III.
It was broad daylight when we reached Bastia. The Public Prosecutor, the colonel of the gendarmes, and the governor of the prison were impatiently awaiting us. I never saw a man look more astonished than the corporal in charge of the escort, as, with a triumphant smile, he led me to these gentlemen, and saw them hurry towards me with all sorts of apologies, and take off the handcuffs.
"What! Is it you?" exclaimed the Public Prosecutor. "Have these idiots really arrested you? But how did it come about—what is the meaning of it?"
"EXPLANATIONS."
Explanations followed. On the previous day the Public Prosecutor had received a telegram from Porto-Vecchio, informing him of the presence of Quastana in the locality, and giving precise details as to where and when he could be found. The name of Porto-Vecchio opened my eyes; it was that travelling companion of mine who had played me this shabby trick! He was the Prosecutor's deputy.
"But, my dear sir," said the Public Prosecutor, "whoever would have expected to see you in shooting costume in the house of the brigand's cousin! We have given you rather a bad time of it, but I know you will not bear malice, and you will prove it by coming to breakfast with me." Then turning to the corporal, and pointing to Matteo, he said: "Take this fellow away; we will deal with him in the morning."
The unfortunate Matteo remained dumb with fright; he looked appealingly at me, and I, of course, could not do otherwise than explain matters. Taking the Prosecutor on one side, I told him that Matteo was really assisting the Prefect to capture the brigand; but as I told him all about the matter, his face assumed a hard, judicial expression.
"I am sorry for the Prefecture," he said; "but I have Quastana's cousin, and I won't let him go! He will be tried with some peasants, who are accused of having supplied the brigand with provisions."
"But I repeat that this man is really in the service of the Prefecture," I protested.
"So much the worse for the Prefecture," said he with a laugh. "I am going to give the Administration a lesson it won't forget, and teach it not to meddle with what doesn't concern it. There is only one brigand in Corsica, and you want to take him! He's my game, I tell you. The Prefect knows that, yet he tries to forestall me! Now I will pay him out. Matteo shall be tried; he will, of course, appeal to your side; there will be a great to-do, and the brigand will be put on his guard against his cousin and gentlemen of the Prefecture who go shooting."
Well, he kept his word. We had to appear on behalf of Matteo, and we had a nice time of it in the court. I was the laughing-stock of the place. Matteo was acquitted, but he could no longer be of use to us, because Quastana was forewarned. He had to quit the country.
As to Quastana, he was never caught. He knew the country, and every peasant was secretly ready to assist him; and although the soldiers and gendarmes tried their best to take him, they could not manage it. When I left the island he was still at liberty, and I have never heard anything about his capture since.
The seal is an affable fellow, though sloppy. He is friendly to man: providing the journalist with copy, the diplomatist with lying practice, and the punster with shocking opportunities. Ungrateful for these benefits, however, or perhaps savage at them, man responds by knocking the seal on the head and taking his skin: an injury which the seal avenges by driving man into the Bankruptcy Court with bills for his wife's jackets. The puns instigated by the seal are of a sort to make one long for the animal's extermination. It is quite possible that this is really what the seal wants, because to become extinct and to occupy a place of honour beside the dodo is a distinction much coveted amongst the lower animals. The dodo was a squabby, ugly, dumpy, not to say fat-headed, bird when it lived; now it is a hero of romance. Possibly this is what the seal is aiming at; but personally I should prefer the extinction of the punster.
A SHAVE.
The punster is a low person, who refers to the awkwardness of the seal's gait by speaking of his not having his seal-legs, although a mariner or a sealubber, as he might express it. If you reply that, on the contrary, the seal's legs, such as they are, are very characteristic, he takes refuge in the atrocious admission, delivered with a French accent, that they are certainly very sealy legs. When he speaks of the messages of the English Government, in the matter of seal-catching in the Behring Sea, he calls it whitewashing the sealing, and explains that the "Behrings of this here observation lies in the application on it." I once even heard a punster remark that the Russian and American officials had got rather out of their Behrings, through an excess of seal on behalf of their Governments; but he was a very sad specimen, in a very advanced stage, and he is dead now. I don't say that that remark sealed his fate, but I believe there are people who would say even that, with half a chance.
TOBY—BEHIND.
Another class of frivoller gets his opportunity because it is customary to give various species of seals—divers species, one might say—inappropriate names. He tells you that if you look for sea-lions and sea-leopards, you will not see lions, nor even see leopards, but seal-lions and seal-leopards, which are very different. These are called lions and leopards because they look less like lions and leopards than anything else in the world; just as the harp seal is so called because he has a broad mark on his back, which doesn't look like a harp. Look at Toby, the Patagonian sea-lion here, who has a large pond and premises to himself. I have the greatest possible respect and esteem for Toby, but I shouldn't mistake him for a lion, in any circumstances. With every wish to spare his feelings, one can only compare him to a very big slug in an overcoat, who has had the misfortune to fall into the water. Even his moustache isn't lion-like. Indeed, if he would only have a white cloth tucked round his neck, and sit back in that chair that stands over his pond, he would look very respectably human—and he certainly wants a shave.
THE BIG-BOOT DANCE.
Toby is a low-comedy sea-lion all over. When I set about organizing the Zoo Nigger Minstrels, Toby shall be corner-man, and do the big-boot dance. He does it now, capitally. You have only to watch him from behind as he proceeds along the edge of the pond, to see the big-boot dance in all its quaint humour. Toby's hind flappers exhale broad farce at every step. Toby is a cheerful and laughter-moving seal, and he would do capitally in a pantomime, if he were a little less damp.
