For a couple of days nothing that need find a
place in this narrative happened. On the
afternoon of the third day of our being aboard
the barque we sighted a sail, hull down, to
windward. I climbed into the main-top and
examined her through the glass, and found
her a brig, very loftily rigged, her canvas
soaring into moonsails, a sight I had never
before witnessed at sea, even in those days
when ships went more heavily draped than
they do in these. She was heading our
course, perhaps making a slightly more
weatherly navigation, and full blown as she
looked to be—a large, soft cloud of canvas
in the lenses of the telescope—we passed her
at the rate of two feet to her one; and some
2time before sunset we had sunk her to her
royals on the quarter.
Miss Temple wanted me to ask Captain
Braine to run the Lady Blanche into speaking
distance of the brig, that we might
ascertain where she was bound to and get on
board of her. ‘For she may be sailing,’ she
said, ‘to some South American port that will
be, comparatively speaking, close at hand,
where we shall be easily able to find a ship to
convey us home.’ But after thinking a little,
I decided to keep quiet. It would not sound
very graciously to request Captain Braine to
tranship us into an outward-bound vessel: nor
would it be wise to put him to the trouble of
deviating from his course merely, perhaps, to
ascertain that the brig was bound round the
Horn to parts more distant than the Mauritius.
Besides, I had no wish to court a blunt refusal
from Captain Braine to put his vessel within
hailing distance of another until a real opportunity
to get to England should present itself
by some homeward-bound ship passing close;
when, of course, I should take my chance of
his assent or refusal. So I suffered the brig
to veer away out of sight without speaking to
the captain about her, or even appearing to
3again heed her after I had come down from
aloft.
It was a terribly dull, anxious, weary
time; I am speaking of those two uneventful
days. The hot breeze had drawn abeam, and
blew feverishly under a cloudless sky that was
a dazzle of brass all about the sun from morn
till evening. We showed royals and a foretopmast-studdingsail
to it, and drove along
over the smooth plain with half a fathom’s
height of foam at the cutwater, and a spin and
hurry of snow alongside that made the eyes
which watched it reel. I entered the day’s
work and the necessary observations, and so
forth, in the log-book in compliance with the
captain’s request. He was delighted with my
handwriting, sat contemplating it with his unwinking
gaze for some considerable time, as
though it were a picture, and then, drawing a
deep breath, exclaimed: ‘There’s no question
but that eddication’s a first-class article.
Look at your writing alongside of mine, and
at mine alongside of Chicken’s. Chicken and
me was brought up in the same college—a
ship’s forecastle, and so far from standing
amazed at my own fist and that there spelling,
4I’m only astonished that I’m able to read or
write at all.”
However, though he broke forth thus, he
fell silent, and remained so afterwards, became,
indeed, extraordinarily meditative, and at
mealtimes scarcely opened his lips, though
his stare grew more deliberate in proportion
as his reserve increased, until it came at last
to his never taking his eyes off one or the
other of us. Again and again Miss Temple
would say to me that she was certain he had
something on his mind, and she looked
frightened as she theorized upon his secret.
Sometimes, when on deck, I would observe
him standing at the rail, gazing seaward, and
talking to himself, frequently snapping his
fingers, whipping round, as though suddenly
conscious that he had talked aloud, then starting
off in a short, restless, unsteady walk,
coming to an abrupt halt to again mutter and
to snap his fingers with the air of one laboring
to form a resolution.
It was on the afternoon of the second day
of those two about which I have spoken, and
it was drawing on to six o’clock, four bells of
the first dog-watch. The captain had been on
deck since four, and for the last twenty
5minutes he had been standing a little to the
right of the fellow who was steering, eyeing
me with an intentness that had a long time
before become embarrassing, and I may say
distressing. Whenever I turned my head
towards him, I found his gaze fixed upon me.
Miss Temple and I were seated too near him
to admit of our commenting upon the singular
regard that he was bestowing upon me. She
contrived to whisper, however, that she was
certain his secret, whatever it was, was slowly
rising from the depths of his soul to the
surface of his mind.
‘I seem to find a change in the man’s face,’
she said under her breath. ‘Let us walk,
Mr. Dugdale. Such scrutiny as that is unbearable.’
As she spoke, four bells were struck
forward. Mr. Lush, who was leaning against
his windlass end, knocked the ashes out of his
pipe and slowly came aft to relieve the deck.
I rose to walk with Miss Temple as she had
proposed. Captain Braine called my name.
He met me as I approached him, and said: ‘I
want to have a talk with you in my cabin.’
There was something in his manner that
alarmed me. How shall I express it? An
6air of uneasy exultation, as of a mind proud
of the achievement of a resolution at which
the secret instincts tremble. For a moment I
hung in the wind, strongly reluctant to box
myself up alone, unarmed as I was, with a
man whose insanity, to call it so, seemed
stronger in him at this moment than I had ever
before observed it. But the carpenter had now
gained the poop; and the captain, on seeing
him, instantly walked to the companion, down
which he went to midway the ladder, and
there stood waiting for me to follow him.
Tut, thought I, surely I am more than his
match in strength, and I am on my guard!
As I put my foot on the ladder—the captain
descending on seeing me coming—I paused to
lean over the cover and say to Miss Temple:
‘If you will remain on deck, I shall be
able to get away from him if he should prove
tedious, by telling him that I have you to look
after.’
‘What do you imagine he wishes to say?’
she exclaimed with a face of alarm that came
very near to consternation.
I could only answer with a helpless shrug
of the shoulders, and the next minute I had
entered Captain Braine’s cabin.
7‘Pray sit you down,’ said he. He pulled
off his straw hat and sent it wheeling through
the air into a corner, as though it were a
boomerang, and fell to drying his perspiring
face upon a large pocket-handkerchief; then
folding his arms tightly across his breast, and
crooking his right knee whilst he dropped his
chin somewhat, he stood gazing at me under
the shadow of his very heavy eyebrows with
a steadfastness I could only compare to the
stare of a cat’s eye.
‘Well, Captain Braine,’ said I in an off-hand
way, though I watched him with the narrowness
of a man who goes in fear, ‘what now is
it that I am to hear from you? Do you propose
to ask me more questions on navigation
and seamanship?’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, speaking very
slowly, though the excitement that worked in
him rendered his voice deep and unusually
clear and loud, ‘I have come to the conclusion
that you are a gentleman very well able to
sarve me, and by sarving me to sarve yourself.
I’ve been a-turning of it over in all hours of
the day and a good many hours in the night,
too, since the moment when ye first stepped
8over the side, and I’ve resolved to take ye
into my confidence.’
He nodded, and stood looking at me without
speech for a few moments; then seated
himself near me and leaned forwards with a
forefinger upon his thumb in a posture of computing.
‘It was in the year 1831,’ he began, ‘that
I was third-mate aboard of a ship called the
Ocean Monarch. We sailed from London
with a cargo of mixed goods, bound to the
port of Callao. Nothing happened till we was
well round to the west’ards of Cape Horn,
when the ship was set afire by the live cinders
of the cabin stove burning through the deck.
The cargo was of an inflammable kind. In
less than two hours the vessel was in a blaze
from stem to starn, by which time we had got
the boats over, and lay at a distance waiting
for her to disappear. There was two boats,
the long-boat and a jolly-boat. The long-boat
was a middling big consarn, and most of the
men went in her along with the captain, a man
named Matthews, and the second mate, a
foreign chap named Falck. In our boat was
the chief mate, Mr. Ruddiman, myself, two
sailors, and a couple of young apprentices.
9We was badly stocked with water and food;
and after the Ocean Monarch had foundered,
Captain Matthews sings out to Mr. Ruddiman
to keep company. But it wasn’t to be done.
The long-boat ran away from us, and then
she hove-to and took us in tow; but there
came on a bit of a sea, and the line parted,
and next morning we was alone.’
He paused.
‘I am closely following you,’ said I, fancying
I perceived in his face a suspicion of inattention
in me, and wondering what on earth
his story was going to lead to. He stood up,
and folding his arms in the first attitude he
had adopted, proceeded, his voice deep and
clear.
‘It came on to blow hard from the south’ard
and east’ard, and we had to up hellum
and run before the seas for our lives. This
went on for three or four days, till Mr. Ruddiman
reckoned that we was blowed pretty
nigh half-way across to the Marquesas. It
then fell a stark calm, and we lay roasting
under a broiling sun with no fresh water in
the boat, and nothing to eat but a handful of
mouldy fragments of biscuit in the bottom of
a bag that had been soaked with spray o’er
10and o’er again. One of the apprentices went
mad, and jumped overboard, and was
drownded. We was too weak to help him;
besides, ne’er a one of us but thought him well
off in that cool water, leaving thirst and hunger
behind him, and sinking into a deep sleep, as it
might be. Then the other apprentice was took
bad, and died in a fit of retching, and we put
him over the side. When daylight broke on the
morning following that job, we saw one of the
sailors dead in the bottom of the boat. T’other
was the sicklier man of the two, yet he hung
out, sir, and lived for three days. We kept
his body.’
His deep tones ceased, and he stared at
me. Just a story of a bad shipwreck, thought
I, so far.
‘There came a light breeze from the east’ard,’
he continued after a little pause; ‘but
neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me had the strength
of a kitten in our arms, and we let the boat
drive, waiting for death. I thought it had
come that same afternoon, and on top of
the sensation followed a fit, I allow, for I recollect
no more, till on opening my eyes I
found myself in a hammock in the ’tweendecks
of a little ship. The craft was a small Spanish
11vessel, called the Rosario. She had floated
into sight of our boat, and there was just
enough strength left in Mr. Ruddiman to
enable him to flourish his handkerchief so as
they might see the boat had something alive
in her. Ne’er a soul aboard spoke a syllable
of English, and neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me
understood a word of Spanish. We couldn’t
even get to larn where the brigantine was bound
to, or where she hailed from. We conversed
with the crew in signs all the same as
though we had been cast away among savages.
We was both hearty men in those days, and
it wasn’t long afore we had picked up what
we had let fall during our ramble in the boat.
Well, the course the vessel made was something
to the south’ard o’ west, and I took it
we were heading for an Australian port; but
though I’d make motions, and draw with a
piece of chalk on the deck, I’d never get
more’n a stare, and a shake of the head and
a grin, and a shrug of the shoulders, for an
answer. In fact, it was like being sent adrift
along with a company of monkeys.’
He dried his face again, took his seat as
before, and leaned towards me in his former
computing posture with his eyes glued to my
12face. The singularity of their habitual expression
was now greatly heightened by a look
of wildness, which I attributed in a measure
to the emotions kindled in him by this recital
of past and dreadful sufferings. I sat as though
engrossed by his story; but I had an eye for
every movement in him as well as for his
face.
‘It came on to blow a gale of wind one
night after we had been aboard the brigantine
about a fortnight. They were a poor lot of
sailors in the vessel, and so many as to be in
one another’s road. They got the little ship
in the trough, somehow, under more sail than
she could stand up to; the main-topmast
went; it brought down the fore-topmast,
which wrecked the bowsprit and jib-boom.
The Spaniards ran about like madmen, some
of them crossing themselves, and praying about
the decks; others bawling in a manner to
terrify all hands, though I can’t tell ye what
was said; the ship was in a horrible mess with
wreckage, which nobody attempted to clear
away. It blew very hard, and the seas were
bursting in smoke over the brigantine, that lay
unmanageable. At last the boatswain of her,
holding a sounding-rod in his hand, yelled out
13something, and there was a rush for the boats
stowed amidships. They were so crazy with
fear they hardly knew how to swing ’em over
the side. Ruddiman says to me: “I shall stick
to the ship. If those boats are not swamped,
they’ll blow away, and her people’ll starve,
and our late job in that line is quite enough
for me.” I said I would stick by the ship, too,
and we stood watching whilst the Spaniards
got their boats over. It was luck, and not
management, that set the little craft afloat.
The captain roaring out, made signs to us to
come; but we, pointing to the sea, made
motions to signify that they would be capsized
and shook our heads. They were mad with
fright, and weren’t going to stay to argue, and
in twos and threes at a time they sprang into
the boats like rats; and whether they took
food and water with them I can’t tell ye; but
this I know, that within twenty minutes of
the Spanish bo’sun’s singing out, the two boats
had disappeared, and Mr. Ruddiman and me
were alone.’
He rose as he said this, and fell to pacing
the cabin floor in silence, with his head
drooped, and his arms hanging up and down
like pump handles.
14‘A very interesting story, captain, so far
as it goes,’ said I, shifting a bit on my seat, as
though I supposed that the end was not far
off now. ‘Of course you were taken off by
some passing vessel?’
He made no reply to this, nor, indeed,
seemed to heed me. After several turns, he
stopped, and looked me in the face, and continued
to stare with a knitted brow, as though
he were returning to his first resolution to
communicate his secret with an effort that
fell little short of mental anguish. He came
slowly to his chair, and started afresh.
‘We sounded the well, and presently discovered
that the water she was taking in
drained through the decks, and that she was
tight enough in her bottom; and we reckoned
that if we could get her out of the trough,
she’d live buoyant; so we searched for the
carpenter’s chest, and found it, and let fly at
the raffle with a chopper apiece, and after a
bit, cleared the vessel of the wrecked spars
and muddle, and got her to look up to it, and
she made middling good weather, breasting it
prettily under a tarpaulin seized in the
weather main rigging. The gale blew itself
out after twenty-four hours, and the wind
15shifted into the east’ards. We let drop the
foresail; there was no more canvas on her to
set, with the head of the mast gone, and with
it the peak halliards and the sail in rags. Our
notion was to head for the Sandwich Islands,
for we stood by so doing to fall in with a
whaler, and failing help of that sort there was
civilisation over at Hawaii; but t’others of
the Polynesian rocks were mostly cannibal
islands, we believed, and we were for giving
them a wide berth. Yet we could do nothing
but blow before it. That you’ll understand,
Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Quite,’ said I.
‘It came on thick,’ he continued, speaking
with intensity and in an utterance deep,
clear, and loud, ‘with a bit of a swell from
the east’ards and a fresh wind singing over it.
I was at the hellum in the afternoon, and
Ruddiman lay asleep close against the companion
hatch. I was drowsy for want of
rest, and there was sleep enough in my eyes to
make me see very ill. Suddenly looking
ahead, I caught sight of a sort of whitish
shadow, and even whilst I was staring at it,
wondering whether it was vapour or white
water, it took shape as a low coral island
16with clumps of trees here and there and a
small rise of greenish land amidships of it.
I put the hellum hard over, and called to
Ruddiman, who jumps up and takes a look.
“A dead lee-shore, Braine,” says he; “what’s
to be done? There’s no clawing off under
this canvas.” What was to be done? The
land lay in a stretch of reef right along our
beam, with the brigantine’s head falling off
again to the drag of the foresail, spite of the
hellum being hard down. In less than twenty
minutes she struck, was took by the swell,
and drove hard aground, and lay fixed on her
bilge with her deck aslope to the beach that
was within an easy jump from the rail.’
He broke off, and went in a restless,
feverish way to the table and unlocked and
drew out a drawer, looked at something
within, then shut the drawer with a convulsive
movement of the arm and turned the
key. I was now heartily wishing he would
make an end. Down to this, the tale was
just a commonplace narrative of marine
suffering, scarcely reclaimed from insipidity
by the singularity of the figure that recited it.
But that was not quite it. I was under a
constant fear of the next piece of behaviour
17he might exhibit, and my alarm was considerably
increased by the air of mystery with
which he had examined the drawer and
hurriedly closed it, as though to satisfy himself
that the weapon he had lodged there was
still in its place. Having locked the drawer,
he stood thinking a little, then taking up his
Bible from the table, he approached me with
it.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘before I
can go on, I must have ye kiss this here book
to an oath. Take it!’ he cried with a sudden
fierceness; ‘hold it, and now follow me.’
‘Stop a minute,’ I said; ‘you are telling
me a story that I have really no particular
desire to hear. You have no right to exact
an oath from me upon a matter that I cannot
possibly be in the smallest decree interested
in.’
‘It’s to come,’ said he in a raven note;
‘ye shall be interested afore long. Take the
oath, sir,’ he added with a dark look.
‘But what oath, man, what oath is it that
I am to take?’
‘That as the Lord is now a-listening to ye,
you will never divulge to mortal creature the
secret I’m agoing to tell ye, so help you God:
18and if you break your oath, may ye be struck
dead at the moment of it, and your soul
chased to the very gates of hell. So help ye
God, again!’
I looked at him with astonishment and
fear. No pen could express his manner as he
pronounced these words—the dull fire that
entered his eyes and seemed to enlarge them
yet, the solemn note his deep and trembling,
yet distinctly clear voice took—his mien of
command that had the force of a menace in it
as he stood upreared before me, his nostrils
wide, his face a dingy sallow, one arm
thrusting the little volume at me, the other
hanging at his side with the fingers clenched.
‘I dare not take that oath,’ said I, after a
little spell of thinking, with every nerve in me
tight-strung, so to speak, in readiness to defend
myself should he attack me. ‘Miss Temple
will certainly inquire what our talk has been
about; I will not undertake to be silent to
her, sir. Keep your secret. It is not too
late. Your narrative is one of shipwreck, and
so far there is nothing in it to betray.’
With that I rose.
‘Stop!’ he exclaimed; ‘you may tell the
lady. There need be no objection. I see
19how it lies betwixt you and her, and I’m not
so onreasonable as to reckon she’ll never be
able to coax it out of ye. No. Your interests’ll
be hers, and of course she goes along
with us. ’Tis my crew I’m thinking of.’
I was horribly puzzled. At the same time
curiosity was growing in me; and with the
swiftness of thought I reflected that whether I
had his secret or not it would be all the same;
he was most assuredly a madman in this
direction, anyhow, if not in others; and it
could be nothing more than some insane fancy
which he had it in his head to impart, and
which might be worth hearing if only for the
sake of recalling it as an incident of this
adventure when Miss Temple and I should
have got away from the barque.
‘Mr. Dugdale, you will swear, sir,’ he
exclaimed.
‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but put it a little
more mildly, please. Leave out the gates of
hell, for instance; or see—suffer me to swear
in my own way. Give me that book.’
I observed that his hand was trembling
violently as I took the volume from him.
‘I swear,’ I said, ‘to keep secret from all
mortal persons in this world, saving Miss
20Temple, whatever it is your intention now to
tell me. So help me God,’ and I put the book
to my lips. ‘That oath excludes your crew,’
I added, ‘and I hope you’re satisfied?’
His face took a little complexion of life,
and he almost smiled.
‘It’ll do—oh yes, it’ll do,’ he exclaimed.
‘I knew I could count upon you. Now then
for it.’
He resumed his seat, and leaning towards
me with his unwinking eyes fixed upon my
face as usual, he proceeded thus.
CHAPTER XXX THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL
21
‘Mr. Ruddiman and I got ashore and walked
a little way up the beach, to see what sort of
spot we had been cast away on. It was a
small island, betwixt two and three miles long,
and about a mile wide in the middle of it.
There were no natives to be seen. We might
be sure that it was uninhabited. There was
nothing to eat upon it, and though we spent
the hours till it came on dark in searching for
fresh water, we found none. This made us
resolve to land all we could out of the brigantine
when daylight should arrive. The weather
cleared at midnight, the stars shone, and
the sea smoothed down with a light swell
from the north-west, which the trend of the
reef shouldered off and left the water about
the stranded craft calm. As soon as daylight
came we got aboard, and rigged a whip on the
fore-yardarm, and by noon we had landed
22provisions enough, along with fresh water and
wines and spirits in jars, to last us two men
for three months; but that didn’t satisfy us.
There was no other land in sight all round the
horizon; we were without a boat; and though,
if the vessel broke up, we had made up our
minds to turn to and save as much of her as
we could handle that might wash ashore, so as
to have the materials for a raft at hand if it
should come to it, we hadn’t the heart to talk
of such a thing then, in the middle of that
wide ocean, with such a sun as was shining
over our heads all day, and the sure chance
of the first of any squall or bit of dirty
weather that might come along adrowning of
us. So we continued to break out all we
could come at. We worked our way out of
the hold into the lazarette, and after we had
made a trifle of clearance there, we came across
three chests heavily padlocked and clamped
with iron. “What’s here?” says Mr. Ruddiman.
“If these ain’t treasure-chests like to
what the Spanish marchants sends away gold
in along the coast my eyes ain’t mates,” he
says. He went away to the carpenter’s chest,
and returned with a crow and a big hammer,
and let fly at one of the padlocks, and struck
23a staple off short. We lifted the lid, and found
the chest full of Spanish pieces of gold. The
other two was the same, full up with minted
gold; and we reckoned that in all three
chests there couldn’t be less in the value of
English money than a hundred and eighty to
two hundred thousand pounds! It wasn’t
to be handled in the chests; so we made
parcels of it in canvas wrappers; and by the
time the dusk drew down, we had landed
every farden of it.’
Once more he broke off and went to the
drawer. I watched him with profound
anxiety, incapable of imagining what he was
about to produce, and collecting all my faculties,
so to speak, ready for whatever was to
come. He took from the drawer, however,
nothing more alarming than a piece of folded
parchment, round which some green tape was
tied. This he opened with trembling hands,
smoothed out the sheet of parchment upon the
table, and invited me to approach. The outline,
formed of thick strokes of ink, represented
an island. Its shape had something of
the look of a bottle with the neck of it broken
away. It lay due north and south according
to the points of the compass marked by hand
24upon the parchment; and towards the north
end of it, on the eastern side, there was a
somewhat spacious indent, signifying, as I supposed,
a lagoon. Over the face of this outline
were a number of crosses irregularly dotted
about to express vegetation. In the centre of
the lagoon was a black spot like a little blot
of ink, with an arrow pointing from it to
another little blot in the heart of the island
bearing due east from the mark in the indent
or lagoon. In the corner of the sheet of
parchment were written in a bold hand the
figures, Long. 120° 3′ W.; Lat. 33° 6′ S.
‘This,’ said he, in a voice vibratory with
excitement and emotion, ‘is the island.’ I
inclined my head. ‘You see how it lies, sir,’
he continued, pointing with a shaking forefinger
to the latitude and longitude of the
place in the corner. ‘Easter Island bears due
north-east from it. That will be the nearest
land. Supposing you start from Valparaiso,
a due west-by-south course would run you
stem on to the reef.’
I waited for him to proceed. He drew
away by a step, that he might keep his eyes
upon my face, whilst he continued to hold his
25trembling forefinger pressed down upon his
little chart.
‘We agreed to bury the gold,’ he said;
‘to hide it somewhere where we should be
easily able to find it when we came to look
for it, if so be as providence should ever allow
us to come off with our lives from this destitute
reef. D’ye see this hollow, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘A lagoon, I suppose?’ said I.
‘Yes. This here mark amidships of it’—he
turned his dead black eyes upon the chart—‘signifies
a coral pillar about twice as thick
as my mainmast, rising out of the water to about
fourteen foot. We reckoned that there was
no force in nature outside an airthquake to
level such a shaft as that, and Mr. Ruddiman
and me took it for a mark. We landed the
brigantine’s compass, and having hit on a
clump of trees, found they bore east three-quarters
south from that there coral pillar.
We fixed upon a tree, and after trying again
and again, made it exactly two hundred and
eight paces from the wash of the water in the
curve of the lagoon. There we buried the
money, sir.’
‘And there it is now, I suppose?’ said I.
‘Hard upon two hundred thousand
26pounds,’ he exclaimed, letting the words drop
from his lips as though they were of lead.
‘Think of it, sir.’
He folded up the sheet of parchment,
always with a very trembling hand, replaced
it in the drawer, which he locked; and
then, after steadfastly gazing at me for some
little while, an expression of energy entered his
face, and he seemed to quicken from his eyes
to his very toes.
‘All that money is mine,’ said he, ‘and I
want you to help me recover it.’
‘I!’
‘Yes, you, Mr. Dugdale. You and me’ll
do it between us. And I’ll tell ye how, if
you’ll listen’——
‘But, my dear sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘I suppose
you recollect that you are under a solemn
promise to Miss Temple and myself to transfer
us to the first homeward-bound ship we meet.’
‘I can’t help that,’ he cried with a hint of
ferocity in his manner. ‘There’s this here
fortune to be recovered first. After we’ve got
it, home won’t be fur off.’
Come, thought I, I must be cool and
apparently careless.
‘It is very good of you, Captain Braine,
27to wish me to participate in this treasure;
but really, my dear sir, I have no title to any
portion of it; besides, I am a man of independent
means, and what I possess is quite as
much as I require.’
‘Ye’ll not refuse it when ye see it,’ he
exclaimed. ‘Money’s money; and in this
here world, where money signifies everything,—love,
happiness, pleasure, everything you
can name—who’s the man that’s agoing to
tell me he can get too much of it?’
‘But you haven’t completed your story,’
said I, strenuously endeavouring to look as
though I believed in every word of the mad
trash he had been communicating.
‘As much as is necessary,’ said he. ‘I
want to come to business, sir. I could keep
you listening for hours whilst I told ye of our
life aboard that island, how the brigantine
went to pieces, how one day Mr. Ruddiman
went for a swim in the lagoon, and how the
cramp or some fit took him, and he sunk with
me a-looking on, being no swimmer, and incapable
of giving him any help.’
‘And how long were you on the island?’
said I.
‘Four months and three days. It was
28one morning that I crawled from the little hut
we had built ourselves out of some of the
brigantine’s wreckage that had drifted ashore,
and saw a small man-of-war with her tops’l
aback just off the island. She was a Yankee
surveying craft, and a boat was coming off
when I first see her. They took me aboard,
and landed me at Valparaiso two months later.
But all that’s got nothing to do with what I
want to talk to ye about. I’ve got now to recover
this money, and I mean to have it, and
you’ll help me to get it, Mr. Dugdale.’
‘But why have you waited all this time
before setting about to recover this treasure?’
said I.
‘I never had a chance of doing it afore,’
he replied; ‘but it’s come now, and I don’t
mean to lose it.’
‘What is your scheme?’
‘As easy,’ he cried, ‘as the digging up of
the money’ll be. I shall head straight away
for Rio, and there discharge all my crew,
then take in a few runners to navigate the
vessel to the Sandwich Islands, where I’ll ship
a small company of Kanakas, just as many
as’ll help us to sail the Lady Blanche to my
island. I shan’t fear them. Kanakas ain’t
29Europeans; they’re as simple as babies; and
we can do a deal that they’ll never dream of
taking notice of.’
I listened with a degree of astonishment
and consternation it was impossible for me to
conceal in my face; yet I managed to preserve
a steady voice.
‘But you have a cargo consigned to Port
Louis, I presume?’ said I. ‘You don’t mean
to run away with this ship, do you? for that
would be an act of piracy punishable with
the gallows, as I suppose you know?’
He eyed me steadily and squarely.
‘I don’t mean to run away with this ship,’
he answered; ‘I know my owners, and what
they’ll think. It’ll be a deviation that ain’t
going to interfere with the ultimate delivery
of my cargo at Port Louis, and I don’t
suppose it’ll take me much time to fix upon a
sum that’ll make my owners very well pleased
with the delay, and quite willing that I
should do it again on the same tarms.’
‘But why do you desire to bring me into
this business?’ I exclaimed, startled by the
intelligence I found in this last answer of his.
‘Because I can trust ye. You’re a gentleman,
and you’ll be satisfied with the share
30we’ll settle upon. Where am I to find a
sailor capable of helping me to navigate this
ship that I could feel any confidence in, that
I could talk to about this here gold with the
sartinty that he wouldn’t play me some
devilish trick? Can’t ye see my position. Mr.
Dugdale?’ he cried with a wild almost
pathetic air of eagerness and pleading. ‘I
can’t work out such a traverse as this alone.
I must have somebody alongside of me that I
can confide in. Once the money’s aboard, we
can rid ourselves of the Kanaka crew, and
ship a company of white men for the run to
the Mauritius. The gold’ll be aboard, and
it’ll be my secret and yourn.’
Though I never doubted for a moment
that all this was the emission of some mad,
fixed humour, I was yet willing to go on
questioning him as if I was interested,
partly that he might think me sincere in my
profession of belief in his tale, and partly that
I might plumb his intentions to the very
bottom; for it was certain that, lie or no lie,
his fancy of buried treasure was a profound
reality to his poor brains, and that it would
influence him, as though it were the truth, to
heaven alone knew what issue of hardship
31and fatefulness and even destruction to Miss
Temple and me.
‘I presume,’ said I, assuming an off-hand
manner, ‘that your men have signed for the
run to Port Louis and back?’
‘Well, sir?’
‘How are you going to get rid of them at
Rio?’
‘Half of them will run, and the rest I
shall know how to start.’
‘But what excuse will you have for putting
into Rio?’
‘Want of a chief mate,’ he answered, in a
deep sepulchral voice.
This threw me all aback again, and
thoroughly confounded me. Indeed, I was
well enough acquainted with the sea to guess
that he was within the truth when he spoke
of an easy quittance of the crew at Rio;
and assuredly in the want of a chief mate he
could find a reason for heading to that South
American port, against which it would be impossible
for his sailors to find anything to
urge, supposing, a thing not to be taken into
account, that they had it in their power
to insist upon his sailing straight for
Mauritius.
32But even as I sat looking at him in an
interval of silence that fell upon us, a thought
entered my head that transformed what was
just now a dark, most sinister menace, into a
bright prospect of deliverance. As matters
stood—particularly now that I had his so-called
secret—I could not flatter myself that
he would suffer me to leave his ship for a
homeward-bound craft, or even for the
Countess Ida herself, if we should heave her
into sight. Consequently, my best, perhaps
the only, chance for myself and the girl who
looked to me for protection and safety must
lie in this madman making for a near port,
where it would be strange indeed if I did not
find a swift opportunity of getting ashore with
Miss Temple. I saw by the expression in his
own face that he instantly observed the
change in mine. He extended his hand.
‘Mr. Dugdale, you will entertain it? I
see it grows upon ye.’
‘It is a mighty unexpected proposal,’ said
I, giving him my fingers to hold. ‘I don’t
like the scheme it involves of running away
with the ship—the deviation, as you term it,
which to my mind is a piratical proceeding.
But if you will sign a document to the effect
33that I acted under compulsion, that I was in
your power, and obliged to go with you in
consequence of your refusal to transfer me to
another ship—if, in short, you will draw up
some instrument signed by yourself and witnessed
by Miss Temple that may help to
absolve me from all complicity in this sotermed
deviation, I will consent to accompany
you to your island. But I must also know
what share I am to expect?’
‘A third,’ he cried feverishly. ‘I’ll put
that down in writing, too, on a separate piece
of paper. As to t’other document, draw it
up yourself, and I’ll copy it and put my name
to it, for I han’t got the language for such a
job.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Is it
settled?’
‘It will be settled,’ I answered, ‘when
those two formal documents are made out
and signed.’
‘That can be done at once,’ he cried, with
profound excitement working in every limb
of him, and agitating his face into many singular
twitchings and almost convulsive dilatations
of the sockets of his eyes.
‘Give me leave to think a little,’ said I.
‘I will have a talk with Miss Temple and
34settle with her the terms of the absolving
letter you are to write and sign.’
‘How long will it take ye?’ he asked
with painful anxiety.
‘I shall hope to be ready for you before
noon to-morrow,’ I replied.
‘All right,’ said he; ‘the moment it is
settled I’ll change my course.’
I took his track-chart and opened it, and
with a pair of compasses that lay on the table
measured the distance betwixt the point at
which we had arrived at noon and Rio.
Roughly speaking, and allowing an average
of a hundred and fifty miles a day to the
barque, I computed that the run would
occupy between ten and twelve days.
‘What are ye looking for?’ he asked
suspiciously.
‘To see how far Rio is from us,’ I
answered.
‘Well, and what d’ye make it?’
‘Call it fifteen hundred miles,’ I responded.
He nodded in a sort of cunning emphatic
way. ‘Nothing remains to be said, I think?’
said I, making a step to the door.
‘Only this,’ said he. ‘I was thinking of
asking ye to keep my lookout, acting, as you
35will be, as my chief mate, but on consideration
I believe it’ll be best to wait till we’ve
got a new crew afore ye take that duty. Not
that the men could object to my calling into
Rio on the grounds that you’re aboard and
are good enough as a navigator to sarve my
turn; because they reckon that you’re to be
transhipped along with the lady at the first
opportunity. But it’ll be safest, I allow, for
you to remain as ye are this side of Rio.’
‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but I can continue
to take observations if you like.’
‘Oh yes; there can be no harm in that,’
he answered.
I opened the door.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, softening his
voice into a hoarse whisper with a sudden
expression of real insanity in the gloomy,
almost threatening look he fastened upon me,
‘ye’ll recollect the oath you’ve taken, if you
please.’
‘Captain Braine,’ I replied with an assumption
of haughtiness, ‘I am a gentleman first of
all, and my oath merely follows;’ and slightly
bowing, I closed the door upon him.
By this time it was nearly dark. I had
scarcely noticed the drawing down of the
36evening whilst in the captain’s cabin, so closely
had my attention been attached to him and
his words. Indeed, the man had detained
me an hour with his talk, owing to his
pausings and silent intervals of staring;
though the substance of his speech and our
conversation could have been easily packed
into a quarter that time. I went half-way up
the companion steps, but feeling thirsty, descended
again to drink from a jug that stood
upon a swinging tray. Whilst I filled the
glass, my eye at the moment happening to be
idly bent aft, I observed the door of the cabin
adjoining that of Captain Braine’s to open
and a man’s head showed. It instantly vanished.
It was too gloomy to allow me to
make sure. However, next moment the
young fellow Wilkins came out, no doubt
guessing that I had seen him, and that he
had therefore better show himself honestly.
I was somewhat startled by the apparition,
wondering if the fellow had been in the berth
throughout our talk, for if so, it was not to
be questioned but that he had overheard every
syllable, for there was nothing between the
cabins but a wooden bulkhead, and the
captain’s utterance had been singularly clear,
37deep, and loud. But a moment’s reflection
convinced me that even if he had heard everything,
his knowledge (supposing he carried
the news forward) would only help to persuade
the men that Captain Braine was a
madman, and facilitate any efforts I might
have to make to deliver myself and Miss
Temple from this situation, should Braine’s
craziness increase and his lunatic imagination
take a new turn. So, that the fellow might
not think that I took any special notice of his
coming out of that cabin, I asked him in a
careless way when supper would be ready.
He answered that he was now going to lay
the table; and without further words I went
on deck.
It was a hot and lovely evening, with a
range of mountainous but fine-weather clouds
in the west, whose heads swelled in scarlet to
the fires of the sun sinking into the sea behind
them. In the east the shadow was of a deep
liquid blue, with the low-lying stars already
coming into their places. The breeze blew
softly off the starboard beam, and the barque,
clothed in canvas to the height of her trucks
and to the outmost points of her far-reaching
studding-sail booms, was floating quietly and
38softly, like some spirit-shape of ship, through
the rich and tender tropic blending of nightdyes
and westering lights.
Miss Temple stood at the rail, leaning
upon her arms, apparently watching the water
sliding past. She sprang erect when I pronounced
her name.
‘I was beginning to fear you would never
come on deck again,’ she exclaimed as she
looked at me with a passionate eagerness of
inquiry. ‘How long you have been! What
could he have found to say to detain you all
this while?’
‘Softly!’ I said, with a glance at old Lush,
who was patrolling the forward end of the
poop athwartships with his hands deep buried
in his breeches’ pockets, and with a sulky air
in the round of his back and the droop of his
head. ‘I have heard some strange things.
If you are not tired, take my arm, and we
will walk a little. We are less likely to be
overheard in the open air than if we conversed
in the silence of the cabin.’
‘You do not look miserable,’ she exclaimed.
‘I expected to see you emerge
with a pale face and alarmed eyes. Now,
please tell me everything.’
39There was something almost of a caress in
her manner of taking my arm, as though she
could not suppress some little exhibition of
pleasure in having me at her side again.
Also she seemed to find relief in the expression
on my face. She had been full of dark
forebodings, and my light smiling manner
instantly soothed her.
I at once started to tell her everything
that had passed between Captain Braine and
myself. I contrived to recite the skipper’s
yarn as though I fully believed it, always
taking care to sober my voice down to little
more than a whisper as we alternately approached
the fellow at the wheel and the
carpenter at the other end in our pendulum
walk. Her fine eyes glowed with astonishment;
never did her beauty show with so
much perfection to the animation of the
wonder, the incredulity, the excitement raised
by the narrative I gave her.
‘So that is his secret?’ she exclaimed,
drawing a breath like a sigh as I concluded,
halting at the rail to gaze at her with a
smile. ‘I presume now, Mr. Dugdale, that
you are satisfied he is mad?’
‘Perfectly satisfied.’
40‘You do not believe a word of his
story?’
‘Not a syllable of it.’
‘And yet it might be true!’ said she.
‘And even then I would not believe it,’ I
answered.
‘Did he explain how it was that all that
gold lay hidden in a poor ship like the
Spanish brigand—brig—whatever you call
it?’ she asked, her curiosity as a woman
dominating for a moment all other considerations
which might grow out of that yarn.
‘No,’ said I; ‘nor would I inquire. It is
giving one’s self needless trouble to dissect the
fabric of a dream.’
‘Poor wretch! But how frightful to be
in a ship commanded by a madman! What
object has he in telling you this secret?’
‘He wants me to help him recover the
treasure;’ and I then related the man’s proposals.
She gazed at me with so much alarm that
I imagined her fear had rendered her speechless.
‘You tell me,’ she cried, ‘that you have
consented to sail with him to this island of his
in—in—the Pacific? Are you as mad as he
41is, Mr. Dugdale? Do you forget that I look
to you to protect me and help me to return
home?’
Her eyes sparkled; the colour mounted to
her cheek, her bosom rose and fell to the sudden
gust of temper.
‘I am surprised that you do not see my
motive,’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course I feigned
to fall in with his views. My desire is to
get to Rio as soon as possible, and ship with
you thence for England.’
‘To Rio? But I’m not going to Rio!’
she cried. ‘The captain solemnly promised
to put me on board the first ship going home.
Why did you not insist upon his keeping his
word?’ she exclaimed, drawing herself up to
her fullest stature and towering over me with
a flashing stare.
