CHAPTER XIX. THE CAMILLA OF THE SEA
Within ten weeks of the date of the sailing of the clipper ship York from the River Thames the vessel was about two hundred miles to the westward of the coast of Portugal. It was a leaden day. The ocean was breathing deeply after a long conflict with the gale. The swell ran in sullen masses, lifting with the lazy sickness of oil, but the breeze was light and scarcely creased the moving knolls, and the shadow of cloud hung like tapestry in a darkened chamber, low down in ragged skirts upon the winding line of the sea.
The ship looked wrecked aloft. All her spars were standing indeed, but her mizzentopsail hung in rags, and the bolt ropes made a skeleton of the fabric aft. The foresail was split in halves, and with each weary roll gaped like a cut in an india-rubber ball when pressed. Rags of the outer jib fluttered from lacing or hanks. The maintopgallantsail had been blown loose and had gone to pieces, and was shaking from the yard in lengths like Irish pennants in the rigging. The ship was rolling drearily, and the channels would often slap white thunder out of the sulky brow of the swell, and she groaned greatly throughout her length and made some dim sound of lamentation aloft.
Hardy stood alone at the wheel. He was fresh from a long and desperate fight with the sea, and you read the character of the struggle in his face. His beard was a week old: in the hollows under his eyes lay a little whiteness, the encrustation of salt; this gave him the ghastly look of the life-boat man who steps ashore after standing two nights and a day by a stranded ship with frozen figures in her shrouds. His hair was a little long, and this gave a something of wildness to his aspect. His looks were haggard, his eyes wanting in their usual lustre, his lips were pale; he looked worn. For ten days he and Julia had been fighting a gale of wind. In ten days they had managed to obtain but two or three hours sleep in a day of twenty-four hours. But happily for them it never blew so hard but that they could keep their course shaped for the English Channel. It never blew so hard that a ship well manned would have needed to heave to. It came in roaring weight upon the quarter, and one midnight the mizzentopsail burst in a blast of cannon, and shortly after the maintopgallantsail was blown into shreds out of the gaskets, and next morning, in the screaming fury of a bleaching squall, the outer jib flew into pennons from the stay, and the veil of the fore-course was rent asunder. But the reefed maintopsail, the foretopmast-staysail, and the inner jib were as faithful to their duty as Tom Bowline in the song, and the ship rushed on in foam to the figurehead, whitening acres of the sea abaft her, passing a brig hove to in the haze; passed by a ship that would not stay to speak; passed by a Fruiter schooner from the Western Islands, whose spring over the surge was the glance of the albatross, whose envanishment in the haze ahead, into which the York was for ever rushing, was the extinction of a meteor in a cloud.
And now the gale was gone the sea would shortly smooth its panting breast; it was the early forenoon. Hardy called the dog, but he did not exert the powerful voice that was familiar to Julia.
The Newfoundland came out of its kennel and looked up in affectionate expectation at the sailor.
"Go below and bring her up!" said Hardy, pointing, and the dog perfectly understanding disappeared down the companionway.
His hands were almost raw with grasping the spokes. His arms were almost lifeless with their long resistance to the mulish tug of the wheel-chains in response to the kick of the rudder. His feet ached with standing, knots seemed to have been tied in the muscles of his legs; but in the gauntness of his looks was visible the spirit of a noble heart, and there was no better or more fearless sailor in the world than that grim, unshorn figure that stood alone at the helm of that reeling ship.
You will think it strange that a man, a woman, and a dog should have brought a big, full-rigged ship in safety down to the present hour through some thunderous Atlantic parallels. Yet this ship's adventure is not so strange to me as the mysterious good fortune of the ocean-tramp of to-day that washes through the Bay of Biscay without her funnel, and quietly discharges her cargo without any one feeling one penny the worse. Take, for instance, the second mate of an ocean-tramp. He walks the bridge; there are three foreign seamen in his watch, one of whom steers the ship, whilst the other two paint her. By secret compulsion, well understood by the owner and the captain of the ship, the second mate quits the bridge and helps the two sailors to paint the ship. Who looks after the ship whilst the person in charge of her paints? The ship herself.
Or the same second mate may be on the bridge in the first watch; the foreign sailor at the wheel has been labouring almost continuously at deck-work through the greater portion of the day. The second mate for convenience has set the ship's course by a star. Suddenly he finds the star sliding slowly abeam. He rushes to the wheel and beholds the helmsman standing erect, and asleep. The second mate shakes the fellow furiously, and shouts, "Hard a-starboard!" and the sleepy foreigner, who scarcely understands the commands of the helm in English, tries to port by every spoke until he is stopped by the second mate's boot.
Is not the voyage of our every-day ocean-tramp more wonderful in the unrevealed conditions of the life of the staggering tank than this story of a full-rigged ship worked by an English seaman, an English girl, a Newfoundland dog, a watch-tackle, and a winch? I served for eight years at sea as a sailor, and I venture to say that the tramp is far more wonderful than this ship.
Sailor knew his business, and in a few minutes Julia arrived on deck. She looked ill and worn. Her straw hat was beginning to show like the end of a long voyage; her dress would have made an ill figure of her in Piccadilly. But you saw all that was necessary of spirit and resolution in her eyes.
"Julia," said Hardy, "the pumps suck with me. I feel worn out. I can't stand at this wheel any longer, and there would be no good in your attempting to hold it. I'll secure the helm, and the ship must take her chance. It'll be a dead calm before long, and we have come to a moment when a great deal must be left to fortune. Look yonder!"