Toby is fond of music; so are most other seals. The complete scale of the seal's preferences among the various musical instruments has not been fixed with anything like finality; but one thing is certain—that far and away above all the rest of the things designed to produce music and other noises, the seal prefers the bagpipes. This taste either proves the seal to be a better judge of music than most human beings, or a worse one than any of the other animals, according as the gentle reader may be a native of Scotland or of somewhere in the remainder of the world. You may charm seals by the bagpipes just as a snake is charmed by pipes with no bag. It has even been suggested that all the sealing vessels leaving this country should carry bagpipes with them, and I can see no sound objection to this course—so long as they take all the bagpipes. I could also reconcile myself to a general extrusion of concertinas for this useful purpose—or for any other; not to mention barrel organs.
THE SEAL ROW.
By-the-bye, on looking at Toby again I think we might do something better for him than give him a mere part in a pantomime; his fine moustache and his shiny hair almost point to a qualification for managership. Nothing more is wanted—except, perhaps, a fur-trimmed coat and a well-oiled hat—to make a very fine manager indeed, of a certain sort.
A VERY FINE MANAGER.
I don't think there is a Noah's ark seal—unless the Lowther Arcade theology has been amended since I had a Noah's ark. As a matter of fact, I don't see what business a seal would have in the ark, where he would find no fish to eat, and would occupy space wanted by a more necessitous animal who couldn't swim. At any rate, there was originally no seal in my Noah's ark, which dissatisfied me, as I remember, at the time; what I wanted not being so much a Biblical illustration as a handy zoological collection. So I appointed the dove a seal, and he did very well indeed when I had pulled off his legs (a little inverted v). I argued, in the first place, that as the dove went out and found nothing to alight on, the legs were of no use to him; in the second place, that since, after all, the dove flew away and never returned, the show would be pretty well complete without him; and, thirdly, that if, on any emergency, a dove were imperatively required, he would do quite well without his legs—looking, indeed, much more like a dove, as well as much more like a seal. So, as the dove was of about the same size as the cow, he made an excellent seal; his bright yellow colour (Noah's was a yellow dove on the authority of all orthodox arks) rather lending an air of distinction than otherwise. And when a rashly funny uncle, who understood wine, observed that I was laying down my crusted old yellow seal because it wouldn't stand up, I didn't altogether understand him.
Toby is a good soul, and you soon make his acquaintance. He never makes himself common, however. As he swims round his circular pond, behind the high rails, he won't have anything to say to a stranger—anybody he has not seen before. But if you wait a few minutes he will swim round several times, see you often, and become quite affable. There is nothing more intelligent than a tame seal, and I have heard people regret that seals can't talk, which is nonsense. When a seal can make you understand him without it, talking is a noisy superfluity. Toby can say many things without the necessity of talking. Observe his eyes fixed upon you as he approaches for the first time. He turns and swaps past with his nose in the air. "Pooh, don't know you," he is saying. But wait. He swims round once, and, the next time of passing, gives you a little more notice. He lifts his head and gazes at you, inquisitively, but severely. "Who's that person?" he asks, and goes on his round.
Next time he rises even a little more. He even smiles, slightly, as he recognises you from the corner of his eye. "Ah! Seen you before, I fancy." And as he flings over into the side stroke he beams at you quite tolerantly.
GOOD DOGGY!
He comes round again; but this time he smiles genially, and nods. "'Morning!" he says, in a manner of a moderately old acquaintance. But see next time; he is an old, intimate friend by this; a chum. He flings his fin-flappers upon the coping, leans toward the bars with an expansive grin and says: "Well, old boy, and how are you?"—as cordially and as loudly as possible without absolutely speaking the words. He will stay thus for a few moments' conversation, not entirely uninfluenced, I fear, by anticipations of fish. Then, in the case of your not being in the habit of carrying raw fish in your pockets, he takes his leave by the short process of falling headlong into his pond and flinging a good deal of it over you. There is no difficulty in becoming acquainted with Toby. If you will only wait a few minutes he will slop his pond over you with all the genial urbanity of an intimate relation. But you must wait for the proper forms of etiquette.
"CAUGHT, SIR!"
FANNY.
The seal's sloppiness is annoying. I would have a tame seal myself if he could go about without setting things afloat. A wet seal is unpleasant to pat and fondle, and if he climbs on your knees he is positively irritating. I suppose even a seal would get dry if you kept him out of water long enough; but can you keep a seal out of water while there is any within five miles for him to get into? And would the seal respect you for it if you did? A dog shakes himself dry after a swim, and, if he be your own dog, he shakes the water over somebody else, which is sagacious and convenient; but a seal doesn't shake himself, and can't understand that wet will lower the value of any animal's caresses. Otherwise a seal would often be preferable to a dog as a domestic pet. He doesn't howl all night. He never attempts to chase cats—seeing the hopelessness of the thing. You don't need a license for him; and there is little temptation to a loafer to steal him, owing to the restricted market for house-seals. I have frequently heard of a dog being engaged to field in a single-wicket cricket match. I should like to play somebody a single-wicket cricket match, with a dog and a seal to field for me. The seal, having no legs to speak of—merely feet—would have to leave the running to the dog, but it could catch. You may see magnificent catching here when Toby and Fanny—the Cape sea-lion (or lioness), over by the turkeys—have their snacks of fish. Sutton the Second, who is Keeper of the Seals (which is a fine title—rather like a Cabinet Minister), is then the source of a sort of pyrotechnic shower of fish, every one of which is caught and swallowed promptly and neatly, no matter how or where it may fall. Fanny, by the way, is the most active seal possible; it is only on extremely rare occasions that she indulges in an interval of comparative rest, to scratch her head with her hind foot and devise fresh gymnastics. But, all through the day, Fanny never forgets Sutton, nor his shower of fish, and half her evolutions include a glance at the door whence he is wont to emerge, and a sort of suicidal fling back into the pond in case of his non-appearance, all which proceedings the solemn turkeys regard with increasing amazement.