‘He’ll not tranship us now,’ said I. ‘I’m
like Caleb Williams. I have his secret, and
he’ll not lose sight of me.’
‘Oh, what miserable judgment!’ she exclaimed.
‘You are frightened of him! But
were he ten times madder than he is, I would
compel him to keep his word. Rio indeed!
He shall put us on board the first ship we
meet, and I’ll tell him so when I see him.’
42‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said I.
‘If you open your lips or suffer your temper
to come between me and any project I have
formed, I will wash my hands of all responsibility.
I will not lift a finger to help ourselves.
He shall carry us whithersoever he
pleases.’
‘How can you talk to me so heartlessly!
I have no friend but you now, and you are
turning from me, and making me feel utterly
alone.’
‘I am so much your friend,’ said I, ‘that
I do not intend you shall alienate me. My
judgment is going to serve me better than
yours in this dilemma. I know exactly what
I am about and what I intend, and you must
keep quiet and be obedient to my wishes.’
‘Oh, I should abhor you at any other
time for talking to me like that!’ she exclaimed.
‘There was a time—— I shall not
go to Rio! He has promised to put us on
board a ship going home.’
‘Miss Temple, you talk intemperately.
You are in an unreasonable mood, and I will
not converse with you. We will resume the
subject by-and-by;’ and I half turned, as
though to walk off, humming an air betwixt
my teeth.
43She grasped my arm. ‘You must not
leave me. I have been long enough alone.
I believe you will drive me as crazy as the
captain.’
‘I will see you safely to England first,’
said I, ‘and then you shall fall crazy.’
The tears suddenly gushed into her eyes,
and she turned seawards to hide her face. I
moved away, but before I had measured
half-a-dozen paces, her hand was again upon
my arm.
‘I am sorry,’ she said softly, hanging her
stately head, ‘if I have said anything to vex
you.’
‘I desire but one end,’ said I, ‘and that is
your safety. To ensure it needs but a little
exercise of tact on your part and a resolution
to trust me.’
‘I do trust you,’ she exclaimed; ‘but am
I wholly wanting in brains, that you will not
suffer me to offer an opinion, nay, even to
express a regret?’
‘You would be able to do nothing with
this mad sailor,’ said I. ‘Rio is within a fortnight’s
sail, and our safety depends upon our
getting there.’
44‘A fortnight!’ she cried—‘another fortnight
of this horrible ship!’
‘Yes; but England is a long way off from
where we are. Were you to get on board
another vessel, you might be fully as uncomfortable
as you are here, unless she should prove
a passenger craft with ladies in her. A fortnight
more or less could not signify. At
Rio you will be able to purchase such articles
as you immediately need, and there will be a
choice of ships to carry us home in comfort.’
‘I believe you are right,’ said she, after a
little pause, with something of timidity in the
lift of her eyes to my face. ‘I was shocked
and made irritable by alarm. I am sorry, Mr.
Dugdale.’
The answer I was about to make was
checked by Wilkins calling to us from the
companion way that supper was ready.
CHAPTER XXXI THE FORM OF AGREEMENT
45
The captain did not arrive, and we had the
table to ourselves. Miss Temple was subdued,
and her glances almost wistful. It gave me
but little pleasure to humble her, or in any
way to triumph over her; but I had made up
my mind to be master whilst we were together,
and not to spare her feelings in my effort to
assert myself; and I may add here that I had
determined, if it pleased God to preserve us,
to make this noble and beautiful woman my
wife. For I was now loving her, but so
secretly, that my love was scarce like a passion
even to my own reason; and the conclusion I
had formed was that the only road to her
heart lay behind the armour of her pride,
which must be broken down and demolished
if ever I was to gain her affection. And sure
I was of this too; that she was of that kind of
women who need to be bowed by a strong
46hand into a submissive posture before they
can be won.
We spoke very little; the captain’s cabin
was not far off, and the knowledge of his
being in it held us very taciturn. However,
we made amends for our silence after we had
supped and regained the deck. She was now
to be easily convinced that our best chance of
escaping from this barque was for me to fool
the captain to the top of his bent, that he might
carry us to Rio; and before long she was even
talking cheerfully of our prospects, asking me
in a half-laughing way how we were to manage
for money when we arrived at Rio, whether I
had any friends there, and so on.
‘There are my jewels,’ she said; ‘but I
should be very sorry to part with them.’
‘There will be no need to do that,’ said I.
‘I have a few bank-notes in my pocket which
I think may suffice. There is an English
consul, I suppose, at Rio, and he will advise
us.’
Talk of this kind heartened her wonderfully.
It gave her something happy and
hopeful to think about; in fact, before we
went below she told me that she now preferred
the idea of proceeding to Rio to the old scheme
of going aboard a ship bound to England.
47‘I shall be able to purchase a few comforts,’
she said; ‘whereas I might be transferred to
some horrid little vessel that would occupy
weeks in crawling along the sea, and in all
that time I should be as badly off as I am
now. Do the ladies in South America dress
picturesquely, do you know? I should like
to be romantically attired on my arrival home.
How my dearest mother would stare! What
colour a long Spanish veil and a dress of
singular fashion would give to my story of
our adventures.’
And so she talked.
It was a very calm and lovely night, with
the moon, a few days old, going down in the
west. The breeze held everything silent aloft;
a murmur as of the raining of a fountain
floated up from alongside as the white body
of the little barque slipped through the darkling
waters brimming in a firm black line to
the spangled sky of the horizon. The captain
had arrived on deck at eight, but he kept to
the after-part of the poop, nor once addressed
us, often standing motionless for ten minutes
at a time, till he looked like some ebony
statue at the rail floating softly up and down
against the stars to the delicate curtseying of
48his little ship. I seemed to notice, however,
yet without giving much heed to the thing, an
indisposition on the part of the watch on deck
to coil themselves away for their usual fine-weather
naps. From time to time, though
dimly, there would steal aft a hum of voices
from the black shadow upon the deck past
the galley. Once a man kindled a phosphorus
match to light his pipe, and a small
group of faces showed to the flash of the
flame, so to speak, as it soared and sank to
the fellow’s sucking at it; but I found nothing
in this to arrest my attention saving that I
recollect asking Miss Temple to notice the
odd effect produced by the coming out of
those faces amid the dusk; for one saw them
only and no other portion of the men’s bodies.
We walked to the companion to leave the
deck. I scarcely knew whether or not to
call a good-night to the captain, so absorbed
in thought did his motionless posture express
him. But as Miss Temple put her foot upon
the steps, he quietly cried out: ‘Are ye going
to bed?’
‘Yes, captain,’ I answered, ‘and we wish
you a very good-night.’
‘A minute!’ he sung out, and came to us.
49He seemed to peer into Miss Temple’s face,
that showed as a mere faint glimmer in the
starlight, the moon being then sunk, and
addressing me, exclaimed in a voice but a
little above a whisper: ‘I suppose you have
told the lady everything, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘my oath allowed for
that, you know.’
‘Certainly,’ said he. ‘It’s a grand opportunity
for money-getting, mem. The brace of
you know more than the wife of my own
bosom has any suspicion of. As God’s my
Saviour, never once have I opened my lips to
Mrs. Braine about that there money.’
‘I had hoped you would have transferred
me to a homeward-bound ship,’ said Miss
Temple.
‘You don’t want to be separated from
a sweetheart, do you?’ he exclaimed.
This was a stroke to utterly silence her.
I believe she had spoken from no other motive
than to finesse, that the captain might suppose
her as sincere in her belief of his story as I
was; but this word sweetheart was like a blast
of lightning. What her face would have
exhibited if there had been light enough to
see it by, I could only imagine.
50‘It grows late, captain; good-night,’ said
I, pitying her for the confusion and disorder
which I knew she would be under.
‘Have you been thinking over the tarms
of that letter we were talking about?’ said he.
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I’ll pay your cabin a
visit after breakfast and write it out.’
‘Very well, sir. That and the agreement
about the division of the money too. I shall
want to shift my hellum for Rio to-morrow.’
He left us, and we descended in silence,
nor did Miss Temple speak a word to me as
we made our way to our gloomy deep-sunk
quarters, excepting to wish me good-night.
I slept well, and rose next morning at
seven to get a bath in the head; for, as in the
Indiaman, so in this barque, and so, indeed, in
most ships in those days, there was a little
pump fixed in the bows for washing down the
decks of the fore-part of the craft. It was a
very gay brilliant morning, a fresh breeze
about a point before the starboard beam, and
the Lady Blanche was moving through it at a
meteoric pace with her royals and gaff topsail
in, and all else save the flying jib abroad.
The water was of a rich blue, and rolled in
snow; the violet shadows of swollen steamcoloured
51clouds swept over the rolling lines of
the ocean, and by their alternations of the
sunshine made a very prism of the vast,
throbbing disc of the deep. About two miles
astern was a large schooner, staggering along
on a westerly course, so close hauled that she
seemed to look into the very eye of the wind
and plunging bow under with a constant
boiling of foam all about her head. By the
time I had taken my bath she was a mere chip
of white on the windy blue over our weather
quarter.
There were a few sailors cleaning up about
the decks, and as I passed them on the road
to the cabin, I could not fail to observe that
they eyed me with a degree of attention I had
never before noticed in them. Their looks
were full of curiosity, with something almost
of impudence in the bold stare of one or two
of them. What, I reflected, can this signify
but that the fellow Wilkins overheard everything
that passed between the captain and me,
and has carried the news into the forecastle?
So much the better, I thought; for should the
captain come to guess that the men had his
secret, the suspicion must harden him in his
52insane resolve to carry the barque forthwith
to Rio to get rid of his crew.
When Miss Temple came out of her berth
there was a momentary touch of bashfulness
and even of confusion in her manner; then
a laughing expression flashed into her eye.
As we repaired to the cabin we exchanged
some commonplaces about the weather. She
warmed up a little when I spoke of the noble
breeze and of the splendid pace of the barque,
and assured her that the most distant port in
the world could never be far off to people
aboard such a clipper keel as this. The
captain joined us at the breakfast table. I
thought he looked unusually haggard and
pale, appearing as a man might after a long
spell of bitter mental conflict. His eyes
seemed preternaturally large, and of a duller
and deader black than my recollection found
common in them. He seldom spoke but to
answer the idle conversational questions one
or the other of us put to him. I observed
that he drank thirstily and ate but little, and
that he would occasionally rest his forehead
upon his hand as though to soothe a pain
there. Yet lustreless as was his gaze, it was
singularly eager and devouring in its steadfastness.
53He had been on deck since four
o’clock, he told us, and had not closed his eyes
during the previous four hours of his watch
below.
‘I get but little sleep now,’ said he with a
long trembling sigh.
‘That schooner astern this morning,’ said
I, ‘looked as if she were bound somewhere
Rio way.’
He responded with a dull nod of indifference.
‘Were you ever at Rio, Captain Braine?’
asked Miss Temple.
‘No, mem.’
‘I suppose I shall easily find a ship there
to carry me home?’ said she.
He stared at her and then at me; and
then said, looking at her again, ‘Don’t you
mean to go along with him?’ indicating me
with a sideways jerk of the head.
Her eyes sought mine for counsel.
‘It will be a question for you and me
to discuss, captain,’ said I. ‘With all due
deference to Miss Temple, it may be you will
come to think that the presence of a lady
could but encumber us in such a job as we
have in hand.’
54‘Ay, but she has my secret!’ said he
swiftly and warmly.
‘Your secret is mine, and my interests are
hers—you know that!’ I exclaimed.
‘What are the relations between you?’
he asked.
A blush overspread Miss Temple’s face and
her eyes fell.
‘Ask me that question presently, captain,’
said I, laughing.
He continued to stare slowly at one or the
other of us, but remained silent.
Wilkins entered with a pot of coffee. I
furtively but attentively surveyed his expressionless
veal-like countenance; but I might as
well have explored the sole of his foot for
hints of what was passing in his mind. He
came and went quickly. Indeed, his practice
of waiting consisted merely in placing our
meals upon the table, and then lingering out
upon the quarter-deck within hearing of the
captain’s voice if he was wanted.
Presently the skipper rose.
‘I’ve made out that document consarning
shares,’ said he; ‘perhaps you might now
come with me and con-coct the letter you
want me to sign.’
55‘Very well,’ I answered; ‘Miss Temple is
to witness your signature, and you will allow
her to accompany us?’
For answer he gave her one of his astonishing
bows, and the three of us went to his
cabin. He opened the drawer that contained
the chart of his island, and produced a sheet
of paper, very oddly scrawled over.
‘I made this up last evening,’ said he;
‘jest see if it’ll do, Mr. Dugdale. If so, I’ll
sign it, and ye can draw me up a copy for my
own keeping.’
‘Miss Temple will have to witness this
too,’ said I, ‘so I’ll read it aloud:
“Barque Lady Blanche.
At Sea (such and such a date).
I, John Braine, master of the barque Lady
Blanche, do hereby agree with Dugdale,
Esquire, that in consideration of his serving
me as chief-officer for a voyage to an island
situate in the South Pacific Ocean, latitude
83° 16′ S. longitude 120° 3′ W., unnamed, but
bearing due south-west from Easter Island,
distant ; I say that in consideration of
your helping me to navigate this ship to that
there island, and from there to Port Louis in
56the island of Mauritius afterwards, the said
John Braine do hereby undertake to give and
secure to the said Dugdale, Esquire, by this
here instrument as witnessed, one whole and
full third of the money now lying buried in
the above-said island, whereof the amount, as
by calculation allowed, is in Spanish pieces
from 180 to 200,000 pounds.
Witness my hand and seal.”’
It cost me a prodigious effort to keep my
face whilst I read, almost tragical as was the
significance of this absurd document to Miss
Temple and myself, as forming a condition, so
to speak, of the extraordinary adventure fate
had put us upon. I durst not look at her for
fear of bursting into a laugh. The man’s
strange eyes were fixed upon me.
‘Nothing could be better,’ said I. ‘Now,
sir, if you will kindly sign it—and I will ask
you, Miss Temple, to witness it.’
He turned to seat himself; the girl’s glance
met mine; but heaven knows there was no
hint of merriment in her face. She was colourless
and agitated, though I could perceive that
she had a good grip of her emotions. The
captain signed his name with a great scratching
57noise of his pen, then made way for Miss
Temple, whose hand slightly trembled as she
attached her signature to the precious document.
It was now my turn; in a few minutes
I had scribbled out a form of letter addressed
to myself guaranteeing me immunity from all
legal perils which might follow upon the
captain’s piratical deviation from his voyage.
This also he signed, and Miss Temple afterwards
put her name to it as a witness.
‘I’ll take copies of these,’ said I, ‘at noon,
after helping you to work out the sights.’
‘I beg pardon,’ he exclaimed, observing
me to take a step towards the door; ‘I should
be glad to know the relations ’twixt you and
this young lady? It ain’t for inquisitiveness
that I ask. She has my secret, sir;’ and he
drew himself erect.
‘We were fellow-passengers,’ I answered
with a side-look at the girl, whose expression
was one of disgust and distress.
‘There’s nothing close in that,’ said he:
‘I counted upon ye as being sweethearts—that
you was keeping company with her, and
to be married when the chance came, when I
told you there was no objection to your reporting
my secret to her.’
58‘We are sweethearts,’ I replied, smiling,
and taking the girl’s hand; ‘and when the
chance comes along,’ I added, faintly accentuating
the ‘when’ for her ear only, ‘we shall
be married, captain, and I shall hope to see
you dancing at our wedding and heartily
enjoying the entertainment, which, it will not
need all my third share to furnish forth.’
Miss Temple could not contain herself;
she uttered a short hysteric laugh.
‘Pity ye couldn’t have told me this at
once,’ exclaimed the captain, regarding me
sternly; ‘but,’ he went on whilst his countenance
slightly relaxed, ‘there’s always sensitiveness
in love-making whilst it keeps young.
I’m obliged to you, mem, for your visit.’
I opened the door and followed Miss
Temple out.
‘I am of opinion that he is not so mad as
he appears,’ said I.
She averted her flushed face somewhat
haughtily. No matter, thought I; it is a
subject that will keep.
We got under the short awning on the
poop and lounged away the morning there.
Her good breeding speedily came to her
rescue, and our chat was as easy, in a sense,
59as ever it could have been aboard the Indiaman—easier,
i’ faith, by a long chalk! though
it concerned troubles and anxieties which
never could have occurred to us in the
Countess Ida. I observed that Mr. Lush frequently
directed his eyes at me as he paced
the weather deck. To my accost he had
satisfied himself with returning a surly ‘marning,’
and we spoke no more. He seemed
unable to view me attentively enough to
satisfy himself without growing offensive by
staring.
‘I hope that fellow,’ I whispered to Miss
Temple, ‘may not thwart my Rio programme.
Yet I don’t see how he could do so. The
barque wants a chiefmate, so the captain
contends. It is no falsehood; the need would
by all sailors be regarded as an imperative
one. Still, I hate that surly fellow without
exactly knowing why.’
‘Do you notice how those men yonder are
constantly looking this way?’
‘Yes. As I have explained to you, Master
Eavesdropper Wilkins has reported all he
heard; and the Jacks understanding at last
that their skipper is a madman, are wondering
what on earth is going to happen next. They’ll
60be glad, you’ll find, to learn that we’re heading
for Rio when the course is changed. They’ll
report the skipper as insane, and end our
difficulties out of hand for us.’
‘I hope so indeed!’ she sighed.
Well, for the rest of the day nothing
happened worth relating. I took an observation
with the captain, worked it out in
his cabin, and made draughts of the two
extraordinary documents. When we had
calculated our situation, he went on deck, and
by a tell-tale compass in his cabin I perceived
that he had changed the barque’s course.
Simultaneously with this, I heard the men
bracing the yards more forward, and the heel
of the barque slightly sharpened to the increased
lateral pressure of the fresh breeze
upon her canvas. I hastened on deck when
I had done my copying to observe the crew’s
deportment; but in the manner of the few
men who were about I witnessed nothing to
lead me to suppose that they made anything
of this sudden change of course.
When I told Miss Temple that we were
now heading as close as the wind would let us
lie for the South American port she instantly
grew animated; her eyes brightened, a look
61of hope and pleasure entered her face, and
her voice was full of cheerfulness. The captain,
on the other hand, grew gloomier as the
day advanced. During his watch on deck
from twelve to four he paced the planks
without any intermission that I was sensible
of, walking nearly always in the same posture,
with his hands clasped behind him and his
head bowed; and with his long black hair,
yellow face, and blue gills he needed nothing
but the dress of a monk to look one, rehearsing
his part for the cloisters.
Some dinner was taken to him on deck;
but I saw Wilkins afterwards carry the dishes
forward, and the food appeared to me untouched.
At the supper hour he came to the
table, but neither ate nor drank. During the
greater part of the sitting he kept turning his
eyes first on one and then on the other of
us with a dim sort of strained interrogative
expression in his stare, as though he was
struggling with some degree of suffering to
dislodge an imagination or idea out of a remote
secret cell of his brain and bring it forward
into the clear light of his understanding.
He seemed to find Miss Temple’s presence a
restraint. Sometimes, after eyeing me he’d
62start as if about to speak, but instantly check
himself with a glance at the girl, whilst his
face would darken to some mood of irritation
and impatience.
Another gloriously fine night followed
sunset that day, with a brighter and longerliving
moon, and a gushing of breeze that
melted through, and through one with the
delicious coolness that it brushed off the
waters and gathered from the dew. The sea
throbbed in flashings of foam, which shone
with the radiance of moon-touched snow
mingled with spangles of the gold and emerald
light of the phosphor. There was a pleasant
roaring and hissing noise off the weather bow,
with merry whistlings aloft, where the fullthroated
canvas soaring to the main-topgallant
yard leaned in pale spaces against the stars,
with frequent sweeps of the mastheads to the
frisky plungings of the clipper hull upon the
head seas.
The carpenter was in charge of the deck.
He was standing at the rail abreast of the
wheel, when it occurred to me to accost him,
that I might gather from his replies what
notions had been put into his head by the
captain having changed the course. I had
63Miss Temple on my arm, for the deck was
hardly safe for her without some such support.
We went to the binnacle, and I took a peep at
the card, then crossed over to the carpenter.
‘Good-evening, Mr. Lush. A rattling
breeze this! Since Rio is our destination,
such a draught as this should put us in the
way of making it smartly, off her course as the
barque is.’
‘I suppose you know what we’re a-going
there for?’ he answered in a gruff tone of
voice, that left me in doubt as to whether he
intended a question or not.
‘You are second mate, and of course are
in the captain’s confidence. What should I
know that you don’t?’
‘Ah, what?’ he exclaimed, in a voice like
a dog’s growl.
Miss Temple slightly pressed my arm, as
though she would have me walk away.
‘A vessel like this wants a chief mate,’ said
I, ‘some one who knows what to do with the
sun and stars.’
‘Oh, then, you’re acquainted with the
reason why we’re going to Rio?’ said he in a
tone of such impudent sarcasm, that without
another word I rounded on my heel and led
Miss Temple forward.
64‘The brute!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I am
rightly served. I have no business to address
the surly illiterate baboon.’
‘You know that he knows you have learnt
the captain’s motives, if it be true, as you
suppose, that Wilkins has repeated to the
men what he overheard; why, then, do you
feign an ignorance that can only excite the
creature’s suspicions?’
‘Suspicions of what?’
‘That you are acting a double part: with
the captain for the sake of his buried money,
and with the crew for the sake of your
safety.’
‘You put it shrewdly, and I am fairly hit,’
said I. ‘I wanted to get at the fellow’s mind,
if he has any; it did not occur to me for the
moment that he would know through Wilkins
of what had passed in the cabin. That is to
say if he does know; for after all, Wilkins
may not have overheard everything, and for
aught we can tell he may not have repeated
a syllable of the little that he managed to
collect through that bulkhead. No matter,
Miss Temple. A fortnight more, please God,
and we shall be able to write the word finis
to this passage of our adventures.’
65‘I shall scarcely know myself again,’ she
exclaimed cheerfully, whilst she extended her
disengaged white hand to the sheen in the air
flowing from the stars and scar of moon,
‘when I put my rings on once more. What
an experience! How improbable, and how
consistently possible and horribly absolute!’
And then she asked me how far it was
from Rio to London; and we went on chatting
and pacing, sometimes coming to a stand at
the side to watch some sweep of foaming
water roaring off from the blow of the lee bow
into the weltering gloom until five bells were
struck—half-past ten. She then said she felt
chilly, and I took her below. It was a little
early for bed, however; besides, the excitement
of the day still lingered—the signing
and witnessing of the queer documents: the
captain’s insane dream of a treasure-quest,
mad, as we deemed it, at all events: the sense
of our speeding now towards a port whence
we should be able to take ship and proceed
comfortably to England.
I went to the cuddy door and called for
Wilkins, and on his arrival told him to put a
bottle of the wine that had been brought from
the wreck on the table along with some biscuit,
66and thus furnished, Miss Temple and I managed
to kill very nearly another hour. She removed
her hat; the lamplight streamed fair upon the
marble-like beauty of her face, upon her large,
dark, soft, and glowing eyes, upon her rich
neglected abundant hair.
‘Do you remember that night,’ I said, ‘in
the English Channel, when after the collision
with the Frenchman you came to where I
stood and asked me to explain what had
happened?’
‘I would rather not remember anything
that passed between us on board the Indiaman,
Mr. Dugdale,’ she replied with a droop
of her long lashes as she spoke.
I gazed at her earnestly; a single glance
would have enabled her to witness something
of passion in my regard at that instant: I bit
my lip to check what my instincts assured me
would then have been said all too soon, and
looking at my watch exclaimed: ‘Hard upon
half-past eleven.’
She rose, and together we descended to
our inhospitable steerage quarters.
CHAPTER XXXII A TRAGEDY
67
How long it was before I fell asleep I cannot
say. The humming of the wake racing away
close outside was noisy; the light cargo in the
steerage creaked and strained, and the thump
of the rudder was frequent, and sometimes
startling. I was aroused by a continuous
knocking on the bulkhead. It was pitch-dark,
despite a small sliding dance of stars in the
porthole glass. I thought the knocking was
upon my door, and cried out, ‘What is it?’
It did not cease; and gathering by this time
that it proceeded from the bulkhead that
divided the cabins, I jumped out of my bunk
and beat upon the boards to let Miss Temple
know I heard her.
I called; but though I caught her voice,
I could not distinguish her utterance. I had
turned in partially clothed, and groping my
way to the door, stepped forth and knocked
68upon her cabin. The handle was touched
and I was sensible that the girl’s door was
ajar.
‘Are you there, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Yes. What is the matter?’
‘Did not you hear a pistol-shot?’
‘No,’ I cried.
‘I am certain a firearm has been discharged,’
she exclaimed.
‘Stay a bit,’ said I. ‘I will see if anything
is wrong, and let you know.’
After some groping, I succeeded in lighting
the candle in my lantern; and then
slipping on my shoes, I made for the hatch
ladder, which I was able to see by leaving my
cabin door open. I entered the cuddy and
listened. The lamp had been extinguished;
but a sort of spectral illumination of stars and
white water came sifting through the skylight
and the port-holes and the little windows in
the cuddy front, and I was able to determine
the outline of objects. All was right in this
interior, so far as I could tell. I listened; but
not so much as a footfall sounded upon the
upper deck, not a note of human voice or
movement of men forward. The barque was
sweeping through the seas bravely, and the
69atmosphere of the cuddy was vibratory with
the resonant cries of the wind up aloft.
I made for the cuddy door and looked
out; nothing stirred on the quarter-deck that
ran pallid into the impenetrable shadow past
the waist. I returned to the companion
steps, which I mounted, and stood in the
hatch a moment or two. There was nobody
on the poop saving the man at the helm. I
stepped over to him and said, ‘Where’s the
captain?’
‘He’s gone below,’ he answered; ‘he told
me he wouldn’t be long.’
‘When did he leave the deck?’
‘Seven or eight minutes ago, belike.’
‘Did you hear a noise just now that resembled
a pistol-shot?’ I inquired.
‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘But who’s to
hear anything atop of this here shindy of wind
and water?’
‘That’s true,’ I exclaimed. ‘I doubt if
the noise will have meant more than a fall of
something below. It is the lady who heard
the sound, and I’ve just stepped up to see
what it might mean. It’s to be hoped the
captain won’t linger. This is not a breeze in
which to leave a ship in charge of her helmsman
only.’
70And indeed the little craft wanted too
much watching on the part of the fellow to
suffer him to talk or to permit of my calling
off his attention from his duty. I resolved to
wait, that there might be some sort of lookout
kept whilst the captain stayed below.
The breeze had freshened, I thought, since I
left the deck; there was a dim windy look,
moreover, all away out to starboard; and the
barque close hauled was making the wind to
come as hard again as it was blowing, in
fact, through her thrusting, plunging, nimble
manner of looking up into it. The mainsail
is too much for her, thought I; it should be
furled. There is a staysail or two too many,
also; and that top-gallant sail will have to
come in anon, if the look of the sky out
yonder means what it threatens.
Five minutes passed, but the captain did
not make his appearance. The sound that
Miss Temple had heard was beginning to
work an ugly fancy in my mind. I stepped
aft to the wheel.
‘Did the captain tell you why he was
going below?’
‘No, sir,’ was the answer. ‘He’d been
standing for about a quarter of an hour stock
71still; then he comes soddenly in a sort o’ run
to the binnacle, takes a look at the card, and
says: “Keep her as she goes; nothing off:
see to it! I shan’t be long.” That was all.’
At that instant the wind breezed up in a
gust that came in a long howl over the weather
rail, and the little vessel bowed down to it
till the smother alongside looked to be up to
the covering-board.
‘No use waiting for the captain,’ said I,
made irritable by anxiety; ‘we shall have
the masts out of her if we don’t mind our
eye;’ and running forward, I shouted at
the top of my voice: ‘Lay aft and haul up
the mainsail!’
In a moment the watch came tumbling
out of the darkness forward. Their manner
of rushing gave me to know that they had
been standing by for the order to shorten sail,
and were wondering why it had not been
delivered sooner.
‘Furl it, lads,’ I shouted, ‘when you’ve
hauled it up; but first get your maintopgallant
staysail hauled down. I must find out
what has become of the captain.’
Without losing another moment, I ran
into the cuddy and knocked upon the door of
72the captain’s cabin. No answer was returned.
I knocked again, thundering with my fist;
then tried the handle, and found the door
locked. ‘Good God!’ thought I, ‘the man
has shot himself. That will be the meaning
of the sound Miss Temple heard.’ As I
turned for a moment, utterly at a loss how to
act, the girl rose through the hatch close to
where I stood. She held in her hand the
lantern I had left alight in my berth.
‘What has happened?’ she cried.
‘I have no notion as yet,’ I responded;
‘but I fear the captain has shot himself. Let
me take that lantern from you.’
I swiftly hitched it by its laniard to a hook
in a stanchion, noticing as I did so that she
had completely dressed herself.
‘Remain here for the present, will you?’
I went on. ‘I must go on deck—there is no
one to give orders to the men.’
I ran up the steps, and perceived the
shadowy shapes of the seamen ascending the
shrouds to lay out upon the main yard.
‘Who is that there?’ I called, observing a
dark figure standing near the main hatch.
‘Me—Wilkins, sir.’
‘Jump forward, Wilkins,’ I shouted, ‘and
73call Mr. Lush. Tell him I want him aft—that
I’m afraid something serious has happened;
in fact, rout up all hands. We shall be having
to reef down shortly.’
The fellow sped forwards. It had been
no passing gust that had bowed the barque
down, but a real increase in the weight of
wind; and by this time, knowing fairly well
how the gear led, I let go the maintopgallant
halliards, and then ran aft to the mizzen topmast
staysail halliards, and was dragging with
my single pair of hands upon the downhaul,
when the carpenter came up to me, followed
by the rest of the watch below.
‘What’s gone wrong?’ he said.
‘I believe the captain has shot himself.
His cabin door is locked, and we have yet to
discover that he has committed suicide. The
wind freshens, the ship wants watching, and
there is nobody to see to her. Will you take
charge? I’ll wait for you in the cabin.’
What expression a light cast upon his
countenance might have shown my news
produced in it I know not; there was a pause
in him, as of sulky astonishment, but he said
nothing. He mounted the poop ladder; and
I entered the cuddy, catching the sound as I
74did so of the men on the main yard chorusing
as they triced up the bunt of the sail, along
with a sudden roar from the carpenter to
clew up the main-topgallant-sail and furl it.
The candle end burning in the lantern made
but a wretched light, as you will suppose.
Close beside it, in such radiance as it emitted,
stood Miss Temple, white as stone, and her
eyes wide and luminous with alarm.
‘Is the vessel in danger?’ she asked.
‘Oh dear, no,’ I replied; ‘the breeze has
freshened considerably, and the men are
shortening sail. But this light is truly
abominable. We shall require to be able to
see clearly presently.’ And with that I took
out the candle and lighted the cabin lamp
with it.
‘I have been every moment expecting to
see that door open, and his figure creep out!’
said Miss Temple, pointing with a shudder,
and without looking, towards the captain’s
berth. ‘Do you believe he has shot himself?’
‘Not a doubt of it. Why should his door
be locked? I should know he has destroyed
himself without being able to make a guess at
his method of doing so, but for your saying
that you heard the report of a pistol.’
75‘I assuredly heard it, Mr. Dugdale. I was
awake. I have not slept since I lay down.
The sound was like the crack of a whip over
my head.’
Just then the carpenter roared out some
fresh orders. The barque, relieved of her
mainsail and topgallant-sail, had recovered
from her perilous heel, and was thrashing
through it with what seemed a stubborn
erectness of spar after the recent wild slope
of her masts. The sea was rising, and the
vessel was beginning to pitch with some spite
in the chopping and smiting shear of her
clipper bows, from which the surge recoiled
in thunder, washing aft in boiling spume with
a sound like the fall of the hail and rain of an
electric storm. I could tell without needing
to look that Mr. Lush’s latest order concerned
the reefing of the foretopsail. At all events,
he had his little ship well in hand, and the
whole of the vessel’s small crew were on deck
to run about to his directions, and there was
some comfort to be got out of knowing this.
To satisfy a small doubt that had arisen,
I stepped once again over to the captain’s
cabin and hammered loud and long upon the
76door, shouting out his name, and then trying
the handle; but to no purpose.
‘For what new horrors are we reserved?’
cried Miss Temple. ‘Shall we ever escape
with our lives? How much has been compressed
within the last few days: the dead
body on the wreck—the drowning of the poor
lieutenant—the loss, perhaps, of Mr. Colledge
and the sailors in the man-of-war’s boat—and
now this!’ she cried, bringing her hands to
her face with a sudden convulsive, tearless
sob; then looking at me she said: ‘If Captain
Braine has killed himself, what is to follow?’
‘Rio,’ I answered. ‘I shall carry the ship
there straight. Thank God for such knowledge
of navigation as I possess! I trust the
captain may not have killed himself; but if he
has done so, it will make for our good. He
was a madman, and it was impossible from
hour to hour to be sure of his intentions.’
‘But, Mr. Dugdale, there will be no head
to the ship if the captain be dead. Who,
then, is to control the crew—this crew of
convicts and mutineers and—and?’——
‘It was a madman who drew that picture,’
said I. ‘I suspect he is as correct in his
description of his crew as in his description of
77his treasure. The men are without a navigator;
they can do nothing without me. If
they are true Jacks, they are already sick of
the voyage, and will be glad to have a port
under their lee, with the promise of a jaunt
ashore and fresh articles to sign on another
ship’s capstan.’
We continued talking thus; presently I
heard the seamen chorusing at the foretopsail
halliards, and later on the carpenter Lush
entered the cabin by the cuddy door.
‘She’ll be snug at this,’ he exclaimed in
his gruff voice; ‘there’s no more weight of
wind, and the whole main-topsail won’t be too
much for her if it don’t freshen yet. What’s
this about the capt’n, sir?’
As he spoke, I observed the glimmering
faces of the crew, the whole body of them,
saving the fellow at the wheel, crowding
to take a peep through the cuddy windows
and doorway. I saw Miss Temple glance
with terror towards them; but there was
nothing more natural than that the fellows
should desire to obtain all news of an event
that concerned them so closely as the suicide
of their captain. I repeated what little I
knew to the carpenter, who at once stalked to
78the captain’s door and tried the handle for
himself, shaking it viciously.
‘I suppose it’ll have to be broke open?’
he exclaimed, looking round.
‘Certainly,’ I answered, ‘and the sooner
the better. This suspense is intolerable.’
‘I’ll go forrards and get some tools,’ he
said.
He returned after a few minutes, and two
seamen accompanied him, one of them being
Joe Wetherly. The others, heedless of all
custom, in their devouring curiosity came
shouldering one another into the cuddy,
thrusting inch by inch to the centre of it,
where they stood staring—a wild and rugged
group, indeed, in that light; hairy breasts,
naked, weather-darkened nervous arms liberally
scored with blue devices, bare feet,
gleaming eyes, sheath-knives on their hips—I
could scarcely wonder that Miss Temple shrank
from them, and clung to my side with her hand
in my arm! They did not need the character
the captain had given them to make her do
that!
Lush forced the door of the berth; it flew
open to a heavy blow, and I advanced to take
a view of the interior, Miss Temple letting go
79of my arm with an exclamation, rather choosing
to remain alone near the sailors than take
a peep at the horror her imagination bodied
forth. A small bracket lamp was burning
brightly. In the centre of the deck of the
cabin lay the body of Captain Braine. He
was on his breast, his arms were outstretched,
one leg was crooked, as though broken under
the other. A pistol of a pattern somewhat
similar to the one I had discovered in Mr.
Chicken’s locker lay beside his right hand.
These details we immediately witnessed; but
we had to look a little before we could distinguish
the great stain of blood upon the
square of drugget under the cheek of the poor
creature, and showing in a black line from a
hole on a level with his eye.
‘He has shot himself, as you said,’ exclaimed
the carpenter in a hoarse note, and
backing half a pace to the right.
‘Turn him over, Bill,’ said Wetherly to the
other sailor.
‘Not me! Handle him yourself, Joe.’
Wetherly fell upon a knee, and got the
corpse on its back. After my experience
with the body on the wreck, I should have
deemed myself equal to any sort of ghastly
80sight-seeing; but that dead captain’s face
was more than I could bear, and I was forced
to look away and to keep my gaze averted, to
rally my nerves from the shock the spectacle
had given them.
The crew had come shoving right to the
very cabin door, and stood in a crowd,
staring open-mouthed with a sort of groaning
of exclamations breaking out from amongst
them.
‘A bad job this, sir,’ said Wetherly, looking
round to me.
‘He’ll be stone-dead, I suppose?’ said the
carpenter.
‘O God, yes!’ I exclaimed.
The carpenter seemed to wait, as if he
expected me to give directions.
‘Better get the body into the bunk, Mr.
Lush,’ said I, ‘and cover it up for to-night.’
‘Ay, hide it as soon as ye will, Joe,’ exclaimed
the carpenter; and as he said these
words, I observed that he rolled his eyes with
an expression in them of keen and thirsty
scrutiny over the cabin.
Wetherly and the other man who had
entered with him lifted the body, placed it in
the bunk, and threw a blanket over it. We
81then quitted the cabin, leaving the lamp
burning, though, I fancy, nobody noticed that
but myself; and the carpenter put a little
wedge of wood under the door to keep it
shut. The sailors slowly walked away out on
to the quarter-deck, casting inquisitive glances
around them, and at Miss Temple, as they
withdrew. The carpenter came to a stand at
the table, and turning his surly face upon me,
exclaimed in his deep-sea, bad-tempered voice:
‘What’s to be done now?’
‘There’s nothing for it,’ I answered, ‘but
to make for the nearest port, and Rio will be
that.’
‘Ay; but that ain’t the question just at
present,’ he exclaimed. ‘What I mean is,
what’s the discipline agoing to be?’
‘Why, of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘I must
render all the assistance I possibly can. If
the crew consent, I shall be happy to keep
watch and watch with you. In any case, I’ll
navigate the ship. Very fortunately, I can
do so.’
