
where the sliding door with the ring was.
A seaman took the ring and slided the
door open, and the three sailors passed
through.
‘Pray,’ said the young officer, examining
me with curiosity, ‘might you have been the
captain’s wife?’
‘No.’
He looked at my left hand. ‘It was not
to be expected,’ he continued. ‘I don’t love
the French, but I believe they don’t make
bad husbands. Were you a passenger in this
vessel?’
I fixed my eyes upon the deck.
‘Where was the brig bound to, can you
tell me?’
‘To Toulon.’
‘From where?’
‘From Boulogne-sur-Mer.’
He ran his eyes over me again but was
interrupted in what he was about to say by
the emergence of the three sailors.
‘There’s nothin’ living to be seen,’ said
one of them.
‘What is to be seen?’ said the young
mate.
‘Vy, sir, in both cabins nautical instruments,
charts, vearing apparel, Vellington
boots, bedding, and de likes of such things as
them.’
‘We have rummaged the brig,’ said the
young officer; ‘there’s nothing left alive in
her but this poor woman. Get the boat
alongside, men. Are you strong enough,’
said he, turning to me, ‘to ascend those steps
without aid?’
‘I fear not,’ I answered.
On this he put his arm around me and
fairly carried me up the steps on to the
deck.
When I was on deck I looked round.
Many large clouds floated under the sky,
and their shadows darkened the face of
the ocean; but in the east was a corner
of misty sun with an atmosphere of rose
betwixt it and the sea-line, and a delicate
pink glittered on the brows of the
swell as the dusky green folds rolled to the
risen luminary. The brig was a complete
wreck. I could not believe that I was on
board the same vessel that had rescued me.
There was a great rift in her deck high above
the water, though she sometimes rolled the
black chasm dangerously close to the sea.
Many feet of her bulwarks on the left-hand
side were smashed into splinters. Her top-masts
were broken, and they were washing at
her side, held by lengths of rope which resembled
eels of inordinate length crawling
overboard. The white boat that used to stand
in the fore part of the deck was gone, and the
sort of sentry-box in which the food had
been cooked was beaten into pieces. The
hull was indeed the most perfect figure
of a wreck that the imagination could conceive.
‘A pretty collision, certainly!’ said the
young mate; ‘but these dirty old coasting
foreigners never will show a light.’
At the distance of about a quarter of a
mile was a large ship. She was a far more
beautiful vessel than the ship which had
passed the brig, admirably graceful, swelling
and swanlike as I had thought her. She was
a long black ship, her sides as glossy as the
hide of a well curried Arabian steed. So
mirror-like was her length that the light that
was upon the water trembled in cloudy flames
in her sides. There was a radiant device of
gold under the white bowsprit, and a line of
gilt ran under the bulwarks from the radiant
device to her stern, that likewise flamed with
decorations in gilt. Her masts were white, and
she had several white boats hanging at the
extremities of curved iron bars at her sides.
Some of the sails were pointed one way and
some another, that one set might neutralise
the impulse of the rest, and the noble and
swelling and queenly ship lay without progress,
softly leaning and gently bowing upon
the swell whilst her spaces of canvas of a
cream white softness showed like a large
summer cloud against the shadowed sky of
the horizon. She was close enough to enable
me to distinguish a few figures moving
about her, both in her fore and in her after
parts.
‘Oh! what is that ship?’ I cried eagerly,
the instant I saw her.
‘She is the Deal Castle,’ answered the
young officer. ‘She is the vessel that was in
collision with this brig last night. After the
collision we hove to, for there was nothing to
be seen, and therefore nothing to be done.
It was blowing fresh. We burnt a flare
and sent up rockets, but nothing came
of them. If the Frenchmen after launching
their boat were not drowned they must
have been blown away to a distance that
lost them the sight of our rockets. Probably
they were picked up in the small hours.
There was nothing to be seen of their boat
at daybreak this morning from yonder mastheads.’
He stepped to the side of the brig where
the bulwarks were crushed, looked over, and
then turning to me called out: ‘Come along,
if you please.’
I approached him, and looking down
saw a large handsome white boat with five
sailors in her, rising and falling at the side of
the wreck.
‘Stand by to catch hold of the lady,’
exclaimed the young officer, and he lifted
me over the edge of the wreck into the
powerful grasp of a couple of sailors who
received and seated me. In a few moments
he had placed himself at the helm, and
the seamen were rowing the boat to the
ship.
I turned my eyes to view the receding
brig. How miserable, how forlorn she looked!
The great gap in her side resembled a frightful
wound, and the pouring look of the black
rigging streaming overboard made the ropes
look like her life-blood draining from her
heart into the ocean. I thought of the little
berth in the hinder part of her, of the lantern
that might still be dimly burning, of the disk
of glass changing with soul-killing slowness
from ebony into dim green, and from dim
green into the yellow of daylight, and a sick
shudder ran through my frame and I averted
my head, and for a little while held my eyes
closed.
‘I should think,’ said the young mate,
clearly guessing what was passing in my mind,
‘that your escape will be the narrowest on
record.’
‘I shall remember that I owe my life to
you,’ I answered, keeping my gaze downwards
bent; for now the morning light had grown
strong, and I could not bear that my face
should be seen. I hung my head and raised
my hand to the hood of the cloak, but the
hood was as far forward as it would sit. However,
the distance to be measured was short;
the boat was swept along by the vigorous
strokes of the seamen, and the young officer
was too busy in manœuvring to run alongside
the leaning and heaving ship to address or
to heed me.
I perceived a group of some eight or
ten people standing at the open rail which
protected the edge of the raised deck in the
sternmost portion of the ship. Their gaze
was intently fixed upon us as we approached.
Some of them were ladies. Along the line of
the ship’s bulwarks were many heads watching
us. A tall man in a frock coat with brass
buttons, detaching himself from the group in
the after part, called to the young officer, who
replied; but their speech was in the language
of the sea, and I did not understand it.
But even as we approached, a ladder was
dropped over the ship’s side; the young
officer mounted, and then extended his hands
to assist me up the steps, and very quickly I
was transferred from the boat on to the deck
of the ship.
I was left for some minutes alone; for,
after the young mate had helped me to climb
on board, he descended a ladder that conducted
to the raised deck, on which were
several ladies and gentlemen, and, touching
his cap to the tall man in the uniform frock coat,
he entered into conversation, both of
them looking towards me as they talked.
A large number of persons of both sexes—sixty
or seventy in all, I dare say—thronged
that part of the deck where I had entered
the ship, and whilst I stood alone they
gathered close about me, staring and whispering.
They were of the emigrant class, the
bulk of them rudely and poorly attired. A
tawny-coloured woman, with braided black
hair and eyes of an Egyptian duskiness, after
staring at me awhile, exclaimed, ‘Delicate
Jesus, what a face! Shall I tell the sweet
lady’s fortune? And, gorgeous angels! look
how her head is bound up.’
‘Hold yer tongue!’ cried a huge red-headed
Irish woman, who had been surveying
me with her arms akimbo. ‘Pace ye hay-then!’
she exclaimed, letting fall her arms
and talking with her hands clasped in a posture
of supplication, ‘can’t ye tell who she
is? She’s a sister of mercy, and I know the
order she belongs to. Sister, d’ye spake
English? If you spake nothing but French,
then give me your blessin’ in French. Pull out
the blessed crucifix from the pocket in which
you have hidden it that ye mightn’t lose it
in the dreadful shipwreck, and bless me. I
haven’t heard a prayer since I’ve been on
board. Oh! sake the place for a howly
minute only of his sainted riverence, Father
Murphy, me confessor that I shall never see
again—oh, that I shall never see again!—and
bless me.’