Toby, however, provides the great seal-feeding show. Toby has a perfect set of properties and appliances for his performance, including a chair, a diving platform, an inclined plane leading thereunto, and a sort of plank isthmus leading to the chair. He climbs up on to the chair, and, leaning over the back, catches as many fish as Sutton will throw for him. He dives off the chair for other fish. He shuffles up the inclined plane for more fish, amid the sniggers of spectators, for Toby's march has no claim to magnificence. He tumbles himself unceremoniously off the platform, he clambers up and kisses Sutton (keeping his eye on the basket), and all for fish. It is curious to contrast the perfunctory affection with which Toby gets over the kiss and takes his reward, with the genuine fondness of his gaze after Sutton when he leaves—with some fish remaining for other seals. Toby is a willing worker; he would gladly have the performance twice as long, while as to an eight hours' day——!
The seals in the next pond, Tommy and Jenny, are insulted with the epithet of "common" seals; but Tommy and Jenny are really very respectable, and if a seal do happen to be born only Phoca vitulina, he can't really help it, and doesn't deserve humiliation so long as he behaves himself. Phoca vitulina has as excellent power of reason as any other kind of seal—brain power, acquired, no doubt, from a continual fish diet. Tommy doesn't feel aggrieved at the slight put upon him, however, and has a proper notion of his own importance. Watch him rise from a mere floating patch—slowly, solemnly, and portentously, to take a look round. He looks to the left—nothing to interest a well-informed seal; to the front—nothing; to the right everything is in order, the weather is only so-so, but the rain keeps off, and there are no signs of that dilatory person with the fish; so Tommy flops in again, and becomes once more a floating patch, having conducted his little airing with proper dignity and self-respect. Really, there is nothing common in the manners of Tommy; there is, at any rate, one piece of rude mischief which he is never guilty of, but which many of the more aristocratic kinds of seal practise habitually. He doesn't throw stones.
FISH DIET.
He doesn't look at all like a stone-thrower, as a matter of fact; but he—and other seals—can throw stones nevertheless. If you chase a seal over a shingly beach, he will scuffle away at a surprising pace, flinging up the stones into your face with his hind feet. This assault, directed toward a well-intentioned person who only wants to bang him on the head with a club, is a piece of grievous ill-humour, particularly on the part of the crested seal, who can blow up a sort of bladder on the top of his head which protects him from assault; and which also gives him, by-the-bye, an intellectual and large-brained appearance not his due, for all his fish diet. I had been thinking of making some sort of a joke about an aristocratic seal with a crest on it—beside a fine coat with no arms—but gave up the undertaking on reflecting that no real swell—probably not even a parvenu—would heave half-bricks with his feet.
INTEREST IN THE NEWS.
All this running away and hurling of clinkers may seem to agree ill with the longing after extermination lately hinted at; but, in fact, it only proves the presence of a large amount of human nature in the composition of the seal. From motives of racial pride the seal aspires to extinction and a place beside the dodo, but in the spirit of many other patriots, he wants the other seals to be exterminated first; wants the individual honour, in fact, of being himself the very last seal, as well as the corporate honour of extinction for the species. This is why, if he live in some other part, he takes such delighted interest in news of wholesale seal slaughter in the Pacific; and also why he skedaddles from the well-meant bangs of the genial hunter—these blows, by the way, being technically described as sealing-whacks.
"DAS VAS BLEASANT, AIN'D IT?"
The sea-lion, as I have said, is not like a lion; the sea-leopard is not like a leopard; but the sea-elephant, which is another sort of seal, and a large one, may possibly be considered sufficiently like an elephant to have been evolved, in the centuries, from an elephant who has had the ill-luck to fall into the sea. He hasn't much of a trunk left, but he often finds himself in seas of a coldness enough to nip off any ordinary trunk; but his legs and feet are not elephantine.
"AND THE NEXT ARTICLE?"
What the previous adventures of the sea-lion may have been in the matter of evolution, I am at a loss to guess, unless there is anything in the slug theory; but if he keep steadily on, and cultivate his moustache and his stomach with proper assiduity, I have no doubt of his one day turning up at a seaside resort and carrying on life in future as a fierce old German out for a bathe. Or the Cape sea-lion, if only he continue his obsequious smile and his habit of planting his fore-flappers on the ledge before him as he rises from the water, may some day, in his posterity, be promoted to a place behind the counter of a respectable drapery warehouse, there to sell the skins his relatives grow.