‘It’ll be a matter for the crew,’ said he,
talking with his eyes upon the deck and
speaking after a pause. ‘To-morrow morning
will be time enough to settle what’s to be
82done. I kep’ a lookout from eight to twelve
to-night; and if you’ll stand this here middle
watch, I’ll be a relieving of ye at four; and
arter breakfast, giving you time to get some
sleep, I’ll call the crew aft, and we’ll see what
they’ve got to say, now there ain’t neither
mate nor capt’n left.’
‘But you are the mate; the acting second
mate,’ I cried, sensible of an indefinable misgiving
that grew rapidly into an emotion of
cold and heart-sickening consternation.
‘I tell ye no, sir!’ he shouted; ‘I’m no
second mate. I signed on as ship’s carpenter,
and I’ve told ye so. Since Mr. Chicken died,
I’ve been treated by that man there’—he
pointed with a square forefinger to the cabin
door—‘worse than any mongrel dog that e’er
a blunderbuss was brought to bear on. Me a
second mate?’ He struck his breast in a sort
of frenzy with his clenched fist and grinned
in my face.
‘Very well,’ said I, forcing a note of composure
into my voice; ‘it is a mere detail of
routine, which we can settle to-morrow, as
you say.’
‘All right,’ he exclaimed; and pulling his
skin cap down over his head, he trudged on
his rounded legs out of the cuddy.
83‘I must go on deck, Miss Temple,’ said I.
She was eyeing me, as though bereft of
speech, when I addressed her.
‘I will accompany you,’ she exclaimed.
‘No! It is out of the question.’
‘Why?’ she cried imperiously, with the
irritability of dismay and dread in her manner.
‘I shall be on deck till four. Such a spell
of exposure it will be needless for you to
undergo. You are perfectly safe in your
cabin.’
‘How dare you ask me to return to that
horrible lonely part of the ship?’ she cried,
with wrath and alarm brilliant in her eyes.
‘Then take some rest upon that locker
there.’
‘You ask me to remain here alone with
the dead body close to in that cabin?’
‘Miss Temple,’ said I firmly, ‘if you decline
to return to your cabin, you will at least
oblige me by staying in this cuddy. I have
no time to reason with you. You must obey
me, if you please. Give me your hand.’ She
extended it, and I conducted her to the sofa
locker, on which I gently but resolutely compelled
her to seat herself. ‘You can rest
here with perfect safety,’ I went on. ‘I am
84astonished that a woman of your spirit should
find anything to render you uneasy, in the
face of the real difficulties which confront us,
in the neighbourhood of a harmless corpse.
I can command a view of you and of this
interior through that skylight. But you must
not come on deck.’
She watched me in a motionless posture
with an air of haughty resentment upon her
lips, to which a kind of awe in her gaze gave
the lie. I left her, and had my foot upon the
companion steps, when a thought occurred to
me. Going to the door of the captain’s berth,
I withdrew the wedge, and entered and picked
up the pistol that lay upon the deck. It was
a heavy single-barrelled concern, but a firearm
all the same, and I thrust it into my breast.
I perceived no materials for loading it; but
I had what was necessary in that way below;
and now I was possessed, as I did not doubt,
of the only two pistols in the ship.
I extinguished the lamp, wedged the door
afresh, and responding to Miss Temple’s appealing
stare with a smile, I went on deck.
The night was a clear dusk, with a great
plenty of shining stars, over which many small
clouds were driving swiftly; and the wind
85still continued to blow strong, though it had
not gained in force since sail had last been
shortened, and the sea was now running
steadily on the bow in regular heaps of dark
waters melting at their heads, so that the
motion of the barque, by being rhythmic, was
comparatively easy. I gained the weather
deck; and after a peep at the compass and a
glance at the indistinguishable face of the
figure at the wheel, I started off on the traditionary
pendulum walk of the sea-watch, to
and fro, to and fro, from the wheel to the
break of the poop, constantly directing looks
to windward or up aloft, and frequently at
Miss Temple, as she showed, seated as I had
left her, visible to me through the glass of the
skylight. It was out of the question that she
should pace the deck with me throughout that
long watch. The pouring wind came with an
edge of cold damp that made itself felt after
a brief term of exposure to it. Then, again,
it was not to be thought of that the sailors
should find the lady on deck throughout this
night watch, as though we were both in mortal
fear, and kept together to hearten each other.
Now that it had come to there being no head
to the ship, it was of vital importance that Miss
86Temple should remain as private as possible,
but little seen by the men. I had clear ideas
as to the extraordinary situation in which we
were placed; and as I glanced at her through
the skylight window, I made up my mind to
subdue her to my views, to conquer the insolence
of her spirit, even should it come to my
having to act in a manner that might be
deemed brutal, never to humour her by giving
her reasons, but to peremptorily insist in such
a fashion as to make her perceive that whilst
we were thus together, I was her master, and
she must instantly acquiesce in my decisions;
for unless this was to be managed, her temper,
her want of tact, her pettish character as that
of a person whose nature had been injured by
admiration and indulgence, might end in the
destruction of us both.
What a midnight watch was that! I was
sick at heart, and miserable with misgiving.
My distrust of the carpenter, a feeling that
had all along possessed me, was strong even to
a conviction that he was equal to the acting
of a hellish part, and that being free, and at
the head, so to speak, of a gang of men, of
whom one only—I mean Wetherly—seemed
worthy of confidence, he might be presently
87hatching some plot of deadly menace to Miss
Temple and me. I asked myself what form
could such a plot take? I knew not: I could
but forebode: I could only keep before me
the circumstance of a little ship afloat on a
wide sea without captain or mates, full to the
hatches with commodities of value, a handsome
fabric of herself, virtually in the possession of
an irresponsible body of men, into whose
keeping she had come through the merest
effect of fortune, without the least stroke of
rascality on their part. I say I had only to
consider this, and then to think of the character
of the crew as it had been represented
to me by Captain Braine, to forebode some
action on their part that might extinguish my
project of reaching Rio—with so much to
follow that I durst not give my mind to
speculating upon it.
Shocking as had been the suddenness and
the unexpectedness of the captain’s suicide, the
thing sat lightly as a horror upon my imagination,
so profoundly agitated was I by the
indeterminable fears that had been raised in
me by the few words the carpenter had let
fall. I could not be sure; but it seemed to
me, by the haze of light which hung about
the forecastle hatch, called the forescuttle, and
88by an occasional stirring of shadows amidst it,
as though to the movements of the men below,
or to figures coming on deck and descending
again, that all hands were awake forward.
There should have been nothing to particularly
disturb me in this suspicion, for enough lay
in the captain’s death to account for the men
keeping awake and talking; still, the belief
that the sailors were conversing in their gloomy
little sea parlour, with Lush’s growling tongue
sulkily active amongst them, greatly increased
my uneasiness.
I continued to pace the deck, keeping a
close eye upon the ship, with watchful regard
also of the compass, for every hour of this
sailing was bringing us by so many miles
nearer to the South American seaboard.
Shortly before two o’clock, on looking through
the skylight, I observed Miss Temple lying
back upon the cushion of the locker in a
sound sleep. Her hat was upon her knees,
her cheek was pillowed upon her arm; thus
she rested in sideways posture. Whilst I
stood looking at her, as at a picture of a
beautiful sleeping woman framed in the square
of the skylight, and touched with the soft
illumination of the oil-lamp swinging hard by
her couch, a man struck four bells on the
89forecastle, and a minute or two later the dark
figure of a seaman came along to leeward to
relieve the wheel. I waited a little, and then
stepped to the binnacle under pretence of
inspecting the card.
‘Are the watch below up forward?’ said I.
‘All hands are awake,’ he answered, and I
recognised him by his voice, though I could
not discern his features. He was a young
sailor named Forrest, a fellow I had often
taken notice of for the elastic suppleness of
his body, the peculiar swing of his walk, an
amazing agility aloft, and an air of mutinous
impudence in his manner of going about any
job he might be put to.
‘I suppose they have been talking about
the captain’s death?’ said I.
‘They’ve been talking of a many things,’
he responded with a sort of chuckle in his
voice, as though he had been drinking.
‘Is Mr. Lush among them?’
‘Oh, ay.’
‘Well, keep your luff,’ said I; ‘she’s a
couple of points off her course as it is.’
‘Her course for where?’ said the man.
‘For Rio,’ I answered.
He made no answer, and I resumed my
pacing of the planks.
CHAPTER XXXIII THE CARPENTER CALLS A COUNCIL
90
At four o’clock the carpenter came aft to
relieve me. He asked me in a short off-hand
way how the weather had been; and
the wide-awake note in his voice satisfied
me that whether or not he had slept during
his watch below, he had certainly not now
come fresh from his bunk or hammock.
When I had answered him, he went abruptly
to the compass, and I descended the poop
ladder and entered the cuddy.
Miss Temple was still asleep. It was
more like some issue of the sorcery of the
imagination than the reality to come out of
the windy dusk of the night and an association,
momentary it might be, with the carpenter,
to the spectacle of the slumbering
beautiful girl breathing deep and restfully,
with the gleam of her white teeth showing
through her parted lips, and the lashes of her
91closed lids resting in a shadow of surprising
loveliness upon her colourless cheeks. But
rest was imperative to me; there was not
another locker to use; and I would not leave
the girl alone. I lightly touched her hand;
she smiled, but slept on; I touched her again,
and she sprang erect with an affrighted air,
staring at me with the meaningless gaze of
the newly awakened.
‘Ah!’ she cried with a violent shudder,
‘I thought it was the dead captain who
touched me! How cold your hand is.’
‘I am going to my berth to seek some
rest,’ said I; ‘and would not leave you alone
here.’
‘Oh no!’ she exclaimed; ‘I will go with
you.’
‘You have been sleeping for above two
hours,’ said I. ‘I am very glad. Slumber
is strength; nay, it is life. You have been
safe, and you will now tell me that I was in
the right in entreating you to remain here.’
‘In commanding me, you mean,’ she
answered with a faint smile. ‘But how miserable
I was alone until I fell asleep—constantly
imagining that that door was being cautiously
opened’—another strong shudder swept
92through her while she motioned towards the
captain’s cabin, holding her face averted.
I unhooked the lantern belonging to my
berth, lighted the candle in it, and, taking
her by the hand, conducted her to the hatch.
When we had entered the steerage, I lifted
her hand to my lips in the old-fashioned
salute and said: ‘Miss Temple, if I appear to
command, it is with the hope of being useful
as a protector to a companion whose claims
upon me must needs deepen as we continue
together and as the outlook darkens.’
I held open her cabin door for her, gave
her my lantern; and then going to my own
berth, groped my way to the bunk, and was
speedily in a sound sleep.
It was eight o’clock by my watch when I
awoke. I at once sprang out of bed, and,
having carefully secreted the pistol I had
brought with me from the captain’s cabin, I
hastily sluiced my face with some salt water,
and stepped to Miss Temple’s cabin door, on
which I knocked. She answered me. I told
her that she would find me on deck. ‘It is
eight o’clock,’ I said, ‘and my turn to keep
watch has come round.’ With that I ascended
the steps. Wilkins was in the cuddy,
93as I must needs call the little living-room,
though, after the Indiaman’s saloon, it seemed
a big name to give to so small an interior. I
said: ‘The lady will be here shortly. Get
breakfast ready for us, d’ye hear? We will
eat it on deck, unless there is somebody to
keep my lookout whilst I come below for the
meal.’ He answered, civilly enough, that he
would carry it on deck to us on my letting
him know when we were ready for it.
I found the carpenter on the poop talking
to a couple of seamen; but on seeing me, the
two fellows went forward in a sort of sheepish
way. It was a fine morning, lively
with flying sunshine, and the seas were running
in foaming dark-blue hills, which shouldered
the reflection of the sun into incessant
flashings of fire as dazzling as the beams
darted down by the luminary himself betwixt
the edges of the streaming clouds. I sent a
swift look round; there was nothing in sight.
The barque was under the same canvas I had
left upon her when I went below; but my
first step carrying me to the compass, I perceived
that she was making a more southerly
course by two points than she had been
heading when I left the deck; and, indeed,
94when I directed my eyes aloft for a second
time, I perceived that the yards had been
slightly braced in, and that, in short, Mr.
Lush was making a fair wind of what was a
foul one for Rio. I was greatly startled, but
controlled my face, for the man’s eyes were
upon me.
‘I presume, Mr. Lush,’ said I, crossing
over to him and feigning a certain carelessness
of behaviour whilst I looked with a manner
of indifference past him at the weather
horizon, ‘that you are aware the barque is
needlessly off her course, seeing that she’ll
easily look up another two or two and a half
points?’
‘A ship’s course depends upon where she’s
a going,’ he answered, running his eyes over my
figure; ‘and nothen’s settled yet so far as we’re
consarned.’
‘Oho! Is it so, indeed!’ said I, after venting
myself in a short whistle. ‘What is the
objection to Rio, Mr. Lush?’
‘I’ll be calling the crew aft presently,’ he
exclaimed; ‘it’s a question for all hands, not
for me nor you only, sir.’
‘I trust,’ said I, my feigned air of carelessness
vanishing before the real consternation
95that was now active in me, ‘that the sailors
will not obstruct my earnest desire for the
lady’s sake, as well as for my own, to make
for Rio as promptly as possible. Miss Temple
and I have met with some cruel experiences,
and we are as badly off even now, aboard
this smart little barque, as we were in the
wreck from which you rescued us. In God’s
name, Mr. Lush, let there be no unreasonable
hindrance to our speedy arrival at a port
whence we may take shipping for home.’
‘I have said,’ he responded in his sulkiest
manner, ‘that it ain’t a question for one man
nor for two men, but for all hands.’
I witnessed stubbornness that was to be
easily developed into insolence strong in the
ruffian’s face, and bit my lip to silence my
tongue. After a short pause I said: ‘I observe
that the decks have not been washed
down.’
‘No; that’s right. They han’t been washed
down.’
‘When is the body of the captain to be
buried?’
‘He is buried,’ he answered; and then
went on, as though perceiving that some explanation
was necessary: ‘No good in keeping
96a human corpse aboard ship. ‘Tain’t lucky.
‘Tain’t lucky, even if so be as it’s the human
corpse of a good man; but when it comes to
the body of the likes of him‘—— He spat
over the rail. ‘He was rolled up in canvas
and dropped overboard two hours since.’
‘A dog’s funeral!’ said I, betwixt my
teeth.
‘A dog’s funeral’s all that the best sailor
must expect; the treatment of a dog when
he’s alive, and a mongrel’s burial when he’s
dead.’
‘Well, I’m here to relieve you,’ said I.
‘Wilkins will bring my breakfast on deck.’
‘All right,’ he answered. ‘Suppose we
call it nine o’clock for the council that’s to be
held?’
I turned from him, assenting with a gesture,
and walked aft, miserably sick at heart, to
receive Miss Temple, who at that moment
appeared in the companion way. She instantly
perceived by my face that there was something
gravely wrong with us, and fixed a look of
nervous passionate inquiry upon me. There
was no purpose to be served by concealing
my fears from her—fears which, shapeless as
they might now be, were, I did not question,
97to be converted presently into bitter convictions.
I took her hand and conducted her to
the skylight, where we were out of earshot of
the helmsman.
‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘that the death of
Captain Braine has thickened the problem of
this adventure for us.’
‘What has happened?’ she demanded.
‘When I went below at four o’clock this
morning,’ I replied, ‘the Lady Blanche was
looking up for the port of Rio as closely
as the wind permitted her. Since then, Mr.
Lush has taken it upon himself to alter the
vessel’s course, and we need but another point
or two of southing to be sailing straight away—down
the South Atlantic Ocean.’
‘But the ship is now being steered for
Rio?’
‘No.’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Why do you not order
the man to direct her according to your
wishes?’ And she sent one of her flashing
glances at the hairy face of the sailor who
grasped the spokes.
‘The crew are coming aft presently to
settle the question of our destination. I can
do nothing. If they have made up their
98minds to a course, they are not going to suffer
me to get in the road of it.’
‘But what course? What resolution are
they likely to form?’ she exclaimed, clasping
her hands with a gesture of despair, and gazing
forwards with an expression of terror at a
group of fellows who stood at the galley door
talking.
‘I know nothing, and can tell you nothing,’
I replied. ‘It is to signify another tax upon
our patience, and we must wait. Some destination
they are bound to hit upon; it will not
be Rio, I believe. We shall see. They cannot
do without me—that is, I alone am capable
of navigating the vessel—and in that may
lie our security. But one thing you must
help me to achieve, Miss Temple: I mean
a behaviour of coolness, good temper, and
tact. I believe the devil himself is lodged
in the hide of that round-backed brute of a
carpenter, and the crew may not be wanting
in some of the highest flavoured of his agreeable
qualities. Help me, then, to the most
inoffensive and patient of attitudes, and say
nothing yourself—nay, look nothing! for those
dark eyes of yours have a hot eloquence of
their own, and a man need not hear your rich
99voice to know what is passing in your
mind.’
She forced a calmness upon herself, and
spoke in a low voice: ‘If the crew insist upon
sailing the ship to some distant part, is there
nothing that we can do to induce them to
transfer us to another vessel, or to run into
the land close enough to set us ashore in any
town on the coast?’
‘First, let them come to a resolution.’
‘This is a shocking situation to be in!
Your old energy seems to be leaving you.
You give me dreadful news in a lifeless way,
and talk spiritlessly of suffering the crew to
do as they please.’ She said this, still preserving
her forced composure; but there was
ire in her gaze and temper and despair in her
respiration, in the twitching of the nostril, in
the curl of her lip, when she had spoken.
I looked at her steadily, but in silence,
weighing down upon her gaze, as it were,
with my own until her eyes fell. ‘Not spiritless
yet,’ said I. ‘Nor shall I suffer you to
make me so, Miss Temple.’
She hung her head, and beat with her
fingers upon her knuckles, as though she
needed some exercise of that sort to enable
100her to suppress her emotions or her tears.
Wilkins came under the skylight to ask if I
was ready for breakfast. I bade him bring it
to us; and he arrived with some coffee and
cold meat and biscuit. I could not induce
the girl to eat. Even when she took a sip of
coffee she scarcely seemed able to swallow it.
Her misery was wretched to see. Sometimes
she would start and send a wild sweeping look
round the horizon; often she would moan.
I tried to put some heart into her; but I could
find little to say, ignorant as I then was of
what the crew meant to do. Most of them
seemed to be in or about the galley. A few
stood in the doorway, and their behaviour
suggested that there were others inside to
whose utterance, whatever form it took, they
listened with attention, sometimes glancing aft
at us. Shortly before nine o’clock I said to
Miss Temple that the crew were coming aft at
that hour, and requested her to go to her own
cabin that she might be out of sight of them.
‘Cannot I remain on deck?’ she exclaimed.
‘My suspense will be a torment. You are
banishing me to an underground cell.’
‘You will withdraw to your cabin, if you
please, Miss Temple. We are here dealing
101with a crew of men who are now without a
head, and whose temper may grow lawless
whenever they shall realise that they are their
own masters.’
‘You will come to me the moment you are
at liberty, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Most assuredly.’
I accompanied her to the companion, and
watched her as she descended the steps. She
halted at the bottom of the ladder to look up
at me with eyes of appealing grief. How
close she had come to my heart I might not
have been able to successfully guess till that
moment. I longed to take her in my arms,
to entreat her forgiveness for any act or speech
of sternness or harshness, to soothe her with
all bright and comforting hopes that it was in
my power to utter. A step carried her out
of my sight, but for some minutes after, the
memory of her beautiful appealing eyes dominated
all other thoughts, and I could think of
nothing but her noble figure, the grief of her
colourless high-bred face, the suggestion I
found in her attitude of her yearning for my
presence and protection—profoundly touching
to me who loved her, spite of not knowing
that the motive of her longing was to be
102found in no other sentiment than that of her
fear.
Presently the carpenter came out of the
galley knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and
advanced slowly to the poop, followed by
most of the crew, who halted opposite the
cuddy front.
‘The cabin’ll be the place to talk in,’ said
he; ‘there’ll be no hearing of one another up
here. There’s Joe Wetherly’ll keep a lookout
whilst you and me are below.’
‘I am ready,’ I answered.
He called to Wetherly, who was standing
in the waist, forward of the others. The man
touched his cap to me as he ascended the
poop ladder, and looked at me meaningly
through the minute holes in which his eyes
lay deep buried. I entered the cuddy with
the carpenter, who turned round as he passed
through the door to sing out, ‘Step in,
lads.’ Nine fellows in all followed. Most of
them carried a sort of grinning, wondering
expression on their faces; but here
and there I took note of a determined
countenance.
‘Mr. Lush,’ I exclaimed, ‘the ordering of
this business is in your hands. I will leave
103you to settle whatever ceremonies we are to
pass through.’
‘Mr. Lush’ll take the cheer,’ said one of
the men.
The carpenter at once seated himself in
the captain’s chair at the after end of the
little table. The sailors sat down upon the
benches. Lush exclaimed: ‘Mr. Dugdale,
you sit alongside o’ me here. Mates, ease
yourselves down, and make room for the
gent.’
I took the place he indicated, and waited
with as resolved a face as I could screw my
features into for what was to follow. There
was a pause whilst the carpenter, rolling his
eyes over the seamen, seemed to be hunting
in his mind for words in which to express
himself. The men stared from him to me
with an occasional glance round, especially in
the direction of the tumbler-rack, at which
they would cast thirsty looks. In this brief
spell of silence I sought to interpret their
intentions from their postures; but there was
little to reassure me in their bearing. There
was a kind of defiance in it that instantly
made itself felt. They were clad for the most
part in shirts and duck or dungaree breeches;
104their breasts were bare, with the sight here
and there of some ink and gunpowder device
straggling amidst the hair; they leaned upon
their naked muscular arms or sat with them
folded looking at me or the carpenter. There
was no hint of such diffidence as one might
expect to find in forecastle hands occupying
the saloon or cabin of a ship.
‘We’ve been a-tarning over,’ began the
carpenter, speaking slowly and viewing me
out of the corners of his eyes, ‘the condition
we’re put in by the sooicide of Capt’n Braine.
All hands is agreed, saving one, who says that
he dorn’t much care how it goes.’
‘Who is that one?’ I asked.
‘Joe Wetherly,’ he answered.
I waited, but he seemed to require me to
question him.
‘You are all agreed, you say, Mr. Lush—upon
what?’
He coughed, thrust his fingers into his
neckcloth to ease his throat, and then said:
‘Well, now, I’ll tell ye exactly how it stands.
Wilkins there was next door to the capt’n’s
cabin when he told you of that matter of two
hundred thousand pound lying stowed away
in a South Sea island. He comes forward and
105tells us all about it.’ He paused, then said
with a tone of impatience: ‘Of course, ye
can guess now what we’ve settled on?’
‘Pray, explain,’ said I, understanding but
too thoroughly, and feeling the blood forsaking
my cheek.
‘Why,’ said the carpenter with a short
laugh, ‘what we’ve resolved on is to sail to
that there island and get the money.’
‘No good in leaving all that money to lie
there for the savages to dig up,’ exclaimed
one of the men.
‘Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘I am a stranger in
this ship, and have but one desire, and that
is, to leave her along with the young lady
who was my fellow-passenger aboard the
Indiaman. You will of course do what you
will with the vessel. The action of the crew
can make no part of my business. All that I
ask is that you will signal the first vessel we
fall in with, let her be heading as she will,
and tranship us.’
A growling ‘No!’ ran amongst the men.
The carpenter echoed it with a blow of his
fist upon the table. ‘No, sir! we can’t spare
you. It’ll be you, Mr. Dugdale, that’ll carry
us to that island.’
106My consternation was too visible to be
missed even by the ignorant eyes which were
bent upon me.
‘You’ll be treated fairly, sir,’ said one of
the men, with an air and tone of conciliation.
‘We’ve allowed for you being a gent as’ll be
carried away from the parts he wants to git
to, Mr. Lush and us men have talked it well
over, and the share of the money ye choose
to name is the share you shall have for the
time and trouble this bit of navigation’ll cost
you.’
A murmur of assent followed this speech,
several heads nodding so vehemently that
their hair danced about their eyes.
‘But, men,’ I cried, turning upon and
addressing them in a body, ‘you are surely
not going to persuade me that you believe in
this yarn of the captain?’
‘Don’t you?’ inquired the carpenter with
a sarcastic sneer.
‘It was the imagination of a madman,’
I continued—‘a crazy fancy, men! Surely
there is no sailor here but knew that the
captain was insane. Did not his actions, his
talk, his very looks, prove him mad? And
what more convincing proof of his insanity
107could you desire than the last act of his
life?’
Two or three of the fellows grumbled out
something, but I did not catch the words.
‘Mad, was he?’ exclaimed the carpenter
in a voice of coarse, morose sarcasm; ‘ye
didn’t think that when you stood out for a
share.’
‘How do you know,’ I cried, ‘that I stood
out for a share?’
‘By God, then,’ he roared, ‘we know
everything! Did ye or did ye not sign an
agreement for a share?’
‘I did,’ I answered, ‘but merely to humour
the man’s madness. I should have left the
ship at Rio.’
‘There’s no use in talking,’ he exclaimed,
smoothing down his voice a trifle; ‘the compact
between ye was overheard. Me and the
others here was to be got rid of at Rio. Then
a crew of Kanakas was to be shipped off
the Sandwich Islands. Then, with the gold
aboard hidden out of sight, you and him was
to ship fresh hands. Mad?’ he cried in an
indescribably sneering way; ‘no, no, that
worn’t do. Ye didn’t think him mad, then,
when you made him provide that if the law
108laid hold of him for a-running away with his
ship, you was to be guaranteed free o’ peril
by what you or him tarmed a hinstrument.
Ye didn’t think him mad then, and ye don’t
think him mad now.’
‘Wilkins,’ I exclaimed to the young fellow
who sat at the corner end of the table, ‘you
overheard that conversation, and your ears
were sharp enough to gather in every syllable
of it. Were they not sharp enough, my
lad, to judge by the tone of my voice that I
assented to the madman’s humour merely to
induce him to make for the near port of Rio,
that I and the lady might quickly get away
from this vessel?’
The veal-faced fellow stirred uneasily to
the many eyes which were turned upon him;
but he answered nevertheless with resolution
and emphasis: ‘You stipulated for tarms,
specially for a share, and you spoke as if you
was in airnest.’
‘Mr. Lush,’ I cried, ‘I am a gentleman.
Believe me, on my honour as one, when I
swear to you that I accepted the captain’s
story as a madman’s fabrication, and seemed
to agree with him only that I might get away
from his ship the sooner.’
109‘What was the dawcument you signed,
sir?’ inquired one of the sailors.
‘Ah, that’s it,’ cried another; ‘let’s see the
hinstrument, as Mr. Lush tarms it.’
I had them both in my pocket-book, intending
to preserve them as curiosities and
as illustrations of my adventure with Miss
Temple. I could not refuse to produce them,
nor would I stoop to a falsehood; but I was
sensible as I drew out the pocket-book, intently
watched by the seamen, that the mere
circumstance of my carrying the papers about
with me as though I deemed them too precious
to be laid aside in a drawer, told heavily
against the assurance I had made to the men.
The carpenter picked the documents up.
‘Who can read here?’ said he, looking
round. There was no reply. ‘Will you recite
’em, sir?’ he continued, turning his surly eyes
upon me.
‘There’s Joe as can read,’ broke in a voice.
‘Ay, call Joe,’ exclaimed another man.
This signified that I was not to be trusted.
They might suppose I would invent instead of
reading, and there was no man present able
to spell a word to disprove what I chose to
deliver. The lee lid of the skylight lay
110open. The carpenter roared through it for
Joe Wetherly, who promptly stepped below.
‘What is it?’ he asked, looking round
upon his mates.
‘Here, Joe,’ said the carpenter, ‘you’re
the one scholard aboard us. Tarn to, will ‘ee,
and let’s hear what’s wrote down upon these
papers.’
The man glanced at me with an expression
of sympathy and bashfulness. ‘I hope there’s
nothen private and agin your wish in this,
sir? ‘he exclaimed. ‘I’m for standin’ neutral
in this here job.’
‘Pray read,’ said I.
He did so, backing and filling in his
postures in true sailor fashion as he struggled
through the writing, reciting the words slowly,
with considerable pauses between, which furnished
his hearers with time to digest what he
delivered. He then put the papers down, but
with an air of astonishment, as I noticed with
grief and anxiety, as if having been before
incredulous of the captain’s story, he was
beginning to regard it as a fact now in the
face of such documentary evidence as he had
read.
‘All right, Joe; thank ye,’ said the carpenter
111gruffly; ‘you can go on deck agin.’
The man went up the ladder slowly, as though
lost in thought. ‘Lads,’ exclaimed Lush,
‘ye’ll agree with me there’s no need for further
arguefication after what ye’ve just heard.’
‘The money’s right enough, and we’ll git
it,’ said one of the men.
‘Where’s the chart of the island as Wilkins
said the captain talked about?’ inquired the
limber bold-faced young seaman with whom I
had spoken at the wheel when I found the
barque off her course.
All eyes were at once turned upon me.
‘You’ll find it in the drawer of the table of
the captain’s cabin,’ said I.
The fellow coolly entered the berth, and
presently returned with a handful of papers.
‘Which’ll it be, sir?’ he exclaimed, placing
them before me. I picked up the parchment
chart, and gave it to the carpenter, who spread
it out before him, and instantly all the men
came round to his chair, and stood in a heap
of shouldering figures mowing and mopping
over his shoulders to catch a view, tossing the
hair with jerks of their heads out of their
eyes, and breathing hard with excitement.
‘I suppose you’re capable of explaining
112the meaning of these here marks?’ exclaimed
the carpenter, pressing a shovel-shaped thumb
upon the outline of the island.
‘You shall have the yarn as the captain
gave it me,’ said I, speaking with a throat dry
with mortification and sickness at heart; for it
was only too certain now that my agreements
with the captain coupled with this chart had
hardened the men’s conviction into an immovable
resolution. They listened with breathless
interest as I told them that the barb of the
arrow indicated the situation of the buried
money; that the treasure lay hidden so many
paces away from the wash of the water of the
lagoon; that the blot in the centre of the
bight was meant to express a coral pillar that
served as a mark to obtain the bearings of
the gold by; and so on. I see their feverish
eyes as I write coming and going from my
face to the chart, and the various expressions
of exultation, eager determination, amazement,
and delight on the mob of countenances
over the carpenter’s shoulders.
‘You now have what the captain explained
to me,’ said I; ‘but he was a madman, men;
and I take God to witness that though this
113island may be real, the money is the coinage
of a diseased mind.’
‘Yet ye would not stir till you had made
him agree to give you a share,’ said the
carpenter. ‘Boys, back to your places whilst
I delivers the resolution we have all of us
made up our minds to.’
The sailors hurriedly resumed their seats.
The carpenter gazed slowly round, then addressed
me with his eyes in the corner of
their sockets whilst his face pointed straight
down the table.
‘We’re here without a capt’n,’ he began,
‘and though this barque ain’t ourn, we mean
to use her. We don’t intend no act of piracy.
When we’ve got the gold, we’ll deliver up the
ship and her cargo, which we shan’t meddle
with. We’re all of us working men, and the
money in that there island fairly distributed’ll
make all hands of us independent for life.
There’s no more inwolved than the job of
fetching it, and that’s to be easily managed.’
The men nodded emphatically. ‘You’re a
navigator, Mr. Dugdale, and we can’t do
without ye. There’s no good in talking of
shipping another man in your place, because,
d’ ye see, that ‘ud oblige us either to communicate
114with a passing vessel or to put into
some port, neither of which is to be hentertained,
seeing the nature of the secret which
is ourn, and which we mean to keep ourn.
We’re agreeable to con-sider any tarms ye
may think proper to propose. As has bin
said, the share ye name is the share ye’ll
have. Ye shall be capt’n, and treated as
capt’n. You and the lady shall live in this
here part of the ship without mollystation, as
the saying is; and ye’ll find us a perlite and
willing crew, who’ll stick to our side of the
compact as you stick to yourn. The money
ye’ll get by this job, gent as ye are, will repay
both you and the lady for loss o’ time and
for work done. This here barque knows how
to sail, and neither me nor you’ll spare her;
for we’re now in a hurry and this voyage can’t
end too quickly to please us all. Them’s our
tarms, which ye can put into writing if you
please, and we’ll write our marks agin it.
There must be no communicating with ships;
and ye’ve got to be honest!’ He said this with
a sudden frown, looking full at me. ‘Is that
your mind, men?’
There was a hurricane response of ‘Ay,
ay! That’s right; that’s right.’
115‘Give me a little while to consider,’ said I,
observing that the carpenter had come to an
end.
‘By when will we have your answer?’ he
demanded.
‘By noon.’
‘Agreed,’ he exclaimed. ‘Here’s your
two documents. I’ll take charge of this here
chart.’
A few minutes later I was alone.
CHAPTER XXXIV I ASSENT
116
I sat as the sailors had left me at that table,
lost in thought, bending all the energies of my
mind to full realisation of my situation, that
my judgment might soundly advise me. I
daresay I remained thus for above twenty
minutes as motionless as ever was the dead
figure that we had met with in the deck-house
of the wreck. Then slowly rising, I went to
one of the cabin windows and stood mechanically
staring at the piebald sky that would
come with a sweep, as the vessel rolled to
windward, to the throbbing line of the frothing
horizon; and thus I continued, still thinking,
weighing one consideration and then
another, forming resolutions which the next
effort of thought rendered helplessly idle, until
I had arrived at a determination; when, starting
from my deep and painful reverie, I
descended into the steerage and knocked on
117Miss Temple’s cabin door. She immediately
opened it.
‘At last!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,
what have you to tell me now?’
‘Let us go to the cabin,’ I answered; ‘we
shall be alone there. The gloom of these
quarters is horribly depressing.’
My manner caused her to regard me for a
moment or two with a feverish eagerness of
scrutiny; she then mounted the steps, and I
followed her.
‘I wish I had news to give that might
comfort you,’ said I, seating myself at her
side. ‘The men left me half an hour ago. I
have been thinking my hardest since, and will
tell you now how matters stand, and how I
believe I must act.’
She breathed quickly, but said nothing.
Her eyes devoured me, so passionate was her
curiosity and fear.
‘The captain’s conversation with me,’ I
began, ‘was, as you know, overheard by the
rogue Wilkins, who waits upon us. He must
have hearkened thirstily; not a syllable did he
lose, and every sentence he carried forward to
the crew. They are fully convinced of the
truth of the crazy story; they are firmly persuaded
118that there are some two hundred
thousand pounds’ worth of golden coin buried
in that South Sea island; they were also
made aware by that scoundrel listener that I
had insisted upon having an agreement signed
and witnessed; which of course confirmed
them in their opinion that I myself believe in
the captain’s story up to the hilt. Their demand,
then, is, that I should navigate the ship
to the island, that they may dig up the money
hidden in it.’
She listened with silent horror.
‘They laugh at my assurance that the
captain was mad,’ I went on, ‘and they see
nothing in his suicide to cause them to doubt
that his story is absolutely true.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘That I must have time to think, and will
give them an answer by noon.’
‘What do you think?’ she demanded,
searching my gaze with her proud eyes.
‘I see nothing for it but to undertake to
sail the ship to the South Pacific.’
‘Are you mad?’ she almost shrieked. ‘To
the South Pacific! Did you not say to them
that you will insist upon their stopping the
119first ship that passes, and putting you and me
on board of her?’
‘They are not to be reasoned with,’ I
answered gently; ‘the dream of this gold has
raised an appetite in them that might easily
convert them into wild beasts, if I refuse to
help them to satisfy their hunger. They will
not suffer communication with any passing
vessel; they will not permit me to make for
any port. Their proposal is that I shall be captain,
and have, with you, the exclusive use of
this end of the ship, and they promise me handsome
usage. But underlying the terms they
desire me to agree to is a menace that I should
be blind not to see. I must do what they want,
or what that villain Lush has contrived that
they shall want, or God alone knows what the
issue may be for you as well as for myself.’
She sat viewing me like one paralysed.
‘My intention,’ I went on, ‘is to inform
the carpenter at noon that I assent to the
wishes of the crew.’
She was about to speak; I held up my
hand.
‘I entreat you to let me have my way.
Do not reason. You can offer no remedy for
this situation saving that of haughty demand,
120which, unless you can back it, as a theory of
escape, by a gang of men capable of pistolling
the fellows forward, will be of no more use to
you or to me than a feather to a drowning
man. My resolution is, to consent to navigate
this vessel to that South Sea island. The
island may be an imaginary one; the crew’s
disappointment may force us into a hunt;
they will then certainly believe that the captain’s
story was the fancy of a madman, and
will ask me to carry them to some near port.
This will be the issue of the adventure, supposing
it is all smooth sailing till then. But
what may happen meanwhile? A storm
to cripple us, and force us to seek assistance?
The sea abounds in the unexpected. We must
wait upon fortune. Nothing shall tempt me
to endeavour to force her hand by any sort of
demeanour that is not one of tact, good temper,
and secret, iron-hard resolution to snatch
at the first chance that may come along.
Why, is not such a policy as this your due,
Miss Temple? Compared to what might
happen if I did not deal with these men as a
combustible not on any account whatever to
be approached with matter that could give
fire to them, this existence, this unendurable
121existence which we are now passing through
might be looked back upon as a veritable
paradise. I am one to twelve, and you have
no protector but me. Think of it! Bear with
my judgment then; help me by striving to
witness wisdom in my determination; and
above all keep up your heart, which is an
Englishwoman’s, whose pulse should grow
stronger as the road grows darker.’
She had put her hands to her face, and so
sat listening to me, slightly rocking herself.
Presently she looked up.
‘I wish I had the spirit you ask me to
show,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You may have
resolved rightly—but this long alienation from
home—the misery of this existence—the peril
we are in, which every day, which every hour,
seems to increase—oh, it is hard to bear! I
will endeavour to school myself—I will strive
to see with your eyes’—she broke off with a
sob.
‘All will come right,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is
entirely a question of waiting. Have you
patience? Yes—and your patience will keep
you hopeful. Trust to me and to my judgment.’