She spoke loudly, but in the most wailing
voice that can be imagined, and when she
ceased there was a sort of thrusting and
shoving of a number of men and women to
get near me, as though, poor souls! they desired
to participate with the tall, red-haired
virago in the prayer she had asked me to
pronounce.
But whilst I stood surveying the rough
and eager faces with alarm, the young mate
came from the upper deck and said, ‘Will
you please step this way?’
I followed him into the saloon—a long,
narrow, brilliant interior with several tables
ranged down the centre of it. A number of
stewards were engaged in preparing the
tables for breakfast. There were two or
three skylights, like domes, overhead, and
there were many mirrors and plated lamps,
and globes in which gold and silver fish were
swimming, and rows of pots containing ferns.
It was like passing from a cottage into a
castle to exchange the living room of the
little French brig for the comfort and splendour
of the saloon of this noble ship.
CHAPTER VII CAPTAIN FREDERICK LADMORE
A respectable-looking, pale-faced woman,
attired in black, stood at the head of a staircase
that descended through a large hatch in
the forward part of this saloon. The young
officer went up to her and said, ‘Mrs.
Richards, we have just brought this poor lady
off from the brig that was run down last
night. The captain requests that you will
take her below and make her comfortable.
She has been locked up—think of it, Mrs.
Richards—she has been locked up all night,
without food or drink, in the berth of a craft
that I dare say she supposed at any moment
might sink under her feet. When you have
thoroughly refreshed yourself,’ he exclaimed,
addressing me, ‘the captain will be happy to
see you.’
‘I think you had better come to my
berth,’ said the person whom the young mate
had called Mrs. Richards.
‘May I ask who you are?’ said I.
‘I am the stewardess,’ she answered.
She then conducted me down the stairs
into what I afterwards learnt was called the
steerage. It was a part of the ship that corresponded
with the saloon, only it was not so
broad, and there were but two tables in the
central passage or corridor. As in the saloon
so here, there were berths or sleeping compartments
ranged on either hand, but these
quarters compared with the saloon were
gloomy, and I do not remember how daylight
was obtained to illuminate the place; yet
one could see fairly well even when fresh
from the glare of the deck.
The stewardess, opening a cabin door at
the after end of the wide passage, bade me
step in, and I found myself in a plain but
comfortable little cabin, lighted by a large
porthole, and furnished with two mahogany
sleeping shelves one above the other. Upon
a table were one or two account-books and a
number of papers on files.
‘Please to sit down, ma’m,’ said the
stewardess, speaking kindly. ‘You look very
weak and ill. Only fancy being locked up
all night in that sinking boat! You are
English?—— Yes, the third officer addressed
you in English, and yet you may be French.
Let me help you to take off that heavy cloak.
It is a man’s cloak and a handsome one, I
declare. I suppose you snatched at the first
thing you could see to wrap yourself up in
when our ship struck yours?’
She paused in her speech to hang up the
cloak, and then surveyed me for a few
moments in silence. I particularly observed
that she ran her eye with an expression of
surprise over my figure, as though she could
not reconcile my white hair and withered
face with my youthful shape. You will not
require me to tell you that I was dressed in
the plain, tight-fitting serge costume that I
had worn when I made my last excursion
with the boatman Hitchens. It had not
suffered much from exposure, nor from the
rude wear to which it had been subjected. It
looked fairly fresh, and at any time I should
have thought it still a wearable, serviceable
dress.
‘You appear to have hurt your head very
badly,’ said the stewardess. ‘But the injury
does not seem fresh—the plaister is surely
older than last night?’
‘Oh yes,’ I answered.
‘But questioning you is not carrying
out the captain’s orders, is it?’ said she
cheerfully. ‘Now what shall I get you?
What could you fancy? Would you like a
plate of chicken and ham and a fresh crisp
roll hot from the oven and a cup of hot
coffee?’
I thanked her. She then pointed to a
little fixed washstand in the corner, and told
me to make use of her hair-brushes and
whatever else I might require, and she then
left me.
A square looking-glass hung over the
washstand. I approached and looked into it
and then shrunk from it. Oh! I could not
wonder that the people in this ship had
stared when I came on board. My white
hair that had been thinned by every application
of the brush fell raggedly down my
back and upon my shoulders. My sallow
complexion was rendered peculiarly sickly
by the pallor that had been put into it by
my sufferings during the night. The plaister
was no longer white, but soiled, and when
for the second time I looked at my face, I
again shrank back and the old blind cry of
my heart, Who am I? rose dumbly to my
lips.
I sank trembling into a chair, and the
words ‘Oh God!’ broke from me. But the
word ‘God’ was no more than the echo of
a sound, whose meaning was eclipsed. Again
and again, and yet again, in my agony I had
uttered that holy Name, but with no more
sense of the meaning than the babe has
when its tiny lips frame the syllables
‘ma-ma.’
After waiting a little I poured out some
water and washed my hands and face, and
I then brushed my hair, but I observed that
not so many hairs came away in the bristles
as heretofore. I seated myself again and
looked around me, and with kindling interest
at the little furniture in the stewardess’s
berth. Near me hung a framed photograph
of two children, a boy and a girl, and close
by it hung another photograph of a respectably-dressed
young woman in a bonnet, with
an infant of a few months old on her knee.
At these things I stared, and there followed
an inward struggle that made me frown as
I looked, and bite my lip and pluck at my
dress with my fingers.
There were other photographs of grown-up
people. I glanced at them, and at a little
row of books, and at a work-basket, and at
similar trivial details. But my eyes went
quickly back to the portraits of the two
children and the little baby, and I was still
gazing at them when the stewardess entered,
bearing my breakfast.
‘Who are those children?’ I asked her.
‘My little nephew and niece,’ she
answered, smiling and lighting up as she
spoke, ‘and that is my only sister with her
first-born on her lap. Oh, such a little
cherub as it is! The sweetest baby! One,
only one did I have. He was sweeter, yes,
even sweeter than that child,’ she added, her
gaze lingering upon the photograph whilst
her voice fell and her face grew grave. ‘I
lost him three months after my husband died——after
he died and left me to —— to ——.
But here is your breakfast now. Make a
good meal. I am sure you need it.’
How much I needed it I did not know
until I began to eat. I ate in silence, and
the stewardess did not interrupt me by
speech. She moved here and there, but all
the while I was sensible that she eyed
me furtively. When I had finished she
said:
‘Do you feel equal to seeing the captain?
Or would you rather lie down and take some
rest? You look as if you needed a long
sleep.’
‘Is the captain waiting to see me?’ I
asked.
She drew out her watch. ‘He wishes to
see you after breakfast, and the passengers
will assemble at breakfast in a few minutes.
Unless you feel very exhausted it might be
as well that you should see him before you
lie down. He will want to know where you
come from, so as to be able to send you to
your friends at the first opportunity. And
then again you will wish to see the doctor?
You must have been badly hurt to need so
many straps about your head.’
‘I do not feel exhausted,’ I answered.
‘This meal has greatly strengthened and
refreshed me. I will sit here, if you please,
until the captain is ready to see me.’