But after all, any phocine ambition, either for extinction or higher evolution, may be an empty thing; because the seal is very comfortable as he is. Consider a few of his advantages. He has a very fine fur overcoat, with an admirable lining of fat, which, as well as being warm, permits any amount of harmless falling and tumbling about, such as is suitable to and inevitable with the seal's want of shape. He can enjoy the sound of bagpipes, which is a privilege accorded to few. Further, he can shut his ears when he has had enough, which is a faculty man may envy him. His wife, too, always has a first-rate sealskin jacket, made in one piece, and he hasn't to pay for it. He can always run down to the seaside when so disposed, although the run is a waddle and a flounder; and if he has no tail to speak of—well, he can't have it frozen off. All these things are better than the empty honour of extinction; better than evolution into bathers who would be drownable, and translation into unaccustomed situations—with the peril of a week's notice. Wherefore let the seal perpetuate his race—his obstacle race, as one might say, seeing him flounder and flop.
The Major's Commission.
By W. Clark Russell.
My name is Henry Adams, and in 1854 I was mate of a ship of 1,200 tons named the Jessamy Bride. June of that year found her at Calcutta with cargo to the hatches, and ready to sail for England in three or four days.
I was walking up and down the ship's long quarter-deck, sheltered by the awning, when a young apprentice came aft and said a gentleman wished to speak to me. I saw a man standing in the gangway; he was a tall, soldierly person, about forty years of age, with iron-grey hair and spiked moustache, and an aquiline nose. His eyes were singularly bright and penetrating. He immediately said:—
"I wanted to see the captain; but as chief officer you'll do equally well. When does this ship sail?"
"On Saturday or Monday next."
He ran his eye along the decks and then looked aloft: there was something bird-like in the briskness of his way of glancing.
"I understand you don't carry passengers?"
"That's so, sir, though there's accommodation for them."
"I'm out of sorts, and have been sick for months, and want to see what a trip round the Cape to England will do for me. I shall be going home, not for my health only, but on a commission. The Maharajah of Ratnagiri, hearing I was returning to England on sick-leave, asked me to take charge of a very splendid gift for Her Majesty the Queen of England. It is a diamond, valued at fifteen thousand pounds."
He paused to observe the effect of this communication, and then proceeded:—
"I suppose you know how the Koh-i-noor was sent home?"
"It was conveyed to England, I think," said I, "by H.M.S. Medea, in 1850."
"Yes, she sailed in April that year, and arrived at Portsmouth in June. The glorious gem was intrusted to Colonel Mackieson and Captain Ramsay. It was locked up in a small box along with other jewels, and each officer had a key. The box was secreted in the ship by them, and no man on board the vessel, saving themselves, knew where it was hidden."
"Was that so?" said I, much interested.
"Yes; I had the particulars from the commander of the vessel, Captain Lockyer. When do you expect your skipper on board?" he exclaimed, darting a bright, sharp look around him.
"I cannot tell. He may arrive at any moment."
"The having charge of a stone valued at fifteen thousand pounds, and intended as a gift for the Queen of England, is a deuce of a responsibility," said he. "I shall borrow a hint from the method adopted in the case of the Koh-i-noor. I intend to hide the stone in my cabin, so as to extinguish all risk, saving, of course, what the insurance people call the acts of God. May I look at your cabin accommodation?"
"Certainly."
I led the way to the companion hatch, and he followed me into the cabin. The ship had berthing room for eight or ten people irrespective of the officers who slept aft. But the vessel made no bid for passengers. She left them to Blackwall Liners, to the splendid ships of Green, Money Wigram, and Smith, and to the P. & O. and other steam lines. The overland route was then the general choice; few of their own decision went by way of the Cape. No one had booked with us down to this hour, and we had counted upon having the cabin to ourselves.
The visitor walked into every empty berth, and inspected it as carefully as though he had been a Government surveyor. He beat upon the walls and bulkheads with his cane, sent his brilliant gaze into the corners and under the bunks and up at the ceiling, and finally said, as he stepped from the last of the visitable cabins:—
"This decides me. I shall sail with you."
I bowed and said I was sure the captain would be glad of the pleasure of his company.
"I presume," said he, "that no objection will be raised to my bringing a native carpenter aboard to construct a secret place, as in the case of the Koh-i-noor, for the Maharajah's diamond?"
"A SQUARE MOROCCO CASE."
"I don't think a native carpenter would be allowed to knock the ship about," said I.
"Certainly not. A little secret receptacle—big enough to receive this," said he, putting his hand in his side pocket and producing a square Morocco case, of a size to berth a bracelet or a large brooch. "The construction of a nook to conceal this will not be knocking your ship about?"
"It's a question for the captain and the agents, sir," said I.
He replaced the case, whose bulk was so inconsiderable that it did not bulge in his coat when he had pocketed it, and said, now that he had inspected the ship and the accommodation, he would call at once upon the agents. He gave me his card and left the vessel.
The card bore the name of a military officer of some distinction. Enough if, in this narrative of a memorable and extraordinary incident, I speak of him as Major Byron Hood.
The master of the Jessamy Bride was Captain Robert North. This man had, three years earlier, sailed with me as my chief mate; it then happened I was unable to quickly obtain command, and accepted the offer of mate of the Jessamy Bride, whose captain, I was surprised to hear, proved the shipmate who had been under me, but who, some money having been left to him, had purchased an interest in the firm to which the ship belonged. We were on excellent terms; almost as brothers indeed. He never asserted his authority, and left it to my own judgment to recognise his claims. I am happy to know he had never occasion to regret his friendly treatment of me.
He came on board in the afternoon of that day on which Major Hood had visited the ship, and was full of that gentleman and his resolution to carry a costly diamond round the Cape under sail, instead of making his obligation as brief as steam and the old desert route would allow.