I took her hand in both mine and pressed
122it. She did not offer to withdraw it. Indeed,
it seemed as though she found comfort
in the clasp; her hard expression of consternation
softened, and her fine eyes took the
same air of appeal I had noticed in them
when she went below to her cabin.
‘There is yet the chance,’ I said, ‘of my
being able to persuade the crew to transfer
you to a passing ship. I might indeed,’ I
went on, warming up to the fancy, ‘insist
upon this as a part of my agreement with
them.’
She slightly shook her head and her glance
fell.
‘How long will it take us to reach this
island?’ she asked, keeping her gaze bent
down.
‘Ten or twelve weeks, perhaps.’
She bit her lip to enable her to speak
steadily, and said: ‘Supposing there is no
gold, what will be done?’
‘I cannot tell,’ I answered; ‘we may be
quite certain that there is no gold. It yet
remains to be seen whether even the poor
wretch’s island is real.’
‘If there should be no island, Mr. Dugdale?’
123‘Well, as I just now said, the men will at
first suppose me wrong in my navigation, and
oblige me to keep on hunting about for a bit.
But such a quest will not take long to tire
them, and they will probably ask me to carry
them on to the coast.’
‘To what part?’
‘Valparaiso, probably. That will be a
near port in those seas.’
‘At that rate,’ she exclaimed with an
expression of impatience and dismay, ‘we
shall be sailing about for five or six months
without the least opportunity of my getting
on shore, of my returning home, of my being
able to obtain a change of dress.’
‘Providing nothing happens. And even
assuming that you are forced to see this adventure
out to the bitter end, the worst that
befalls you is a disagreeably long divorce
from your home, together with such discomforts
as you should laugh at when you think
of them side by side with the tragedy that
this ramble is easily to be worked into.’
However, spite of her little effort to look
the difficulty in the face, she seemed stunned.
She would start sometimes whilst I talked to
her, and send a wild sweeping look round the
124cabin, as though she could not realise her
situation and sought to persuade herself that
she was in a dream. I was grieved for her
beyond words, yet I would not exhibit too
much sympathy either, lest I should unduly
accentuate the significance of our condition,
and make her suppose that I believed it
darker and more perilous than it really was.
She had been buoyed up with a hope of
escaping into another ship, or of shortly landing
at Rio, and sailing home from there; and
the disappointment coming on top of the perception
that our adventure, harsh and soul-subduing
as it had already been in some
particulars, was only in reality just beginning,
seemed to break her down. I did my utmost
to make light of the business: said that but
for my anxiety for her, I should enter upon
the affair with positive relish, accepting it as
a wild romance of the sea, which could
seldom happen to a man in his life, and
which he ought to live through and see out,
if only for the sake of the memory of a stirring
picturesque passage that at the longest
would yet be brief.
‘As to wearing-apparel,’ I said, ‘there are
needles and thread forward, and I don’t
125doubt that when you are put to it you will
be able to manage. And then, suppose this
story of the captain’s should prove true! suppose
we should actually find buried in the
spot he indicated a mass of gold which, when
equally divided amongst us, would yield every
man several thousands of pounds!’
She searched my face with her glowing
eyes. ‘You do not believe this?’ she
cried.
‘Certainly I do not,’ I answered. ‘I am
only supposing.’
‘I wish I could read your heart; I wish
I could be sure that your determination to
assent to the men’s wishes is not owing to
sympathy with their own ideas.’
I burst into a loud laugh. ‘Of how
many sins do you think me capable?’ I
exclaimed. ‘How many enormous follies am
I equal to? I believe you already secretly
regard me as a pirate. Oh, Miss Temple, no
man could ever feel ill-tempered in conversing
with you, say what you will. But you
are a little trying, though, now and again.
Why do you wish to read my heart? You
might discover sentiments which would render
me detestable to you.’
126‘I do not understand you,’ she exclaimed,
looking somewhat frightened.
‘Admiration for you, in a person whom
you dislike, would make you abhor him.’
‘Mr. Dugdale, is this a time for such feeble
small-talk as would scarcely be endurable
amidst safety and comfort? I should not be
so utterly unhappy as I am if I felt that my
mother knew where I was, that she was conscious
of all that has happened to me, and
that we should meet again.’
‘It will all come right,’ said I, looking at
my watch. ‘I must make ready now for
taking sights, and letting the carpenter know
the determination I have arrived at. Back
me, Miss Temple, in my efforts by the utmost
exertion of your tact. And now, come on
deck with me, will you? There is life in the
fresh and frothing scene outside, and you will
find courage in the mere sight of the wide
horizon, with thoughts of what lies behind it,
and how time will work all things to your
wishes.’
I entered the captain’s cabin to fetch a
sextant, and then, with Miss Temple, went on
deck. Lush was marching up and down the
weather side of the poop. The sailors were
127sprawling about forward in whatever shadowings
of the canvas they could find, most of
them smoking, their faces red as powder-flags
with the heat. Hot it was, with the sun
shining nearly over our mastheads, with a
sting like to some fierce bite in every flashing
launch of his radiance betwixt the wool-white
clouds blowing transversely athwart his path,
spite of the strong sweep of the wind as it
came splitting in long whistlings upon our
rigging from a little forward of the beam, the
rush of it feeling almost damp to the flesh to
the view of the foaming waters melting into
yeast out of the long blue lines of the Atlantic
surge. The barque, making a fair breeze of
it, was storming through the seas in noble
style, shouldering off vast masses of throbbing
white from her weather bow with a wake
twisting away astern of her of twice her beam
in width, a broad path of glittering, leaping,
blowing crystals and foam-flakes and creaming
eddies rising and falling for a mile astern into
the windy blue there, full of fire and snow
as it looked with the spume of breaking
waves and the splendour of the darting sunlight.
The carpenter came to a stand when I
128arrived. I went up to him at once, Miss
Temple at my side.
‘I have thought the matter over,’ I said,
‘and accept the men’s terms.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he answered, with a slow
smile breaking sulkily through his surly countenance.
‘If you care about a written hundertaking’——
‘No,’ I interrupted contemptuously; ‘my
agreement is based on yours. If you do not
hold piously to every article of it, I drop my
part.’
He viewed me with his head slightly on
one side, but without any appearance of resentment
at my peremptory tone. Coarse and
unlettered as the fellow was, he had discernment
enough to witness what he would regard
as sincerity of purpose in my very outspokenness.
‘All you’ve got to do,’ said he, ‘is to carry
us to that there island. You do your bit, and
you’ll have no occasion to grumble at us for
not doing ourn. But—you’ll do it. You
onderstand me, Mr. Dugdale? So long as
you’re honest, you’ll find us honest.’
The ugly significance he imparted to these
words by the look that accompanied them, I
129could not hope to express. Miss Temple, whose
hand was on my arm, shrank at my side. It
pleased me that she should have witnessed
that look and heard the words, for they would
go further to persuade her that the only
road to choose in this matter was the one
I had taken, than any amount of reasoning
on my part.
‘Your threats are perfectly indifferent to
me,’ I exclaimed, eyeing him coolly and fixedly.
‘I believe I know your character, and don’t
question your capacity to act up again to the
part your captain told me you had already
played.’
‘What was that?’ he growled, but with
no other change of face than such as temper
might produce. I seemed to find even in this
little thing that the captain had told me a lie
when he charged the fellow with murder, and
my mind felt easier on a sudden as to a conviction
of the truth of a matter less dark than
I had dared believe.
‘That is my business,’ I responded, preserving
my cool almost contemptuous manner.
‘You need be at no pains to threaten me.
You’ll achieve nothing by your forecastle
menaces. I have been a sailor in my time
130and quite know what you and such as you
are. If you or any of your mates disappoint
me in a single particular of the understanding
between us, I will throw this sextant,’ said I,
flourishing it under his nose, ‘overboard, and
you may grope your way round the Horn as
best you can. That agreement is this:’ I
elevated my forefinger. ‘First we are to have
the exclusive use of this end of the ship; you
alone coming aft to stand your watch.’ He
nodded. I erected another finger. ‘Next:
the captain’s cabin and the one adjoining are
to be occupied by this lady and myself.’ He
nodded again. I raised a third finger, thrusting
it close to his face. ‘Next: Wilkins continues
to wait upon us as heretofore; we are
to be fed with care and punctuality; it is distinctly
to be understood—and this you will
see to—that no liquor aboard is broached
outside a tot or two per man per day; for,’
said I, speaking with the most emphatic
deliberateness I could contrive, ‘if there
should be a single exhibition of drunkenness
amongst the crew, I shall pitch this sextant
overboard.’
‘I’ve got nothen to say agin that,’ he exclaimed,
speaking with something of sullen
131respect, as though impressed by my energy
and language.
‘Next,’ I proceeded, ‘I am to be captain,
and what I say must be law, and what I do
must be done.’
‘Saving this,’ said he, elevating two square
fingers in imitation of my gesture: ‘Fust, you
ain’t going to order us to speak a ship, and
next you ain’t going to get us to obey ye if
you should take it into your head to steer for
a port.’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘that is a part of my
agreement. Yet there is this to be said: it is
mere idle cruelty to carry this young lady
away round Cape Horn into the Pacific. She
is without any other wearing apparel than
what you see; she is destitute of almost every
convenience; her mother is in bad health, and
she wishes to return as speedily as possible,
that no news about us may reach England that
is not perfectly true. The crew, therefore,
will not object to speak a ship that we may
transfer this lady to her.’
‘No!’ he roared.
‘Her going will render me easy in my
mind as to her safety,’ I continued, ‘and I
132shall be able to serve you the better by knowing
that she is on her way home.’
‘No!’ he roared again; ‘she’s quite safe
aboard us. There must be no speaking with
ships. ‘Sides,’ he added, falling back a step
with a round flourish of his arm, ‘the lady
knows all about the gold and where it is and
how it’s to be come at.’
‘I can keep a secret, Mr. Lush,’ she exclaimed.
‘No,’ he repeated with a stamp of his foot;
‘sorry for it, lady, but here ye are, and here
ye must stop. I know what the crew ‘ud say.
I’m but expressing of their minds. Here ye
stop, lady. Mr. Dugdale, that was a part of
the bargain, as we onderstood it this marning.
Besides, lady,’ he added with an indescribable
leer, ‘ye wouldn’t care to be separated from
him now, would ‘ee?’
She moved so as to bring him between me
and her.
‘That will do, Mr. Lush,’ said I. ‘I am
acquainted with your wishes, and you know
now my resolution;’ and so saying, I walked
to a part of the deck where I could command
the sun, and went to work with my sextant,
133talking to Miss Temple in a low voice as I ogled
the luminary.
‘You see now how it is? If I refused my
assent to the crew’s wishes, they might have
sent me adrift in a boat—alone.’ I added
significantly.
‘He is a most dreadful creature. You
spoke to him bravely. But is that manner
what you call tact?’
‘Yes. The man must not imagine that I
am afraid of him. I would that I could choke
him with his own threats.’
‘I believe he would not shrink from murdering
both of us.’
‘They have made up their minds to
sail to the island, and they mean that I
shall carry them there. That resolve was
strong in them when they entered the cabin.
If I had refused—— But no matter! It may
yet come to my being able to induce them
to speak a ship.’
She made no response. There was a short
silence between us.
‘Make eight bells!’ I shouted, and the
chimes floated sharp upon the rushing wind
as I walked aft to the companion, Miss Temple
always at my side.
134I went straight to the captain’s cabin, and
there worked out my observation, and fixed
the correct position of the barque on the
chart. The course she was steering happened
to be the true direction she needed to take,
and there was nothing to mend in that way.
Miss Temple came to the table and watched
me as I made my calculations. When I had
come to an end, I asked her to remain where
she was, and returned with the chart on deck.
I beckoned to the carpenter, who was standing
at the break of the poop, as though waiting
for me to arrive that he might go forward
to his dinner.
‘Here’s our situation to-day,’ I exclaimed
pointing to the chart—it was a tract-chart of
the world—‘and here’s Cape Horn. Our
course then is as we’re steering.’
He stared at the chart with the blind and
stupid look of a man who cannot read, and
after a bit said: ‘Let’s see: here’s south, and
here’s west, ain’t it? And here’s Cape Horn,
as you say. Ay, our course is about right
for it, I allow.’
Whilst I rolled the chart up, I exclaimed:
‘It is inconvenient to be without a stand-by
for a third relief. You and I both want to
135dine at once, and there is nobody to keep a
lookout in the place of one of us. The man
who had charge this morning whilst we were
below appeared to be a very respectable
steady sailor. Suppose now, calling me captain,
and you chief officer, we appoint him,
with the sanction of the crew of course,
second mate.’
‘I dunno as I should do that,’ he answered;
‘best not have too many masters aboard. I’m
no chief officer, and there’ll be no convartin’
of Joe Wetherly into a second mate. We’re
all jest men. But I tell ‘ee what; if the
crew’s willing, Joe might be selected to relieve
you or me whensoever it comes about as the
pair of us wants to be below at the same time,
as now.’
‘Very well,’ I exclaimed, in the sort of
peremptory yet half-careless way which I had
made up my mind to employ when speaking
to this man; ‘work it out in your own fashion.
You can send him aft to relieve me when he’s
done dinner. I shall feel obliged by your
seeing that Wilkins turns to and prepares the
table for us at once.’
I was about to leave him, when he exclaimed:
‘One question, Mr. Dugdale. Nothen
136was said between us men and you as to the
share ye expect.’
‘Never mind about that now,’ I answered.
‘The agreement betwixt you and the
captain was for a third, I think,’ said he; ‘you
won’t expect that, now there’s a dozen of us
in the consarn?’
‘Oh no, oh no! Send Joe Wetherly aft
as soon as he’s done.’
‘It’s onderstood,’ said he, ‘that the lady
won’t take no share?’
‘Yes, you may understand that,’ I exclaimed.
‘As for my portion,’ I continued,
anxious to get rid of him, ‘give me what you
think I shall have fairly earned, and you’ll
satisfy me.’
‘Right!’ he exclaimed with alacrity, seeking
clumsily to conceal an emotion of sulky
exultation. ‘Just another word, Mr. Dugdale.
What sort of character might that ha’ been
which the captain gave me?’
‘Oh, damn it! go and send Joe Wetherly
aft,’ I cried, feigning a fit of temper; and I
marched away to the binnacle, leaving him to
trudge forward.
A few minutes later, on looking through
the skylight, I perceived Wilkins preparing
137the table. Presently, Wetherly arrived on
the poop. I went forward to meet him, that
I might be out of ear-shot of the fellow at
the wheel, and at once said: ‘Wetherly, how
is it with you in this truly infernal business?’
‘Truly infarnal it is, sir,’ he instantly replied;
‘but you’ve got the most raw-headed
lot of men to deal with that ever slung hammocks
in a ship’s forecastle. After they went
forward last night, they fell a-debating, all
hands of them, and settled for this ship to
fetch away that there gold, you commanding.
I was agin it till I see how hot they talked,
and then I thinks says I to myself, what do
it sinnify? Whether I’m bound away to the
Isle o’ France or to a loonatic’s island in the
South Pacific, is all the same. If there’s
money there, so much the better. If there
ain’t, it can’t be helped. One agin ten’s not
going to do much aboard a ship; so, when
I was asked for an opinion, I just says, I’m
neutral, lads. Do as ye like. I’ll be with
ye; but never none of ye go and ask if I’m
of ye.’
‘You don’t surely believe in Captain
Braine’s crazy fancy?’
‘Well, I own, Mr. Dugdale, that that
138there agreement ’twixt you and him a bit
nonplushed me this mornin’ after I had read
it out. It did look oncommonly like as
though you yourself genu-inely believed in
the yarn.’
He viewed me critically, though respectfully,
as he spoke, with his mere pins’-heads of
eyes.
‘Oh, man, I agreed—I pretended to fully
credit—wholly with the idea of coaxing the
madman to Rio, where the lady and myself
would have left the barque. Can’t you see
that, Wetherly?’
‘Why, yes,’ he answered quickly, though
speaking, nevertheless, as though his mind
was not quite made up. ‘It’s a bad job for
you and the lady, sir. The men are terribly
in airnest. They’ll allow no speaking with
ships, for fear of your blowing the gaff, as the
saying goes. I may tell you you’ve acted
wisely in falling in with their wishes. I may
be more open by and by. I’m with you
and the lady, sir; but I’ve got to be very careful.’
‘I thank you sincerely.’
I saw him restlessly glance aft at the helmsman,
139and took the hint. His goodwill was of
the utmost importance to me, and it would not
do to imperil my relations with him by any
sort of behaviour that might excite the suspicions
of the crew as to our intimacy.
CHAPTER XXXV MY CAPTAINCY
140
I am arrived now at a passage of this singular
adventure that will admit only of brief indications
of certain features of it. To write down
all the incidents of the time which followed
could but run me into several volumes of very
insipid matter. I own that when I look back
upon this experience, it offers itself as something
so amazing, something so beside the
most astonishing romantic incidents of sea-life
which my memory carries, that, though I was
the chief actor in it, I often at this hour find
myself pausing as in doubt of the actuality of
the events I have related and have yet to
narrate.
Sometimes I wonder whether I might not
have brought this kidnapping business—for
thus it may fairly be called so far as Miss
Temple and I were concerned—to a speedy
end by peremptory refusal to navigate the
141ship to Captain Braine’s island. But I have
only to close my eyes and recall the faces and
recollect the behaviour of the men who formed
that barque’s crew, to know better; I have
only to repeople that now timeworn canvas
with the countenances of those seamen, to
witness afresh the looks and bearing of the
carpenter, to recollect my defencelessness, the
helplessness of my companion, whose life and
whose more than life were absolutely dependent
upon my judgment; to think of the wild
greed raised in the men by their dream of
thousands, their resolution to get the money,
the sense of lawlessness that would increase
upon them with the growing perception of
their irresponsibility as a crew deprived of
their officers by no crime of their own: I have
only to recall all this along with my own
thoughts and fears and bitter nerve-sapping
anxieties, to understand that the course I
adopted was the only practicable one open to
me, and that what I did no other man situated
as I then was but must have also done. But
enough of this.
That afternoon, when the carpenter relieved
me at four o’clock, I went below and
superintended the preparation of the two
142cabins at the extremity of the cuddy for our
reception. The berth adjoining the captain’s
was a fresh, bright, airy little apartment, and
every convenience that Braine’s cabin yielded
was put into it for Miss Temple’s use. This
change of apartment seemed to tranquillise her
a bit. Such was her dislike and fear of our
steerage quarters, that I believe she would
have thought the deck-house of the wreck
endurable compared to them. Instead of
a little ‘tweendeck shrouded in gloom and
lumbered with cargo, we had the whole breezy,
sun-lit cuddy before us when we opened our
doors. The berths were also well lighted, with
something of taste in their equipment of panel,
bulkhead mouldings, and the like. I was very
careful to bring up Mr. Chicken’s pistol and
ammunition, and when I was alone with Miss
Temple, I said: ‘You are not afraid to handle
a firearm, I think?’
‘Oh dear, no.’
‘You shot very well, I remember, with
Mr. Colledge at a bottle. Who hit the bottle?’
‘I did.’
‘So I might have thought by your manner
of aiming at it. Your figure showed nobly,
Miss Temple, in your posture as markswoman.
143I remember the sparkle of your eyes
as you glanced along the barrel. I should not
have cared to be hated by you and in front of
you at that moment.’
‘I wish I had the courage you feign I
have,’ said she.
‘Well,’ I exclaimed, pulling the captain’s
pistol out of my breast, ‘here is a friend that
will do more than bark for you, if you should
find yourself in want of such help as it can
give. I have a double-barrelled concern of a
like build in the next room, so that between
us we are able to muster three muzzles;
artillery enough to fit us to stand a siege,
I can assure you, with the ammunition we
possess.’
She took the clumsy weapon in her small
delicate white hand and toyed with it, levelling
and examining it, and so forth. I bade her
mind, as it was loaded. She smiled, and going
to her bunk, hid the pistol between the mattress
and the bulkhead.
‘I shall certainly feel easier for having it,’
said she. ‘You will not always now be next
door, Mr. Dugdale. You will be for four hours
at a time on deck, when you keep your watch.’
‘Ay,’ said I; ‘but there is a skylight;
144and I’ll take care that the cabin lamp be kept
burning; and I have a keen ear, too, that
when I am away from you will not be blunted
by my thoughts always being here.’
My own cabin I found comfortable enough.
I was not so choice as to be above using what
I found in it. The unhappy captain had left
behind him sufficient clothes to provide me
with several changes; and a couple of his
coats fitted me very well—being made, I
suppose, to allow for a sailor’s underclothing
in cold weather—though I was much broader
in the shoulders than he had been. I overhauled
his papers, but found nothing of interest.
What I met with I carefully put away
in a drawer along with some money, and one
or two objects of some small value, for I
remembered that the unfortunate creature
had left a widow behind him, who might
be thankful for his poor effects, should the
little ship ever live to carry his goods and his
tragic story to a civilised place.
Wilkins waited upon us with punctuality
and civility. He would ask me what I wished
for breakfast and dinner and supper, bringing
little suggestions from the cook as to sea-pies
and ship-board hashes and currant dumplings
145and other heavy dishes, for the due digestion of
which a man needs to have bowels of brass and
the triple rows of the shark’s fangs. Indeed,
the Lady Blanche’s larder was a poor one, and
the genius of the first cook in the world must
have come to a halt in the face of such a
Mother Hubbard of a cupboard. Aft, there
was little more to eat than the forecastle stores:
salt beef and salt pork, peas, currants for duff
days, biscuit, coffee and tea, and a few other
items. However, the dead captain had laid in
a good stock of bottled beer. There were also
a few gallons of brandy and gin, both of them
a very good spirit; and the forecastle stores,
supplemented by cheese and hams and some
tins of preserved stuff bearing the name of soup
and bouilli—pronounced by sailors soup and
bully, or soap and bullion—supplied us with
dishes enough to enable us to support life
and even health, helped out as they were by
occasional little relishes from the cook, feeble
attempts indeed, and briny to a degree, yet in
their way welcome to people who were as
good as beggars in food, and without choice.
Lush faithfully kept to his end of the
ship. He never offered to enter the cabin
except to my invitation, when perhaps I
146would have something in navigation to tell
him about. He seemed anxious to keep us at
a distance, and picked up the ship’s routine,
when his watch came round, as I let it fall,
with an air of morose reserve. I made
several efforts with an assumption of cheerfulness
and heartiness of manner to break
through his sullenness, with the dream of
finding something like a human being of sensibilities
behind it, whom I should be able to
influence into getting the crew to consent to
speak a passing ship, that Miss Temple might
be transferred to her; but he was like a
hedgehog; his quills regularly rose to my
least approach. He would watch me with a
sulky, cursing expression in his eye, or view
me with a sour, askant regard, and to my
civillest speech respond in some ragged,
scurvy sentence.
But I did not play an obliging part with
him very long. Having come to the conclusion
that he was a ruffian of immovable
qualities, I recurred to my earlier behaviour,
addressed him only to give him instructions
in a peremptory manner, or to point out the
ship’s place on the chart; so, as you will suppose,
very little passed between us; yet my
147putting on the airs of a captain and treating
him as the mere forecastle hand which he
claimed to be, influenced his bearing, and
rendered him even respectful.
Nevertheless, I knew that he and his
mates never had their eyes off me, so to
speak; that, having learnt the course to Cape
Horn was so-and-so, the compass was watched
with restless assiduity, every man as he was
relieved at the wheel reporting the direction
of the ship’s head to his companions forward,
and how she had been steering during his
trick; that my behaviour on deck was critically
followed by eyes in the fore-part of the
ship; that I could never give an order to trim
sail during my watch but that it was duly
reported to Lush, and weighed and considered
by the crew in the frequent councils they
held in the caboose. All this I was secretly
informed of by Wetherly.
Yet I had nothing to complain of in the
behaviour of the men. They sprang to my
bidding, and their ‘Ay, ay, sirs,’ and responses
to my orders had as lively and hearty a ring
as anyone could hope to hear in the mouth of a
crew. They sang out briskly when they pulled
and hauled, with enjoyment of the sound of
148their own voices, and a marked willingness
in their demeanour to contribute their
utmost to the navigation of the vessel. This,
indeed, was to be expected. It was rather a
Jack’s jaunt now with them, than a voyage;
they were sailing, as they believed, to an island
full of gold; their fortunes were assured; they
gazed into a future radiant with visions of
dancing, drinking, marine jinks of all sorts;
they knew that the fulfilment of their fine
lookout must depend upon their willingness
to work the ship now, so that everything they
did they did without a growl; without the
least hint of the mutinous disposition that
would have shown strong and deadly in them,
had their wishes been delayed or obstructed.
But outside the actual, essential routine of
the ship, nothing was done. The decks were
washed down at very long intervals only; there
was no sail-making or repairing; the spunyarn
winch was mute; the chafing gear was
left to rot off as it would; the carpenter indeed
saw to the rigging, took care that everything
should be sound, for neither he nor his
mates had a mind to lose a mast. But there
was very little of sweeping or polishing, of
swabbing or cleaning.
149The rum was kept down in the steerage;
every day Wilkins drew as much as sufficed
to furnish the men with two glasses apiece.
After drawing the stuff, he regularly presented
himself with it to Lush or me, according as
the one or the other of us was on deck, that
it might be seen he had drawn the allowance
only. The men seemed fully satisfied. There
was never any demand for more grog than
what was given to them, and I do not recall
a single instance of intoxication: which I
attributed to my determined and oft-repeated
declaration that should there be any exhibition
of drunkenness on board the barque, I
would abandon my undertaking, and leave
the carpenter to navigate her. Dread of the
consequences of drink amongst a mob of such
ungoverned men as those fellows, rendered
me extraordinarily impressive and emphatic
in this threat; and I knew that the carpenter
was convinced in his own mind that I would
prove as good as my word. Indeed, I had
only to look at Miss Temple to shrink from
the mere thought of drunkenness amongst the
sailors. All other risks that might attend a
drinking bout forward were as naught compared
to the peril she would stand in. The
150least insult offered her I should resent with
the muzzle of my pistol: and if it ever came
to that, then God alone could foresee the
character of the tragedy that must follow.
But, as I have said, they showed themselves
satisfied with their two glasses a day.
The sense of festivity never carried them
further than an occasional dance on the forecastle
head of a fine dog watch, when they
would diversify their caper-cutting with
songs and yarns—all as harmless as child’s
play, so unsuggestive of the errand that we
were upon, so dumb as indications of the
smouldering fires which were to be blown
into a blaze by want of judgment on my part,
that any one viewing us from the deck of a
ship close at hand would have supposed the
Lady Blanche the very peacefullest of traders,
worked by the happiest and most liberally
paid of crews, and bound on a voyage that
was scarcely more than one of pleasure from
port to port.
I was as eager as any man aboard to make
an end of the voyage—to arrive, at all events,
in the South Sea, where, let the problem of
the island prove what it might, we should
have come to the end of our expectations,
151and be able to see our way to the near
future, that might signify a return home for
me and Miss Temple; and, consequently, I
never spared the barque’s canvas, but, on the
contrary, would hold on every rag to the
very last, leaving the white clipper hull to
sweep through it at the pace of a comet.
The carpenter used the little ship in the same
way, and between us both, our runs in the
twenty-four hours would again and again rise
to figures that might have been deemed
almost miraculous in those days of round
bows and kettle bottoms, of apple sides, and
a beam but a third less than the length. To
be sure, when I was at sea professionally, I
was never in a position to give an order,
nor were the midshipmen, of whom I was
one, regarded as much better than inconvenient
ornaments, though we were well
grounded in navigation; yet this command
that had been forced upon me caused me no
uneasiness; I would find myself walking the
weather side of the poop as though I had
been master of a ship for years; I knew, or
thought I knew, exactly what to do, and the
men sprang to my orders, and the little ship
could not have been managed better had she
152been handsomely officered by men grown
grey in the profession, instead of commanded
by a young fellow who had only passed two
years at sea a long while earlier, whose chief
mate was a surly and sinister old rascal,
so illiterate as to be unable to read his own
name when written by another, and as incapable
of handling a sextant as of expressing
himself in correct English.
It came into my head once that we might
run short of fresh water before we should
arrive at that spot on the chart where the
captain’s gold was supposed to be buried, and
I earnestly hoped that this might happen,
since a threat of thirst must infallibly drive
us for help to the first port we could manage
to reach. I asked the carpenter if he knew
what stock of water there was aboard. He
said no, but promised to find out, and later in
the day came to tell me that there were so
many casks, making in all so many gallons—I
cannot recollect the figures. To satisfy myself,
I went into the hold with him, and discovered
that he was right, and then entered
into a calculation, which, to my secret mortification
and disappointment, expressed a
sufficient quantity of water aboard to last all
153hands of us at a liberal supply per diem for at
least six months.
Now that I had assured myself as to the
posture of the crew, and was profoundly
satisfied in my own mind that their consuming
eagerness to arrive at the island would guarantee
a uniformly proper behaviour in them,
unless they addressed themselves to the rum
casks, or unless I gave them cause to turn
upon me, I had no misgiving in suffering Miss
Temple to be seen by them. She was therefore
constantly with me on deck when my
lookout came round, and all the hours I could
spare from sleep I dedicated to her society;
so that it would be impossible to imagine any
young unmarried couple passing the time in
an association more intimate and incessant.
At the beginning of this run to the South
Pacific she showed a spirit that afterwards
temporarily failed her. It was two days after
I had consented to navigate the vessel that I
observed a certain air of determination in her,
as though she had been earnestly contemplating
our situation, and had formed her resolution
to encounter what might come with courage
and patience. Then, after awhile, her
pluck seemed to fail her again; I would find
154her sitting motionless in the cabin with her
eyes fixed on the deck, and an expression of
misery in her face, as though her heart were
broken. I could not induce her to eat;
though, God knows, there was little or nothing
to tempt her with. She could not sleep, she
told me; and the glow faded out of her deep
and beautiful eyes. Pale she always was, but
now her face took a character of haggardness,
which her whiteness, that was a loveliness in
her when in health, accentuated to a degree
that was presently shocking to me. When on
deck, she would take my arm and walk listlessly,
almost lifelessly, by my side, briefly
replying to me in low tones, which trembled
with excess of grief.
Secretly loving her as I did, though not as
yet had a syllable, nay, as I believe, had a look
of my passion escaped me, I began to dread
the influence of her misery upon my behaviour
to the men. She was a constant appeal to
me, so to speak, to call the fellows aft, and tell
them that the girl was pining her heart away,
that she must be put ashore or conveyed
aboard another ship this side Cape Horn,
though it came to our backing our maintopsail
to wait for one, or that I would throw up
155my command of the vessel and refuse to sail
her another mile. I say I lived in mortal
fear of my being forced into this by sentiment
and sympathy; for I was advised by every
secret instinct, by every glance I levelled at
the crew, by every look I directed at the
carpenter, that the certain issue of such a
resolution as that must involve my life!
I do not exaggerate in this; the nimbleness
and sleekness of the crew were the
qualities of the tiger; the ferocity of the wild
beast was in them too, and for the girl’s sake
I recoiled in terror from the mere fancy of
arousing their passions. How they might
serve me if I showed myself stubborn in proposals
which they declined to accept, I could
not foresee; they might send me adrift in a
boat; they might more mercifully knock me
over the head in the dark, and toss what their
weapons left of me overboard. I was unalterably
convinced, at all events, that if I ceased
to be of use to them, then, as the possessor of
the secret of the island, I should be made
away with. But Miss Temple they would
keep with them! Of that I had no shadow of
a doubt either; and hence I say I was in
terror lest the spectacle of her misery should
156impel me to some act that, even whilst it was
doing, my reason would pronounce madness.
I said everything I could imagine that I
thought might reassure her, and one afternoon
spent two hours in earnest talk with her. I
told her that her grief was influencing me,
and that it might come to my not being able to
control myself in my relations with the crew;
and I went on to point out what must follow
if I suffered my sorrow for her to betray me
into any other attitude towards the men than
that I now wore. I had never been very
candid in this way with her before, not
choosing to excite her alarm and distress, and
now I succeeded in thoroughly frightening her.
It was enough that I should indicate the probability
of her being left alone among the crew
to fill her with horror. I need not give you
the substance of my talk with her. So much
remains to be told that I can only refer to it.
But it achieved the end I had hoped to
witness.
When next day came, I found some spirit
in her voice and manner. Whilst we sat at
breakfast alone, as we invariably were whether
in the cuddy or on deck, she exclaimed, viewing
me with an earnestness which there was
157nothing in the faint smile that accompanied it
to diminish:
‘I have taken your lecture to heart, Mr.
Dugdale, and I mean to reform. I have
shown myself a sad coward; but you shall
have no further reason to complain of me for
that. I am ashamed of myself. I wonder
that I have confidence enough to look at you
when I compare my behaviour with yours.
You have thought only of me, and I have
thought only of myself; and that is the difference
between us.’
‘It puts a new pulse into my heart to
hear you talk so,’ said I. ‘I want to conduct
you home to your mother’s side out of this
wild adventure, with the same beauty and
health that you brought away from England
with you. It grieved me to the soul to see
you refusing food, to watch your face growing
hollow, to hear of your sleepless nights, and
to witness in your eyes the misery that was
consuming you. Pray keep this steadfastly
in mind—that every day shortens our run to
the South Pacific, and that every day this
horrible experience is lessened by twenty-four
hours. Whether there be gold in the island
or not, whether the island have existence or
158not, the crew must still be dependent upon
me to carry them to a port, and the port that
is good for them will be good for us; for it
will be strange if from it we are unable to
proceed straight home. All along I have said
it is but a question of patience and waiting,
and God alone can tell how grateful I shall be
to you if you will enable me to play the part
that I know must be played if our safety is to
be worth a rushlight.’
From this time she showed herself a
thoroughly resolved woman. She ceased to
tease me with regrets, to distress me with
inquiries which I could not answer, to imply
by her silence or her sighs or looks of reproach
that I had it in my power by some
other sort of policy than what I was pursuing,
to get her safely away out of the barque.
With this new mind in her came a subtle but
appreciable change in her manner towards
me. Heretofore her behaviour had been uniformly
haunted by some small flavour more
or less defined of her treatment of me, and
indeed of all others, saving Mr. Colledge,
aboard the Indiaman. She had suggested,
though perhaps without intending it, a sort of
condescension in our quiet hours, with a deal
159of haughtiness and almost contemptuous command
in moments when she was wrought up
by alarm and despair. I now found a kind of
yielding in her, a compliance, a complaisance
that was almost tender, a subdued form of
expression, no matter what the mood might
be which our conversation happened to excite
in her. At times I would observe her watching
me with an expression of sweetness in
her fine eyes, though these sudden discoveries
never betrayed her into the least air of confusion
or embarrassment upon which I might
found a hope that I was slowly making my
way to her heart.
However, I consoled myself by thinking
that our situation hung in too black a shadow
over her mind to enable her to guess at what
might be going on in it. Besides, never a
word had I let fall that she could construe
into a revelation of my passion for her. Had
I loved her a thousandfold more than I did,
my honour must have held my emotions
dumb. It was not only that my pride determined
me to keep silent until I might have
good reason to believe that my love would
not be declined by this high and mighty
young lady of the Countess Ida, with hidden
160wonder at my impertinence in offering it; I
also was sensible that I should be acting the
meanest part in the world to let her guess my
feelings—by my language, at least; my face
I might not be always able to control—whilst
she continued in this miserable condition,
utterly dependent upon me for protection,
and too helpless to avow any resentment,
which she would be desperately quick to express
and let me feel under other circumstances.
We should be entering the bitter climate
of the Horn presently, and she was without
warm apparel. Her dress, as you know, was
the light tropical costume in which she had
attired herself to visit the corvette. What
was to be done?
‘You cannot face the weather of the Horn
in that garb,’ said I on one occasion, lightly
glancing at her dress, to which her noble and
faultless figure communicated a grace that
the wear and tear and soiling of the many
days she had worn it could not rob it of.
‘Needs must, you know, when Old Nick
drives. There is but one expedient; I hope
you will not make a grimace at it.’
‘Tell it to me?’
161‘There is a good, warm, long pilot coat
in my cabin. I will borrow needles and
thread, and you must go to work to make it
fit you.’
She laughed with a slight blush. ‘I fear
I shall not be able to manage it.’
‘Try. If you fail, fifty to one but that
there is some man forward who will contrive
it for you. Most sailors can sew and cut out
after a fashion. But I would rather you
should try your hand at it alone. If I employ
a fellow forward he will have to come aft and
measure you, and so on; all of which I don’t
want.’
‘Nor I,’ she cried eagerly. ‘I will try the
coat on now, Mr. Dugdale. I daresay I shall
be able to fashion it into some sort of jacket,’
she added with another laugh that trembled
with a sigh.
I procured the coat, and helped her to
put it on. It had been built for an overcoat,
and designed to wrap up more than the narrow
shoulders for which it had been fashioned,
and it buttoned easily over the girl’s swelling
figure.
‘Come, we shan’t want a tailor after all,’
162said I, backing a step to admire her in this
new, queer apparel.
‘It will keep me warm,’ said she, turning
about to take a view of herself.
‘And now,’ said I, ‘for a hat. That
elegant straw of yours will not do for Cape
Horn.’
I overhauled the captain’s wardrobe, and
unearthed three hats of different kinds—one
of them a wideawake; another, a cap of some
kind of skin, very good to keep a night-watch
in in dirty weather; and the third, an old-fashioned
tarpaulin glazed hat—the sire of
the sou’-wester of our own times, though, to
be sure, sou’-wester caps, as they were called,
were in use at the beginning of the century.
This example of head-gear I returned to the
locker in which I had found it, but the other
two Miss Temple thought she could make
serviceable. She tried them on, stealing
glances almost coquettish at me as she peered
at herself in the looking-glass which I brought
from her cabin.
There had been a time when nothing, I
am persuaded, could have induced her to
touch those hats. She would have shrunk
from them with the aversion and disgust she
163had exhibited at Captain Braine’s suggestions
about the furnishing of her cabin in the steerage.