‘I shall not be able to sit with you,’ said
the stewardess. ‘My hands are very full.
We are not long from port, and some of my
ladies have not yet overcome their sea-sickness.
And then I have a sweet, poor young lady to
see after. She is very ill of consumption. I
fear she will not live. Her mother is taking
her on a voyage round the world, but, like
most people who are ill of consumption, the
young lady has started too late. At least, I
fear so. I have seen too many instances in
my time not to fear so.’
‘Will you tell me,’ said I, ‘where this
ship is going to?’
‘To Sydney,’ said she, pausing with her
hand upon the door. She continued to watch
me for a few moments, and then with a smile
said, ‘You know where Sydney is?’ I held
my eyes bent downwards. ‘It is in Australia,’
said she; ‘in New South Wales. It is a
beautiful city, and most people think that its
harbour is the loveliest in the world.’
She opened the door, gave me a friendly
nod, and passed out.
I remained seated, lost in such recent and
slender thought as my mind could find to deal
with. The ship was moving through the
water. I could tell that by the tremble and
hurry of light on the thick glass of the
closed port. The movement was regular,
buoyant, and wonderfully easy after the convulsive
motions of the little brig. There
was a clatter of crockery and subdued noise
of talk outside in the somewhat darksome
corridor, as I may call it, where some people—those
no doubt who lodged in this part
of the ship—were at breakfast. A baby
was faintly crying in an adjacent cabin, but
the compartments were stoutly divided, and
every note reached the ear dimly. I sat
thinking, and I thought of the terrible night
I had passed, and of my abandonment by the
young Frenchman and his companions, and
also of the kind treatment I had met with on
board the little French brig, and I thought of
the days I had spent in her, and how the
young Frenchman had said they had found
me lying insensible, wounded, and bleeding in
a boat with two masts; and, one thought
leading to another, I suddenly arose and
stepped to the looking-glass and gazed into it,
and whilst I was staring at myself the door
opened and the stewardess entered.
‘I have just left the captain,’ said she,
‘and he will be glad to see you in his cabin
if you are equal to the visit.’
‘There are people about,’ I answered; ‘my
face is—this plaister——’ I put my hand to
my brow, at a loss to express myself. I was
ashamed to be seen, yet I was not able to
say so.
‘You look nicely—oh, you look nicely!’
exclaimed the stewardess cordially. ‘Consider
what you have gone through. How
many would look so well after being wounded
as you have, and then locked up in a cabin all
night in a sinking ship? But you will not be
seen. There is a staircase at the end of this
steerage, and it opens close against the cabin
door. Come, dear lady!’
She was about to lead the way out when
she stopped and said, ‘What name shall I
give when I show you in?’
‘I do not know,’ I answered.
She stared and looked frightened.
‘I have lost my memory,’ I said, and as I
pronounced the words, I clasped my hands
and bowed my head and sobbed.
‘Ah, poor lady! God keep your heart!
You have passed through a great deal surely,’
said the kindly creature instantly, with a
woman’s sympathetic perception, witnessing
the truth of my assurance and understanding
my condition, and, tenderly taking my arm in
her hand, she conducted me out of the berth.
She led me to a narrow staircase at the
end of the corridor. I heard the voice of
people at breakfast at the tables behind me,
but I held my head bowed and saw nothing.
We mounted the staircase and emerged at the
aftermost end of the brilliant saloon, that was
filled with the hum and busy with the clinking
and clattering noises of passengers talking
and lingering at the breakfast table. The
stewardess knocked on the cabin door, and
without waiting for a reply opened it, and we
entered.
Two gentlemen arose from their chairs as
I stepped in, and the stewardess, going up to
one of them, said quickly but audibly, ‘She
has lost her memory, sir,’ and so saying went
out, giving me a smile as she passed.
The cabin into which I had been introduced
was large and cheerful. It was furnished
as a private sitting-room. On a table were
a number of mathematical instruments; the
deck was handsomely carpeted, and but for
the movement to be felt, and but for one or
two points of sea equipment, such as a silver
telescope in a bracket and a sleeping-place or
bunk that closed as though it were a horizontal
cupboard, it would have been hard to
imagine in this fresh, shining, comfortably
furnished room that you were upon the ocean.
One of the gentlemen was the tall man
who had been accosted by the young officer
on our arrival. He was a very fine figure of
a man indeed, above six feet tall and proportionately
broad. His age was probably fifty,
his complexion fresh, his eyes blue and kindly.
There was but little of the look of the sailor,
as we are taught by books to imagine him, in
this man. With his grey whiskers, black-satin
cravat, and dignified air, he might very
well have passed for a well-to-do City banker
or a country squire.
His companion on the other hand was a
short man with sandy hair streaked with grey,
and a dry, shrewd Scotch face. He was
dressed in a suit of tweed, and I recollect that
his boots resembled a pair of shovels, so
square-toed were they.
‘I am happy,’ said the tall gentleman, in a
slow, mild voice, after glancing at me with a
mingled expression of pity and anxiety, ‘to
have been the instrument of delivering you
from a terrible fate.’ He placed a chair for
me. ‘Pray be seated. My name is Ladmore—Captain
Frederick Ladmore, and I am
in command of this ship, the Deal Castle.
This gentleman is Mr. McEwan, the ship’s
surgeon.’
‘Who strapped your forehead up, may I
ask?’ said Mr. McEwan, in a strong accent
incommunicable by the pen, and he came
close to me and stared at the plaister.
‘A young Frenchman who belonged to
the vessel from which you rescued me,’ I
answered.
‘And a young ’un he must have been,’
said Mr. McEwan, with a smile which disclosed
gums containing scarcely more than
four front teeth. ‘How did he lay those
strips on, ma’m? With a trowel?’
‘You seem to have been badly hurt,’ said
Captain Ladmore compassionately.
‘No, no, captain,’ interrupted Mr.
McEwan, ‘never make too much of a
woman’s troubles or complaints. There’s
nothing to fret over unless the bridge of
the nose be a trifle indented.’
‘How did it happen?’ inquired the captain.
‘I was found in an open boat, lying insensible,
with the mast of the boat across my
face.’
‘Oh! you were found in an open boat.
By whom?’ inquired the captain.
‘By the people belonging to the French
brig.’
‘Now I understand,’ said the captain. ‘I
thought you might have been—in fact, it
puzzled me to know what you were doing on
board that little craft. How long were you
in the open boat?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What sort of boat was she?’
‘I cannot remember.’
‘But you surely remember how it happened
that you were in that boat, and also
how it happened that you were alone in her
when rescued?’
‘No, I do not remember,’ I answered,
biting my lip, whilst I was sensible that my
inward struggle and agitation was causing me
to frown.
The two gentlemen exchanged looks. ‘I
need not inquire whether you are English,’
said the captain; ‘your accent assures me
on that head. And forgive me for saying
that no one could hear you speak without
being satisfied as to your station in life. Let
me see if I can help your memory: you are
a lady who in all probability engaged a pleasure
boat to take a cruise in, and you were
venturesome enough to go alone. The boat
proved too much for you and she ran away
with you. Or, dirty weather came on and
blew you out of sight of land.’
I listened to him with my eyes fastened
upon the deck, greedily devouring his speech;
but all remained dark. I hearkened and I
understood him, and I believed that it might
be as he had said, but I could not say that it
was so. No! no more indeed than had he been
telling me the experience of another of whom
I had never heard.