"I've had a long talk with him up at the agents," said Captain North. "He don't seem well."
"Suffering from his nerves, perhaps," said I.
"He's a fine, gentlemanly person. He told Mr. Nicholson he was twice wounded, naming towns which no Christian man could twist his tongue into the sound of."
"Will he be allowed to make a hole in the ship to hide his diamond in?"
"He has agreed to make good any damage done, and to pay at the rate of a fare and a half for the privilege of hiding the stone."
"Why doesn't he give the thing into your keeping, sir? This jackdaw-like hiding is a sort of reflection on our honesty, isn't it, captain?"
He laughed and answered, "No; I like such reflections for my part. Who wants to be burdened with the custody of precious things belonging to other people? Since he's to have the honour of presenting the diamond, let the worry of taking care of it be his; this ship's enough for me."
"He'll be knighted, I suppose, for delivering this stone," said I. "Did he show it to you, sir?"
"No."
"He has it in his pocket."
"He produced the case," said Captain North. "A thing about the size of a muffin. Where'll he hide it? But we're not to be curious in that direction," he added, smiling.
Next morning, somewhere about ten o'clock, Major Hood came on board with two natives; one a carpenter, the other his assistant. They brought a basket of tools, descended into the cabin, and were lost sight of till after two. No; I'm wrong. I was writing at the cabin table at half-past twelve when the Major opened his door, peered out, shut the door swiftly behind him with an extraordinary air and face of caution and anxiety, and coming along to me asked for some refreshments for himself and the two natives. I called to the steward, who filled a tray, which the Major with his own hands conveyed into his berth. Then, some time after two, whilst I was at the gangway talking to a friend, the Major and the two blacks came out of the cabin. Before they went over the side I said:—
"Is the work finished below, sir?"
"It is, and to my entire satisfaction," he answered.
When he was gone, my friend, who was the master of a barque, asked me who that fine-looking man was. I answered he was a passenger, and then, not understanding that the thing was a secret, plainly told him what they had been doing in the cabin, and why.
"But," said he, "those two niggers'll know that something precious is to be hidden in the place they've been making."
"That's been in my head all the morning," said I.
"Who's to hinder them," said he, "from blabbing to one or more of the crew? Treachery's cheap in this country. A rupee will buy a pile of roguery." He looked at me expressively. "Keep a bright look-out for a brace of well-oiled stowaways," said he.
"It's the Major's business," I answered, with a shrug.
When Captain North came on board he and I went into the Major's berth. We scrutinized every part, but saw nothing to indicate that a tool had been used or a plank lifted. There was no sawdust, no chip of wood: everything to the eye was precisely as before. No man will say we had not a right to look: how were we to make sure, as captain and mate of the ship for whose safety we were responsible, that those blacks under the eye of the Major had not been doing something which might give us trouble by-and-by?
"Well," said Captain North, as we stepped on deck, "if the diamond's already hidden, which I doubt, it couldn't be more snugly concealed if it were twenty fathoms deep in the mud here."
The Major's baggage came on board on the Saturday, and on the Monday we sailed. We were twenty-four of a ship's company all told: twenty-five souls in all, with Major Hood. Our second mate was a man named Mackenzie, to whom and to the apprentices whilst we lay in the river I had given particular instructions to keep a sharp look-out on all strangers coming aboard. I had been very vigilant myself too, and altogether was quite convinced there was no stowaway below, either white or black, though under ordinary circumstances one never would think of seeking for a native in hiding for Europe.
On either hand of the Jessamy Bride's cabin five sleeping berths were bulkheaded off. The Major's was right aft on the starboard side. Mine was next his. The captain occupied a berth corresponding with the Major's, right aft on the port side. Our solitary passenger was exceedingly amiable and agreeable at the start and for days after. He professed himself delighted with the cabin fare, and said it was not to be bettered at three times the charge in the saloons of the steamers. His drink he had himself laid in: it consisted mainly of claret and soda. He had come aboard with a large cargo of Indian cigars, and was never without a long, black weed, bearing some tongue-staggering, up-country name, betwixt his lips. He was primed with professional anecdote, had a thorough knowledge of life in India, both in the towns and wilds, had seen service in Burmah and China, and was altogether one of the most conversible soldiers I ever met: a scholar, something of a wit, and all that he said and all that he did was rendered the more engaging by grace of breeding.
Captain North declared to me he had never met so delightful a man in all his life, and the pleasantest hours I ever passed on the ocean were spent in walking the deck in conversation with Major Byron Hood.
For some days after we were at sea no reference was made either by the Major or ourselves to the Maharajah of Ratnagiri's splendid gift to Her Majesty the Queen. The captain and I and Mackenzie viewed it as tabooed matter: a thing to be locked up in memory, just as, in fact, it was hidden away in some cunningly-wrought receptacle in the Major's cabin. One day at dinner, however, when we were about a week out from Calcutta, Major Hood spoke of the Maharajah's gift. He talked freely about it; his face was flushed as though the mere thought of the thing raised a passion of triumph in his spirits. His eyes shone whilst he enlarged upon the beauty and value of the stone.
"EXCEEDINGLY AMIABLE AND AGREEABLE."