Assuredly, old ocean was working a
mighty change in her character. Life real,
stern, uncompromising, was busy with her;
and just as Byron says of his shipwrecked
people, that the mothers of them would not
have known their own sons, so was I assured
of my shipmate Louise that if it pleased God
we should escape from the perils of this
adventure, she would emerge a changed
woman in every characteristic that had been
displeasing in her before.
CHAPTER XXXVI I CONVERSE WITH WETHERLY
164
Not to dwell too long on a detail of insignificance,
it will suffice to say that by dint of
rummaging the wardrobes of Captain Braine
and Mr. Chicken I obtained several useful
articles, and Miss Temple went to work to
convert them into wearing-apparel for herself,
with the help of a pair of scissors which I
borrowed from the carpenter, and needles and
thread procured from amongst the men by
Wetherly. The occupation was useful to
her in other ways; it killed the tedious, the
insufferably tedious time, and it gave her
something to think of, and even something to
look forward to, so blank had been the hours.
I remember coming out of my cabin after
a spell of sleep to take sights shortly before
noon, and finding her seated at the table with
some flannel or fine blanket stuff before her,
at which she was stitching—ripped up and
165violated vestments of either Braine or
Chicken, but brand-new, or she would scarcely
have meddled with them. She received me
with a smile and a few words, and then went
on sewing with an air as of gratification in
her that I should have found her at work.
I halted, and stood looking on, feigning
to watch her busy fingers, whilst in reality I
gazed at her face with a lover’s delight. It
was hard to believe that what was passing
was something more than a dream, astonishingly
vivid and logical. Again and again,
when in the company of this girl, a sense of
the unreality of our association had possessed
me to such a degree at times that had the
feeling continued, I might honestly have
feared for my head. But never before this
moment had that sense been so strong upon
me. I forgot her beauty in my wonder. It
was sheer bewilderment to recall her as she
was on board the Indiaman; her haughtiness,
her disdain, her contemptuous insensibility to
all presences save that of my Lord Sandown’s
son, the cold glance of scornful surprise that
would instantly cause me to avert mine—to
recall this and how much more? and behold
her now pensively bending her lovely head
166and face of high-bred charms over that sordid
need of rough sailor’s clothes, occasionally
stealing a peep at me of mingled sweetness
and a sort of wistful amusement, as though
she grieved while she smiled at the necessity
that had brought her to such a pass. Yet
there was no repining; if she sighed, it was
under her breath; forced as her light air of
cheerfulness might be, it proved a growing
resolution of spirit, a development of heroic
forces, latent in her till recently.
Secretly, however, I was worried by keen
anxiety. What was to be the issue of this
voyage? I merely feigned a manner of confidence
when talking with her about the result
of this amazing ramble, as I chose to figure
it. In reality, I could not think of the time
when we should have arrived upon the spot
where the dead captain had declared his
island to be without dread. Suppose there
were no island! What next step would the
men take? The disappointment that must
follow their long dream of gold might determine
them upon plundering the barque—put
them upon some wild scheme of converting
her and her cargo into money. Or suppose—though
I never seriously considered the
167matter thus—suppose, I would ask myself,
that the island proved real, that the treasure
proved real, that the men should dig and
actually find the gold! What then? Was
I to conceive that a body of ignorant, reckless,
lawless sailors, led by a man who was at
heart the completest imaginable copy of a
sea-villain, would peaceably divide the treasure
amongst them, pay me over my share—which,
God knows, I should have been willing to
attach to Mr. Lush’s feet on condition of the
others throwing him overboard—and suffer
me to quietly navigate the barque to an adjacent
port, conscious that I owed them a bitter
grudge for the outrage they had committed
in forcing me and the lady to accompany
them?
At long intervals I would exchange a few
sentences with Joe Wetherly. Unfortunately,
he was in the carpenter’s watch, and my
opportunities, therefore, for speaking with
him were few. It was only now and again,
when he was required to keep a lookout for
Lush or myself, that I contrived to gather
what was going forward amongst the men by
engaging him in a brief chat before he quitted
the poop. I was so sensible of being keenly
168observed by all hands, that I was obliged to
exercise the utmost caution in speaking to
this man. On the poop there was always the
fellow at the helm to observe me; and the
quarter-deck was within the easy reach of men
stirring about the galley, or leaving or
entering the forecastle.
However, it happened one dog-watch that
Wetherly came aft instead of the carpenter
to relieve me. Mr. Lush, he told me, felt
unwell, and had asked him to stand his watch
from eight to twelve. It was a clear night,
but dark, the south-east trade-wind strong off
the port beam, and the weather dry and cold,
with a frosty glitter in the trembling of the
stars which enriched the heavens with such a
multitude of white and green lights that the
firmament seemed to hover over our mastheads
like some vast sheet of black velvet
gloriously spangled with brilliants and
emeralds and dust of diamonds and tender
miracles of delicate prisms.
Miss Temple had left me some twenty
minutes or so, and was now in the cabin,
seated at the table under the lamp, with a
pencil in her hand, with which she drew outlines
upon a sheet of paper with an air of
169profound absent-mindedness. She wore over
her dress a knitted waistcoat that had belonged
to the captain; it stretched to her figure, and
it was already a need even in the day-time
with the sun shining brightly, for we were
penetrating well to the southwards, and every
score of miles which the nimble keel of the
barque could measure made a sensible difference
in the temperature of even the shelter
in the cabin. It was too dark to distinguish
Wetherly until he was close. On hearing
that he was to keep the deck until twelve, I
determined to have a long chat with him, to
get with some thoroughness at his views,
which, to a certain extent, I had found a bit
puzzling, and to gather what information I
could from him touching the behaviour I
might expect in the crew if there should be
no gold, or, which was the same, no island.
The fellow who had come to the wheel
at eight bells was Forrest, the supple, piratic-looking
young sailor, whose walk, as he rolled
along the lee-deck, his figure swinging against
the stars over the rail, had told me who he
was without need of my going to the binnacle
to make sure. Whilst Wetherly talked about
the carpenter feeling unwell, I drew him aft,
170that we might be within earshot of Forrest,
and said, as I turned to the companion hatch:
‘I’ll bring my pipe on deck, Wetherly, for a
smoke after I’ve had a bite below. I wish to
keep an eye upon the weather till two bells.
Those green stars to wind’ard may signify
more than a mere atmospheric effect.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered in a voice that
made me see that he took my words in their
most literal meaning.
I remained below until half-past eight,
talking with Miss Temple, eating a little
supper, and so on. I then fetched my pipe,
and told her that I should be down again at
nine, and that I did not ask her to accompany
me, as I wished to have a talk with Wetherly.
She fixed her dark eyes upon me with an
expression of inquiry, but asked no questions.
There had been a time when she would have
opened the full battery of her alarm and
anxiety upon me, but silence was now become
a habit with her. It was her confession of
faith in my judgment, an admission that she
expected no other information than such as I
chose to give her. I cannot express how this
new behaviour was emphasised by the eloquence
of her beauty, in which I could witness
171the curiosity and the apprehension which she
had disciplined her tongue to suppress.
I left her, and went on deck. I first
walked to the binnacle, into which I peered,
and then in the sheen of it gazed very
earnestly to windward and around, as though
I was a little uneasy. The floating figure of
Forrest swayed at the wheel, and I observed
that he cast several glances to windward also.
Muttering to myself, as though thinking aloud,
‘Those green stars show uncommonly bright!’
I went abruptly to the break of the poop,
where the dark form of Wetherly was pacing,
as though my mind were full of the weather.
‘What’s wrong with them stars, sir, d’ye
think?’ said he.
‘Oh, nothing in the world,’ I answered.
‘They are very honest trade-wind stars. I
wanted an excuse for a chat, Wetherly. Forrest
has the ears of a prairie hunter. I’m not
here to talk to you about the weather. You
are the only man on board in whom I can
confide. As we approach the Horn, my
anxieties gain upon me. How is this voyage
to end? By this time you pretty well understand
the disposition of the crew. If there
should be no island, what then, Wetherly?’
172I noticed a cautious pause in him.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘I’m heartily
consarned for you, and for the lady too, and
I may say particularly for the lady, who
seems to me to be a born princess, a sight too
good for such quarters as them’—he pointed
to the skylight with a shadowy hand—‘with
naught but a dead man’s clothes to keep her
warm. If I could be of sarvice to ye, I would;
but I’ve got to be as careful as you. Mr.
Lush has such a hold upon the minds of the
crew that there’s nothen he couldn’t get ’em
to do, I believe; and if he should come to
suspect that there’s anything ’twixt you and
me, any sort of confidence that aint direct
in the interests of the fo’c’sle, it ‘ud go
as hard with me as I may tell ‘ee it certainly
would with you if you was to play ’em
false.’
This speech he delivered in a low key,
with frequent glances aft and at the quarter-deck
below. I listened with patience, though
he told me nothing that I was not fully aware
of.
‘But what course, Wetherly, do you think
these men will adopt if on our arrival at the
latitude and longitude named by that unhappy
173madman as the spot where his treasure lies,
there should be no island?’
‘Well, sir,’ he responded, preserving his
cautious tone, ‘I can answer that question,
for it’s formed a part of the consultations the
crew is agin and agin a-holding. They’ll think
ye’ve dished ’em, and that o’ purpose you
han’t steered a true course.’
‘Ha!’ I exclaimed; ‘and what then?’
‘You’ll have to find the island, sir.’
‘But, my God, Wetherly, if it be not
there! There is no rock marked on the chart
in the place that was named by Captain
Braine.’
‘They’ll keep ye a-hunting for it,’ said he
grimly.
‘And if we don’t find it?’
‘Well, I can’t tell ‘ee what they’ll do. All
they’ve said is, “If it ain’t there, it’ll be
because he don’t mean it shall be.” But I’ve
heard no threats—no talk of what ‘ud follow.’
‘If there should be no gold, no island,’
said I, ‘my opinion is that they will seize upon
the ship and cargo, and compel me to navigate
her to some port where they will find a
market for their plunder.’
‘And where will that be?’ he asked.
174‘Impossible to say. Lush will probably
know. He has the airs and appearance of a
man to whom a performance of the kind I
suggest would be no novelty. I may tell you
now, Wetherly, and, indeed, I might have
done so long ago, that it was the carpenter
whom Captain Braine charged with murder.’
‘Well, sir, you’ll excuse me. I’m not for
believing that, Mr. Dugdale. That Lush has
been a rare old sinner, ye need only watch
him by daylight and hear him talk in his
sleep at night, to know; but, as I said afore,
when ye mentioned it—murder’—I saw him
wag his head by the starlight—‘I’d choose to
make sure afore believing it on the evidence
of a madman.’
‘But don’t you think the carpenter and,
let me add, most of the crew equal to the
commission of any crime?’
‘Well, I won’t say no to that now with
this here glittering temptation of money getting
into their souls, to work everything that
may be evil in ’em out through their skins. I
wouldn’t trust ’em, and so I tell ‘ee, Mr. Dugdale;
and if this here barque was any other
ship than the Lady Blanche, and my mates
any other men but what they are, I’d be content
175to pawn for sixpence all that I’ve got in
my chest.’
I came to a stand with him for a while at
the weather rail in feigned contemplation of
the weather.
‘Wetherly,’ said I quietly, as we resumed
our crosswise walk, ‘my position is a frightful
one. Were it not for the cursed lunatic fancy
that that shambling villain Wilkins overheard—the
completest lie that ever took shape in a
madman’s brain—I might hope to be able to
tempt the crew with a handsome reward to
allow me to sail this ship to a port whence
the lady and I could get home. But what
could I offer, with honest intention to pay,
that should approach the thousands which
those fools yonder dream about day and
night?’
He made no answer.
‘Supposing, Wetherly,’ I continued, ‘I
should determine, in a mood of desperation,
to drop my command here, and refuse to
navigate the vessel another league unless Miss
Temple and I are put ashore?’
‘You know what ‘ud happen,’ he cried;
‘ye’ve said it o’er and o’er agin, hitting upon
what’s most likely. For God’s sake, sir, clear
176your mind o’ that scheme, if it’s only for the
lady’s sake!’
‘But what’s to follow upon our arrival in
the Pacific?’ I exclaimed with an emotion of
despair.
‘There’s nothen to be done but to wait,’
he answered gloomily.
‘Do you believe that every mother’s son
forward believes in the existence of the
treasure?’
‘Every mother’s son of ’em, sir. The belief
mightn’t have been so general, I daresay, if it
hadn’t been for them documents you signed.
Ignorant as the men are, they know how to
git four out of two and two. First, there’s the
drawing on that there bit of parchment; then
there was the capt’n’s yarn of how he come
by the gold, as ship-shape to the minds of the
men as if they’d seen him fetch it out of the
Bank of England; then comes the plot of
getting rid of ’em at Rio, with a crew of
Kanakas to follow; and then a company of
beachcombers atop of them, to carry the
barque on. Here alone’s a thought-out scheme
proper to convince an atheist. But then follows
them documents o’ yourn to prove that you, a
born gent of eddication and first-class intelligence,
177don’t doubt the truth o’ what ye hear,
and, to make sure, provide for your share
when the gold’s come at and for your security,
if so be as the law should lay hold on the
capt’n for a-deviating.’
‘It’s all very true,’ I exclaimed, staggered
myself by the consistency of the wretched
business, and forced to mentally admit the
reasonableness of the illiterate creatures in
the forecastle accepting it all as indisputable.
‘But you know my motive in acting as I
did?’
‘Well, I do, sir. As I told ye, I was a
bit nonplushed at first; but it’s a madman’s
yarn—ne’er a doubt of it. And I’m as wishful,
Mr. Dugdale, as ever ye can be to be quit
of the whole blooming job.’
Again I came to a pause at the weather
rail, as though I lingered on deck only to
observe the weather.
‘Now, Wetherly, listen to me,’ said I.
‘You know you are the only man in the ship
that I would dream of opening my lips to.
You have my full confidence; I believe you
to be sound to the core. If you will give me
your word I shall be perfectly satisfied that
you will not betray me.’
178‘Whatever ye may tell me, Mr. Dugdale,’
he responded in a voice slightly agitated, ‘I
swear to keep locked up in my bosom; but
afore I can give ye my word, I must know
what I’ve got to take my oath on.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ I exclaimed; ‘I
desire no oath. Simply assure me that should
a time ever come when I may see my way to
escape, you will stand my friend; you will
actively assist me if you can—you will not
be neutral; I mean, merely my well-wisher;
simply tell me this, and I shall know that when
an opportunity arises, I will have you to count
upon.’
‘Have you a scheme, first of all, Mr. Dugdale?’
he inquired. ‘There’s no good in my
consenting to anything that’s agoing to end in
getting our throats cut.’
‘No; I have no scheme. What plan could
I form? I must grasp the first, the best chance
that offers, and then it may be that I will want
you. There are others besides myself whom
you would find grateful. Miss Temple’s mother
is a lady of title, and a rich woman’——
‘Excuse me, Mr. Dugdale,’ he interrupted;
‘I don’t want no bribe to bring me into a
proper way of acting, if so be as that proper
179way ain’t a-going to cost too much. I’ll say
downright, now, that if I can help you and the
lady to get out of this job and put ye both in
the road of getting home, ye may depend upon
my doing my best. More’n that there’d be
no use in saying, seeing that it ain’t possible
to consart a scheme, and that we must wait
until something tarns up. If there be an island,
and we bring up off it, the sort of opportunity
you want may come, and you’ll find all of me
there. If the island be a delusion, then something
else’ll have to be waited for. But I tell
you as man to man that I’m with you and
the lady, that I don’t like Mr. Lush nor the
business he’s brought the vessel’s crew into
but that I’ve got to be as cautious as you;
which now means, sir—and I beg that you’ll
onderstand me as speaking respectfully—that
that there Forrest has seen us together long
enough.’
‘Right,’ I exclaimed, grasping his hand;
‘I thank you from my heart for your assurance;
and Miss Temple shall thank you
herself.’
With which I went aft, gazing steadfastly
to windward as I walked, and after a final
180peep into the binnacle and a slow look round,
I stepped below.
There was little to comfort me in this chat
with Wetherly; it was worth knowing, however,
that he regarded the captain’s yarn as a
mere emission of craziness; for heretofore, in
the few conversations I had had with him, his
hesitation, his cautious inquiries, his manner,
that in a superior person would to a certain
extent have suggested irony, had caused me
to see that his mind was by no means made
up on the subject. This, then, was to the
good, and it was satisfactory to be informed
by him that he would befriend us if an opportunity
occurred, providing his assistance should
not jeopardise his life. I was grateful for this
promise, but scarcely comforted by it. I
carried a clouded face into the cabin; Miss
Temple, who awaited my return to the cabin,
fixed an anxious gaze upon me, but asked no
questions.
‘How good you are to suppress your
curiosity!’ I exclaimed, standing by her side,
and looking into her upturned face; ‘you
incalculably lighten my burthen by your forbearance.’
‘You have taught me my lesson,’ she
181answered quietly; ‘and as a pupil I should
be proud of the commendations of my master.’
She pronounced the word ‘master’ with a
glance of her proud eyes through the droop
of the lashes, and a smile at once sweet and
haughty played upon her lips.
‘It will comfort you to know that Wetherly
is our friend,’ said I.
‘I have always regarded him as so,’ she
responded.
‘Yes; but he has now consented to aid
me in any effort I may by-and-by make to
escape with you from this barque.’
She was silent, but her face was eloquent
with nervous eager questioning.
‘Moreover,’ I proceeded, ‘Wetherly is now
convinced that Captain Braine’s gold was a
dream of that man’s madness. A dream of
course it is. But do you know I am extremely
anxious that we should find an island in that
latitude and longitude of waters to which I
shall be presently heading this ship.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I think—mind, I do but think—that
I may see a way to escape with you and
Wetherly alone in this barque.’ She breathed
quickly, and watched me with impassioned
182attention. ‘In fact,’ I continued, ‘even as I
stand here, looking at you, Miss Temple, a
resolution grows in me to create an island for
Captain Braine’s gold, should the bearings he
gave me prove barren of land.’
‘Create?’ she exclaimed musingly.
‘Yes. The South Sea is full of rocks. I’ll
find the men a reef, and that reef must provide
me with my chance. But,’ I exclaimed, breaking
off and looking at my watch, ‘it is time for
me to seek some rest. I shall have to be on
deck again at twelve.’
‘I shall go to bed also,’ she exclaimed; ‘it
is dull—and there are many weeks before us
yet.’ She smiled with a quivering lip, as
though she would have me know that she
rebuked herself for complaining. ‘I believe
you would tell me more if you had the least
faith in my judgment.’
‘At present, I have nothing to tell; but an
hour may come when I shall have to depend
very largely upon your judgment and your
spirit also.’
She met my eyes with a firm, full, glowing
gaze. ‘No matter what task you assign to
me,’ she cried with vehemence, ‘you will find
me equal to it. This life is insupportable; and
183I would choose at this instant the chance of
death side by side with the chance of escape,
sooner than continue as I am in this horrible
condition of uncertainty, banishment, and
misery.’
‘That may be the spirit I shall want to
evoke,’ I said, smiling, whilst I held open her
cabin door. ‘Good-night, Miss Temple.’
She held my hand a moment or two before
relinquishing it. ‘I hope I have said nothing
to vex you, Mr. Dugdale?’ she exclaimed,
slightly inclining her fine head into a posture
that might make one think of a princess expressing
an apology.
‘What have I said that you should think
so?’ I answered.
‘Your manner is a little hard,’ she exclaimed
in a low voice.
‘God forgive me if it be so,’ said I. ‘Not
to you, Miss Temple, would I be hard.’
My voice trembled as I pronounced these
words, and abruptly I caught up her hand and
pressed her fingers to my lips, and bowing,
closed the door upon her and entered my own
berth.
CHAPTER XXXVII CAPE HORN
184
It was on one of the closing days of the month
of December that my longitude being then
some three leagues east of the easternmost of
the Falkland Islands, and my latitude some
fifty-five degrees south, that I brought the
barque’s head to a west-south-west course
for the rounding of Cape Horn. It was
happily the summer season in those parts—their
midsummer, indeed—and I was glad to
believe that the horrors of this passage would
be mitigated by a sun that in the month of
June shines for scarcely six hours in the day
over the ice-laden surge of this, the most inhospitable,
the most bitterly dreary tract of
waters upon the face of the world.
Down to the latitude of the Falkland
Islands we had sighted, from the hour of my
taking command of the barque, but four sail,
so vast is the ocean, and so minute a speck
185does a ship make upon it. But whilst the
loom of the land about Berkeley Sound was
hanging in a blue and windy shadow, with a
gleam as of snow upon it away out upon our
starboard beam, we fell in with a whaler, a
vessel rigged as ours was; a round-bowed,
motherly old craft, jogging along under a
load of boats suspended over her sides from
the extremities of thick wooden davits. There
was a long Atlantic swell running, and as she
rose and rolled to it, she showed a line of
green sheathing dark with moss and barnacles
and lines of trailing weeds.
She had been visible at daybreak right
ahead, and she was clear upon the sea over
our bow, when I came on deck shortly after
eight bells to relieve Lush, who had had the
watch since four o’clock.
‘What have we there?’ said I, bringing
Braine’s old leather telescope out of the companion
and putting my eye to it. ‘A squab
old whaler, as I may suppose by her boats;
Cape Horn topgallant-masts; a sawed-off
square sea-wagon after the true Nantucket
pattern.’
‘I’ve been a-waiting for you to come on
deck,’ said the carpenter. ‘We don’t want
186to run her down. We’ve got nothen to say
to her, and so ‘ud better keep out of hail.
Shift the course, will you, sir?’
There was nothing in the sir to qualify the
offensive tone of command with which he
addressed me. I looked at him fixedly, taking
care, however, to keep a good grip on my
temper.
‘What are you afraid of?’ I asked. ‘Are
any of the crew likely to hail her if we pass
within speaking distance?’
‘I’d like to know what man there is
amongst us as ‘ud have the courage to do it,’
he exclaimed, his face darkening to the
thought, and his eyes travelling up and down
my body, as though in search of some part on
which to settle.
‘Why do you wait for me to shift the
helm, man?’ said I.
‘The navigation’s in your hands,’ he
answered sullenly; ‘if your calculations don’t
turn out correct, it musn’t be because of any
man a-meddling with the course whilst you
was below.’
Miss Temple at this moment arrived on
deck and joined me.
‘A pity to run away,’ said I; ‘we’re sailing
187three feet to that chap’s one, and will be
passing him like smoke. There’s been nothing
to look at for a long time. It’ll be a treat to
our shore-going eyes to see a strange face,
though we catch but a glimpse. You don’t
think I’ll hail her, I hope?’
‘I hope!’ he responded with a coarse
ironical sneer and a rude stare of suspicion.
‘By God, then!’ said I, with an effusion of
temper I instantly regretted, ‘since you have
forced this command upon me, I’ll take what
privileges it confers, and be hanged to it!
My orders are to keep the ship as she goes.
If you disobey me, I’ll call the crew aft, and
charge them to observe that any miscalculations
in my navigation will be owing to your
interference.’
The fellow scowled, and looked ahead at the
vessel, and then at a knot of sailors who were
standing at the galley, and I could see that
he was at a loss; in fact, a minute after, never
having spoken a word, during which time he
frequently sent his gaze at the craft over the
bow, he abruptly crossed to the lee side of
the deck and fell to patrolling, coming now
and again to a stand to leeward of the sailor
at the helm, with whom he would exchange
188a few words, whilst he swayed on his rounded
shanks, with his arms folded upon his breast,
occasionally stooping to obtain a view of the
whaler under the curve of the fore-course.
It was his watch below, and at another
time he would have promptly gone forward.
His remaining on deck signified an insulting
menace, an impudent threat to watch me,
and to guard his own and the crew’s interests
against me. But I was resolved not to seem
to notice his behaviour, nor even to appear
conscious of his presence. We were carrying
a grand sailing wind out of the south, and
under a main top-gallant sail and a boarded
main tack, the barque was sweeping nobly
over the powerful heave of the long Pacific
swell, and through the tall surges which were
breaking in foam far as the eye could reach,
with deep blue lines between. At intervals,
some great hill of waters sparkling to the
flying sunshine would flash into foam to the
buoyant rise of the glittering metalled forefoot
of the speeding, milk-white fabric, and
cloud her forecastle in a storm of snow. The
wind sang in the rigging with a frosty note,
but the shrewd air was dry, without any
sting of ice, though there was no warmth
189whatever in the white splendour of the leaping
sun.
The men observing that Lush kept the
deck, came out of the galley and forecastle,
and with abrupt shifting motions gradually
drew aft to the line of the quarter-deck rail,
which they overhung, feigning to watch the
ship we were overtaking, though nothing
could be more obvious than their real motive
in drawing aft in this fashion. Wetherly
alone kept forward. He stood leaning in the
galley door, smoking a short pipe in as careless
and unconcerned a posture as you would
look to see in a lounging fellow sailing up the
river Thames.
‘The brutes are terribly in earnest,’ said I
to Miss Temple, as we stood together under
the lee of the weather quarter-boat for the
shelter of it. ‘If ever I had had a doubt of
the wisdom of my conduct in this business,
the presence of that group yonder would
extinguish it for good and all.’
‘Forgive me,’ she exclaimed; ‘but were
you well advised in not altering the course
of this vessel?’
‘The fellows must not know that I am
190afraid of them, or believe me to be without
some resolution of character.’
‘What would happen were you to attempt
to hail that ship there?’ she asked, with her
eyes enlarging to the fear that accompanied
the question, and her lips quivering as they
closed to a blast of wind sweeping in a long
howl betwixt the rail and the keel of the
boat.
‘I do not intend to hail her,’ I replied;
‘and we will not, therefore, distract our minds
with conjectures. Let us rather wonder,’ I
went on, forcing a light air of cheerfulness
upon me, ‘what those whalemen will think of
you when they catch a sight of your figure?
Will they take you to be captain or chief
mate?’
She smiled, and slightly coloured. Indeed,
at a little distance, with the rail to hide her
dress, she would very well have passed for a
young man, habited as she was in Captain
Braine’s long pilot coat and his wide-awake,
which entirely hid her hair to the level of her
ears, and which she kept seated on her head
by means of a piece of black tape passed
under her chin. But shall I tell you that her
beauty borrowed a new and fascinating freshness
191of grace from the very oddity of her
attire? For my part, I found her more
admirable in the perfections of her face and
form, grotesquely clothed as she was, than
had she come to my side but now from the
hands of the most fashionable dressmaker and
the most modish of hairdressers and milliners.
The name of the old whaler lifted clear in
long white letters to the heave of her square
stern off the spread of froth that raced from
under her counter: Maria Jane Taylor was
her title, and I remember it now as I can
remember very much smaller matters which
entered into that abominable time. The
green and weedy and rust-stained fabric,
heeling to the pressure of the wind, and making
prodigious weather of the Pacific surge
as she crushed into the violet hollow with a
commotion of foam such as no whale which
ever her boats had made fast to could have
raised in its death-agony, swarmed and staggered
along with frequent wild slantings of
her spars, upon which her ill-patched sails
pulled in disorderly spaces. A whole mob of
people, black, orange-coloured, and white,
stared at us from under all kinds of singular
headgear over her weather rail, and a man
192swinging off in the mizzen shrouds, apparently
waited for us to come abreast to hail us. As
our clipper keel swept in thunder to her
quarter, scarcely more water than a pistol-shot
could measure dividing us, Lush came
up from to leeward and stood beside me, but
without speaking, simply holding himself in
readiness—as I might witness in the sulky
determined expression in the villain’s face—to
silence me if I should attempt to hail. I
glanced at him askant, running my eye down
his round-backed muscular figure, and then
put on a behaviour of perfect insensibility to
his presence.
‘How touching is the sight of a strange
face,’ said I to Miss Temple, ‘encountered in
the heart of such a waste as this! Rough as
those fellows are, how could one take them
by the hand! with what pleasure could one
listen to their voices! Would to God we
were aboard of her!’ And I brought my
foot with a stamp of momentary poignant
impatience to the deck.
Our own crew staring at the whaler over
the quarter-deck bulwarks were incessantly
bringing their eyes away from her to fix them
upon me with a manner of angry suspicion
193that it was impossible to mistake. The noise
of the roaring of the wind in her canvas was
loud in the pouring air; the blue waters
foamed viciously to her tall catheads, and her
green and rusty bends showed raggedly amid
the frothing, foaming, and seething curves of
the boiling smother rushing past her; here
and there aft was the muddy glint of a disc
of begrimed window amid the line of her
seams, out of which all the caulking appeared
to have dropped. We were passing her as a
roll of smoke might.
‘Barque ahoy!’ bawled the long slabsided
man in the mizzen rigging in the nasal
accents of the ‘longshore Yankee.
Lush at my side stood grimly staring.
Several of the crew on the quarter-deck were
now watching me continuously.
‘What barque air you?’ came in a
hurricane note out of the whaler’s mizzen
shrouds.
There was no reply from us.
‘Barque ahoy, I say!’ yelled the man with
a frantic gesture of astonishment; ‘where air
you bound, and what ship might you be?’
The Lady Blanche rushed on; nevertheless,
we were yet so close to the whaler even
194when we had her on our quarter that I could
easily distinguish the features of the man who
had hailed us as he hung motionless, as though
withered by some blast from the skies, in the
mizzen rigging, with his mouth wide open,
whilst an expression of inimitable amazement
was visible in the rows of faces along the
bulwark rail, white and coloured alternately,
like the keys of a pianoforte.
On a sudden the man sprang out of the
mizzen shrouds on to the deck; his legs were
immensely long, and he was habited in a short
monkey jacket. He started to run for the
forecastle, and his prodigious strides made
one think of a pair of tongs put into motion
by some electrical power. He gained the
forecastle head, where for one moment he
stood surveying us, then bringing his hands
to his face, he made what is known to schoolboys
as a ‘long-nose’ at us, turning a little
sideways, that we might clearly observe the
humiliating derisiveness of his posture. In
this attitude he remained whilst a man might
have counted twenty, then turning his back
upon us, he smote himself with a gesture of
utmost scorn upon a part of his body which
the short skirts of his monkey jacket left partially
195exposed; after which, with the air of a
person whose mind has been relieved, he
leisurely made his way aft, thrice, as he
walked, turning his profile, that we might
observe him lift his thumb and fingers again
to his nose. A little while later the old
whaler was plunging amid the white throbbings
of her own churning a long mile astern;
and in half an hour she looked to be scarcely
more than a gleam out in the cold blue air,
where there seemed a dimness in the atmosphere
as of the blowing of crystals off the
melting heads of the high seas.
It was not till then that Lush left the
deck.
This little incident was as stern a warrant
of the disposition of the crew as they could
have desired to make me understand. It
proved their possession of a quality of suspicion,
of a character so ungovernably insolent
and daring, that I might well believe, were it
transformed into passion by disappointment
or insincerity on my part, there was no infamy
it would not render them equal to. I often
wonder in recalling this time that I should
have found strength to bear up under my
anxieties. The future lay absolutely in blackness.
196I had some hope, some vague fancy,
rather, let me call it, of lighting upon an
island, should Braine’s prove the chimera I
feared it was, that might enable me to contrive
a stratagem to effect our deliverance from this
unspeakable situation. But there was nothing
in such an imagination as this to cast the
faintest light upon the gloom ahead. I would
cudgel my brains in my lonely watches at
night with vehement struggles in search of
any idea that might be shaped into a method
of escape. At intervals I would secretly and
warily converse with Wetherly; but he had
no other proposals to make than the souldepressing
one of patience, with regular
assurances, indeed, that he would stand by
me if his help could be safely ventured.
In these despairful considerations I even
went to the length of fixing my thoughts upon
the boats. When we should have rounded
the Horn and entered the mild parallels of
the Pacific, sparkling nights of tranquillity
were sure to descend upon us, and furnish me
with an opportunity of leaving the barque
with Miss Temple; an opportunity, I say, so
far as the weather and the peace of the sea
might be concerned; but how with my single
197pair of hands was I to lower a boat, provide
that Miss Temple should be in her, provide
also that the little fabric should be stored with
food and water, then unhook her, and slide
away into the gloom, all so privily, all so
noiselessly as to elude the vigilance of the
man at the helm and of the seamen in my
own watch sprawling about the decks forward?
It was not to be done. I did not even
suggest this method of deliverance to Wetherly,
feeling perfectly convinced that he would not
entertain it. And suppose I should be able
to successfully get away with the girl in this
manner, how dreadful would be our outlook!
with oars, indeed, but without masts or sails,
lying exposed for God alone could tell how
long a time in the heart of one of old ocean’s
mightiest deserts, not traversed then, as in
these days; scarcely penetrated, indeed, save
at long times between, by such a whaler as
we had passed, or by some vessel trading to
the Polynesian groups from the western South
American seaboard.
I do not know that I considered myself
very fortunate because of the fine weather
which attended the barque in her passage of
198the Horn. Far better, I sometimes thought,
than the strong southerly breeze, the flying
skies of dark winter blue, the brilliant rolling
and foaming of long arrays of billows brimming
in cream to the ivory white sides of the
little ship, and aiding her headlong flight with
floating buoyant liftings and fallings that
timed the measures of her nimble sea-dance
with her waving mastheads as the batôn of a
band conductor keeps the elbows of his fiddlers
quivering in unison—far better might it have
been for us, I would often think, had the
month been the mid-winter of the Horn, with
heavy westerly gales to oppose our entrance
into the Pacific Ocean, and fields of ice to
hinder us yet, with some disaster on top to
force us to bear away as the wind might permit
for the nearest port.
The rounding of this iron headland
was absolutely uneventful; the wind blew
almost continuously from the southward, and
throughout was a strong and steady breeze,
that enabled me to show whole topsails and a
maintopgallant-sail to it. Once only did we
sight ice, a distant spot of a luminous crystalline
whiteness upon the throbbing limits of
the sea. Day and night the water in white
199clouds poured in thunder from either bow of
the rushing barque; the clouds soaring from
out the Antarctic solitudes down behind the
ocean line, swept in smoke athwart our
trucks; by day the small white sun danced
amongst these fleeting shadows in the north,
and flashed up the sea into a very dazzle at
each blinding launch of his beams, so multitudinous
were the peaks of froth which
glanced back the sparkling emissions of the
luminary; by night the dark skies were filled
with stars of a frosty brilliance, amid which
burned the jewels of the Southern Cross with
the Magellanic clouds beyond dim as curls of
vapour. A fire was lighted in the little stove
in the cabin, and by it, during my watch
below, Miss Temple and I would sit exchanging
our hopes and fears, speculating upon the
future, endeavouring to animate each other
with representations of our feelings when we
should have arrived home, and amid safety
and comfort look back upon the unutterable
experiences into which we had been plunged
by so trifling a circumstance as a visit to a
wreck.
Thus passed the time. Every day I obtained
a clear sight of the sun, and then
200striking the meridian of 76° West, I headed
the barque on a north-north-west course for
Captain Braine’s island, the declared situation
of which I calculated would occupy us about
three weeks to reach.
It was on the afternoon of the day on
which I had shifted the barque’s helm, that
Wilkins came to me as I sat at dinner with
Miss Temple with a message from the carpenter
to the effect that he would be glad of a
word with me. I answered that I was at Mr.
Lush’s disposal when I had dined, but not
before. This did not occupy another ten
minutes in accomplishing; my companion
then withdrew to her cabin, having with much
eagerness expressed a number of conjectures
as to the carpenter’s motive in soliciting an
interview.
The man came off the poop by way of the
quarter-deck and entered the cabin with his
skin cap in hand.
‘I obsarve,’ said he, ‘that you’ve altered
the vessel’s course.’
‘That is so,’ I rejoined. ‘Wetherly was
on deck when I left my cabin after working
out my sights, and I believed he would have
reported the change of course to you.’
201‘No; it was Woodward [one of the sailors]
that was at the hellum. He calls me over
and points into the binnacle and says: “Ye
see what’s happened?” The men ‘ud be glad
to know if it’s all right?’
‘If what is all right?’
‘Why, if this here course is true for the
island? They’ll feel obliged if ye’ll let ’em in
here and show ’em the chart and ‘splain the
distance and the course and the likes of that
to ’em yourself.’
I hardly required him to inform me of
their wishes, for I had but to direct my glance
at the cabin door to observe them assembled on
the quarter-deck awaiting the invitation the
carpenter had come to demand; all hands of
them, saving Wetherly and the fellow that was
steering, called Woodward by Lush.
‘Certainly: let them enter,’ said I; and
at once fetched my chart, which I placed upon
the table, and went to the other side, ruler in
hand, ready to point and to explain.
The body of rough men, a few of them with
their mahogany lineaments scarcely visible
amidst the whiskers, eyebrows, and falls of
front hair which obscured their countenances,
stood looking upon the chart with Lush in the
202thick of them, and Forrest’s mutinous, daredevil,
rolling face conspicuous over the carpenter’s
shoulder.
‘Now, men, what is it you want to know?’
said I.
‘We’re a steering by the compass up above
nor’-nor’-west,’ answered Lush; ‘will ye be
pleased to tell us how ye make that right?’
I had to fetch a pair of parallel rulers to
render my answer intelligible to the illiterate
creatures who stood gaping at me with an expression
of dull struggling perception that
would come and go in a manner that must
have moved me to laughter at another time.
‘What part of this here paper is the island
wrote down upon?’ demanded Forrest.
I pointed with my ruler, and the whole
knot of faces came together as they stooped
with a sound as of a general snore arising
from their vigorous breathing.
‘How far is it off from where we are?’
inquired one of the men. I told him. Several
questions of a like kind were put to me; a
growling ran amongst them as they hummed
their comments into one another’s ears. Meanwhile,
I stood inspecting them with mingled
inquisitiveness and disgust. What a miserable
203pass had the wretches brought the girl and
me to! What bitter anxieties had they
overwhelmed us with! What was to be our
future so far as they should have a share in
the creation of it? I sought in vain amidst
their various countenances, composed of hair
and warts and beards, of leathery skins, of
moist eyes dim with weather, of the smooth
cheeks of two or three of the younger fellows—I
sought in vain, I say, for a single expression
to assure me of the existence of qualities upon
whose generous response I might depend,
should it ever come to my having to entreat
them. Yet they presented, as I long ago said,
just such exteriors as you would expect to
meet with in the sailors of a humble trader
like the Lady Blanche.