‘In what part was your boat fallen in
with?’ he asked after a pause.
‘I cannot tell.’
‘How long were you on board the
brig?’
This question I could answer. He rose
and took a chart from a corner of the cabin,
and then sat again with his finger upon the
open chart.
‘Concede an average of sixty miles a day
to that brig,’ said he, addressing Mr. McEwan.
‘Her weather will have been ours, and we
may take it that her average will not have
exceeded sixty miles a day in the time during
which the lady was aboard her.’ His lips
moved as he calculated to himself, and then,
passing his finger over the chart, he said:
‘The situation of the open boat when the
French brig fell in with her would be about——’
and he indicated the place by stating
the latitude and longitude of it.
‘That’ll be clear of the Chops, captain,’
said Mr. McEwan, ‘and at that, though the
lady may hail from England, she never can
have sailed from that country.’
‘It certainly would be a prodigious drift
for a small boat,’ said the captain, looking at
the chart and speaking in a musing way. ‘It
should signify a week’s drift, unless the boat
kept her stern to it with all sail set. Perhaps
I do not allow enough for the brig’s average
run.’
‘The lady may have been blown from a
French port,’ said Mr. McEwan.
‘What French port?’ inquired the captain,
moving the chart that the surgeon might
see it.
‘I have an idea!’ said Mr. McEwan;
‘why must the lady have been blown from a
port at all? And why should the boat in
which she was discovered necessarily have
been a pleasure-boat? Who’s to say that she
is not the sole survivor of some disastrous
shipwreck? In that case she may have been
coming home from the other side of the
world. There’s more happened to her, Captain
Ladmore,’ said he, speaking with his eyes
fixed upon me, ‘than is to be occasioned by
misadventure during a pleasure cruise.’
‘Cannot you describe the boat?’ said the
captain to me.
‘The Frenchman told me that she was
an open boat and that she had two masts,’ I
answered.
‘Did they notice no more of her than
that?’
‘No. She was entangled with the rigging
and drove along with the brig for a short
distance. She broke away after I had been
taken out of her, and the Frenchman let her
go. It was a little before daybreak, and there
was scarcely any light to see by.’
‘You remember all that!’ exclaimed Mr.
McEwan.
‘I remember everything that the Frenchman
told me,’ I answered; ‘and I can remember
everything that has happened from the
hour of my returning to consciousness on
board the brig.’
‘Would not a ship’s quarter-boat have
two masts, captain?’ said Mr. McEwan. ‘Ye
must know it is my theory that ’tis a case of
shipwreck, and that this lady may be the only
survivor. Who can tell?’
‘I have known a ship’s long-boat with two
masts,’ answered Captain Ladmore, ‘but I
never heard of a quarter-boat so rigged.’
‘Then the boat that the Frenchman fell
in with may have been a long-boat,’ said the
surgeon.
‘I wish to find out all about you,’ said the
captain gravely and quietly, glancing at my
bare hands and then running his eyes over my
dress, ‘that I may be able to send you home.
A home you must have—but where? Cannot
you tell me that it is in England?’
I looked at him, and my swimming eyes
sank. I could not speak.
‘This is sad indeed,’ said he. ‘Did you
ever hear of so complete a failure of memory,
McEwan?’
‘Oh yes,’ answered the surgeon. ‘I’ll
show you fifty examples of utter failure in a
book on the brain which I have in my cabin,
and I can give you half a dozen instances at
least out of my own experience. At the same
time,’ he continued, speaking as though I
were not present, ‘this case is peculiar and
impressive. But I should regard it as hopeful
on the whole because, ye see, there’s the
capacity of recollecting everything on this
side of whatever it may be that occasioned
the loss.’
‘Did the Frenchman find nothing in the
boat?’ asked the captain gently.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘except a straw hat
that was crushed by the fall of the mast, and
stained by my wounds.’
‘It was your hat?’
‘They thought so,’ I answered.
‘Nothing more?’ said he, ‘merely a straw
hat? But then to be sure it was in the dark
of the morning, and they were able to see
nothing more.’
He rose from his chair and took several
turns about the cabin; meanwhile Mr.
McEwan steadfastly regarded me. His air
was one of professional curiosity. At last
his scrutiny grew painful, but he did not
relax it, though my uneasiness must have
been clear to him.
‘Can you give me any idea,’ said the
captain, ‘of what became of the French
crew?’
‘I cannot,’ I replied.
‘It was barbarous of them to leave you
on board a vessel which they believed was
sinking, or they would not have quitted her.’
‘I was kindly treated by them,’ I
answered. One of them, a young Frenchman,
endeavoured to release me that I might
gain the deck. But he could not move the
cask that was jammed between my door and
the steps. His uncle, the captain, threatened
to leave him behind. The young man would
have saved me could he have procured help.’
‘That’s how it always is in a panic at sea,’
said the captain, addressing Mr. McEwan.
‘I can tell you exactly how it happened with
those foreigners. When the brig was struck
the seamen supposed that she would instantly
founder. They launched the boat, probably
their only boat.’
‘They had but one boat,’ I said.
‘Just so,’ exclaimed the captain; ‘they
launched their only boat, and then as they
lay alongside they shouted to their skipper
that if he delayed they would leave him. No
man has a chance with a cowardly crew at
such a time. I dare say, had it depended
upon the French captain and his nephew,
you would have been brought on deck and
taken into the boat. But well for you, poor
lady, that they did not stay to release you!
They blew away in the blackness, and in such
a sea as was running it is fifty to one if the
boat was not capsized.’
‘Are there no initials upon your linen,
ma’m?’ inquired the surgeon.
I produced from my pocket the handkerchief
which the young Frenchman had
examined, and handed it to the surgeon,
saying, ‘This was in my pocket when I was
rescued, and it must therefore be mine. The
letters “A. C.” are upon it. My under-linen
is similarly marked.’
He looked at the initials, and then passed
the handkerchief to the captain.
‘Do not the letters suggest your name to
you?’ said the surgeon. I shook my head.
‘Would you know your name if I were to
pronounce it, d’ye think?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Have you run over any names for
yourself?’
‘I cannot think of any names to run
over,’ said I.
‘Ha!’ exclaimed the captain, ‘how great,
how awful is the mystery of life, is the
mystery of the mind!’ and as though overcome
he stepped to the porthole and seemed
to look out, keeping his back upon us. Mr.
McEwan continued to scrutinise me.
‘Captain,’ he suddenly exclaimed again,
speaking as though I were deaf or absent,
‘the lady’s hair is snow white, d’ye mark?
Her hair, as we see it, doesn’t correspond
with her figure. She’s much younger than
the colour of her hair. She is much
younger than the look of her face, captain.
She’s a young woman that has been suddenly
aged—to the sight. I can see the youth of
her lurking under her countenance, like
comely lineaments under a veil. As she
recovers strength and health, her bloom
will return.’ He turned to me. ‘When
you entered the boat in which you were
found insensible, your hair, m’am, was
black.’
‘But all this is not to the point, McEwan,’
exclaimed the captain, coming from the
porthole before which he had been standing
with his back upon us. ‘The question is,
where does this lady live? Has she friends
in England. If so, it is my duty to send
her home by the first ship. But your
memory,’ said he to me, ‘may return in a
day or two, and we are not acting kindly
in detaining you from the rest which I
am sure you need after such a night as
you have endured.’