The captain and I exchanged looks; the steward was waiting upon us with cocked ears, and that menial, deaf expression of face which makes you know every word is being greedily listened to. We might therefore make sure that before the first dog-watch came round all hands would have heard that the Major had a diamond in his cabin intended for the Queen of England, and worth fifteen thousand pounds. Nay, they'd hear even more than that; for in the course of his talk about the gem the Major praised the ingenuity of the Asiatic artisan, whether Indian or Chinese, and spoke of the hiding-place the two natives had contrived for the diamond as an example of that sort of juggling skill in carving which is found in perfection amongst the Japanese.
I thought this candour highly indiscreet: charged too with menace. A matter gains in significance by mystery. The Jacks would think nothing of a diamond being in the ship as a part of her cargo, which might include a quantity of specie for all they knew. But some of them might think more often about it than was at all desirable when they understood it was stowed away under a plank, or was to be got by tapping about for a hollow echo, or probing with the judgment of a carpenter when the Major was on deck and the coast aft all clear.
We had been three weeks at sea; it was a roasting afternoon, though I cannot exactly remember the situation of the ship. Our tacks were aboard and the bowlines triced out, and the vessel was scarcely looking up to her course, slightly heeling away from a fiery fanning of wind off the starboard bow, with the sea trembling under the sun in white-hot needles of broken light, and a narrow ribbon of wake glancing off into a hot blue thickness that brought the horizon within a mile of us astern.
I had charge of the deck from twelve to four. For an hour past the Major, cigar in mouth, had been stretched at his ease in a folding chair; a book lay beside him on the skylight, but he scarcely glanced at it. I had paused to address him once or twice, but he showed no disposition to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable, I observed a restless, singular expression in his face, accentuated yet by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea, or glances at the deck forward, or around at the helm, so far as he might move his head without shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labour with some scheme. A man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of a play, or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of a novel piece of mechanism.
"STRETCHED AT HIS EASE IN A FOLDING CHAIR."
On a sudden he started up and went below.
A few minutes after he had left the deck, Captain North came up from his cabin, and for some while we paced the planks together. There was a pleasant hush upon the ship; the silence was as refreshing as a fold of coolness lifting off the sea. A spun-yarn winch was clinking on the forecastle; from alongside rose the music of fretted waters.
I was talking to the captain on some detail of the ship's furniture; when Major Hood came running up the companion steps, his face as white as his waistcoat, his head uncovered, every muscle of his countenance rigid, as with horror.
"Good God, captain!" cried he, standing in the companion, "what do you think has happened?" Before we could fetch a breath he cried: "Someone's stolen the diamond!"
I glanced at the helmsman who stood at the radiant circle of wheel staring with open mouth and eyebrows arched into his hair. The captain, stepping close to Major Hood, said in a low, steady voice:—
"What's this you tell me, sir?"
"The diamond's gone!" exclaimed the Major, fixing his shining eyes upon me, whilst I observed that his fingers convulsively stroked his thumbs as though he were rolling up pellets of bread or paper.
"Do you tell me the diamond's been taken from the place you hid it in?" said Captain North, still speaking softly, but with deliberation.
"The diamond never was hidden," replied the Major, who continued to stare at me. "It was in a portmanteau. That's no hiding-place!"
Captain North fell back a step. "Never was hidden!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you bring two native workmen aboard for no other purpose than to hide it?"
"It never was hidden," said the Major, now turning his eyes upon the captain. "I chose it should be believed it was undiscoverably concealed in some part of my cabin, that I might safely and conveniently keep it in my baggage, where no thief would dream of looking for it. Who has it?" he cried with a sudden fierceness, making a step full of passion out of the companion-way; and he looked under knitted brows towards the ship's forecastle.
Captain North watched him idly for a moment or two, and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in a quiet, level voice:—
"I shan't be able to help you. If it's gone, it's gone. A diamond's not a bale of wool. Whoever's been clever enough to find it will know how to keep it."
"SOMEONE'S STOLEN THE DIAMOND!"
"I must have it!" broke out the Major. "It's a gift for Her Majesty the Queen. It's in this ship. I look to you, sir, as master of this vessel, to recover the property which some one of the people under your charge has robbed me of!"
"I'll accompany you to your cabin," said the captain; and they went down the steps.
I stood motionless, gaping like an idiot into the yawn of hatch down which they had disappeared. I had been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the Major's berth, that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment. Small wonder that neither Captain North nor I had observed any marks of a workman's tools in the Major's berth. Not but that it was a very ingenious stratagem, far cleverer to my way of thinking than any subtle, secret burial of the thing. To think of the Major and his two Indians sitting idly for hours in that cabin, with the captain and myself all the while supposing they were fashioning some wonderful contrivance or place for concealing the treasure in! And still, for all the Major's cunning, the stone was gone! Who had stolen it? The only fellow likely to prove the thief was the steward, not because he was more or less of a rogue than any other man in the ship, but because he was the one person who, by virtue of his office, was privileged to go in and out of the sleeping places as his duties required.
I was pacing the deck, musing into a sheer muddle this singular business of the Maharajah of Ratnagiri's gift to the Queen of England, with all sorts of dim, unformed suspicions floating loose in my brains round the central fancy of the fifteen thousand pound stone there, when the captain returned. He was alone. He stepped up to me hastily, and said:—
"He swears the diamond has been stolen. He showed me the empty case."
"Was there ever a stone in it at all?" said I.
"I don't think that," he answered, quickly; "there's no motive under Heaven to be imagined if the whole thing's a fabrication."
"What then, sir?"
"The case is empty, but I've not made up my mind yet that the stone's missing."