‘Well, men,’ exclaimed the carpenter,
‘there ain’t no doubt to my mind. It’s all
right; and I’m bound to say stan’ing here,
that con-sidering that Mr. Dugdale guv’ up
the sea a good bit ago, he’s managed oncommonly
well down to this here time.’
There was a murmur of assent. I thought
I would take advantage of this momentary
posture in them of appreciation, perhaps of
concession.
204‘Since you are all before me,’ said I, ‘two
excepted, let me ask you a question. You are
aware, of course, that from the very beginning
of this business I have regarded your whole
scheme as the effect of a madman’s dream.’
Lush stared at me with an iron face;
Forrest, with an impudent grin, shook his
head; two or three of the fellows smiled
incredulously. I proceeded, eyeing them deliberately
one after the other, and speaking in
the most collected tones I could command.
‘I want to know this: If Captain Braine’s
island should have no existence in fact, what
do you men propose to do?’
‘No use putting it in that way!’ exclaimed
the carpenter, after a brief pause, and a slow,
sour wagging of his head; ‘the island’s there.
‘Tain’t no dream. Ye’ll find it right enough,
I’ll warrant.’
‘It was described to me,’ I went on, ‘as
little more than a reef. This is a big sea,
men. A reef is easily missed in such an ocean
as this.’
‘You have its bearings,’ exclaimed Forrest
defiantly; ‘if you put the barque in the place
on the chart where the captain said the island
is, how are we agoing to miss it, unless all
205hands turns puppies, and keeps a lookout
with their eyes shut?’
‘But,’ said I, preserving my temper, ‘may
not this hope of obtaining a large treasure
have rendered you all very considerably overconfident?
Suppose there is no island. Reason
with me on that supposition. Imagine that we
have arrived, and that there is nothing but
clear water. Imagine, if you will, that we
have been sweeping those seas for a month
without heaving into sight your late captain’s
reef. What then, I ask? What next steps
have you in your minds to take? I have a
right to an answer, even though I should
address you only in the name of the young
lady whose protector I am.’
The fellows glanced at one another. Their
low, suspicious intelligence manifestly witnessed
some strategic fancy underlying my
question.
‘Look here, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the
carpenter, ‘there’s no use in your a-putting it
in any other way than the way we want, and
the way we mean to have.’ He accompanied
this with a violent nod of the head. ‘Though
we’re plain men without e’er a stroke of book-learning
amongst us, we ain’t to be made fools
206of. The island’s where ‘ee can find it, if ye
choose, and to that there island we’re bound,
sir;’ and he bestowed another emphatic,
malevolent nod upon me.
I gazed at the fellows in silence. One
glance at the array of mulish countenances
should have satisfied me that there was nothing
in anything I could say to induce in them
other views than those they held, or to render
endurable to them a discussion that must be
based upon a probability of their being disappointed.
‘We’ve stuck to our side of the bargain,
sir,’ said one of them.
‘Ay,’ cried the carpenter; ‘I allow that
let the gent strive as he may, there’s nothen
he can find in the treatment him and the
lady’s met with from us men to complain
of.’
‘I do not complain,’ I exclaimed; ‘have
you on your side any reason to complain?’
‘No, sir, and we don’t want none,’ the
fellow responded with a look that rendered
his words indescribably significant.
‘You are satisfied, I hope,’ said I, ‘with
the explanation I have given you as to the
situation and course of the barque?’
207‘Yes,’ answered the carpenter, with a look
round.
‘Then there is nothing more to be said,’ I
exclaimed, and picking up the chart, I carried
it into my cabin.
CHAPTER XXXVIII LAND!
208
Our progress was slow. For some while we
carried strong winds, which swept us onwards
into the softer climates of the Pacific; they
then failed us, and were followed by a succession
of light airs, as often ahead as astern. I
was astonished, however, by the yacht-like
qualities of motion of the little barque.
Through weather that had scarcely weight
enough in it to have stirred the Countess Ida,
the Lady Blanche would sneak over a surface
of water that was often glass-like, ripples fine
as wire breaking away from her keen stem,
and a short wake scoring the liquid smoothness
under her counter; her topsails and
courses motionless, save but for their soft
swaying to the long and gentle respiration of
the swell; a faint lifting, however, perceptible
in the light cloths of the loftier sails, which
were doing the work of the rest, and communicating
209to the little fabric out of the
delicate softness of the blue Pacific heavens,
so to speak, an impulse of vitality, the recollection
of which would move me to amazement
when I found that our progress in the twenty-four
hours had been as considerable as the
Indiaman would have got out of a pleasant
breeze.
But not to linger upon this time—though
I could tell much of my incessant intimate
association with Miss Temple—dwell with
delight, untinctured by recollection of the
miseries and anxieties of this passage, upon
the memory of the soft and lovely nights of
those delicious parallels, the clear dusk radiant
with the glistening of stars from sea-line to
sea-line, the mild atmosphere, sweet with dew,
the hush upon the slumbering leagues of the
deep, soothing as a benediction to the perturbed
spirit, the play of delicate fires in the
water, the stirring of canvas in the still gloom
aloft, as of the brushing of the pinions of
hovering creatures: then the wide blue sparkling
scene of day, the barque clothed in the
ivory whiteness of her canvas striking a prismatic
shadow of pearl from her white sides
and silken heights into the opalescent profound,
210on which she would rest as on a bed
of glass, some distant fountain and curve of
wet black body denoting the rising of a
leviathan from the depths—ah! had all been
well with us, this would have made a noble
time for the memory to muse on—but my
story draws me to its conclusion.
It was February the 18th, as very well
indeed do I remember. From the hour of our
having sighted the whaler off Cape Horn, we
had met with nothing, not even of the bigness
of the tip of the wing of a sea-fowl, to break
the continuity of the sea-line, no shadow of
low-lying land, no vision of star-like space of
water indicating the froth of the submerged
reef. On this day at noon, having worked
out my calculations, I discovered that the
distance to Braine’s island, as I may call it,
from the then situation of the barque, was to
be traversed, if the light air held as it was,
in about twelve hours; so that it would be
proper to keep a lookout for it at about midnight.
I gave Mr. Lush this piece of news; he
received it with a flush of excitement that
almost humanised the insipid coarseness of his
211dull, wooden, leather-bound, weather-hardened
visage.
‘Ye may calculate upon our keeping a
bright lookout, sir,’ said he with a grin that
disclosed his tobacco-coloured fangs, and that
might fairly be called sardonic, since the eyes
bore no part in this disagreeable expression of
satisfaction.
I watched him walk forwards to convey
the information to the men. They went in a
whole body on to the forecastle, and stood
staring about them, as though the ocean wore
a new countenance to their gaze, now that
they believed Braine’s island to be a short
distance past the slope of it. The carpenter
pointed, and was full of talk; there was much
lighting of pipes, expectoration, puffing of
great clouds indicative of emotion, uneasy,
impatient, flitting movements amongst the
men, some of whom presently broke up into
couples and fell to pacing the forecastle like
marines on sentry; talking, as I did not doubt,
of the money they were going to dig up, what
they would do with it when they had it, and
so on; the expressions on their faces varying
at every instant, one emotion suppressing
another in a manner that to a contemplative
212and leisurely eye would have provided a
study at once ludicrous and informing.
I had the watch that afternoon; and when
Miss Temple and I had eaten our little midday
meal, I drew chairs into the shadow of
the short awning, and we sat together, I, pipe
in mouth, occasionally quitting her side to
take a look outside the edge of our canvas
roof, along with a brief stare ahead, for I
could not be sure of Captain Braine’s chronometer,
nor of the exactness of my own
calculations, and if the madman’s island was
where he had declared it to be, it might heave
into view off either bow or right ahead at
any moment, for all I could tell.
Miss Temple stood in no need now of
Captain Braine’s overcoat. She was habited
in the costume of the Countess Ida; somewhat
soiled it was, yet the perfect fit of it continued
to atone for its shipwrecked airs. Her dark
eyes glowed under the shadow of the straw
hat she had had on when she left the Indiaman.
She needed but her jewelry, the flash
and decoration of her trinkets, to show very
nearly as finely as she had on that day. There
was but little alteration visible in her. For
my part I could detect no more than that her
213face was a trifle thinner than when we had
first entered on this wild adventure. The eye
of close and constant association would not
indeed witness changes which might instantly
be perceptible to one encountered after an
absence. Still, I had the image of her brilliant
on my mind as she was on board the
Indiaman, and viewing her now, as I say, I
could perceive no other change than what I
have mentioned. Intellectually, however,
there was an alteration, defined to a degree to
my sight. Her gaze was softened, and was
often sweet. The characteristic firmness of
her lips had lost its air of haughtiness. There
was no longer any manner of command in her
looks, nor of exaction in her fixed regard;
there was nothing to hint that her spirit was
broken—merely that it had been bowed to
an average human level by the rough usage
of the sea, and by the amazing experiences
with which her months of lonely association
with me had been surcharged.
Heretofore, that is to say for some weeks
past, she had exhibited a resigned, calm, resolved
behaviour, as of one who was constantly
schooling herself to prepare for an
issue of life or death. She had long ceased to
214utter a complaint; she would even detect a
sigh in herself with a glance of contrition and
self-reproach. Again and again had I complimented
her upon the heroic qualities which
her sufferings of mind and body had fructified
in her; but this afternoon she was feverishly
impatient and restless. The old fires of her
spirit when alarmed were in her eyes. I would
observe her struggling in vain to appear composed.
As we sat together, she exclaimed,
as she brought her eyes to my face from a
nervous sweeping gaze at the horizon over
the bows: ‘By this time to-morrow we shall
know our fate.’
‘Perhaps not. Yet I pray it may be so.
If I were sentenced to be hanged, I would
wish the hour come. But what is to be our
fate? Nothing in this life is so bad or so
good as our fears or our hopes would have
us think. If there should be no island—— Well,
those villains will find me on the alert
for what may come along in the shape of
chance, and you must be ready.’
‘I am ready,’ she exclaimed; ‘only tell
me what to do. But this expectation——’
Her lips trembled, and her white fingers
clenched to the agitation that possessed her.
215‘The misery is, Mr. Dugdale, you have no
scheme.’
‘That will come,’ I exclaimed; ‘be calm,
and remain hopeful. I might, in the language
of the heroes of novels, hope to reassure you
by promising that if we are to perish we will
perish together. I am not a hero, and I talk
with the desire and the intention of living.
There may be a few more adventures yet
before us; but your hand is in mine, and I
shall not relinquish it until I conduct you to
your mother’s side.’
Of course I talked only to cheer her; yet
I hoped even as I spoke, and my hope gave a
tone of conviction to my words that seemed
to animate her, and she smiled whilst her
wistful eyes sank, as though to a sudden
reverie.
During the rest of the day the crew were
ceaselessly on the move, passing in and out of
the galley and in and out of the forecastle,
pacing the planks with impatience strong in
their rolling gait; one or another of them
from time to time springing on to the head
rail to peer thirstily and steadfastly under the
shelter of his hand; one or another again at
long intervals ascending to the height of the
216foreroyal yard, there to linger, whilst the
fellows below gazed up with expectant faces,
and ears greedy for a cry from that lofty
summit. The sturdy figure of the carpenter
was conspicuous amongst them. When he
came aft, he would look as though willing to
converse with me, but I walked away abruptly
on his approach, and if I chanced to leave
the cabin when he was on deck, I kept to the
lee side, contriving an air that even to his
unintelligent gaze must have conveyed the
assurance that I wished to have nothing to
do with him.
The breeze was light, just forward enough
on the beam to allow of the foretopmast
studding-sail remaining abroad. So weak
was the air, that the barque crept along with
erect spars, and the red fly of the dogvane
scarcely flickered to the soft breathings at the
royal mast head. I feared that it would fall
a dead calm at sun-down, but greatly to my
satisfaction, there was a small freshening in
the breeze whilst the scarlet yet lay gloriously
upon the cloudless countenance of the west.
Indeed, my own almost crazy anxieties and
expectation made the mere fancy of a spell
of stagnation abhorrent to me. Supposing
217the chronometer below to be correct, I was
in little doubt of the accuracy of my computations,
and my desire to verify or disprove
the madman’s assurance was consuming and
insupportable.
When the night descended it was moonless,
and through the pleasant blowing of the
wind, of a singular sweetness and freshness
such as I could not imagine of darkness in
any other ocean. The water was now streaming
in a line of whiteness along either side,
and the murmur under the counter was as
constant as the voice of a running brook
heard amid the stillness of a summer night.
The carpenter had the watch from eight to
twelve; but for my part I could not find it
in me to go to my cabin. Such was my
feverishly restless condition, that I knew I
should close my eyes in vain, and that the
inactivity of a recumbent posture would
speedily grow irksome and intolerable. Miss
Temple entreated me to lie down upon the
locker in the cabin. I answered that I should
be unable to sleep, and that without sleep the
mere resting of my limbs would be of no
service to me.
‘But you will have to watch from twelve
218to four,’ she exclaimed, ‘and at this rate you
will get no sleep to-night.’
I smiled, and answered that Braine and
the carpenter between them had murdered
sleep; and then took her on deck, where we
walked and conversed till the hour of eleven—six
bells. I then returned with her to the
cabin. She declined to enter her berth; she
begged me, and her eyes pleaded with her
voice, to suffer her to remain at my side
throughout the night. But this I would not
hear of; I told her that such a vigil would
exhaust her, that her utmost strength might
have to be taxed sooner than either of us
could imagine; that she must endeavour to
obtain some repose upon the locker, and that
if anything resembling land showed during
my watch, I would call her. I saw a look of
reproachful remonstrance in her face; but
compliance was now a habit with her, and in
silence she allowed me to arrange a pillow
and to throw a light blanket, that I fetched
from her bed, over her feet. I sat near her
at the table, leaning my cheek on my elbow,
and from time to time exchanged a few words
with her. There was hardly any movement
in the sea. The wind held the canvas motionless.
219The seething alongside was too delicate
to penetrate, and the silence in the little cuddy
was unbroken save by the ticking of a small
brass clock under the skylight, and by the
measured tramp of the carpenter overhead.
A little before twelve I looked at my companion,
and perceived that she was asleep.
On the eve, as I believed we were, of God
alone knew what sort of events, the spectacle
of the slumbering unconscious girl, whose
beauty was never so affecting as when softened,
and I may say spiritualised by the expression
of placid repose, moved me to the heart.
What a strange association had been ours!
How intimate had we become! what confidences
had our common suffering caused us
to exchange! what condition of shoregoing
life was there that could have brought this
girl and me together as we had been and still
were? How I loved her, I was now knowing;
I could dwell upon my passion with delight
as I looked at her, though on the threshold of
a future that might prove terrible and destructive
to us both. What was the secret of
her heart, so far as I was concerned? I gazed
at her lips with some unintelligible hope of
witnessing them shape the syllables of my
220name; then the clear chimes of eight bells
floated aft. With a sigh and a prayer, I
dimmed the cabin lamp and went softly to the
companion steps.
On my emerging, the carpenter came up
to me.
‘It’s been blowing a steady air o’ wind,’
said he; ‘allowing for this here improvement
in our pace, what time d’ye reckon the
island’ll take to show itself?’
‘If it exists,’ I answered, ‘it might be in
sight now. The captain’s description showed
that there was no height of side to make a
loom of. If you’re going forward, see that a
couple of hands are stationed on the forecastle,
and tell them to keep a bright lookout.
We don’t want to run the reef down, if
it’s there.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he exclaimed in the rough
off-hand voice of a sailor receiving an order,
and left the poop.
The time crept away. There was a light
burning in the galley; and the shapes that
flitted in and out through the open door,
throwing giant shadows upon the hazy square
of illumination on the bulwark abreast of the
galley entrance, satisfied me that most if not
221all of the men were awake and on the lookout.
Several figures, never less than two,
paced against the stars over the bows with
the regular tread of sentinels, clear on the
forecastle under the forecourse by the spaces
of the spangled sky they blotted out as they
moved. The breeze continued a pleasant
air, and all about the gliding barque were
the summer tinkling sounds of water gently
broken. Occasionally, I would go forward,
and taking my stand on the rise of the cathead
where it sloped to the rail, strain my
eyes into the elusive starry dusk where sea
and sky seemed to melt into liquid gloom. No
one accosted me as I passed to and fro. Once
I heard the tones of the carpenter in the
galley warm in argument. The fellows pacing
the forecastle would come to a halt whenever
I went forward, and stand looking at me in
silence, full of expectation, no doubt, of my
being able to see more than they. The very
barque herself seemed to participate in the
emotions, the breathless curiosity, the avid
yearnings of the men who awaited the appearance
of the island with restless motions and
voices subdued into low growling notes:
the ship herself, I say, seemed governed by
222the impassioned expectation of the hour, so
tremulously breathless was she aloft, so still
and subtle was her movement through the
water, so hearkening the aspect of her forward,
as though the stirless curve of her jibs
were ears which she eagerly projected that
she might catch the first sound of the wash
of surf.
All this while Miss Temple lay soundly
sleeping below.
It was wanting about ten minutes to four
when the quarter-deck was suddenly hailed
from the forecastle. The voice rang loud
and startlingly upon the ear used to the continued
stillness of the night.
‘Hallo!’ I cried.
‘There’s something dark right ahead,’
came back the answer.
I whipped the glass out of the companion,
and walked swiftly forwards where all the
crew had run to the first cry, and where I
found them standing in a huddle of shadowy
shapes at the rail, some pointing, and all looking
in one direction.
‘Where away is the object reported?’ I
exclaimed.
‘Yonder,’ cried the carpenter, stepping
223out of the little crowd and projecting his
arm almost on a line with the jib-boom end.
I instantly perceived it! It was just a
streak of shadow, low-lying, like a line of
cloud beheld by night lifting a few fathoms
of its brow above the sea-line. I pointed the
telescope; and the lenses without revealing
features, resolved the length of airy obscurity
into the firm proportions of land.
‘Is it the island, sir?’ demanded the carpenter
in a voice hoarse with excitement.
My own astonishment—the wonder raised
in me by yonder prompt settlement of the
incredulity that had possessed me from the
first minute of hearing the captain’s story—the
conflict of emotions which followed on
my considering that the land ahead must inevitably
be Braine’s island, since the chart
showed clear water to the distance of the
latitude of Easter Island, which the low
stretch over the bows most assuredly was
not, the loom being little more than that of a
reef—rendered my ear deaf to the carpenter’s
inquiry. He repeated his question.
‘If not, then I know not what other land
it can be,’ said I. ‘How far distant will it be,
think you?’
224The men gathered about us to hear what
was said.
‘Three mile about,’ he answered.
‘More like five,’ grumbled out a seaman.
‘Five in your eye!’ cried another—‘more
like tew. If ye’ll stay your breathing, you’ll
hear the wash o’ the surf.’
‘Better shorten sail and wait for daylight,
Mr. Lush,’ said I.
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered; ‘that’ll be the
proper thing to do;’ and instantly fell to bellowing
out orders.
The uproar of the excited crew clewing
up and hauling down, yelling as they pulled
at the ropes, and springing about with an
alacrity that made their darting figures resemble
those of madmen, awakened Miss
Temple. I stood alone on the poop, endeavouring
to obtain a view of the land by
leaning over the rail, when she came up
to me.
‘What is it, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Land!’ I exclaimed, instantly turning to
her.
‘The island?’ she cried, suppressing
astonishment until she should have received
my answer.
225‘I have no doubt of it. The shadow indicates
that it is little more than a reef. Its
bearings, according to my computation, accurately
correspond with those given by Captain
Braine.’
She projected her head over the rail, but
was some time before she could distinguish
the mere dash of gloom that the land made
upon the horizon.
‘If it should be the island!’ she cried.
‘That you should have steered this ship
straight as an arrow for it, and that it should
be there—no madman’s dream, as we have
both believed it! If one part of the story be
true, the other part should be so.’
I was too astounded to converse. I could
do no more than ejaculate. To be sure, as
my companion had said, if the story of the
island was true, the story of the gold might
be equally true. There would be the treasure,
then, for the men to possess themselves of!
And afterwards?
My brains seemed to whirl like a teetotum
in my skull.
Meanwhile, the sailors had reduced sail
till the barque was now under topsails only,
the rest of the canvas hanging from the yards
226in the grip of its gear. The carpenter arrived
on the poop.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, in a rough,
congratulatory voice, ‘you’ve done wonderfully
well, sir. By ——! but I don’t think
there’s e’er a navigator would have struck it
true as a hair as ye have. Ye’ve got no
doubts now left, I allow?’ and I saw his face
darken with the wrinkles of the grin that
overspread his countenance.
‘What’s to follow?’ I demanded, thinking
to take advantage of his mood.
‘Why, the gold,’ he answered, ‘the money,
sir; what we’ve been a-waiting for; and what
I suspects we’ll most of us know what to do
with when we gits it.’
‘And then?’
‘That’ll be a matter for consideration,’ he
answered, drawing off and going to the rail
and staring ahead.
‘Back the topsail yard and bring the ship
to a stand, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and get a cast
of the lead, will you?’
These orders were immediately obeyed.
The lead ran out to the whole scope of line
without touching bottom. There was nothing
now to be done but to wait for daylight. A
227whole eternity seemed to pass before the dawn
broke. Then to the sifting of the dull gray
faintness over the rim of the eastern sea, the
land came stealing out, till, to the sudden
soaring of the sun into the clear blue sky of
the Pacific morning, it flashed out into its full
proportions and distinctive features not a mile
off our port beam as we then lay with our
maintopsail aback.
The crew, neglecting all discipline and
shipboard habit, were assembled in a body on
the poop; and thus we all stood looking, I a
little distance away from them with Miss
Temple at my side. It was a small coral
island, apparently of the dimensions that
Captain Braine had named. To the northward
the smooth water brimmed to a long
shelf of coral grit, lustrous as snow in the
sparkle of the early sunshine. There was a
small rise, green with vegetation, in the centre
of the island; how far distant, I could not
imagine. Almost abreast of us, the land went
in with a semicircular sweep like to a horseshoe,
and was exactly the lagoon that had been
described by Captain Braine. In the centre
of it, just as he had marked the thing down
upon his chart, rose a coral formation of the
228appearance of a very thick pillar, and at the
distance from which we surveyed it, it might
easily have passed for a monument of white
stone erected by human hands, the decorated
summit of which had been rudely broken off
by a tempest or some volcanic shock. On a
line with this pillar, some little distance up
the beach of the lagoon, were several clumps
of trees. There was a deal of a sort of
stunted vegetation going inland from the
margin of the little bay, coarse grass, as my
telescope made out, tangles of bushes, and
so on.
The carpenter in the midst of the men
stood with the parchment chart in his hand,
pointing out how the outlines corresponded
with those of the land, amidst a hubbub of
eager comments and exclamations of excitement.
For my part, I could not credit my
senses; I disputed the evidence of my own
eyes; I brought them away from the island
to fix them with an emotion of profound
bewilderment upon Miss Temple.
‘Can it be real?’ I cried. ‘After the
weeks of conviction of the utter madness of
this quest, am I at last to be persuaded that
the wretched suicide was not mad, that his
229island is a fact, and his gold an absolute
reality too?’
I turned my back upon the crew to press
my hands to my eyes to ease my brow of an
intolerable sense of swooning in it.
‘Three cheers for him, men!’ I heard the
carpenter roar out. Volley after volley of
huzzas rang from the deep sea lungs of the
sailors. They were cheering me. I turned
to find them all looking my way. They tossed
their caps and flourished their arms like madmen
in the exuberance of their delight.
‘Now, sir,’ sung out the carpenter, ‘hadn’t
we better see to our ground tackle?’
‘As you will,’ I answered; ‘there is your
island; I have kept my word with you; now,
Mr. Lush, the crew will proceed as they think
proper. When you require my services again
as a navigator I am ready;’ and so saying I
seated myself on the edge of the skylight, and
with folded arms continued to view the island
with such astonishment and incredulity as
made me fear for my head.
‘Is it all for the best, do you think, Mr.
Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple, who had seated
herself beside me.
‘I cannot tell—it may be so. If they find
230the money, the wretches’ delight and good
temper may render them willing to comply
with my wishes to make for the nearest port.
I am in a dream. Give me a little time to
recover my amazement. You know it ought
to be impossible that that island should be
there.’
She glanced at me anxiously, with something
of alarm indeed, as though there was
even a greater strangeness in my manner than
in my language. Long hours of anxiety, long
hours of sleeplessness, the continual apprehension
of what was to follow if this island
was not discoverable, these things and how
much more had done their work with me;
and now on top was come the shock of the
discovery of the truth of what I had all along
been convinced was the dream of a madman—the
lie of a crazy head! I felt a moisture
in my eyes; my limbs trembled; my breathing
grew thick and difficult. In silence, Miss
Temple hurried below and returned with a
tumbler of cold brandy grog. She put it into
my hand, and I drank it off; and I have very
little doubt that the strong stimulant—such a
dose as might have made me boozy in an hour
231of ease!—rescued me from an attack of
hysterics, man as I am who tell this!
Meanwhile the seamen had gone forward,
and were all hard at work with the chain
cables, connecting them with the anchors,
affixing tackles, hoisting the ponderous irons
to the catheads, and filling the barque with
business and songs. They worked with
desperate will and eagerness, yet their progress
was slow, and the sun had mounted
many degrees before all was ready forward
for bringing up. They then went tumultuously
to breakfast, which they devoured upon
deck, emptying their hook-pots down their
throats, and hastily eating their biscuit and
meat, whilst they jabbered away in voices of
enthusiasm, one calling out a joke to another
amidst loud laughter.
The carpenter had now taken command.
He came aft while Miss Temple and I nibbled
at some breakfast which Wilkins had brought
us on deck, and ordered the maintopsail to be
swung, and stationed a hand with a lead-line
in each of the main-chains. The wind was
about south, and allowed the barque with her
yards braced fore and aft to very nearly look
up for the lagoon. We crept slowly along;
232the lead on either hand went in frequent
flights towards the bow, but no bottom was
reported. This went on till the yawn of the
lagoon was upon our starboard quarter, with
the trend of the land covered with bushes
opening out as it ran into the south-east, and
then came a shout from the port main chains.
The water now shoaled rapidly; a man stood
forward ready to let go the anchor; down
thundered the topsail yards to the cry of the
carpenter to let go the halliards; the barque
lost way; the sharp clank of a hammer rang
through the vessel, followed by a mighty
splash, and the roar of iron links torn in fury
through the hawse-pipes.
In a few moments the Lady Blanche was at
rest, with the western spur of the lagoon
within half a mile of her.
CHAPTER XXXIX THE ISLAND
233
The men now went to work to get tackles on
to the yards, in order to hoist the long-boat
over. This again ran into time, for the boat
stood in chocks, and was stoutly lashed to the
deck; and before they could remove her,
they had to clear away the spare booms which
were stowed on top of her and clean her out.
When they had her alongside, they passed
water and provisions and several gallons of
rum into her, with other matters of this sort,
of which I hardly took notice. They also
handed down the shovels used for the little
stock of coal that was carried in the fore-peak,
and several crows, handspikes, and whatever
else they could lay their hands upon that
would enable many of them at a time to dig
up the soil.
Whilst all this was doing, I remained
seated on the poop with Miss Temple. I was
234now feeling better and stronger again, could
think rationally, and astonishment was worn
out.
‘It is most unmistakably the island that
Captain Braine named,’ I said to the girl,
speaking with my eye at the telescope. ‘I
remember he spoke of a clump of trees at the
foot of which the treasure lies hidden. Yonder
are several clumps. Which one of them will
it be, I wonder? and will the money be there?
What an astonishing romance will it prove,
should those sailors fall in with a booty of
nearly two hundred thousand pounds!’
‘What are they going to do, do you think,
Mr. Dugdale?’
‘It looks to me as if the whole body of
them were going ashore to dig.’
‘Are they not taking a deal of provisions
with them?’
‘They may mean to make merry. After
months of shipboard life, the touch of the
land will be grateful to the soles of their
feet. Let them find the gold! their transports
will know no bounds; there will be some wild
skylarking amongst them before they come
off, or I am greatly mistaken. Would to God
235they would make themselves drunk, that I
might run away with the ship.’
‘Cannot that be done when they are on
shore?’ she cried with an air of exultant
entreaty in her sudden leaning towards me as
she spoke.
‘Yes, were an off-shore gale to come on
to blow, I might contrive to slip and let the
barque storm out to sea before it. But in
this weather! They would be after me in a
jiffy in their boat, and then God help me
when they got hold of me!’
A shade of paleness overspread her face,
and she regarded me with a look of consternation,
as though violently affected by the fancies
my simple sentence had put before her. I
sprang on the top of the hencoop to sweep
the sea-line with the telescope, but could
nowhere discern the least shadow of land.
As I put down the glass, the carpenter came
off the quarter-deck, where, at the gangway,
he had been busily shouting out instructions
and overseeing the work of preparing the
boat, and approached me. He held Captain
Braine’s parchment chart, at which he stopped
to look for a moment when he was yet some
paces distant.
236‘Will ye tell me what’s your opinion of
the weather, sir?’ he exclaimed, in a voice
whose natural gruffness and surliness were not
to be sweetened by the satisfaction that was
merely visible in a small symptom of respectfulness
in his bearing.
‘I do not know, I am sure. This cloudless
sky should be full of promise. The mercury
in the captain’s cabin promises fair weather.’
‘What do ‘ee think of letting them sails
hang?’ said he, sending his malevolent gaze
aloft; ‘or shall we tarn to and roll ’em up
afore we go ashore?—though it’ll be a long
job,’ he added, directing his eyes thirstily at
the island.
‘The ship is in your hands,’ said I.
‘Oh well,’ he exclaimed, as though gratified
by my admission, and sending a slow look
round the sea; ‘we’ll let ’em be as they are
for the present. The anchor’s got a good
grip, I allow; if so be as a breeze should come
along, we can send some of the men aboard
to furl the sails.’
We! thought I, as I regarded him in
silence.
‘My sight ain’t what it used to be,’ he
continued; ‘yet I can see enough of that
237there island’—and here he began to fumble
with the chart he held—‘to guess that this
here’s a first-rate likeness of it. This,’ said
he, pointing with his square thumb at the
mark in the middle of the lagoon on the
parchment, ‘is one of the bearings we’ve got
to have in mind to find out where we’re to
begin to dig, ain’t it?’
‘I believe so,’ said I.
‘Didn’t ye put down the particulars of the
spot in writing?’ he inquired, looking up at
me from the chart.
‘No,’ I answered shortly.
‘How many feet was the money hid away
from the wash of the water?’ he demanded.
‘It was in paces, I remember,’ I returned,
‘but the figure is entirely gone out of my
head. Wilkins should be able to recollect.’
He ran with a sort of dismay to the break
of the poop and bawled for Wilkins. The lad
came half-way up the steps. The carpenter
spoke to him and then returned.
‘The young scowbanker don’t recall,’ he
exclaimed. ‘He believes—a curse on his
believes!—that the captain spoke of four
hundred feet. Was that it, sir?’
238‘I remember enough to make sure that it
was not four hundred feet,’ I answered.
He picked up the glass and levelled it at
the island.
‘Which of them clumps of trees was it
that the capt’n talked to ye about?’ he asked
whilst he looked.
‘He did not describe any particular clump.
It was to be found by measuring so many
paces from the edge of the water of the
lagoon yonder, the pillar bearing something
west, but what I can’t tell you. I treated
the story as a madman’s dream, and dismissed
all the particulars of it from my mind.’
‘We’ll have to try all them clumps, then,
that’s all,’ said he, with a hard face and a
voice at once sharp and coarse with ill-subdued
temper. ‘We’ll get the money,
though it comes to having to dig up the
whole island. And now, sir, there’s nothen
to stop us—the boat’s ready—if you’ll be
pleased to come along.’
‘I can be of no good to you,’ I exclaimed
with an involuntary recoil; ‘you have hands
enough to dig. I’ll stop here.’
‘No, if you please; we shall want you,’
239he said, with a stare of dogged determination.
‘I must not be left alone, Mr. Lush,’ cried
Miss Temple, with a painful expression of fear
in her bloodless face. ‘If Mr. Dugdale goes,
I must accompany him.’
‘No, mem. You’re safe enough here. We
must have Mr. Dugdale along with us to show
us what to do. For Lord’s sake, no arguments,
sir! The impatience of the men’ll be
forcing them to taking you up in their arms
and lifting you over the side, if you keep ’em
waiting.’
‘But am I to understand,’ I exclaimed,
‘that all hands of you intend to quit the ship,
leaving this lady alone on board?’
‘Joe Wetherly and Jim Simpson’ll remain,’
he replied; ‘they’ll keep a lookout, and two’s
enough with us men in hail of their voices.
Now, sir, if you please.’
The crew standing in the gangway were
looking my way with signs of irritation in
their bearing. I merely needed to give one
glance at the carpenter’s face to satisfy me
that temper, protest, appeal, would be hopeless;
that refusal must simply end in my being
bodily laid hold of. I was urged by every
240instinct in me to a policy of conciliation. To
irritate the fellows would be the height of
folly; to provoke the indignity of being seized
and roughly thrust into the boat, the utmost
degree of madness. My resolution was at
once formed.
‘I will accompany you, Mr. Lush,’ I said.
‘Get you gone on to the quarter-deck whilst
I say a few words to comfort my companion.’
He walked away to the gesture with which
I accompanied this request.
‘Miss Temple, pray take heart. Wetherly
is one of the two men who are to be left.
You will feel safe here with him on board
until I return.’
‘Until you return!’ she cried, with her
eyes full of misery and horror. ‘I shall never
see you more!’
‘Oh no; do not believe such a thing. The
men imagine I shall be of service to them in
lighting upon the spot where the gold is.
They cannot do without me as a navigator.
They will bring me off with them when they
leave the island.’
‘I shall never see you again,’ she repeated
in a voice of exquisite distress. ‘Why could
they not have left us together here?’
241‘Now, Mr. Dugdale, if you please,’ bawled
the carpenter from the head of the poop
ladder.
I took and pressed her hand between
mine, and then broke away from her. What
had I to say, what to offer, that she could
convert into a hope? I felt the danger
of continuing to view her in her despair
and helplessness, for already it was producing
in me a rage against the men that
must be suppressed at all costs. I turned
to smile and to wave my hand, and found
her with her back upon me and her face
buried.
Wetherly and the man who was to be left
with him stood a little forward of the main-hatch
looking on. As I stepped to the gangway
I called out: ‘Wetherly, and you, Simpson: I
leave the lady behind me; she is alone. You
will see to her, men, I beg.’
Simpson gazed stolidly, as though not
understanding me; indeed, there was no countenance
amongst the sailors from which all
meaning appeared to have been so entirely
discharged as his. Wetherly smiled, and
flourished his hand with a significant glance.
He would perfectly comprehend that I had
242included Simpson as an excuse to appeal to
him only. Without another word I dropped
into the main-chains and jumped into the
long-boat.
When the men had entered, there were
ten of us in all. The boat was a roomy,
stoutly-built fabric, and her oars were almost
as long as sweeps. The barque’s quarter-boats
would have been too small for this service;
for the ten of us made a body, and they had
handsomely stowed her besides with water
and rum and provisions (as you are aware),
not to mention the sundries with which they
proposed to dig the soil. I rather wondered
that they should have supplied themselves so
hospitably, till I recollected that Captain
Braine had said there was no fresh water and
nothing to eat upon the island. The carpenter
had no doubt remembered this as a passage
in the story which Wilkins had overheard and
repeated. It might be also that they intended
to stay awhile on this island when they had
dug up the gold, to refresh themselves, with
the substantiality of land under their feet, for
a day or two after their long months of the
heaving sea; in which case they would naturally
convey what they required at once, to
243spare themselves the trouble of a trip to the
ship.
Their leaving Wetherly behind was due, I
took it, to the indifference and doubt he had
exhibited from the commencement; possibly,
they might also have some notion, by requiring
him to remain on board, to cheat him of a
portion of his share; and since they considered
that two were necessary to watch the barque,
they would find a willingness to remain in her
only in the stupidest man amongst them, who,
to be sure, was Simpson. These were thoughts
which hurriedly passed through my mind
even whilst the fellows were in the act of
shoving off. There was neither sail nor mast
in the boat. Probably they considered that
those things would encumber the thwarts,
whilst, in fact, there was no real need for
them, since the vessel lay within a very easy
pull. Four fellows threw their oars over, and
the boat clumsily broke the smooth water to
the impulse of their blades.
When we were clear of the shadow of the
barque’s side, I turned to look for Miss Temple,
and observed her seated in a posture of
utter despondency upon the skylight. I stood
up and flourished my hat; but she made no
244sort of response. She remained motionless,
as though stupefied and insensible. I resumed
my seat, breathing hard with the wild mood
that possessed me; but I was not to be suffered
to sit in silence. The carpenter plied me with
questions, which he only ceased that the
others might have a chance of making inquiries.
Couldn’t I remember how many
paces it was that the captain had said? Would
it be one hundred? Would it be two hundred?
Would I turn to and think a bit?
A gent’s eddicated memory was always better
than plain men’s, who weren’t no scholards.
If the right number of paces wasn’t hit upon,
it might take ’em a week to find the spot.
And what about the bearings? Couldn’t I
recollect exactly how the trees bore from
that there pillar? Wherever the gold was,
it couldn’t lie deep hid, for there was but two
men to bury it, and them weak with shipwreck,
and they wasn’t going all the way
down to hell to make sartin of a secret nook.
To all this I had to listen and reply as I
best could. Yet it was talk to put a fancy
that had long haunted me—that had haunted
me, I may say, from the time of some of my
earliest conversations with the carpenter—into
245shape, out of which arose one instantly
present keen perception: that gold or no
gold, they must be kept hunting for it!
