CHAPTER XVIII—CONCLUSION OF DR. ULSWATER'S THIRD MANUSCIPT
A LYRICAL poem composed by Sadler, and by him sung inharmoniously to a banjo:—
“I'm, so to speak, shanghaied to sea;
And who you think my shipmates be?
One family of millionaires,
Rambling the deep in search of heirs;
One hypnotiser Oriental;
One orphan maiden ornamental;
One widowed cat; one spinster hen;
A crew of blue-eyed Swedish men;
One head of hair too hot for wearing;
One captive monarch spanked for swearing—
is not what you would call amethystine or ethereal; but poetry, of a kind, we have come to expect of him. But when Susannah brought me a ballad, composed by herself, on the foregoing events, it produced in my mind—and I speak moderately—a state of exhausting confusion. I copy this ballad. It is entitled “The Kings of Lua.”
'There were two kings in Lua,
Which only could use one.
Now Sadler came from Sumatra
And needed some more fun.
“He was a white man, although
He was not exactly white,
But tanned and played on the banjo.
Which angels would delight.
“He said, 'Prime Ministers are good things,
And I'm one of those things, Hooroar!
I'll bet my last week s shirt, O Kings:
To yours of the week before.'
“The old King wore a pink one neat,
But not much else did wear.
His face looked something like mince meat.
Some bones were in his hair.
“Another man was Irish,
And I will make a joke,
His hair it was so fierish,
That always he did smoke.
“The other King we never saw;
He didn't come to tea.
Oh, wretched island of Lua
I weep and wail for thee.
“ So then they had a war,
Although they never fought.
'There's something ails this civil war,'
Said Sadler, 'I wonder what.'
“Ha! Ha! The Violetta
Came sailing in one day.
Ogel and Sadler and Irish
We yanked and took away.
“About Lua now it is now known,
I'll tell you what I think.
I think Kolo ran up the throne
As quick as he could wink.”
Yours—ULSWATER.
CHAPTER XIX—DR. ULSWATER'S NARRATIVE CONTINUES: THE MYSTERY OF GEORGIANA AND DELORES
Samoa. March.
IN respect to incisive logic, decision, and force, I have sometimes thought that Susannah resembles Mrs. Ulswater. The characters of both, in contact with my temperament, produce a harmony, thrilling but agreeable. But then my temperament is a kettle drum. I have sometimes thought that on a temperament more lute-like, the impact of Susannah might produce—shall I say?—surprise. On the temperament of Sadler,—melancholy and yet buoyant, intricate and yet simple,—the impact of Susannah seems to produce sometimes extraordinary jubilation, sometimes a condition quite the reverse. He calls her “a melojous circus,” a phrase implying jubilation.
He is a man of moods, a contrast to the consistent placidity of Ram Nad, the Occident to the Orient. Are they then supersignificant types of that new world and that old? One of them turns to life's mystery a bold but troubled face, and covers with a jocular and careless manner a soul unreconciled. The toil and restless wandering of individuals, the surging migration of races, the incessant change called progress, are all but the symptoms of his feverish discomfort, his cosmic ill adjustment? And the other, the Ram Nads, the old-world type, meek, timid, tricky, placid, has it found at least, out of its age-long thoughts, how to make its truckling peace with the mystery? C'est un grand peut-être. Meanwhile the education of Susannah is the principal enterprise of Mrs. Ulswater, Sadler, and me, to say nothing of Ram Nad.
It was my habit to read aloud from the poets, the divine Shelley, the noble Tennyson, the golden Keats. Susannah's opinion of these poets was, on the whole, scornful.
They appeared to her tortuous and deceitful. Their language was, she thought, “mussy.” She did not believe they stated the facts.
Hence, if any one had asked me sometime ago whether I thought it possible or likely that Susannah would bud, bloom, burst loose and explode into song, I should have said: “No! Impossible! Susannah has all the materials of strident criticism, but none of poesy.”