He opened the door of his cabin, and
called to one of the stewards to send Mrs.
Richards to him.
‘You’ll forgive me, ma’m,’ said Mr.
McEwan, ‘but I observe that you have no
rings. Now I’m sure you must have had
rings on when you were found in the boat.
Were they stolen from you, d’ye think?’
I looked at my hands and answered, ‘I
was without rings when my consciousness
returned.’
‘A pity!’ exclaimed the surgeon impatiently;
‘there might be the clue we seek
in a ring of yours. Have ye no jewellery?’
‘I have nothing but this purse,’ I
answered, and I gave it to him.
‘English money at all events, captain,’
he cried, emptying the contents into his
hand. ‘But what does that tell? Merely
that English money circulates everywhere.’
The stewardess entered.
‘Mrs. Richards,’ said Captain Ladmore,
‘you will please prepare a berth for this lady
in the steerage. See that she is made perfectly
comfortable, and the conveniences which she
stands in need of that the ship can supply
let her have.’
‘I do not know how to thank you,’ I
said in a broken voice.
‘Not a word of thanks, if you please,’ he
answered. ‘You have suffered sadly, and for
no inconsiderable part of your suffering is
this ship responsible. We must make you
all the amends possible.’
He motioned to the stewardess who
opened the door.
‘I’ll not worry you now with looking at
your head and dressing it,’ said Mr. McEwan;
‘take some rest first. I’ll call in upon you
by-and-by.’
We passed into the brilliant saloon. The
sun was now high, and his beams glittered
gloriously upon the skylights, and were multiplied
in a hundred sparkling prisms in the
mirrors, lamps, and globes of fish. Through
the windows of the skylight some of the sails
of the ship were visible, and they rose swelling
and towering and of a surf-like whiteness
to the windy sky that lay in a hazy marble
over the mastheads. The stewards were
stripping the tables of the breakfast things,
and at the forward end of the saloon stood
a group of ladies conversing, and looking
through a window on to the decks beyond,
where a multitude of the emigrant or third-class
passengers were assembled.
I held my head bowed, for I was ashamed
to be seen. The stewardess took me to her
berth, and when I had entered it I sat down,
and putting my hands to my heart I rocked
myself and tried to weep, for my heart felt
swollen as though it would burst, and my
head felt full, and my breathing was difficult;
but the tears would not flow. Many hours
of anguish had I passed since consciousness
had returned to me on board the brig, but
more exquisite than all those hours of
anguish put together was the agony my spirit
underwent as I sat in the stewardess’s berth
rocking myself. No light! no light! Oh, I
had hoped for some faint illumination from
the questions which had been asked me, from
the sentences which the captain and the surgeon
had exchanged about me. The blackness
was as impenetrable as ever it had been.
I groped with my inward vision over the
thick dark curtain, but no glimmer of light
crossed it, no fold stirred. The silence and
the blackness were of the tomb. It was as
though I had returned to life to find myself
in a coffin, there to lie straining my eyes
against the impenetrable darkness, and there,
in the grave, to lie hearkening to the awful
hush of death.
‘Come, cheer up, dear,’ said the stewardess,
putting her hand upon my shoulder.
‘Stay, I have something that will do you
good,’ and going to a shelf she took down
a little decanter of cherry-brandy and gave
me a glassful.
‘They told me things that may be true,
and I do not know whether they are true or
not,’ said I.
‘What did they say, dear?’
‘They said that I was young, and that
my hair was black before I lost my memory;
and they said that I might be the only survivor
of a shipwreck, and that there was
nothing—nothing—oh! nothing to tell where
I came from, where my home was, what my
name is——!
‘Now you must have patience, and you
must keep up your courage,’ said the stewardess.
‘Wait till you see poor Miss Lee.
You will not think that yours is the greatest
or the only trouble in this world. She is
certainly dying, but you will not die, I hope.
You will get strong, and then your memory
will return, and you will go home, and the
separation will not be long, you will find. It
is not like dying. There is no return then,’
said she, glancing at the photograph of the
little baby on the woman’s knee; ‘and besides,’
she continued, looking at my hand,
‘whether you remember or not, you may be
sure that you are not married, and, therefore,
have no husband or children wondering what
has become of you. You may, indeed, have
a father and mother, and perhaps sisters,
and others like that, but separation from
them is not like separation from husband and
children. So, dear, think how much worse
it might be, and go on hoping for the best.
And now I am going to prepare a berth for
you, and get a bath ready. There is an
empty berth next door, and you shall have
it. And you shall also have what you sadly
need, a comforting change of linen.’
She then left me.
An hour later I was lying, greatly refreshed,
in the berth which the good-hearted
Mrs. Richards had got ready for me. A
warm salt-water bath had taken all the
aching out of my limbs. No restorative
could have proved so life-giving. It soothed
me—Oh! the embrace and enfoldment of the
warm, green, sparkling brine was deliciously
grateful beyond all power of words after the
long days which I had passed in my clothes—in
clothes which the rain had soaked
through to the skin, and which had dried upon
me. When I had bathed, I replaced my underclothing
by some clean linen lent to me by
the stewardess. And when, having entered my
new berth, I had brushed my hair and refreshed
my face with some lavender water which Mrs.
Richards had placed with brushes and other
toilet articles upon a little table—when, having
done this, I got into my bunk, or sleeping-shelf,
and found myself resting upon a hair
mattress, with a bolster and pillow of down
for my head, I felt as though I had been
born into a new life, as though some base
and heavy burden of sordid physical pain
and distress had been taken from me. My
mind, too, was resting. The inward weary
wrestling had ceased for a time. I lay watching
the lines of golden sunlight rippling upon
a circle of bluish splendour cast by the
large circular porthole upon the polished
chestnut-coloured bulkhead near the door,
until my eyes closed and I slumbered.
CHAPTER VIII A KIND LITTLE WOMAN
When I awoke my gaze was directed at the
face of Mr. McEwan, who stood at the side
of my bedplace looking at me. The cabin
was full of strong daylight, but the atmosphere
was tinctured with a faint rose, and
had I at that moment given the matter a
thought, I should have known that I had
slept far into the afternoon.
In spite of my eyes being open the ship’s
surgeon continued to view me without any
change of posture or alteration of countenance.
He might have been waiting to make
sure that I was conscious; he scrutinised me,
nevertheless, as though his eyes were gimlets,
with which he could pierce into my brain.
He held a volume in his hand, but on his
appearing to make up his mind that I was
awake he put the book into the bunk that
was above me, and said, ‘You sleep well.’
‘I have slept well to-day,’ I answered; ‘I
bathed and was much comforted before I lay
down.’
‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked.
‘Never.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘My memory on this side of my recovery
is good,’ I said; ‘and if I dreamt I should
recollect my dreams. I have longed with
passion to dream, because I have a fancy that
my memory may return to me in a vision.’
‘That is not unlikely,’ said he. He took
the book from the upper bunk, drew a chair
close to me, and seated himself.
‘I have been looking at you in your
sleep,’ said he, ‘and I am confirmed in my
first opinion—you are a young woman. Your
age is four- or five-and-twenty. You smiled
shortly before you awoke, and your smile was
like a light thrown upon your youth hidden
behind your face. Some dream must have
produced that smile—but the mere phantom
of a phantom of a dream, too colourless and
attenuated for your mind to recollect. And
your hair! Has it been coming out of late?’