It was a cloudless day; the sky a true
Pacific blue, a mild breathing of wind off the
island; and the sun, that was already at his
meridian, flung a wide splendour upon the air
that was without an insufferable excess of
heat. The long-boat floated into the lagoon,
the bottom of which showed like a pavement
of white marble trembling through the blue,
glass-like translucency. I looked carefully
about me, but could see no signs of the hut
which Captain Braine told me he had built,
and out of which he had crawled to find the
Yankee surveying craft hove-to abreast of the
island. Neither were there any other relics
of his shipwreck visible: such as the bottles,
casks, tins, and so on, which, according to his
account, he and his companion had landed
from the brigantine. It is true that a good
many years had elapsed since the date of the
wreck as he had given it me, and in that time
the island might have been visited or swept
by seas and hurricanes. The sailors did not
appear to heed the absence of all memorials
of Captain Braine’s having landed here.
246‘The Spanish craft’ll have come ashore
yonder,’ said the carpenter, standing erect,
referring to Braine’s story, and indicating by
an eager nod of the head the position of
the stretch of lustrous beach that looked
northwards, but that was now invisible to us.
‘Where’ll be a good place to land here?’
All hands were staring about them. The
fellow named Forrest said: ‘There’s a bit of
a tree there that’ll hold the boat secure.
Better let her lay afloat, Mr. Lush, ‘case of
a change o’ weather and having to shove off
in a hurry.’
‘Ay, she’ll lie all right off that tree,’ exclaimed
the carpenter. ‘In oars, lads! Let
her slide quietly stem on. I’ve heard of coral
spikes a-tearing of boats’ bottoms out.’
A few minutes later most of us were
ashore, the boat lying quietly secured by a
line to a small but solidly rooted tree, and
two or three fellows in her handing out her
freight of odds and ends to the others.
The feel of solid land under my feet was
a singular sensation. I had now been incessantly
at sea for a time that was growing
rapidly into six months, and after those interminable
weeks of heaving shipboard, the immovability
247of this coral rock affected me as
something in the greatest degree novel. I sent
a hurried glance around; but the eyes I had
strained from over the rail of the barque had
acquainted me with every material point of
the island, and this closer survey yielded
nothing fresh. The margin of the beach of
the lagoon went gently sloping up from hard
coral to a species of soil that appeared to
possess some qualities of fertility, for the tall
coarse grass was very plentiful and of a most
vivid green. The few groups of trees were
also richly clad, and the bushes extraordinarily
abundant. There were no signs of life
of any sort saving birds, of which a score
or two were wheeling about in the air over
the northward fronting beach. The inland
rise was a mere small green acclivity probably
not above thirty feet to the summit. All was
silent, desolate, lifeless; nothing to hear amid
the brief intervals of stillness among the
men save the delicate noise of the soft
wind amongst the foliage, and the melancholy
moaning of surf from the other side of the
island.
Everything was landed; the men seized
hold of the various implements they had
248brought with them to dig up the soil; the
carpenter flourished a shovel and called to
me: ‘Mr. Dugdale, have ye no recollection
of the number of paces?’
‘None whatever,’ I responded.
‘What d’ye advise, sir?’
‘Measure a hundred paces, keeping yonder
pillar on a line with that clump of trees
there, and then dig.’
‘Ay, but Wilkins overheard the capt’n
say that the money was buried at the foot of
some trees,’ said Forrest. ‘A hundred paces
ain’t going to bring us near a tree.’
‘I remember nothing about the foot of
some trees,’ I exclaimed.
‘What do you recall?’ the carpenter
shouted to Wilkins.
‘I thought I heerd something about the
foot of trees,’ answered the fellow, turning
his pale meaningless countenance upon Lush.
But Mr. Dugdale’ll know best, of course.’
‘If the money be here at all,’ said I, ‘you
may take it as lying hidden somewhere in
this space,’ and with pointing finger I indicated
an oblong surface one end of which
went a little beyond the fourth group of trees,
whilst I defined the other as starting from
249about a hundred paces away from the edge of
the beach where the boat was.
Ten minutes were now expended in heated
discussion. Where should they begin? One
or two were for leaving it to me and carrying
out my suggestions; others were for measuring
two hundred paces and starting there;
whilst others were for digging at the roots of
the clumps of trees, taking them one after
another.
‘See here, lads,’ cried the carpenter; ‘we
han’t had anything to eat yet. Better tarn to
and get some dinner and grog. By that time
we shall ha’ settled what to do and be the
fitter to go to work.’
This was a proposal which all hands found
perfectly agreeable. They flung down the
implements they held, and in a very short
time were seated about the grass, sheath-knives
in hand, making a hearty meal off salt
beef and biscuit and cheese, and tossing down
pannikins of rum-and-water. They invited
me to join them, and treated me with all the
respect I could desire. Again and again,
whilst we thus sat, I would direct looks at
the barque as she lay as it might seem almost
within musket-shot of us. The figure of a
250man paced the forecastle; but Miss Temple
was not to be seen. Once the carpenter,
catching me looking, exclaimed with a sort
of enthusiasm in his voice: ‘Well, the little
hooker is a beauty and no mistake. What a
slaver she’d make!’ Commendation probably
could not go higher in such a man. A beauty,
indeed, she looked; the reflection of her
white sides floated under her like a wavering
sheet of silver; her canvas hanging in festoons
showed with the milk-white softness of
streaks of clouds against the blue sky past
her; her rigging had the exquisite minuteness
of hair. Would to God, I thought to myself
with a sudden heavy sinking of my heart,
that I were on board of her alone with Miss
Temple, ay, with no other hands than mine to
work the ship! I should find the strength of
half-a-dozen seamen in me for her sake. Poor
girl! and there arose before me a vision of
the Indiaman—a recollection of the proud
Miss Temple scarcely enduring to send a
glance my way—— But this was a reverie
that must be speedily disturbed by the company
I was in.
They had hoarsely debated until they had
come to an agreement, and, having concluded
251their meal, each man lighted his inch of
sooty clay, picked up his shovel or his crow,
or whatever else had been brought off from
the barque, and marched to the nearest of
the clump of trees, at the foot of which they
fell to digging. Every man was in motion:
they laboured with incredible activity, and
with such faces of rapturous expectation as
again and again forced a smile from me,
depressed, anxious, miserable as I was. With
my hands clasped behind me, I paced to and
fro, watching and waiting. Now that the
island had proved an absolute fact, I could
no longer feel certain that the gold was a madman’s
fancy. Nay, I was now indeed imagining
that it was all true, and that Braine had
fallen crazy through possession of his incommunicable
secret acting upon a mind congenitally
tinctured with insanity, and irremediably
weakened yet by the horrible sufferings he
had undergone before he was cast away upon
this spot. Yet never did I glance at the
barque without a prayer trembling from my
heart to my lips that the wretches might not
find the gold. An old scheme, that this
unexpected lighting upon the island had
quickened and given shape to, was fast
252maturing in my mind, even while I paced
that stretch of grass; but the discovery of
the money would render it abortive.
I watched the seamen with an interest as
keen as their own, but with hopes diametrically
opposite. The soil was dry, stubborn,
perhaps through the intermingling of coral-grit
and the coarse fibres of its herbage. Yet
there were many of them, and every man
worked with desperate energy, and presently
they had dug up a good space to some little
depth. I awaited with a beating heart the
exultant shout which I might be sure the first
man who turned up one of the yellow pieces
would raise. They continued to toil in
silence. Presently the carpenter, resting his
chest upon his shovel, with the sweat falling
in rain from his crimson face, bawled out to
me: ‘How fur down, d’ye think, we ought to
keep on a-digging?’
‘I would give up at two feet,’ said I.
‘Captain Braine and his friend would not
find strength to go much beyond two feet.’
One of the fellows plumbed with his crow,
and, bringing it out, with his thumb at the
height of the level, cried: ‘It’s more’n two
feet already.’
253They dug a little longer, nevertheless;
then a few curses ran among them, and the
carpenter, with a note of irritation in his
voice, roared out: ‘No good going on here.
Try this clump.’ He walked over to it and
drove his shovel into the soil. The men
gathered about him, and in a trice were all
in motion again.
This was a severity of toil that I knew
must force them to break off presently.
Although I could not distinctly recollect the
bearings of the treasure as given by Captain
Braine, I felt persuaded that he had named
the base of the group of trees which the
fellows had just quitted as the hiding-place
of the money. If it were not there, then I
might feel perfectly satisfied it was nowhere
else, and hope began to dawn in me afresh.
Their labour at the base of the second clump
resulted in nothing. They exposed a wide
space, and went deep, but to no purpose.
The time had passed rapidly; I looked at
my watch, and was astonished to find it hard
upon five o’clock.
All this while the sky had remained cloudless,
and there was no hint visible in any
part of its countenance of a change in this
254softness and tranquillity of weather. The
light off-shore draught, however, had shifted
into the west, and at this hour there was a
cool and pleasant breeze, that brushed the
breast of the sea into a surface of twinkling
ripples. The water of the lagoon trembled
to it as it breathed laterally athwart its face,
and already the coral beach of this graceful
wide-mouthed inlet bore on the lee-side its
stress of tiny breakers.
The sailors by this time were pretty well
exhausted. The expressions their faces wore,
so far as they might be determinable amid
the purple, and perspiration, and hair of their
dripping and fire-hot visages, showed them
full of irritability and disappointment. The
carpenter addressed them; I did not catch
what he said, but as they came in a body
towards the part of the beach where I had
been pacing or sitting whilst they worked, I
could hear them swearing and cursing, whilst
they grumbled and growled out their surmises
as to where the money was hidden,
their eyes roving over the soil as they talked.
Lush’s face was hard with temper.
‘We’re agoing to send off some men to
furl the lighter canvas,’ said he. ‘Ha’n’t got
255much opinion of this soil as holding-ground,
and she’ll drag with that weight of canvas
loose, and blow away out of soundings, if we
don’t see to it.’
‘A very proper precaution,’ said I coolly.
‘You don’t mean to give up digging yet, I
suppose?’
‘Give up?’ he cried with his coarse sarcastic
air, and frowning upon me out of the
rage my inquiry excited. ‘No; not if we
has to dig the whole island up, as I told ye.’
‘Very well. I’ll go aboard with the men
in the boat. The money, if it is hidden at
all, will be hereabouts,’ said I, with a wave
of my arm, ‘and I can be of no further use
to you.’
‘No, no; you’ll stop along with us, if you
please,’ said the fellow. ‘Your recollection
of the number of paces may come back to ye,
and we can’t do without you.’
I sent a look from him to the faces of the
fellows who stood listening near us, and without
another word folded my arms, and with
a spin of my heel started off on a walk to and
fro.
CHAPTER XL I ESCAPE
256
If I had witnessed the idleness of protest and
remonstrance and appeal on board the barque,
I must have held entreaty to be tenfold more
useless in the face of the mortification of the
carpenter and his crew, increased as their
temper was by the irritation and the fatigue
of hard and useless work. I might at once
be sure that they had no intention of suffering
me to leave the island until they quitted
it themselves for good. There would be also
distrust; the fear that I might contrive to
run away with the ship. Yet I had still to
find out what they meant to do; what their
plans were for the night. I knew what I
wanted, and I remember what I prayed for as
I tramped solitarily backwards and forwards
upon the edge of the herbage where it came
thin to the beach.
Seven men entered the long-boat and
257shoved off. The carpenter remained; with
him was the sailor named Woodward. They
flung themselves down upon the ground with
an air of exhaustion, and so lay smoking their
pipes. After awhile, the carpenter called to
me. I approached him leisurely. He asked
me if I remembered the number of paces
from the beach, and eyed me so surlily as he
put the inquiry that I began to think he
suspected I could tell if I chose.
‘If Wilkins can’t remember,’ I exclaimed,
‘why should I be able to do so—I, whose
opinion of this business you well know? I
do not recollect the number of paces. I
wish I did, for I am more anxious than ever
you can be that you should come at this gold,
that we may sail away, and end the most
cursed adventure that ever a man was forced
into.’
The heat and the evident sincerity with
which I spoke these words slightly subdued
him, and his ugly face relaxed its threatening
look. Finding him silent I said: ‘What do
you mean to do?’
‘Stop here all night,’ he answered shortly.
‘Stop here, I’ve told ye, till we’ve found the
money.’
258‘You will leave some men aboard the ship
to look after her?’
‘Two’ll be quite enough,’ he answered.
‘How much looking after do she want in
weather of this pattern? If we don’t meet
with the gold afore dark—and there’ll be no
chance of that, I allow—we must all be at
hand to tarn to at daybreak.’
I asked no further questions; and the
fellow sank into silence, both he and the other
sucking at their pipes, whilst they seemed to
hunt with their eyes over the ground as they
lay with their heads propped on their elbows.
I saw Miss Temple on the poop watching
the approaching boat. Very well could I
imagine the feeling which would possess her
when she perceived that I was not among
the occupants of the little craft! The boat
clumsily drove alongside, and the men sprang
on board over a short rope gangway ladder
that had been dropped. They went to work
at once, as though in a hurry to get the furling
job over, that they might return; and
with a swiftness that was surprising in fellows
almost exhausted by previous labour, they
furled the mainsail, foresail, and lighter canvas,
leaving the topsails hanging, and the spanker
259loosely brailed in to the mast. This done,
they descended, and came to a pause at the
gangway, as though giving what news they
had to the two seamen that had been left
behind. They then entered the boat afresh
and leisurely made for the island. As they
jumped on to the beach, I noticed that the
man Simpson had taken the place of Forrest,
who had been left to keep a lookout with
Wetherly. I felt instantly very uneasy on
observing this. There was no other man of
all the crew whom I would not sooner have
wished to be Wetherly’s associate than that
impudent, mutinous, bold-faced young seaman.
To think of Miss Temple alone with those two
men! one to be trusted, as I hoped and believed;
but the other as insolent and defiant
a rascal as could be imagined of any forecastle
blackguardly hand! I gazed eagerly at the
barque, and was glad to find that the girl had
gone below. I earnestly prayed that she
would have the sense to keep in hiding.
There was the long night before her, and
Wetherly might sleep.
Never since the hour of our losing sight
of the Indiaman had I felt half so worried,
half so distracted with fears and forebodings.
260I withdrew to a distance from that part of the
beach where I had been walking, that the
workings of my mind might not be seen in
my face; and thankful was I afterwards, when
I had somewhat cooled down, that the carpenter
did not offer to approach or speak to
me; for such was the passion my anxiety for
Miss Temple had raised, that I believe a single
syllable of rudeness would have caused me to
fall upon him—with what result it would be
useless here to imagine.
There was about an hour and a half of
daylight remaining. When the sailors had
secured their boat, they went to supper. In
lieu of tea they drank rum-and-water, and
this pretty plentifully.
‘Won’t ye jine us, Mr. Dugdale?’ called
out the carpenter. ‘No call to eat along with
us if you object to our company. Ye can
have your food separate; but you’ll be wanting
to eat anyhow.’
‘He must be a poor sailor who is not good
enough company for me,’ I exclaimed, having
by this time mastered myself; and forthwith
I took my seat amongst them and fell to upon
a piece of salt beef, whilst I got a stronger
261beat for my pulse out of the pannikin of grog
that I drained.
The men’s talk was all about the gold.
‘If it ain’t under them trees,’ said one of them,
‘it’ll ha’ to come to doing what the gent told
us; starting at a hundred paces from the wash
of the water there and digging in a line till
we strikes it.’
‘What’ll them as hid it have wrapped it
up in?’ exclaimed another.
‘Canvas,’ answered the carpenter shortly.
‘Which’ll have rotted by this time, I
allow, and the money’ll be lying loose,’ said a
sailor.
‘Who’ll get the first chink of it?’ cried
Wilkins.
Exclamations of this sort I observed
worked a general sense of elation in them;
and the rum helping their spirits, they began
to crack jokes, and their laughter was loud
and frequent. The scene, to any one who
could have viewed it without distress, must
have been thought admirable for its character
of soft romantic beauty. The western atmosphere
was brimful of the reddening light of
the descending sun; under it, the smooth
ocean lay in dark gold that came sifting out
262into a cool azure, which then ran with an
ever-deepening tint of blue into the clear
liquid distance. The trembling of the sea to
the breeze put a weak coming and going
of light and shadow into these dyes, and
freshened the western light upon the surface
into a very glorious scintillation. The barque
floated like a shape of marble in the cerulean
water that lay betwixt the reflection of the
sun and the darker tints of the east. Her
rigging resembled wires of gold, her masthead
vane lay like a little flame against the sky,
her white shadow fluctuated in dissolving
quicksilver under her, and as she slightly
leaned with the delicate heave of that wide
Pacific breast, stars of crimson flashed off her
deck, and her bright lower-masts showed as
though they were on fire. The water in the
lagoon floated in a tender blue to the coral
beach on which it rippled. There was a
subtle aroma as of sweet and secret inland
vegetation upon the atmosphere. The long
grass stirred, and the silken brushing of the
leaves of the trees against one another produced
the most refreshing sound that could
be imagined to ears which for months had
received no pleasanter noises than the straining
263of timbers, the flapping of sails, and the
sobbing and washing of the ocean surge.
There was nothing in the wildness and rugged
looks of the fiery-faced recumbent seamen to
impair the tenderness of this picture. On the
contrary, their roughness seemed to accentuate
its gentle beauty, as the silence of a calm midnight
at sea may be heightened by some gruff
human voice speaking at a distance, or by
some rude sound that assists the hearing as a
contrast.
The carpenter looked towards the sun.
‘Don’t let’s waste no more time,’ he cried;
‘let’s attack that third clump there afore it
falls dark.’
They sprang to their feet, seized their
several tools, and in a few moments were
hard at it, digging, boring, but in silence, for
their efforts were too heavy for talk or for
laughter. The sun went down whilst they
were still toiling. They had discovered
nothing, and the first to give up was the
carpenter. He sent his shovel flying through
the air with a loud curse.
‘I’m done for to-night,’ he roared. ‘Where
did them scowbankers hide it? It’ll have to
be as Mr. Dugdale says. ‘Morrow marning
264we’ll start at a hundred paces from the beach.
We’re not here to miss it, and we’ll have it if
we rip the guts of this island out of her forty
fathom deep!’
He was furious with temper and exhaustion,
and stepping to a kettle that was full of
rum and water, he half-filled a hook-pot and
swallowed the contents to the dregs, afterwards
pitching the vessel from him with an
air of loathing and passion. The men, throwing
their implements into a heap, came slowly
to where the rum and provisions were, cursing
very freely indeed, some of them groaning
with weariness, smearing the sweat off their
foreheads along their naked arms, and stretching
their clenched fists above their heads in
postures of yawning. Every man of them
took a long drink, and then they slowly fell
to filling their pipes whilst they continued to
heap curses upon Captain Braine and his
companion for not having buried the money
in a place where it might be easily got at.
My heart was now beating quickly with
anxiety. What was the next step they meant
to take? Would the carpenter change his
mind and carry all hands of us aboard? I
observed him light his pipe, and take a look
265around with as evil an expression on his
face as ever I had witnessed in it. He then
trudged with a deep sea-roll in his walk down
to the tree to which the boat was attached,
and having carefully examined the knot, as
though to make sure that the line was securely
fastened, he stood gazing awhile at the little
craft, as though considering, afterwards sending
his eyes in another rolling stare round the
horizon as far as it lay visible. I watched
him furtively, but with consuming anxiety.
‘Tell ye what, mates,’ he suddenly sung
out, rounding upon the men and approaching
them, ‘there’s nothen to hurt in this weather,
and the barque’s going to lie as quiet as if she
was laid up. We’ll just stop where we are;
but a lookout’ll ha’ to be kept, and the boat
must be watched. Better settle the order at
once. The lookout will sit in the boat,
case’—he added with a sarcastic leer in my
direction—‘there might be savages about unbeknown
to us with a settlement aback of
that hill amidships there. What d’ye say,
Mr. Dugdale?’
‘I have no longer command,’ I answered;
‘it is for you to arrange as you will. Why
you desire to keep me here, I cannot imagine.
266Why not put me aboard, that the young lady
may have the comfort of my presence?’
‘She don’t want no comfort,’ he answered
coarsely; ‘she’s all right. The number of
paces the capt’n talked of may come to ye by
daybreak, and we’re all at hand to tarn to.’
I made no answer.
The night came down dark and clear, with
a noise of rippling waters in the quiet steady
wind. The barque faded into a phantasm,
and inland it was all black as ink, with the
stars which rimmed the outline of the central
rise winking there like sentinel beacons burning
upon some giant mountain leagues distant.
But where the boat lay the space of coral grit
showed pallid, of the hue of ordinary soil
bathed in moonlight, and the figure of the
little fabric, with her nose pointing at the
tree to which the rope that secured her was
fastened, blended shadowily with the darkling
surface of the water of the lagoon, over whose
tiny ripples the clear reflection of the larger
stars were riding.
The men roamed about in twos and threes,
but never very far. I believed I could trace
an uneasiness in their behaviour, as though
they had consented to sleep out of the ship
267in obedience only to the carpenter’s wishes,
and were now reconsidering their acquiescence
with some indecision of mind. I earnestly
hoped that this might not prove so, and
watched and listened to them with my heart
full of wretchedness. The carpenter was
seated with another man, and conversed with
him in low notes, which trembled to my ears
like the subdued growling of a dog. I strolled
away to a distance, but was neither followed
nor called to.
The time passed very slowly. The men
grew weary of moving about, though for
some while the mere sensation of the hard soil
was a delight to them, now that the air was
deliciously cool and they had no work to do
and could roam at will. They came in a body
together and seated themselves round about
the carpenter and his companion, drinking by
the starlight, with the frequent glare of the
lighting of pipes throwing out the adjacent
faces, till it was like looking into a camera
obscura. They talked much, but my attentive
ear detected a drowsy note stealing into the
sound of grumbling that stood for their conversation.
It was drawing on to the half-hour past
268ten when I stepped leisurely up to the huddle
of shadows, and looking over them as they
lay in all sorts of postures, I exclaimed:
‘Which is the carpenter?’
‘Here he is,’ answered the voice of Lush.
‘Are the men going to make a bedroom
of this spot?’ said I.
‘Ay,’ he answered. ‘Where else? Ye
han’t surely come across a hotel in your
lonely rambles?’
These words he pronounced without intending
offence, though such was the coarseness
of the ruffian that he could say little
which was not offensive. One or two of the
fellows laughed.
‘I shall look out for comfortable quarters
for myself,’ said I. ‘I have no fancy for lying
amidst all this high grass. There may be
snakes about.’
‘No, no!’ exclaimed one of the men;
‘there’s no snakes here, sir. I’ve kept a bright
lookout. There’s nothen to be afeerd of.’
‘Ye’ll find the grass a soft bed,’ exclaimed
the carpenter.
‘Thank you,’ I answered; ‘but since I am
detained here against my will, allow me at
least to choose my own mattress. Should you
269want me, you’ll find me about eighty paces
yonder, where there’s some clean sand betwixt
the bushes.’ I pointed to a spot a little distance
past the curve of the lagoon.
‘It don’t signify to us where ye sleep, sir,
exclaimed Lush; ‘we shan’t be wanting ye
till the morning, by which time I hope you’ll
have recollected the distance Capt’n Braine
named. If you should feel a-dry in the night
ye’ll find a kettle-full of rum-and-water alongside
yon breaker that’s standing upright.’
‘Thanks,’ said I; ‘good-night.’
There was a rumbling sleepy answer of
‘good-night’ from amongst them.
The spot I had chosen gave me a clear
view of the lagoon, and by consequence of
the boat. There was no grass here, and the
bushes were small and stunted, as though
starved by the sandy character of the soil.
Yet they furnished a dark surface, amid which
I could crawl on my hands and knees without
risk of being seen from the place occupied by
the men. I sat down to wait and watch.
Over the tops of the bushes alongside of me
I could just distinguish the figures of the
sailors when one or another of them rose
apparently to obtain a drink from the kettle.
270After I had been seated some twenty minutes
or so, I spied one of them walking towards
the boat. His dark shape showed with tolerable
distinctness when he emerged from the
comparative obscurity of the herbage into the
dull gleam of the stretch of coral foreshore.
He entered the boat, and then I lost sight of
him, for the water past him lay in a trembling
sheet of gloom, and his outline was absorbed
in it. From time to time I could hear the
voices of the seamen conversing; but shortly
after eleven all was silent amongst them, and
then the indescribable hush of the great ocean
night settled down upon the lonely rock.
There was nothing in the stirring of the
bushes to the wind, in the dim and delicate
seething in the lagoon, in the hollower note
of surf lightly tumbling at the back of the
island, to vex this vast oppressive stillness.
I thanked God that there was no moon; yet
could have earnestly prayed for more wind
and for a few clouds to obscure something
of the small fine spangling of the atmosphere
by the stars. I could see no light upon the
barque; she lay in a little heap of faintness,
what with her white sides and hanging white
topsails, out in the gloom.
271Presently, when I had supposed that all
hands saving the fellow in the boat were sleeping,
I saw a figure slowly coming my way.
I gathered by his posture, as I dimly discerned
it, that he was staring among the bushes as
he advanced. He slightly lurched as he
stepped, and it was not until he was within
twenty feet of me that I perceived he was the
carpenter. I pillowed my head on my arm,
drew my feet up, and feigned to be in a sound
slumber. He arrived abreast of me, stood
looking a little, and then went slowly back to
the others.
The scheme I had made up my mind to
adventure was one of extraordinary peril.
Yet I was quite certain that the dreadful risk
would provide me with my last, indeed my
only chance. I was now immovably convinced
that though Captain Braine’s story of
the existence of the island was a fact, his
assurance of a large fortune in hidden gold was
a madman’s fancy. The men would be finding
this out; what they would then do, I could
not conjecture; but the menace involved in
their lawlessness, their rage of disappointment,
their determination (certain to follow)
to find their account in the barque and her
272cargo at all costs, was so heavy, so fraught
with deadly peril to Miss Temple and myself,
that I was resolved that night to make one
prodigious dash for liberty, leaving the rest
to fate. Once during that day it had occurred
to me to make a rush for the boat and shove
off, leaving the men without any means of
pursuing me; but a little consideration showed
me that the risks of such an attempt were all
too fearfully against me. If I valued my life
for my own as well as for the girl’s sake, I must
not fail; and yet failure seemed almost certain.
Before I could have liberated the line that
secured the boat, sprung into her, lifted one
of her heavy oars to shove her off with, the
men, who had always been working within a
hundred and fifty yards of the beach, would
have been upon me. Or supposing I had
managed to slide the boat a few fathoms away
before they arrived, half of them would have
been probably able to swim faster than I could
scull the clumsy fabric, whilst my erect figure
must have supplied an easy mark for the
stones which those remaining on shore would
have hurled at me. No! I had mused upon
and then utterly dismissed that scheme, coming
273back to my first resolution, which I now lay
waiting for the right moment to execute.
At half-past twelve by my watch, which
the starlight enabled me to read, the man who
had first entered the boat came out of it, and
was replaced by another, whose figure I
followed with my sight as he passed across
the beach and disappeared in the little
structure. For another hour I continued to
watch, to wait, to hearken with every sense
in me strained to its acutest limit; during
which time the island continued sunk in the
profoundest stillness of this midnight, saving
always the noise of the rippling of waters and
of the breezy stirring of the bushes. Then
with a few words of appeal to God for courage
and support, I started to crawl round past the
spot where the men were sleeping, that I
might arrive at the beach under cover of the
tall grass, which would hinder them from
observing my form as I approached the tree
to which the boat’s line was secured.
The soil ran in a sandy trail through the
bushes hereabouts, and I got along pretty
nimbly, crawling noiselessly, feeling ready to
burst at times, owing to the almost unconscious
holding of my breath, forced upon me
274by my apprehension lest I should be observed
or overheard. Presently, coming to the trees
at whose base the men had dug, I stood up,
not fearing detection here, and very rapidly
gained the growth of bushes which darkened
a space of land to the north, betwixt the
place where the men lay and the broad shelf
of white beach where, as the fellows had
supposed, the Spanish brigantine had driven
ashore. I now dropped on my knees and
hands again, and in this posture skirted the
high herbage that grew down to where the
coral grit provided no soil for such vegetation,
until I came to the tree, close up against
which I rose, that my shape might appear
as a part of the trunk. Then, with an eager,
trembling hand, I cast the line adrift, and
sinking again on my knees and hands, crawled
upon the dark surface of the verdure to
where it went nearest to the northern horn
of the lagoon, where, still crouching, I remained
for a little space watching.
In a few minutes the liberated boat, feeling
the action of the wind, slowly floated off.
At every instant I was prepared to hear
a shout from the shore or from the fellow
who was supposed to be at watch in the boat.
275Yet it soon grew plain that my utmost hopes
were to be confirmed by the heavy rum-influenced
slumber that had overtaken the
watchman, and that lay in lead upon the
closed lids of the wearied sailors upon the
grass. My heart was loud in my ears as I
crouched watching. Presently the boat had
slipped to some considerable distance from
the shore, and was sliding seawards out to
the wide yawn of the lagoon broadside to
the ripples and the breeze. Then, pulling off
my coat and waistcoat, and shoes and smallclothes,
I crawled down on to the clear gleam
of the beach, waded into the water, and
struck out for the barque.
I was a fairly good swimmer; of old the
exercise had been one of delight to me. The
water was cool, but not chilling; I seemed
to find a buoyancy in me, too, as from excess
of brine in the dark surface, through which
I gently pushed at first, lest I should raise a
light of phosphorescence about me. At intervals
I would pause, faintly moving my arms
that I might keep myself afloat, and hearkening
in a very agony of expectation. But
all continued silent ashore. Now and again
I caught sight of the boat as she went drifting
276seawards; but the shadow of the night
lay thick upon the breast of the sea, and the
small structure was sunk in it in a blending
that eluded the gaze.
When I considered I had swum far
enough to render any such sea-glow as my
movements would kindle about me invisible
from the island, I put my whole strength into
my arms and legs and swam with a vigour
that speedily began to tell. The dim heap
of faintness which the barque had made grew
definable with the stealing out of its proportions.
The outline of the hull shaped itself;
then I could see the clear line of the yards
and spars ruling the starry sky with the
vaporous-like folds of the topsails hanging.
I felt no fatigue, no cold; the silence on the
land filled me with a spirit of exultation, and
the animation of that emotion acted upon me
like a cordial of enduring virtue. Gradually
and surely I neared the barque; the swim
was but a short one in reality, and I needed
no rest, though rest I could easily have
obtained by floating on my back for a while.
Within twenty minutes from my first cautious
taking of the water, my hand was upon the
277lowest rung of the rope gangway ladder that
lay over the side.
I held by it a little, to take breath and to
listen. I had seen no figures on the vessel
as I approached: but I knew that Forrest
was on board, that the very piratical cast of
the rogue’s character would render him alert
and perceptive; that the moment he spied me
he would guess a stratagem, and be upon
me; and that it was my business to be before
him, or to be prepared for his first spring,
armed, as I knew him to be, with the sailor’s
invariable weapon, the sheath-knife.
CHAPTER XLI WE SAIL AWAY
278
It did not take me long to recover my breath.
The swim had, indeed, comparatively speaking,
been a short one; there was no tide that
I had been in any degree sensible of; and I
had lost nothing but breath, thanks to my
eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that
had nerved my limbs with steel and rendered
me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up the
ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom
lay heavy upon the quarter-deck and waist,
and objects were hard to distinguish. All
was motionless, however, there and on the
forecastle; but I could now discern two
figures walking on the poop on the port side.
The spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the
several fittings of skylight and companion, and
so on, had concealed them from my observation
whilst I swam, approaching the ship as I
had on the starboard side. Their shapes
279showed tolerably clear against the stars that
sparkled over the rail and betwixt the squares
of the rigging, and I stood staring with no
more of me showing over the line of bulwarks
than my head till they had come to the rail
that protected the break of the poop, and
I then made out that one of them was Miss
Temple.
This convinced me that the other must be
Wetherly, for it was not to be imagined that
the girl would seek refuge from even a more
frightful loneliness than hers was in the society
of young Forrest.
At that instant I heard a long wild halloa
dimly coming through the steady breeze from
the shore. The cry was followed by another
and yet another, and then it seemed to me
that it was re-echoed from off the water some
distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound
on to the deck, and in a breath had armed
myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if
that man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple
was, I was ready for him! In a moment
I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had
brought the pair to a dead halt, and they
stood listening. Now that I was on the poop
I perceived by the build of the figure of the
280man that it was Wetherly, and rushed up to
him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on
seeing me, as well she might; for, having
partially undressed myself, I was clothed from
top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides,
which moulded my attire to my figure
and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster
of Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if
I had shaped myself out of the air.
‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried.
‘Great God, mum, it’s Mr. Dugdale!’ he
roared.
The girl uttered another shriek, came in a
bound to me and flung her arms round my
neck.
Now the halloaing ashore was incessant,
and the wild cries sounding through the wind
were as though the island had been suddenly
invaded by an army of frenzied cannibals.
‘My dearest!’ I cried, letting forth my
heart in that moment of being clasped and
clung to by her whom I had long loved and
was risking my life to save, ‘it is I indeed!
But release me now, my darling girl. We
must get the barque under weigh instantly.
Wetherly, where is Forrest?’
‘Dead, sir.’
281‘Dead!’ I cried.
‘Shot dead by Miss Temple’s hand, sir,’ he
exclaimed.
The girl let fall her arms from my neck,
essayed to speak, struggled a little with her
breath, and fell against me in a dead swoon.
‘Your coat, Wetherly,’ I shouted; ‘off
with it, man, and make a pillow for the lady’s
head. Quick! If the long-boat sculls ashore
and the crew enter her before we can slip, we
are both of us dead men.’
He instantly pulled off his jacket; and
tenderly, but swiftly, I laid the girl down,
first freeing the collar of her dress and no
more, for there was time for no more.
‘Jump for the cabin lamp, Wetherly,’ I
cried; ‘don’t stop to ask any questions. We
must knock out a shackle, and let the chain
go overboard. That is what is now to be
done.’
He rushed off the poop, I in his wake.
The lamp was dimly burning, but it enabled
us to find what we wanted in the carpenter’s
chest: and whilst I held the light to a
shackle that was just forward of the windlass
barrel, he let drive, and the cable went
with a roar through the iron hawse-pipe.
282‘We must now get the topsail on her and
blow away,’ I cried.
The conviction that the men would view
him as my confederate and have his life if
they got aboard, put an incredible activity
into his limbs, which were habitually slow of
motion. My having swum to the ship made
his sailorly mind comprehend without a syllable
of explanation from me how I had contrived
the matter. We fled to where the
topsail clewlines were belayed, and let them
go, and then hand over hand dragged home
the sheets, which, being of chain, travelled
through the sheave-holes very readily. This
done, I sped as fast as my feet would carry
me to the poop, and finding the helm amidships,
waited to see how the wind sat with
regard to the position of the ship, meanwhile
bawling at the top of my lungs to Wetherly
to let go the maintopsail clewlines and bring
the clews home as far as his strength would
enable him.
The light breeze was off the starboard
quarter. I at once starboarded the helm,
and, to my infinite delight, found the barque
responsive to the turn of the spokes, proving
that, snail-like as might be her progress, she
283at least had steerage way upon her. This
brought the land upon the starboard beam.
I then steadied the helm, quite sure that the
craft would steer herself for a few minutes.
As I ran forward I witnessed Miss Temple
in the act of sitting upright. I sprang to her
side and lifted her to her feet, and held her
for perhaps a minute with her face upon my
shoulder until she should have recovered her
self.
‘Sit on this skylight,’ I exclaimed, ‘until
you feel equal to assisting us, and then come
to our help, for we greatly need you.’
She understood me, but was too weak and
dazed as yet to be of use. The shouts from
the shore were incessant. The men had
heard the chain cable as it rattled through
the hawse-pipe, and I judged they were yelling
to the ship, as though hailing Forrest;
but they were too far distant for their syllables
to reach us. I spent a breathless moment
in sweeping the sea towards the mouth of the
lagoon, and on a sudden saw the boat like a
drop of ink on the star-touched shadow of
the water; but I heard no sounds of her being
sculled—which would be the fellow’s only
284chance of getting ashore—nor could I catch
the least sign of his figure.
My immediate business now was to get
the foretopsail mast-headed as best we could.
There was a little winch just abaft the mainmast.
Shouting out my intentions to Wetherly,
I bent on the first length of rope I met with
to the hauling part of the topsail halliards and
brought it to the winch, where I took some
turns with it. As I did this, Miss Temple descended
the poop ladder.
‘Have you strength to hold on to this
rope?’ I cried to her.
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered.
I put it into her hand, bidding her do no
more than keep a light strain upon it, that it
might not slip; and in a moment the little
winch was rattling with the chirruping of its
pawls going straight up in the air like an endless
cocking of muskets to Wetherly’s and my
vigorous arms.
By this means we contrived to hoist the
foretopsail, though not, as will be supposed,
to a ‘taut leech,’ as sailors call it. Yet the
cloths showed a wide surface to the wind, and
already the nimble frame of the little barque,
yielding to the summer pressure aloft, was
285sliding along very nearly as fast as the men
could have urged the heavy long-boat through
the water, supposing them to have recovered
her and to be in pursuit. Whilst Wetherly
manœuvred with the maintopsail halliards in
readiness for hoisting the yard, I once again
hurried aft to the wheel, to make sure of the
course of the barque. She was drifting dead
before the small breeze with her head at
about east-by-north, and already had brought
the island veering upon the quarter, lying
down there in a lump of blackness in the
starlit gloom, with just the gleam of the bit
of northern coral sea-board glancing off the
dusk of the shelving reef. From time to time
I could hear the fellows shouting, but their
voices were now sounding thin, weak, and remote.
The star-flakes in the black water
astern trembled to the mild passage of the
wind; and sparks of the sea-fire, like golden
seed, churned up in our wake mingled with
those delicate crystal reflections. With an
eager passionate prayer upon my lip that this
steady draught would hold, I regained the
main-deck; and all being ready, Wetherly
and I revolved the winch, Miss Temple
holding on as before, and the yards slowly
286mounted till we could ‘heave and pawl’ no
further.
‘Now, Wetherly,’ I shouted, ‘jump aloft
and loose that foresail. Pass your knife
through the gaskets. Don’t wait to cast them
adrift.’
Then catching up the girl’s hand, which I
pressed to my lips before speaking, I asked
her to accompany me to the wheel, that she
might hold the helm steady and keep the
barque straight before the wind.