"The man's an officer and a gentleman."
"I know, I know!" he interrupted, "but still, in my opinion, the stone's not missing. The long and short of it is," he said, after a very short pause, with a careful glance at the skylight and companion hatch, "his behaviour isn't convincing enough. Something's wanting in his passion and his vexation."
"Sincerity!"
"Ah! I don't intend that this business shall trouble me. He angrily required me to search the ship for stowaways. Bosh! The second mate and steward have repeatedly overhauled the lazarette: there's nobody there."
"And if not there, then nowhere else," said I. "Perhaps he's got the forepeak in his head."
"I'll not have a hatch lifted," he exclaimed, warmly, "nor will I allow the crew to be troubled. There's been no theft. Put it that the stone is stolen. Who's going to find it in a forecastle full of men—a thing as big as half a bean perhaps? If it's gone, it's gone, indeed, whoever may have it. But there's no go in this matter at all," he added, with a short, nervous laugh.
We were talking in this fashion when the Major joined us; his features were now composed. He gazed sternly at the captain and said, loftily:—
"What steps are you prepared to take in this matter?"
"None, sir."
His face darkened. He looked with a bright gleam in his eyes at the captain, then at me: his gaze was piercing with the light in it. Without a word he stepped to the side and, folding his arms, stood motionless.
I glanced at the captain; there was something in the bearing of the Major that gave shape, vague indeed, to a suspicion that had cloudily hovered about my thoughts of the man for some time past. The captain met my glance, but he did not interpret it.
When I was relieved at four o'clock by the second mate, I entered my berth, and presently, hearing the captain go to his cabin, went to him and made a proposal. He reflected, and then answered:—
"Yes; get it done."
After some talk I went forward and told the carpenter to step aft and bore a hole in the bulkhead that separated the Major's berth from mine. He took the necessary tools from his chest and followed me. The captain was now again on deck, talking with the Major; in fact, detaining him in conversation, as had been preconcerted. I went into the Major's berth, and quickly settled upon a spot for an eye-hole. The carpenter then went to work in my cabin, and in a few minutes bored an orifice large enough to enable me to command a large portion of the adjacent interior. I swept the sawdust from the deck in the Major's berth, so that no hint should draw his attention to the hole, which was pierced in a corner shadowed by a shelf. I then told the carpenter to manufacture a plug and paint its extremity of the colour of the bulkhead. He brought me this plug in a quarter of an hour. It fitted nicely, and was to be withdrawn and inserted as noiselessly as though greased.
I don't want you to suppose this Peeping-Tom scheme was at all to my taste, albeit my own proposal; but the truth is, the Major's telling us that someone had stolen his diamond made all who lived aft hotly eager to find out whether he spoke the truth or not; for, if he had been really robbed of the stone, then suspicion properly rested upon the officers and the steward, which was an infernal consideration: dishonouring and inflaming enough to drive one to seek a remedy in even a baser device than that of secretly keeping watch on a man in his bedroom. Then, again, the captain told me that the Major, whilst they talked when the carpenter was at work making the hole, had said he would give notice of his loss to the police at Cape Town (at which place we were to touch), and declared he'd take care no man went ashore—from Captain North himself down to the youngest apprentice—till every individual, every sea-chest, every locker, drawer, shelf and box, bunk, bracket and crevice had been searched by qualified rummagers.
"THE CARPENTER THEN WENT TO WORK."
On this the day of the theft, nothing more was said about the diamond: that is, after the captain had emphatically informed Major Hood that he meant to take no steps whatever in the matter. I had expected to find the Major sullen and silent at dinner; he was not, indeed, so talkative as usual, but no man watching and hearing him would have supposed so heavy a loss as that of a stone worth fifteen thousand pounds, the gift of an Eastern potentate to the Queen of England, was weighing upon his spirits.
It is with reluctance I tell you that, after dinner that day, when he went to his cabin, I softly withdrew the plug and watched him. I blushed whilst thus acting, yet I was determined, for my own sake and for the sake of my shipmates, to persevere. I spied nothing noticeable saving this: he sat in a folding chair and smoked, but every now and again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth and talked to it with a singular smile. It was a smile of cunning, that worked like some baleful, magical spirit in the fine high breeding of his features; changing his looks just as a painter of incomparable skill might colour a noble, familiar face into a diabolical expression, amazing those who knew it only in its honest and manly beauty. I had never seen that wild, grinning countenance on him before, and it was rendered the more remarkable by the movement of his lips whilst he talked to himself, but inaudibly.
A week slipped by; time after time I had the man under observation; often when I had charge of the deck I'd leave the captain to keep a look out, and steal below and watch Major Hood in his cabin.
It was a Sunday, I remember. I was lying in my bunk half dozing—we were then, I think, about a three-weeks' sail from Table Bay—when I heard the Major go to his cabin. I was already sick of my aimless prying; and whilst I now lay I thought to myself: "I'll sleep; what is the good of this trouble? I know exactly what I shall see. He is either in his chair, or his bunk, or overhauling his clothes, or standing, cigar in mouth, at the open porthole." And then I said to myself: "If I don't look now I shall miss the only opportunity of detection that may occur." One is often urged by a sort of instinct in these matters.