‘I have lost a great quantity. It came
out in handfuls, but it no longer falls as it
did.’
‘Your hair was black,’ said he, smiling,
‘and very abundant and fine. Before your
calamity—whatever it might be—befell you
you were a handsome young woman, excellently
shaped, with dark, speaking eyes, and a
noble growth of hair. Take my word for it.
And now think. Do I give you any ideas?’
I shut my eyes to think, and I thought
and thought, but to no purpose.
‘No matter,’ he exclaimed; ‘do not strain
your mind. Take things perfectly easy. I
have been reading in several volumes I possess
on cases resembling yours; and here is a book,’
he continued, ‘with some examples, two of
which you shall hear, that you may take
heart.’
He balanced a pair of gold glasses on his
nose and read as follows, slowly and deliberately:—
‘A young clergyman, when on the point
of being married, suffered an injury of the
head by which his understanding was entirely
and permanently deranged. He lived in this
condition till the age of eighty, and to the
last talked of nothing but his approaching
wedding, and expressed impatience of the
arrival of the happy day.’
‘What do you think of that?’ said the
surgeon.
I did not answer.
‘Do you understand it?’ said he.
‘I understand it,’ I replied, ‘but I do not
see what it has to do with the memory.’
‘There is too much memory in it,’ he exclaimed
with a dry smile; ‘but you are right,
and I’m very well satisfied that you should be
able to reason. Now I will read you something
that does concern the memory, and you
shall be consoled when you hear it;’ and he
read aloud as follows:—
‘On her recovery from the torpor she
appeared to have forgotten nearly all her
previous knowledge: everything seemed new
to her, and she did not recognise a single
individual, not even her nearest relatives.
In her behaviour she was restless and inattentive,
but very lively and cheerful: she was
delighted with everything she saw and heard,
and altogether resembled a child more than a
grown person. At first it was scarcely possible
to engage her in conversation: in place
of answering a question she repeated it aloud
in the same words in which it was put. At
first she had very few words. She often made
one word answer for all others which were in
any way allied to it: thus, in place of tea she
would ask for juice. She once or twice had
dreams, which she afterwards related to her
friends, and she seemed quite aware of the
difference betwixt a dream and a reality.’
‘Now mark this,’ continued the surgeon,
looking at me over his glasses; and he then
read:—
‘After a time Mrs. H—— was able to
return to her home in England, where she
passed the rest of her life happily with her
husband. She was in the habit of corresponding
by letter with her friends at a distance,
and lived on the most agreeable terms
with her immediate neighbours, by whom
she was held in much regard on account of
her kindly nature and charitable work.’
‘So you see,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘that
the poor thing got quite well.’
‘Is that a good book?’ said I, looking
at it.
‘It is a first-rate book,’ he answered.
‘But the woman’s memory was not utterly
gone, as mine is.’
‘She was far worse than you,’ said he.
‘Be of good cheer. Think of your brain as
a theatre. The curtain has come down with
a run, and the gentleman whose business it is
to wind it up is drunk, or absent through
illness. We’ll rout him out by-and-by, and
the curtain will rise again. And now sit up,
if you please, that I may look at your head.’
He was abrupt and off-hand in his speech,
with something of the wag in him, but already
was I sensible that there was an abundance of
good-nature and of kindly feeling underlying
his manner. He carefully renewed the plaister
and examined the injured brow, then dressed
it with some salve and bandaged it with a
tender hand. I asked him if I was disfigured.
‘An excellent question,’ he explained; ‘a
woman’s question. Go on asking every question
that may occur to you; but do not strain
your mind to recollect.’
‘Am I disfigured?’ I asked.
‘That is right,’ said he; ‘go on questioning
me.’
‘Let me look at the glass.’
‘No; don’t you see that I am about
to bandage you—so! Do not remove this
bandage. There is something that needs to
heal, and your young Frenchman’s sticking-plaister
has not helped you.’
The surgeon left me after saying that he
would send me a powerful tonic, which I was
to take so many times a day, and when he
was gone I got out of the bunk, in which I
had slept fully dressed, and going to the glass
over the washstand looked into it. The face
that gazed back upon me was no longer the
forbidding, the almost repulsive countenance
that I remembered. The removal of the
darkened and bloodstained strips of sticking-plaister
had made a wonderful difference. In
their place was a snow-white bandage, skilfully
fitted. It hid a portion of the right
brow, and descended so as to conceal the
bridge of the nose, but it left my right eye
visible; and when I looked at my eyes I
observed that they were no longer leaden and
lustreless, but that, on the contrary, there
was the light of life in them, and the dark
pupils soft and liquid.
This I knew by comparing my face with
the face with which I had awoke to consciousness
on board the brig; but I remembered
no other face than that.
I stood for some while staring in the glass,
recalling the assurance of the surgeon that I
was a woman of four- or five-and-twenty,
and contrasting that notion with the belief
Alphonse had expressed, that my age was
forty-five, and I kept on saying to myself,
Who am I? and silently repeating over and
over again the letters A. C. until, recalling
Mr. McEwan’s advice to me not to strain my
brain, I broke away with a sudden horror, as
of insanity, from the glass, and went to the
cabin porthole.
I could see very little of the sky and sea,
but what I saw was beautiful with the colouring
of the rich dark gold of sunset. I gazed
almost directly west, and as much as I could
behold of the heavens that way was a glowing
and a throbbing crimson, barred with streaks
of violet gloriously edged with ruby flames.
The sea ran red as the sky; every ridged head
of purple broke into rosy froth. In the heart
of this little circle of western magnificence
formed by the porthole was a ship with
orange-coloured sails. I watched her, and
thought of the young Frenchman, and wondered
whether the crew of the brig had
perished, as Captain Ladmore supposed,
or whether they had been picked up during
the darkness of the night by some vessel that
had passed at too great a distance to be
observed by the people of the Deal Castle.
Whilst I stood thus looking and thinking,
the door was opened by an under-steward to
enable Mrs. Richards to enter with a tray,
which she grasped with both hands.
‘I thought,’ said she, smiling as she
placed the tray full of good things upon the
deck, ‘that you would rather have your tea
here than at the table outside, and with your
leave I will drink a cup of tea with you. Ah!
now you look better. Yes, your eyes have
cleared wonderfully; and I don’t see the
same expression of pain in your face. And
how much better that bandage looks than the
ugly sticking-plaister.’
She chatted thus whilst she gazed around,
considering how she should dispose of the
tray. At last she placed it in my bed, where
it would be safe—where, at least, it would not
slide, for there was a heave running from the
sunset through the sea, and the ship regularly
leaned upon it, but in motions so stately as
scarcely to be noticeable. We seated ourselves
by the side of the bed and ate and
drank. She had brought cold fowl, and ham-and-tongue,
and pressed beef, and fancy rolls
of bread, all which, with other things, after
the fare I had been used to on board the brig,
were true dainties and delicacies to me, and
particularly did I enjoy the tea with its dash
of new milk.
‘I had some trouble,’ said the stewardess,
looking into the milk-jug, ‘to coax this drop
out of the steward. There is but one cow,
and there are many demands upon poor
Crummie. But I felt sure you would enjoy a
cup of tea with milk in it.’
She then asked me what Mr. McEwan had
said, and I told her.
‘He is a clever man, I believe,’ said she.