Nevertheless here lies her “Ballad of the Kings of Lua.” Here lies moreover her tragic and profound “Ballad of Georgiana and Dolores.” What can be said of them? First, this; that I take the immediate cause of Susannah's explosion to have been Sadler. He has the lyric habit. He composes as a rooster crows, whenever it occurs to him. He is apt to state his mind in that form. The lyric habit is infectious; youth is imitative; hence arise schools of poetry; hence Susannah's explosion. But Susannah's gift is for the narrative, the reflective. She has not the lyric cry. Hers rather are the forceful expression and the just remark.
We left King Ogel at Sydney. He was pensioned by Sadler. He will probably pass his remaining years in intemperate leisure. Mrs. Ulswater did not think there was any prospect of working his reformation. He was not a desirable orphan. My opinion was that Susannah was occupation enough for an orphanage.
Of Georgiana Tupper, that reserved, that exclusive hen from the island of Clementina, and of Dolores, that stricken cat from Lua, I am about to speak.
It was the 13th of February. We were steaming eastward somewhat to the south of the Loyalty Islands. The weather had been oppressive, the night turned threatening, and by morning it was blowing a gale. I went on deck to watch the watery phenomena. The sea was tumultuous and black, the clouds overhead hung low and rainy, and the intense wind trailed streamers of cloud across the sea.
Suddenly, as I stood there, a tall black column of water rose directly ahead of the Violetta.
She swerved aside in answer to her helm, narrowly escaped disaster; and that contorted and insurgent object, that careening maelstrom, and insensate Charybdis, that water spout, went whirling by on the port side.
But now, behold! the sea all about was columned with water spouts, mushroom-shaped, their summits lost in eddying gloom—infuriate smoke-stacks, roaring volcanoes waltzing on end—perpendicular and intoxicated whales, bowelless of compassion, active and voracious—gyrating black funnels of wind and water, full of exuberant malice, full of demons of the nethermost deep striving to climb the pendant and embattled heavens. Between the shattered sea and low curtaining clouds, rumbled about us that tremendous warfare. Now and again a spout would fall, broken like a pipe stem near its base, and another heave up, grip the vapourish canopy above it, and come racing over that chaotic ocean; through the midst of which forest of fluid insanity and monstrous fungi of the sea—even as through some vast cavern columned with maniac stalagmites and abandoned pillars of wet combustion—we fled.
How long this condition of affairs lasted, I could not say. How we escaped, Heaven and Captain Jansen may know. The seas now and again swept the deck.
When we found ourselves at last with no water spouts anywhere near, and the upper and lower world reasonably disconnected, Sadler and I went below, where we found Mrs. Ulswater nervous, Susannah excited, Ram Nad calm as a browsing cow. We discussed the experience. By night the weather was fairly calm. Not till then did we find that Dolores and Georgiana Tupper were missing.
In the forecastle, it had been supposed that they were aft; in the cabin, that they were forward. They were nowhere. The minutest search was in vain. From one end of the yacht to the other we went—from deck to keel. None could remember having noticed them, except Ram Nad, who stated that he had seen them on deck before the tumult arose. No doubt remained then. They were gone. What could be said? What interpretation could be put upon it? What other than this? that in endeavouring to pass, during the storm, from the forecastle to the cabin, or vice versa, they had been blown or swept overboard.
But why both? How, in particular, Dolores? Georgiana was but a hen; a hen can be swept or blown; her anchorage is weak, her sail area apt to enlarge with the wind; whereas Dolores was a cat, carrying four to five anchors to each foot, and a sail area small under all circumstances. What force then could have torn loose her desperate grapple? unless it were—a pathetic possibility here—that, seeing Georgiana, the companion and support of her bereaved existence, thus blown away, she had rushed devotedly to her rescue; or—a still more affecting thought—that, simply resolved not to outlive Georgiana but to perish with her, she had cast herself after Georgiana upon the weltering deep.
When this last idea occurred to me, I sought Susannah and turned it over to her. The first effect was unfortunate. Tearful, at the time, she burst out weeping. Mrs. Ulswater said I ought to be ashamed. Sadler, with mournful sarcasm, did not see why a man, because he was full of ideas, had to slop over like a tub of soapsuds—surely a mixed metaphor, a confused figure of speech.
Another idea occurred to me. It was that Susannah had the entire sympathies of the Violetta in tow.