I got up, almost as through an impulse of habit, noiselessly withdrew the plug, and looked. The Major was at that instant standing with a pistol-case in his hand: he opened it as my sight went to him, took out one of a brace of very elegant pistols, put down the case, and on his apparently touching a spring in the butt of the pistol, the silver plate that ornamented the extremity sprang open as the lid of a snuff-box would, and something small and bright dropped into his hand. This he examined with the peculiar cunning smile I have before described; but owing to the position of his hand, I could not see what he held, though I had not the least doubt that it was the diamond.
"SOMETHING SMALL AND BRIGHT DROPPED INTO HIS HAND."
I watched him breathlessly. After a few minutes he dropped the stone into the hollow butt-end, shut the silver plate, shook the weapon against his ear as though it pleased him to rattle the stone, then put it in its case, and the case into a portmanteau.
I at once went on deck, where I found the captain, and reported to him what I had seen. He viewed me in silence, with a stare of astonishment and incredulity. What I had seen, he said, was not the diamond. I told him the thing that had dropped into the Major's hand was bright, and, as I thought, sparkled, but it was so held I could not see it.
I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the Major came on deck. The captain said to me: "Hold him in chat. I'll judge for myself," and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol-case. This I did, and he went below.
I joined the Major, and talked on the first subjects that entered my head. He was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face; wore a lofty manner, and being half a head taller than I, glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way. This behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his "injured air." He'd occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain's insensibility to his loss, and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Cape Town.
Presently looking down the skylight, I perceived the captain. Mackenzie had charge of the watch. I descended the steps, and Captain North's first words to me were:—
"It's no diamond!"
"What, then, is it?"
"A common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing."
"What's it all about, then?" said I. "Upon my soul, there's nothing in Euclid to beat it. Glass?"
"A little lump of common glass; a fragment of bull's-eye, perhaps."
"What's he hiding it for?"
"Because," said Captain North, in a soft voice, looking up and around, "he's mad!"
"Just so!" said I. "That I'll swear to now, and I've been suspecting it this fortnight past."
"He's under the spell of some sort of mania," continued the captain; "he believes he's commissioned to present a diamond to the Queen; possibly picked up a bit of stuff in the street that started the delusion, then bought a case for it, and worked out the rest as we know."
"But why does he want to pretend that the stone was stolen from him?"
"He's been mastered by his own love for the diamond," he answered. "That's how I reason it. Madness has made his affection for his imaginary gem a passion in him."
"And so he robbed himself of it, you think, that he might keep it?"
"That's about it," said he.
After this I kept no further look-out upon the Major, nor would I ever take an opportunity to enter his cabin to view for myself the piece of glass as the captain described it, though curiosity was often hot in me.
We arrived at Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high bred, polished gentleman who had sailed with us from Calcutta.
The first to come aboard were the Customs people. They were almost immediately followed by the harbour-master. Scarcely had the first of the Custom House officers stepped over the side when Major Hood, with a very red face, and a lofty, dignified carriage, marched up to him, and said in a loud voice:—
"I have been robbed during the passage from Calcutta of a diamond worth fifteen thousand pounds, which I was bearing as a gift from the Maharajah of Ratnagiri to Her Majesty the Queen of England."
The Customs man stared with a lobster-like expression of face: no image could better hit the protruding eyes and brick-red countenance of the man.
"I request," continued the Major, raising his voice into a shout, "to be placed at once in communication with the police at this port. No person must be allowed to leave the vessel until he has been thoroughly searched by such expert hands as you and your confrères no doubt are, sir. I am Major Byron Hood. I have been twice wounded. My services are well known, and I believe duly appreciated in the right quarters. Her Majesty the Queen is not to suffer any disappointment at the hands of one who has the honour of wearing her uniform, nor am I to be compelled, by the act of a thief, to betray the confidence the Maharajah has reposed in me."
He continued to harangue in this manner for some minutes, during which I observed a change in the expression of the Custom House officers' faces.
Meanwhile Captain North stood apart in earnest conversation with the harbour-master. They now approached; the harbour-master, looking steadily at the Major, exclaimed:—
"Good news, sir! Your diamond is found!"
"Ha!" shouted the Major. "Who has it?"
"You'll find it in your pistol-case," said the harbour-master.
The Major gazed round at us with his wild, bright eyes, with a face a-work with the conflict of twenty mad passions and sensations. Then bursting into a loud, insane laugh, he caught the harbour-master by the arm, and in a low voice and a sickening, transforming leer of cunning, said: "Come, let's go and look at it."
"I HAVE BEEN ROBBED."
We went below. We were six, including two Custom House officers. We followed the poor madman, who grasped the harbour-master's arm, and on arriving at his cabin we stood at the door of it. He seemed heedless of our presence, but on his taking the pistol-case from the portmanteau, the two Customs men sprang forward.
"That must be searched by us," one cried, and in a minute they had it.
With the swiftness of experienced hands they found and pressed the spring of the pistol, the silver plate flew open, and out dropped a fragment of thick, common glass, just as Captain North had described the thing. It fell upon the deck. The Major sprang, picked it up, and pocketed it.
"Her Majesty will not be disappointed, after all," said he, with a courtly bow to us, "and the commission the Maharajah's honoured me with shall be fulfilled."
The poor gentleman was taken ashore that afternoon, and his luggage followed him. He was certified mad by the medical man at Cape Town, and was to be retained there, as I understood, till the arrival of a steamer for England. It was an odd, bewildering incident from top to bottom. No doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow, whose mind was then fast decaying, reading about the transmission of the Koh-i-noor, and musing about it with a mad-man's proneness to dwell upon little things.