‘There is no time,’ I exclaimed as I
hastened aft with her, ‘to utter more than the
few syllables necessary to effect our escape.
We must heap all the canvas we can manage
to spread upon the ship. We must contrive
to blow away out of sight of that island before
the breeze fails, or the men will be giving
chase in the long-boat.’
She grasped the spokes in silence. The
binnacle lamp was unlighted, and the card lay
in gloom. I bade her take note of a star that
stood like a jewel at the extreme end of the
starboard main-yard arm, and swiftly directed
her how to move the wheel, if that star swung
from the end of the spar, so as to bring it
back again to its place. I then sprang to the
287main-rigging, and climbed with the activity of
one to whom the loss of a minute may mean
life or death, to the height of the topgallant
yard, the sail of which I loosed, and then
came hand over hand down to the deck by
the stay. The barque was but a toy of a ship
at the best, and after the pyramidal heights
reared by the Indiaman, her tops and crosstrees
looked but a leap from the deck. I
had sheeted home the topgallant-sail before
Wetherly had let fall the foresail. I summoned
him to the halliards, and when the
sail was set, we let go the fore clew garnets
and hauled the sheet aft. Then we hoisted
the foretopmast staysail and other light fore
and aft sails; and in order to get as much
weight out of the wind as there blew in it, we
braced the yards somewhat forward, that the
fore and aft canvas might draw. When this
was done, I raced aft to the wheel and put it
down.
No sooner did the little barque feel the air
off her beam than she gently sloped her spars
to it with a small spitting of froth at her cutwater,
and in a few minutes she was gliding
along like a yacht, reeling off a fair six knots
with water smooth as ice to travel over, small
288as was the amount of canvas we had made
shift to spread. But I could do no more. My
strength had failed me, and I was incapable
of further exertions. It was not the fatigue
of the swim merely, nor my red-hot haste and
maddened labours since I had boarded the
barque; the frightful hours of expectation, of
anticipation, of hopes and fears, and of waiting,
that I had passed upon the accursed
island since sundown were now heavily telling
upon me.
‘Hold the wheel, will you, Wetherly,’ said
I. ‘I am pretty nearly spent. I must rest a
bit. Thanks be to God, we are safe now, I
believe;’ and so saying, I sunk wearily upon
the stern gratings.
Miss Temple went hastily to the cabin,
carrying with her the lamp with which
Wetherly had kindled the mesh in the binnacle.
In a few minutes she returned with a
tumbler of brandy-and-water, which she put
to my lips. I swallowed the contents greedily,
for I was not only parched with thirst, but
my nerves sorely needed the stimulant. I
took her hand and brought her to sit by my
side, and continued to caress her hand, scarcely
equal for more just then than a few rapturous
289exclamations over our deliverance, the delight
I felt in being with her again, the joy in believing
that I should now be able to redeem
my promise and restore her in safety to her
mother. Her replies were mere murmurs.
Indeed, her own emotions were overwhelming.
I could hear her sobbing; then see her by
the starlight smiling; but she kept her eyes
fixed on my face; soaked as I still was to the
skin with salt water, she leaned against me, as
though she needed the assurance of actual
contact to convince her that I was with her
once more.
But by this time the island had melted
into the scintillant dusk of the sky. Nothing
showed but the liquid sweep of the indigo
line of horizon. Another hour of such sailing
as this would convey us out of all possibility
of reach of the long-boat, supposing
the men should recover her; for she was
without mast or sail; the utmost exertion of
the rowers could scarcely get more than three
or three and a half miles an hour out of her;
then again I had shifted the barque’s course,
and would shift it again presently.
‘Tell me now about Forrest?’ I exclaimed,
290breaking a silence of fatigue and emotion that
had lasted some few minutes.
I felt the shudder that ran through my
companion in the clasp of her hand.
‘Did I understand that you shot him?’
‘It is too dreadful to speak of,’ she said in
a low voice.
‘It was like this, sir,’ exclaimed Wetherly.
‘Forrest and me had agreed to keep a four
hours’ lookout. He was to stand from eight
to twelve. I lay down on the fo’c’sle, believing
the lady safe below, where she’d been
pretty nigh ever since you and the men went
ashore. I was awoke by a noise that sounded
to me like the report of a gun. It was then
about six bells, sir. I thought I’d just walk
aft to see if all was right with the lady.
Audacious as I knew that there fellow Forrest
to be, speaking of him as a fo’c’sle hand, and
capable of any sort of hinsolence and mutiny
and the likes of that, I had no fear of him
whilst he was left alone to keep a lookout
with the hentertainment of thinking about the
money him and his mates was to dig up.
Well, as I reached the quarter-deck the lady
came out of the cabin. The light was burning
dim, just as you found it when you came
291aboard. She held a pistol in her hand, and she
says to me quite coolly: “A man came into
my cabin just now. I heard him trying the
handle of my door, and I took up this pistol,
and when he walked in, I said: “Who are
you? What do you want?” he answered;
and I pointed my pistol at him and fired. I
believe I have killed him. Will you go and
see?” I thought she was walking in her
sleep, so quiet she talked. I went to her cabin,
and saw Forrest lying upon the deck. I
turned him over, and he was stone dead; shot
through the heart, I reckon. I dragged his
body into your cabin, where it’s a-lying now.
The lady then asked to keep company with
me on the poop; and so it was you found us
a-walking together, sir.’
‘Brave Louise!’ I murmured, moved to
the utterance of her Christian name, though
this was the first time I had ever given it her,
close and ceaseless as our association had
been. Yet an instant’s reluctance, regret, or
bashfulness followed my pronunciation of it—even
at such a moment as that!—to the
memory that arose in me with the velocity of
thought of the proud eyes, the haughty coldness
292of the lofty, disdainful, elegant Miss
Temple of the Countess Ida.
But what she had done was a thing not to
be referred to again now. I felt the piteousness
of her distress, shame, and horror in her
silence: by-and-by she would be able to
speak of it collectedly, if there were need
indeed to recur to it at all.
‘No fear of the boat overhauling us, now,
I think, Wetherly?’ I exclaimed.
‘Lord, no, sir; without e’er a sail to spread
either. That swim of yourn was a bold venture,
Mr. Dugdale. Ye must ha’ managed
the job in first-rate style. Wasn’t no lookout
kept?’
His questions led me into telling the story.
Miss Temple listened eagerly, our hands remaining
locked; again and again she broke
into an exclamation with some cry of alarm,
some ejaculation of sympathy. ‘You called
me brave just now,’ she said; ‘but how is
your behaviour to be expressed?’
‘D’ye think there’s any chance of the men
recovering that boat?’ inquired Wetherly.
‘The chaps told me when they came aboard
to furl the canvas that there was nothen to
eat or drink upon the island saving what
293they’d taken. If they should lose the boat,
it must go hard with them, sir.’
‘They will not lose their boat unless the
fellow who was in charge of her lay dead
drunk in her bottom: an improbability; for
I saw him walk on steady legs to her. My
one chance lay in his being asleep. Make
your mind easy: he was awakened long ago
by the yells of the men, and by this time the
boat lies snug at the beach of the lagoon.
But why should you have any feeling for the
brutes? They would have cut your throat
had they succeeded in boarding us. What
happened when you were asleep should be
indication enough for you of the character of
the ruffians, a pretty good warrant of the
sort of treatment we might have expected at
their hands later on, gold or no gold.’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘all I can say
is I’m thankful to the Lord to be where I am.
I shall be desperate glad, I shall, when this
here woyage is over. I should only just like
to see my way to getting enough out of it to
set up for myself ashore, for this here’s been
a job as has properly sickened me of the sea,
and so I don’t mind telling ye, sir.’
‘There’ll be the salvage of this craft,’
294said I; ‘you can have my share, and I’m sure
Miss Temple will give you hers.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ she exclaimed.
‘Then there’ll be your own share,’ I went
on. ‘We have to carry the ship in safety to
a port first of all. If we can’t pick up hands
as we go along, we three will have to manage
as best we can. I don’t doubt we shall contrive
it; and then you will easily see your
way to a few hundreds.’
I saw him grin broadly by the mingled
light of the binnacle and star-shine. It
was proper to fill him with hope, and to
present to his limited understanding some
thing definite to work upon. There had
been nothing in his behaviour to render me
much obliged to him. He had chosen neutral
ground in this business, with a little inclination
to the safer side: and though he had
ventured upon several promises, I had never
secretly regarded him as a man who would
prove heroically useful at a pinch. However,
he was absolutely essential to our safety
now, and it was politic that I should seem
grateful; though, to be sure, there was always
the instinct of self-preservation to keep him
straight; by which I mean that he was as
295eager to end this extraordinary ramble as I
was.
He asked me several questions about the
gold, and talked as if he believed that the
men might yet meet with it; but my answers
seemed to convince him after a little, and I
saw him wagging his head whilst he exclaimed:
‘It was at the foot of a clump of
trees, I know; I clearly recollect the yarn as
Wilkins gave it, and his memory couldn’t
have gone wrong, for he arrived fresh with it
from the cabin. If they’ve dug at the roots
of all the trees abreast of the beach, as you
say, sir, and the money ain’t there, then good-night!
It’s the hallucination I always said
it was; and for my part give me two pound
of honest salvage afore two hundred thousand
pound of lunatic dreamings.’
The breeze seemed to freshen as we drew
away. The barque was now heeling prettily,
throwing the water in a white curl of sea
off her weather bow, and her wake ran far into
the liquid gloom astern, into which I would
again and again send a glance, governed yet
by an agitation of spirits and an animation of
alarm which my judgment pronounced ridiculous.
I cannot express the caressing character
296of Miss Temple’s manner as she continued
seated close beside me. The astonishment,
the rapture, the wildly contending sensations
and emotions which had possessed her were
now giving way to a mood of happiness, of
triumphant hope, that put an indescribable
note of tender elation and grateful, joyous
sweetness into her words. If I had yet to
wonder whether she loved me, I might feel
sure that my return to her, that my presence,
filled her with emotions which came very near
to the passion of love.
But I was wet through; and now that we
were safe, the vessel sliding with swiftness
through the clear shadow of the night, and
my shipmate Louise tranquil in the full realisation
of our sudden and complete deliverance,
I could find leisure to feel a little chilly. So,
leaving her with a promise that I should shortly
return, and telling Wetherly to keep the
barque steady as she was going, I picked up
the cabin lamp, that was still feebly burning
upon the deck, and descended the companion
steps. I paused to look around me upon the
familiar interior in which Miss Temple and I
had passed so many hours of distress and
wretchedness with an exclamation of gratitude
297to God for his merciful preservation of
us, and then went to my cabin to habit myself
in such dry garments as I might find in
Captain Braine’s locker. I opened the door,
but recoiled with an involuntary cry. I had
forgotten Forrest! and there lay the dead body
of the man right in front of me. Twice, now,
had that little square of carpet been stained
by human blood. I was horribly shocked by
the spectacle of the corpse; but it was necessary
that I should change my clothes, and I
had to undergo the torture of being watched
by those half-closed ghastly eyes, to which
twenty expressions of life were imparted by
the stirring of the dim flame in the lantern
whilst I sought for and attired myself in dry
apparel. This done, I made a brighter flame,
and then held the light to the dead face, that
I might be sure the villain had no life in
him. No gibbeted body that had been swinging
in chains for a month could be deader.
I entered the cuddy, hung up the lamp, and
went on deck.
‘Miss Temple,’ I exclaimed, ‘will you
kindly hold the wheel for a few minutes?’
She rose and grasped the spokes.
298Wetherly understood me, and followed me
below in silence.
‘We must toss the body overboard,’ said
I; ‘there can be no luck for the ship with
such an object as that as a part of her freight,
and Miss Temple must be helped to forget the
horror of the night that’s going.’
Between us we picked up the corpse, very
quickly conveyed it through the companion
hatch, went forward with it where the darkness
lay heavy, and dropped it over the bulwarks.
‘That’s how they would have served you,
sir,’ said Wetherly.
‘And you,’ said I.
‘Yes, my God, I know it!’ he answered
in a voice of agitation.
We returned to the wheel, which Wetherly
took from Miss Temple, who seated herself
with me just behind it on the gratings, and
there we held a council. Our business must
be to get to a port as soon as possible.
Should we head away for the Islands of the
Low Archipelago, bearing north-west with a
chance of falling in with a vessel cruising
amongst them who would lend us two or
three men to help us in navigating the
299barque, or should we steer a due east course
for Valparaiso, that lay about two thousand
six hundred miles distant?
Our resolution was rapidly formed. The
islands might yield us no help; there was also
the risk of running ashore upon the hundred
reefs of that then little known navigation;
abundance of the natives of the groups were
man-eaters, and we certainly had not delivered
ourselves from the perils we ran through enforced
association with the carpenter and his
crew merely to ingloriously terminate our
adventures by serving to appease the appetite
of a little population of blacks.
No; it must be Valparaiso. There we
should find a city with every species of convenience:
a consul to advise and assist us;
shops where Miss Temple could make all
necessary purchases; a choice of large ships
for the passage home. The ocean we were
traversing was the Pacific, and the time of
year in it summer; there was nothing greatly
to alarm us then in the contemplation of the
possibility of our having to work the barque
to the South American coast without more
help than the three of us could provide. It
would be necessary to keep the vessel under
300easy canvas, that we might always be equal
to the occasion of a sudden change of weather,
and that, to be sure, would protract the run.
But a few weeks more or less of old ocean
would be as nothing to us now that we were
masters of our lives and liberty, now that we
should know every day was bringing us
something nearer to our distant home, that
all the horrors with which our future had
but a few hours before been crowded were
gone. As we conversed, talking with exultation
of our escape, arranging for keeping
watches, planning about the cooking of the
food, and concerting twenty other measures
of a like sort, the day broke; the stars died
out in the east; the pale green of dawn went
lifting like a delicate smoke into the shadow
of the zenith; the light broadened fast, and
the sun soared into a flashing day of cloudless
heaven and of dark-blue ocean wrinkled by
the breeze. With a telescope in my hand I
sprang on to the grating and slowly circled
the sea-line with the lenses. The water
brimmed bare to the sky on all sides.
‘We are alone,’ said I, dismounting and
taking Miss Temple by the hand whilst I
looked fondly into her face. ‘When we were
301on the wreck, it was our misery to hunt the
ocean with our gaze and find ourselves alone;
and now, though we are still at sea, loneliness
is delightful—for it is escape, freedom,
the promise of home.’
Her eyes filled with tears.
CHAPTER XLII CONCLUSION
302
I have kept you long at sea. With my escape
in the barque from Captain Braine’s island in
company with my shipmate Louise, the story
of my adventure—the narrative, indeed, of
the romance of the wreck—virtually ends.
Yet you will wish to see Miss Temple safely
home; you will desire to know whether I
married her or not; you will also want to
hear the latest news of the people of the
Countess Ida, to learn the fate of the Honourable
Mr. Colledge, of the crew of the Magicienne’s
cutter, and of the carpenter Lush and
his merry gold-hunting men. All may be told
in the brief limits of a chapter.
For five days Wetherly and Miss Temple
and myself navigated the barque without
assistance. We managed it thus: the girl
took her turn in steering the vessel, and after
a very few trials steered with the expertness
303of a trained hand. I can see her now as she
stands at the wheel: her fine figure clear cut
against the soft Pacific blue over the stern;
her dark and shining eyes bent upon the
compass card, or lifting in the beauty of the
shadow of their lashes to the white canvas;
her hands of ivory delicacy grasping the
spokes, and always a smile of sweetness and
gladness and hope for me when our glances
met. To think of the haughty, aristocratic
Miss Louise Temple reduced to it! But she
did a deal more than that: she helped us to
pull and haul; she cooked for us, she kept a
lookout, walking the weather-deck whilst
Wetherly steered and I was resting. No
complaint ever left her lips; she was gentle
and happy in all she did. The sea had dealt
with her to some purpose; and she was now
as sweet, tender, compliant, as she was before
self-willed, insolent, and objectionable in all
things but her beauty.
The struggle, indeed, would have been a
desperate one for us but for the weather.
The small but steady sailing breeze that had
blown us away from the island continued with
a shift of three points only in those five days,
and a trifling increase one night, so that we
304had never occasion to start a sheet or let go
a halliard; nothing more were we called upon
to do with the gear than to slacken away the
braces.
It was on the afternoon of the fifth day
that we fell in with a Peruvian man-of-war
brig. She backed her topsail and sent a boat.
The young officer in command spoke French
very fluently, and Miss Temple and I between
us were able to make him understand our
story. He returned to his ship to report what
I had said, and presently came back with a
couple of Irish seamen, to whose services to
help us to carry the barque to Valparaiso we
were, he said, very welcome. This I considered
an extraordinary stroke of fortune,
for in so slender a ship’s company as we should
still make it was of the utmost consequence
that all orders given should be perfectly and
instantly intelligible. The Peruvian brig was
bound on a cruise amongst the islands, and I
earnestly entreated the officer to request his
commander to head first of all for the reef
upon which I had left Lush and his men, that
they might be taken off, if they had not
recovered their boat.
Down to this point, the three of us in one
305fashion and another had managed so fairly
well, that the acquisition of the two Irish
seamen communicated to me a sense of being
in command of a very tolerable ship’s company.
Miss Temple and I could now enjoy
some little leisure apart from a routine that
had been harassing with its vexations and
incessant demands upon our vigilance. Night
after night descended upon us in beauty; the
warm wind blew moist with dew; the reflection
of the rich and trembling stars quivered
in cones of an icy gleam amid the ripples of
the breeze-brushed sea; the curl of new moon
shone in the west in the wake of the glowing
sun to rise nightly fuller and more brilliant
yet, till for awhile the barque sailed through
an atmosphere that was brimful of the greenish
glory of the unclouded planet. There was
scarcely, indeed, a condition of this tender
tropic passage to Valparaiso that was not
favourable to sentiment. Yet my pride rendered
it an obligation upon me that before I
spoke my love I must make sure of the girl’s
own feelings towards me. I watched her with
an impassioned eye; I listened to every word
that fell from her lips with an ear eager to
penetrate to the spirit of her meaning; a
306smile that seemed in the least degree ambiguous
would keep me musing for a whole
watch together. Then I would inquire
whether I could in honour ask her to be my
wife until my protection and care for her had
ceased, and she stood to me in the position
she had occupied when we had first met
aboard the Indiaman. But to this very fine
question of conscience I would respond with
the consideration that if I did not ask her
now, I must continue in a distracting state of
suspense and anxiety for many weeks, running,
indeed, into months—that is to say,
until we should reach home; that she might
misconstrue my reserve, and attribute it to
indifference; that to make her understand
why I did not speak would involve the
declaration that my honour was supposed to
regard as objectionable.
But all this self-parleying simply signified
that I was waiting to make sure of her answer
before addressing her. In one quarter of an
hour one fine night, with a high moon riding
over the topsail yardarm and the breeze
bringing an elfin-like sound of delicate singing,
out of the rigging, it was settled! A glance
from her, a moment of speaking silence,
307brought my love to my lips, and standing with
her hand in mine in the shadow of a wing of
sail curving past the main-rigging, with the
brook-like voice of running waters rising, I
asked her to be my wife.
There was hesitation without reluctance,
a manner of mingled doubt and delight. I
had won her heart; and her hand must
follow; but her mother, her dearest mother!
Her consent must be obtained; and from what
she said in disjointed sentences, with earnest
anxiety to say nothing that might give me
pain, with a voice that trembled with the
emotions of gratitude and affection, I gathered
that Lady Temple’s matrimonial schemes for
her daughter soared very considerably above
the degree of a commoner.
‘But Louise, I have your love?’
‘Yes, yes, yes! my love, my gratitude, and
my admiration.’
‘And you need but your mother’s consent
to marry me?’
‘Yes, and she will consent. This long
association—this astonishing adventure’——
‘Ay, but there is no obligation of marriage
in that. I have your love, and your mother
will consent because you love me?’
308She fixed her eyes on my face, and by the
haze of moonlight floating off the sand-white
planks into the shadow in which we stood, I
saw such meaning in them that the sole sequel
of my interpretation of it must be to put my
lips to hers.
‘My first kiss, Louise! My God! how
little did I dream of this happiness when I
used to look at you and almost hate you
aboard the Countess Ida!’
But enough of this. It all happened so
many years ago now, that I am astonished by
my memory that enables me to put down even
so much of this little passage of my experiences
with Louise as I have written.
After days of delightful weather and prosperous
winds, we came to an anchor at
Valparaiso. I at once waited upon the British
consul, related my story, delivered over the
ship, and was treated by him with the utmost
courtesy, consideration, and hospitality. A
large English vessel was sailing for Liverpool
eight days after the date of our arrival. I
inspected her, and promptly took berths for
myself and Miss Temple; and the rest of the
time we spent in providing ourselves with the
necessary outfit for another long voyage.
309The consul informed me that the deposition
I made as to the Lady Blanche would suffice
in respect of the legal manœuvring that would
have to follow, and that I was at liberty to
sail whenever I chose. I empowered him to
hand over any salvage money that might
come to me to Wetherly, whom I also requested
to call upon me when he should arrive
in England, that I might suitably reward him
for the very honest discharge of his duties
from the time of our leaving the island in the
barque.
I will not pretend that our passage home
was uneventful. Out of it might readily be
spun another considerable narrative; but here
I may but glance at it. The ship was named
the Greyhound. She was a tall, black, softwood-built
ship, of American birth, with a
white figurehead, and fine lines of planking,
and three lofty skysail poles, and an almost
perpendicular bow, and she had, to use the
old term, the sailing qualities of a witch.
There went with her a number of passengers,
Spanish and English, who, thanks, I suppose,
to the gossip of the British consul and his
wife and family, were perfectly informed of
every article of our story, and in consequence
310made a very great deal of us—of Miss Temple
in particular. But how great had been the
change wrought in her character! No more
supercilious airs, haughty looks, chilling glances
of contemptuous surprise. Her sweetness and
cordiality rendered her as completely a
favourite as she had been before disliked and
feared by her fellow-passengers of the Indiaman.
It took her a long while, however, to recur
without exquisite distress to the man Forrest
whom she had shot. But I was never weary of
putting the matter before her in its just light;
and at last she suffered me to persuade her
that what she had done it had been her duty
to do, that every law of God and man was at
the back of such a deed to justify and even
consecrate it, and that so far from suffering
the recollection to render her wretched, she
should proudly honour herself for the instant’s
coolness, courage, and presence of mind she
had exhibited at sight of the scoundrel. Yet
it was inevitably a memory to linger darkly
with her for some time.
Our being incessantly together from the
hour of our sailing down to the hour of our
arrival strengthened her love for me, and her
311passion became a pure and unaffected sentiment.
This I could have by no means sworn
it was when I spoke my love to her in the
Pacific. I was sure that she liked me, that
she even had a warm affection for me, inspired
by gratitude and by esteem for as much of my
character as she could understand in my
behaviour to her. But I could not satisfy
myself that she loved me, or that, subject to
her mother’s approval, she would have consented
to marry me, but for our extraordinary
experiences, that had coupled us together in
an intimacy which most people might consider
matrimony must confirm for her sake if not
for mine.
But if that had ever been her mood—she
never would own it—it ripened during this
voyage into a love that the most wretchedly
sensitive heart could not have mistaken. And
now it remained to be seen what reception
Lady Temple would accord me. She would
be all gratitude, of course; she would be
transported with the sight and safety of her
daughter; but ambition might presently dominate
all effusion of thankfulness, and she
would quite fail to see any particular obligation
on her daughter’s part to marry merely
312because we had been shipmates together in a
series of incredible adventures.
But all conjecture was abruptly ended on
our arrival by the news of Lady Temple’s
death. A stroke of paralysis had carried her
off. The attack was charged to her fretting
for her daughter, of whose abandonment upon
the wreck she had received the news from no
less a person than the Honourable Mr. Colledge.
Let me briefly describe how this had
come about.
When the cutter containing Mr. Colledge
and the men of the Magicienne had lost sight
of the wreck in the sudden vapour that had
boiled down over it, the fellows, having lost
their lieutenant and being without a head,
hurriedly agreed to pull dead away before the
wind in the direction of the Indiaman, not
doubting that she would be lying hove-to, and
that they must strike her situation near enough
to disclose the huge loom of her amidst the
fog. They missed her, and then, not knowing
what else to do, they lashed their oars into a
bundle and rode to it. It was hard upon
sunset when a great shadow came surging up
out of the fog close aboard of them. It was
the corvette under reefed topsails. The cutter
313was within an ace of being run down. Her
crew roared at the top of their pipes, and
they were heard; but a few moments later
the Magicienne had melted out again upon
the flying thickness. The boat, however, had
been seen, and her bearings accurately taken;
and twenty minutes later, the corvette again
came surging to the spot where the cutter
lay. Scores of eyes gazed over the ship-of-war’s
head and bulwarks in a thirsty, piercing
lookout. The end of a line was flung, the
boat dragged alongside, and in a few minutes
all were safe on board. Colledge related the
story of the adventure to his cousin—how the
lieutenant had fallen overboard and was
drowned, as he believed; how Miss Temple
and I were left upon the wreck, and were yet
there. But the blackness of a densely foggy
night was now upon the sea; it was also blowing
hard, and nothing could be done till the
weather cleared and the day broke.
That nothing was done, you know. When
the horizon was penetrable, keen eyes were
despatched to the mastheads; but whether it
was that the light wreck had drifted to a
degree entirely out of the calculations of Sir
Edward Panton, or that his own drift during
314the long, black, blowing hours misled him, no
sign of us rewarded his search. For two days
he gallantly stuck to those waters, then abandoned
the hunt as a hopeless one, and proceeded
on his voyage to England.
Mr. Colledge on his arrival immediately
thought it his duty to write what he could
tell of the fate of Miss Temple to Lady
Temple’s brother, General Ashmole. The
General was a little in a hurry to communicate
with poor Lady Temple. His activity as a
bearer of ill tidings might perhaps have found
additional animation in the knowledge that if
Miss Temple were dead, then the next of her
kinsfolk to whom her ladyship must leave the
bulk of her property would be the General
and his four charming daughters. Be this as
it will, the news proved fatal to Lady Temple.
The uncertainty of her daughter’s fate, doubt
of the possibility of her having been rescued
from the wreck, fears of her having met with
a slow, miserable, most dreadful death, preyed
upon such poor remains of health as paralysis
and a long term of motionless confinement had
left her; and her maid one morning on entering
her room found her dead in her bed.
The shock was a terrible one to Louise.
315Again and again she had said to me that if
the news of her having been lost out of the
Indiaman reached her mother before she
arrived home, it would kill her. And now she
found her prediction verified! I was a deal
grieved for the girl’s sake; but it was not a
thing for me to take very seriously to heart.
Indeed it was not long before I got to hear that
her ladyship had been an exceedingly ambitious
woman, with the highest possible notions
of her own importance, and of an insufferable
condescension of manner; and I was assured
had she lived, I should have found her a
formidable, perhaps an immovable obstacle to
my marriage. But had she been the most
amiable of women, the stroke of her death
must have been considerably softened to my
mind by understanding that it made Louise
the absolute mistress of a mansion and large
grounds and a clear income of three thousand
five hundred a year. This was very well, and
quite worth being shipwrecked and kidnapped
for.
But if her ladyship’s death cleared the road
for me in one way, it temporarily blocked it
for me in another by enforcing delay. Louise
must not now marry for a year. No; anything
316less than a year was out of the question. It
would be an insult to the memory of an adored
parent even to think of happiness under a
twelvemonth. I resigned myself in silence to
the affliction of waiting, leaving it to time to
unsettle her resolution. She had many relatives,
and she went from house to house; but
I was never very far off. I loved her too
fondly to lose her. I had won her, and I
meant to have and hold the supreme title to
her that had come to me from old ocean.
Not that I had a doubt of her own devotion;
I was afraid of her relatives. Some of them
were titled people; they were all of them
social star-gazers, with their intellectual eyes
rooted upon objects that shone more splendidly
than they and higher in life’s atmosphere; and
there was such an army of them in one shape
or another, such battalions of uncles and aunts,
of cousins and connections spreading out like
the tendrils of creepers, that I feared their
influence if I did not take care to keep hovering
close by to guard my Louise’s heart against
any relaxation of sentiment.
Indeed, I was uneasy till I got her down
to my mother’s house, and I could fill a volume
in describing the manœuvring I was forced
317into to accomplish so simple a matter against
the devices and stratagems of her superior
connections. Already there was one young
man dying of love for her. He was the eldest
son of a baronet, and his mother was one of
the most intriguing old wretches that ever
perplexed the wishes or confounded the respectable
pleasures of her fellow-creatures.
Single-handed I had to fight the battle of my
love against this young man, who was dying
of passion, and my lady his mother, both of
them backed by a large proportion of Louise’s
relatives; and I say I scarcely enjoyed an hour’s
tranquillity of mind until I had her under my
mother’s roof.
By this time her grief had abated; the recollection
of her past sufferings lay lightly
upon her mind. We were now once more
together, as we had been when at sea. She
soon learned to love my gentle old mother,
and was so happy that after awhile her
relatives ceased in despair to attempt to coax
her back to them. By that time little more
than six months had elapsed since our return,
and, consequently, since she had received the
news of her mother’s death. But our being
together in constant close association from
318morning till night, almost as much alone as
ever we had been when on the wreck, what
with delightful drives, delicious hand-in-hand
rambles, ended in rendering me mighty impatient,
and impatience is usually importunate.
I grew pressing, and one day she consented
to our being married at the expiration of a
fortnight.
It was much too plain a wedding for such
a heroine as our adventures had made Louise,
but it was her own choosing. A few intimate
friends of my own family, two poor but exceedingly
ladylike and well-bred cousins of
her own, the vicar who joined our hands, and
his homely agreeable wife—these formed the
company. I sent an invitation to Mr. Colledge,
against the inclination of Louise, who
associated him with all our misfortunes, though
for my part I could have strained him to my
heart on my marriage day as the involuntary
promoter of all my happiness. He neither
wrote nor presented himself; but this was
afterwards explained by a letter dated from
Palestine, in which country he was then
travelling, having made up his mind to trust
himself and his fortunes as little as possible
to the ocean in his determination to see the
319world. It was a stupid amiable letter, full of
good-wishes and kindest regards, with much
rambling on in reference to the wreck and his
own narrow escape. I observed that he did
not mention the name of Miss Fanny Crawley.
An effusion of the local good-will and
sympathy was visible in the decoration of the
church. Never stood any man before the
altar more proud of the girl of his heart’s
choice than did I with Louise by my side.
Beautiful she had always shown to me from
the first moment of my gaze resting on her
aboard the Indiaman, but never more beautiful
in the eyes of my passion than on that
day. The sweetness that had come to her
from suffering was in every smile and look.
‘We have started on another voyage now,’
I whispered as we passed out of the church.
‘There must be no wrecks in it,’ she answered.
And for years, I thank God, it was all
summer sailing with us; but I am old now,
and alone.
In those times, the round voyage to India
averaged a twelvemonth, and I was unable to
obtain news of the Countess Ida until the
August that had followed the June of our
320arrival at Liverpool in the Greyhound. I was
in London when I heard of the Indiaman as
having been reported off Deal. In the course
of a few days I despatched a note to old Keeling,
addressed to the East India Docks, asking
him to come and dine with me, that I might
tell him of my adventures, and learn what
efforts he had made to recover us from the
wreck. He arrived in full shore-going fig,
with the old familiar skewered look, in the
long, tightly buttoned-up coat, and the tall
cravat and stiff collars, in which his sun-reddened
face rested like a ball in a cup.
He was heartily glad to see me, and continued
to shake my hand until my arm ached
again. Of my story he had known nothing; for
the first time he was now hearing it from my
lips. He listened with acute attention, with a
countenance over which expression chased expression;
and when I had done, seized my hand
again, and shook it long and vehemently,
whilst he complimented me on my success in
navigating the Lady Blanche to the island,
and on the judgment I had shown in planning
and effecting my escape from Mr. Lush and
his crew.
He had little to tell me, however, that was
321very interesting. He had been blown away
from the neighbourhood of the wreck; and
though, when the weather cleared, he had
luffed up to the spot where he believed she
was to be found, he could see nothing of her.
Mr. Prance was looking at the hull through
his glass when the smother came driving down
upon her, and saw the cutter shove off; and
he believed that Miss Temple and I were in
her. He had no time to make sure, for the
vapour swiftly blotted the boat out of sight.
But his conviction was—and Keeling owned
himself influenced by it—that if they fell in
with the wreck they would not find us aboard
her. Poor old Mrs. Radcliffe nearly went crazy
with grief and distress; and to satisfy her
mind, he cruised over the supposed situation
of the hull till the night fell; then satisfied
that we had either perished by the capsizal of
the cutter, or been picked up by the corvette,
he trimmed sail for his course and proceeded.
The disaster that had befallen us, he said,
had cast a heavy gloom over the ship, and it
was heightened by Mrs. Radcliffe’s serious illness,
due to the poignant wretchedness caused
her by the loss of her niece. Hemmeridge
was entreated to prescribe for her, but he
322sullenly refused, hoped that her illness might
be epidemical, that more might suffer than
she, and could breathe nothing but threats
of having the law of Keeling on the ship’s
arrival at Bombay. However, by the time
the vessel was up with the Cape, Mrs. Radcliffe
had recovered; and when Keeling last saw
her, she seemed as hopeful as she was before
despairful of her niece being yet accounted
for.
Abreast of the Cape also, the spirits of
the passengers had sufficiently lightened to
enable some love-making to proceed briskly
amongst them.
‘Much about twenty degrees of south
latitude,’ said old Keeling in his dry voice,
‘young Mr. Fairthorne, the fellow that lisped,
you remember, Mr. Dugdale, succeeded in
tempting that nice young lady, Constance
Hudson, to accept his hand and heart. Old
Mrs. Hudson was very well pleased, sir.
About the latitude of the Chagos Archipelago,
Mr. Emmett induced Miss Helen Trevor to
betroth herself to him. And off the Laccadive
Islands, Peter Hemskirk, to the astonishment
of all hands, deposited his person and his fortune
at the feet of Miss Mary Joliffe.’
323‘I had thought Mr. Emmett was a married
man,’ I said.
‘Apparently not, sir,’ he answered.
‘And your friend Hemmeridge?’
He replied that the surgeon consulted a
solicitor at Bombay, and had no doubt been
advised to take certain proceedings; but three
weeks after the arrival of the ship the doctor
had been thrown from a horse, and so injured
in the spine and head, that he died within a
fortnight.
‘What he could have done I’m sure I don’t
know, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the old fellow. ‘I
believe I was within my rights. Yet he might
have given me trouble, and I hate law. The
two fellows, Crabb and Willett, I handed over
to the police. Mr. Saunders got the drug the
scoundrel had used carefully analysed, and it
turned out that he was right: it proved to be
what he’d termed it; and I afterwards heard
the stuff was not unknown in India, where it’s
used for some religious purposes; but in what
way I don’t know.’
This was all the news that old Keeling had
to give me.
When I left Lush and the sailors of the
Lady Blanche upon the reef, I had little
324thought of ever hearing of them again. I
knew the nature of sailors. If they came off
with their lives, I might be sure they would
disperse and utterly vanish. Great was my
surprise, then, one morning some months after
my marriage, to find, on opening my morning
newspaper, a column-long account of the trial
of a seaman named Lush for the murder of a
man named Woodward. The evidence was
substantially my story with a sequel to it.
The witnesses against Lush were three of the
seamen of the Lady Blanche. The counsel
for the prosecution related the adventures of
the barque down to the time of my swimming
off to her and sailing away with her. The
boat had been in charge of the man Woodward
when I detached the line to let her slip
away. He had fallen into a deep sleep, overcome
by fatigue and drink. The yells and
roaring of the crew, one of whom had started
up and observed the boat drifting out, had
aroused the sleeper after the uproar had been
some time continued. He was thick and
stupid, went clumsily to work to scull the
heavy boat ashore, and was a long time in
doing it. The carpenter dragged him on to
the beach and asked him if he had fallen
325asleep. The unfortunate wretch answered
yes; the carpenter struck him fiercely; Woodward
returned the blow; and, mad with rage,
Lush whipped out his sheath-knife and stabbed
the man to the heart.
By this time the barque had almost faded
out in the gloom of the night. Pursuit was
not to be thought of. They waited till daylight;
but instead of putting their remaining
provisions and water in the boat and heading
away in search of land or a passing ship, the
fools fell to dicing afresh; and it was not
until their little stock of water was almost
gone that, being satisfied that there was no
gold in that part of the shore where Captain
Braine had said it lay hidden, they put to
sea.
They were several days afloat before they,
or at least the survivors, were rescued.
Their sufferings were not to be expressed.
They had been five days without water when
picked up. Four of them had died, and one
of the bodies had been preserved for a use
that cannot be dwelt on. They were fallen
in with by an English brig bound home, to
the captain of which one of the sailors, who
had been an old ‘chum’ of Woodward, told
326the story of the murder of that man by Lush.
The skipper, not choosing to have such a
ruffian as the carpenter at large in his little
ship, clapped him in irons, and kept him
under hatches until the arrival of the vessel
in the Thames, when he was handed over to
the police. I hardly wished the scoundrel
hanged, richly as he deserved making such
an ending; and it was with something of
relief that I read when he was brought to the
Old Bailey that the jury had found a verdict
of manslaughter, and that he was sentenced
to ten years’ transportation.
To this hour I am puzzled by Captain
Braine and his island. My wife uniformly
believed that the gold was there, and that
the poor lunatic had mistaken the bearings
of the spot where it lay. My own fancy,
however, always inclined to this: that from
the circumstance of his having rightly described
the island, which he situated on a
part of the sea where no reef or land of any
sort was laid down on the charts, he had
actually been wrecked upon it, and suffered
as he had related to me; that by long dwelling
upon his terrific experience he had imported
certain insane fancies into it out of his
327unsuspected madness when it grew upon him;
until the hallucination of the gold hardened
in his poor soul into a conviction. Yet I
may be wrong; and, if so, then there must at
this hour be upwards of a hundred and eighty
thousand pounds’ worth of gold coins lying
concealed somewhere in the reef whose latitude
and longitude you have.