‘Oh, if he would only give me back my
memory!’ I exclaimed.
‘I wonder what the captain means to do
with you,’ said she.
‘And I, too, wonder. Have I a home?
Surely I must have a home somewhere? It
cannot be that I am utterly alone in the
world, though I am so now.’
‘No, dear, you will not be alone. God
will raise up friends for you until He gives you
back your memory; and then——’
‘But this ship is going on a long voyage,’
said I, ‘and if I remain in her she will be
carrying me away from where my home may
be.’
‘Yes, but if your home is in England, this
ship will convey you back there if you remain
in her.’
‘How long will it take the ship to sail to
the place you spoke of?’
‘Sydney. She is going to Sydney. Well,
it may take her three months, or it may take
her four months, to get there, and she will
stop at Sydney for three months. We all
hope—all of us, I mean, whose homes are in
England—to be home by next August.’
I turned her words over in my mind, but
was unable to attach any meaning to what
she said. I could not understand time—that
is, I did not know what Mrs. Richards meant
when she spoke of ‘next August.’ But I
would not question her; my incapacity made
me feel ashamed, and exquisitely wretched
at heart, and I asked no questions, lest she
should divine that I did not comprehend
her.
There were people drinking tea at the
tables outside. I heard the occasional cry of
a baby, the voices of children, the murmur of
men and women conversing. Mrs. Richards
informed me that those people were second-class
passengers, who inhabited this part of
the ship.
‘Are there many passengers in all?’ I
asked.
‘Oh yes, the ship is full of men and
women,’ she replied.
‘Where do they come from?’
‘The ship sailed from London. The people
joined her at the docks, or at Gravesend, from
all parts of the kingdom.’
‘Oh,’ cried I, clasping my hands, ‘if there
were but a single person amongst the crowds
on board—a single person who knew me, who
would be able to pronounce my name and tell
me where my home is—if, indeed, I have a
home!’
‘Well, who knows but there may be such
a person?’ said the stewardess. ‘Big as this
world is, we are constantly running against
friends or acquaintances. Everybody is asking
after you. All my ladies, all the people I
attend on, make inquiries after you every
time I see them. There is a dear old lady on
board, Mrs. Lee; she is the mother of the
poor consumptive girl. Not half an hour ago,
as I was passing through the saloon, Mrs. Lee
left her chair and said to me, “Mrs. Richards,
if there is anything that I or my daughter can
do for the poor lady who was rescued this
morning, I beg you will enable us to serve
her. I fear she is without clothes,” said Mrs.
Lee. “How could it be otherwise, indeed?
Now my daughter and I have plenty of
clothes, and the poor lady is welcome to
whatever she wants.”’
‘How good of her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Thank
her, thank her for me, Mrs. Richards.’
‘She is a dear old lady, and her daughter
is the sweetest of girls. Oh dear! oh dear!
that the hand of Death should be drawing
closer and closer to steal away so much
beauty and gentleness.’
‘Is it known that—that——’
‘That you have lost your memory?’
I sank my head.
‘Why, yes. News flies fast on board ship.
And why should it not be known? Your not
having your memory will explain a great
deal.’
‘What will it explain?’
‘For instance, your having no name.’
‘My initials are A. C.,’ said I, and I
pronounced the letters several times over,
and cried out, ‘What can they stand for?’
‘But would you know your name if you
saw it?’ said the stewardess.
‘I cannot tell.’
As I made this answer the door was
quietly rapped. ‘Come in,’ said the stewardess,
and the captain entered. The stewardess rose,
and stood as though a royal personage had
walked in, and then made a step to the
door.
‘Do not go away, Mrs. Richards,’ cried
Captain Ladmore. ‘I am glad to see that
you are carefully attending to the lady’—and
he asked me if I felt better.
I answered that I felt very much better,
and that I did not know how to express the
gratitude which all the kindness I had received
and was receiving had filled my heart
with. He pulled a chair and seated himself
near me.
‘I have been all day,’ said he with a grave
smile, ‘considering what course to adopt as
regards your disposal. I should very well
know what to do if you could give me any
hint as to where you come from.’ He paused,
as though hoping I might now be able to give
him such a hint. He then continued: ‘In
my own mind I have little doubt that you are
English, and that your home is in England.
But I cannot be quite sure of this, and I
should wish to be convinced before acting.
At any hour, whether to-morrow or the
following day—at any hour we may fall in
with a ship bound to England whose captain
might be willing to receive you and to land
you. But then, unless your memory returns
during the homeward run, what would a
captain be able to do with you when he
reached port? He would land you—yes;
but humanity would not suffer him to let you
leave his ship without your memory, without
possessing a friend to go to, and, pardon me
for adding, with only a few shillings in your
pocket.’
I hid my face and sobbed.
‘Don’t take on, dear,’ said Mrs. Richards,
gently clasping my wrist; ‘wait a little till
you hear what the captain has to say. Yours
is a sorrowful, sad case, and it has to be
thought over,’ and here her voice failed
her.
‘A bad disaster,’ continued the captain,
‘has brought you into my ship and placed
you under my care. I am obliged to put
your own situation and condition to you fairly
and intelligibly. If your home is in England,
I should not wish to keep you on board my
ship and carry you to Australia. But your
home may not be in England, and I dislike
the thought of sending you to that country,
where, for all I know, you may have no
friends. When your memory returns we shall
gather exactly how to act.’
‘I do not seem able to think, I do not feel
able to reason,’ I exclaimed, putting my hand
to my forehead.
‘Do not trouble to think or to reason
either,’ said the stewardess; ‘the captain
will do it for you.’
‘What,’ said Captain Ladmore, fixing his
eyes upon Mrs. Richards, but talking as though
he thought aloud—‘what should I be able to
tell the shipmaster to whom I transferred
this lady? I should have positively nothing
whatever to tell him. He might hesitate to
receive her. His reluctance would be justified.
I myself should certainly hesitate to
receive a shipwrecked lady under such circumstances.
I should say to myself, When I
arrive, whom shall I find to receive her?
There might, indeed, be philanthropic institutions
to take her in, but if I could
not find such an institution, what should
I do? I should have to take charge
of her until I could place her somewhere.
I might, indeed, advertise, send a letter
to the newspapers, and trust by publishing
her case to make her existence known
to her friends. But then she may have
no friends in England—and meanwhile?
I have thought the matter over,’ said he,
addressing me, ‘and believe that I cannot
do better than keep you on board, with a
chance of your memory returning at any
moment, and enabling me then to take the
first opportuning of sending you to your
home, wherever it may be. What do you
think?’
‘I cannot think. Oh, if but the dimmest
idea would visit my mind to help you and to
help me! It would be dreadful,’ I said in a
voice that was failing me, ‘to find myself on
shore, in destitution, without friends, not
knowing what to do, where to go. That
thought was a horror to me in the French
brig, when the Frenchmen talked of landing
me at Toulon and handing me over to the
British Consul. I remember what they said:
What would the British Consul do for me?’
And then I sprang from my chair and cried
out, hysterically, ‘Oh, Captain Ladmore, what
is to become of me? what is to become of
me?’
‘You are amongst friends. Do not take
on so, dear,’ said the stewardess.
‘It is my dreadful loneliness,’ I cried,
speaking out of the old terror that was again
upon me—the miserable terror that had
possessed me again and again on board the
Frenchman.
‘All of us are alone,’ said the captain, in
his deep, serious voice; ‘we arrive and we
depart in loneliness. God Himself is alone.’
‘Think of that!’ said the stewardess.
‘Whilst you are with us,’ said Captain
Ladmore, ‘it is proper that you should be
known by some name. Your initials are
clearly A. C. Now suppose we call you
Miss C.? By so terming you we shall be
preserving as much of your real name as we
can discover.’ He paused, and a moment
later added, addressing the stewardess, ‘Do
you suggest Miss C. or Mrs. C., Mrs.
Richards?’
‘Oh! Miss C., sir, undoubtedly,’ she
answered.
I lifted my head, and perceived the
captain examining me as scrutinisingly as
the western light that was now weak and
fast waning would permit.
‘Then Miss C.,’ said he, rising slowly, and
smiling gravely as he pronounced the name,
‘you will consider yourself the guest of the
ship Deal Castle for the present. By-and-by
your memory will return to you. We shall
then learn all about you, and then, whatever
steps I take must certainly result in restoring
you to your friends; whereas to tranship you
now—— But that is settled,’ he added, with
a dignified motion of the hand.
He pulled out his watch, held it to the
porthole, and then bidding the stewardess see
that I wanted for nothing, gave me a bow
and went out. Mrs. Richards produced a
box of matches from her pocket, and lighted
a bracket lamp.
‘What do you think of Captain Ladmore?’
she asked.
‘He is the soul of goodness, Mrs.
Richards.’
‘He is, indeed. Who would suppose him
to be a sea-captain? Sea-captains are thought
to be a very rough body of men. Before I
come upon the water as a stewardess I used
to imagine all sea-captains as persons with
red faces wrinkled like walnut-shells, and
boozy eyes. They all had bandy legs, and
used bad language. Since then I have met
many sea-captains, and some of them are as
I used to think they all were; but some are
otherwise, and Captain Ladmore is one of
them. On his return home two or three
voyages ago he found his wife and only
daughter dead. They had died while he was
away. The blow was dreadful. He cannot
forget it, they say. It changed his nature—it
made him a sad, grave man, and thus he
will always be. Well, now I must go and
attend to my work.’
I opened the door, and she passed out
bearing the tray.
The floating swing of the ship was so
steady that I was able to walk about my
cabin with comfort. I paced round and
round it with my hands clasped behind me
and my eyes fixed on the floor, thinking over
what Captain Ladmore had said. On the
whole I was comforted. It startled me, it
shocked me, indeed, when I thought that
unless my memory returned I was to be
carried all the way to Australia. Not that I
had any clear ideas as to where Australia
was, or its distance from the ship, and, as I
have before said, I was unable to grasp
the meaning of time as conveyed by the
stewardess’s information that the passage out
would occupy three months or four months
as it might be. But from what Mr. McEwan
and Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Richards had
said among them, I could in some manner
understand that Sydney, whither the ship
was bound, was an immense distance off, and
though I had not the least idea where my
home was—whether it was in England or in
America, as the young Frenchman had
suggested, or in that very continent of
Australia to which the Deal Castle was
voyaging—yet the mere notion of being
carried a vast distance, and for no other
purpose than to give my memory time to
revive, with the certainty, moreover, that if
my memory had not returned to me at the
end of the voyage I should be as lonely,
miserable, and helpless as I now was: here
were considerations, as I say, to startle and
shock me.
But on the whole I felt comforted. It
was the prospect of being set ashore friendless
at Toulon that had immeasurably added to
my wretchedness whilst on board the Frenchman.
But now that threatened state of
hopelessness, of poverty, of homelessness, all
to be exquisitely complicated by total mental
blindness, was indefinitely postponed or
removed. I had met with people who were
taking pity on me, and amongst whom I
might find friends. My health, too, would
now be professionally watched. And then,
again, if my home were in England, this ship
would certainly in time return to that
country, and in the long weeks between it
might be that my memory would be restored
to me. Therefore, as I walked about in my
cabin I felt on the whole comforted.
Mrs. Richards brought me an armful of
books, some of her own, and some from the
ship’s little collection. She said, as she put
the volumes down—it was about seven o’clock
in the evening:—
‘Do you feel dull? If so, there are many
in the saloon who would be glad to meet you
and converse with you.’
‘No, I am not dull. My mind is much
more tranquil than it was. I am thinking of
last night. How glad I am to be here!’
‘Would you like to receive a visit?
There are many who would be delighted to
visit you. Mrs. Lee will gladly come and sit
with you if you feel strong enough for a
chat.’
‘I would rather remain quiet, Mrs.
Richards. To-morrow I hope—— Perhaps
in a day or two the doctor will remove this
bandage.’
‘You must not think of your appearance,’
she said, smiling, ‘although it is a good sign.
A little vanity is always a good sign in invalids.
I would not give much for the life
of an invalid woman who is without a touch
of womanly conceit. But you are very well;
you look very nicely. Do not think of your
bandage,’ and with a kindly smile and nod
she left me.
When I went to bed I found myself sleepless.
But sleeplessness I might have expected
after my deep slumbers during the day. At
nine o’clock Mrs. Richards had brought me
some brandy-and-water and biscuits, and
when she left me I went to bed, and lay
listening to the people in the steerage outside.
I gathered that some of them were playing
at cards: there were frequent short exclamations,
and now and again a noisy peal of
laughter. The sea was smooth and the ship
was going along quietly; no creaking, no
sounds of straining vexed the quiet when a
hush fell upon the players.
At ten o’clock there was a tap upon my
door, and the voice of a man bade me put
my light out. I extinguished the lamp and
returned to my bed. All was silent outside
now; nothing was to be heard save a dim
swarming noise of broken waters hurrying
by, and at intervals the cry of a baby.
For some time I listened to this cry, and it
produced not the least effect upon me; but
suddenly, on my hearing it more clearly, as
though the door of the cabin in which the
infant lay had been opened, a feeling of
dreadful grief seized me—a feeling of dreadful
loneliness. I sat up in my bed and
racked my mind—I know not how else to
express what I felt in my effort to compel my
mind to seek in the black void of memory
for the reasons why that infant’s cry had
raised in me so insufferable a sense of grief,
so incommunicable an ache of loneliness.
I grew calm and closed my eyes, but I
could not sleep. Time passed, and still finding
myself sleepless, I quitted my bed and
went to the porthole, and perceived through
the glass the bluish haze of moonlit darkness,
with many brilliant stars in it, rhythmically
sliding to the movements of the ship. I
cannot sleep, I said to myself. I slept too
deeply to-day to slumber now; I will go on
deck. The fresh air will revive me. It is
dreadful to be in this gloom, alone and bitterly
wakeful, thinking of this time last
night.
So I put on my clothes—sheen enough
flowed through the porthole to see by—and
I took from a peg on the door the cloak in
which I had been wrapped when I left the
brig, and enveloped myself in it, pulling the
hood over my head, and quietly stepped out.
I remembered that there was a ladder at
either end of the steerage, and that the deck
was the more easily to be gained by the
foremost ladder. A lamp burnt at one end
of the steerage, and with the help of its rays
I easily made my way to the foot of the
steps. All was buried in deep silence. I
mounted the steps and gained the foremost
end of the saloon, and silently opening a
door I passed out on to the quarterdeck, into
the windy, moonlit, starry night.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found
in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