He pointed on the quarter where streaks of fine weather were expanding and lifting, lines and spaces of silver blue irradiating the ragged gloom of the firmament which was moving ponderously and slowly northwest.
"You will find it cold," continued Hardy. "Go and wrap yourself up in the captain's cloak whilst I secure the wheel."
Before he had secured the helm the girl returned apparelled as commanded, for to her his word was law. He then sank down in a chair near the wheel with his chin upon his breast, and the girl went forward to boil a kettle of water.
She remained forward until some hot coffee was ready, and when she came aft with it she found her sweetheart sound asleep. It is not love that disturbs the sleeping sailor. It is love that watches and shields the repose of love, as the guardian angel the slumber of the baby. Julia looked at Hardy. How gaunt and hollow! How grim and bristly with the week's growth! Yet how peaceful in sleep, how manly in look, how dear to her; oh, how dear to her by loyal devotion, by beautiful honour, by self-respect, by his fear and his love of God!
She sat on the deck beside him and drank a little coffee, and the dog lay at her feet. The helm was paralysed by the rope which secured the wheel, and the ship was slowly knocked by the head into the hollow of the swell; the topsail was aback, and the ship lay rolling quietly on the quieting folds with streamers of canvas swaying from the yard and from the stay.
Julia continued to sit by her sleeping lover's side for more than half an hour, leaving him once only to see to the galley fire. When again she arose to attend to the fire the dog stood up and shook himself and sprang upon the taffrail to take a look around, and before Julia had stepped ten paces the noble animal was sounding in deep tones his report of a ship in sight.
The noise awoke Hardy, who started and stood up, and Julia stayed where she was to look at the sea.
Nearly right abeam, in the midst of the lifting bright weather whose suffusion of radiance was over the mastheads, was visible the feathering of a steamer's smoke.
"It is something coming our way," said Hardy to Julia, and he took the glass, and pointed it.
His hands trembled, and he steadied the tubes by grasping the vang of the gaff with them. After a long look—Julia was at his side—he said:
"She rises fast. By her square yards I take her to be a man-of-war. If she is British she will be the help I have sometimes prayed for."
He put down the glass, bent on the Red Ensign Jack down, and ran it aloft.
"I will get you some hot coffee," said Julia. "Do you feel rested a little?"
"I am good for an eight hours' spell," he replied, but he did not look so.
She went forward, and he watched the approaching steamer, and the dog watched her also. When the girl returned with a pannikin of hot coffee Hardy had more news to give her. He first drank, then lighted a pipe, and he told her that the ship abeam, whose paddle-wheels had by this time slapped her hull into clear view, was undoubtedly a British man-of-war, and to judge by her course she was either from the Cape de Verde or direct from Rio, or some port on the eastern coast of South America.
"How do you know she is British?" asked Julia.
"By every token of yards squared by lifts and braces, by white bunt, and something white at the gaff end."
"Can you distinguish her flag?"
"It is a speck of light, but I know what it means."
"Will you accept help from her?" inquired Julia.
"Of course I will," he answered. "The Admiralty do not claim salvage, or they so hedge about the claim as to make the claimant's case prohibitory."
"How will she help us?" said the girl.
"Either by towing or sending men. But I doubt if she will tow," answered Hardy. "She may not have enough coal. She may be in a hurry to get home. The sailor is always in a hurry—God help him—and often when he gets home he finds the canary dead in the cage."
"We have no canary to greet us with its corpse," said Julia.
She picked up the glass, and inspected the approaching vessel. And so the time was whiled away until the steamer was close on the York's quarter, her paddle-wheels ceased to revolve, and now all about her could easily be understood without the glass.
She was one of that class of naval steamers which still survive (in aspect at least), at the date of the composition of this story, in the Royal Yacht, familiar in the Solent. She had a square stern, embellished with gilded mouldings and sparkling with windows. She had yellow paddle-boxes, a tall black hull with a few square gunports of a side. She was a barque, though they tried to make her look like a ship by fixing square yards without canvas on her mizzenmast and fidded topmast, which was a brigantine's mainmast with its crosstrees. For a full-rigged ship must have fidded topmast and fidded topgallantmast and royalmast, and if she has not these you may call her what you like but she is not a ship.
The steamer was H.M.S. Magicienne, bound from Rio to Devonport, having halted at the Cape de Verde for coal. She was full of men, as the Navy ship usually is. Here and there she was spotted by the red coat of a marine. She sparkled to the risen fine weather, and the sea was now blue to both the ships, though northwest it breathed in leaden shadow. She dipped her visible wheel in foam. The colour of her country trembled in handkerchief-size at her gaff end, and her pennon streamed in a line of silk. An officer stood upon the paddle-box and hailed the York. Hardy thought he could answer, and tried to do so, but found that his voice would not carry. Indeed he had been overburdened, and every function was bowed and humped.
To make himself understood he shook his head and pointed to his mouth, and flew the signal of "No voice" by pantomime. The trill of a whistle could be heard. In a few moments—moments are minutes, minutes are hours on board the ship of war with hundreds of a crew, as compared with the moments, minutes, and hours aboard a ship of trade with thirty of a crew—a boat-full of men with something glittering in the stern-sheets sank to the water at the steamer's side, and, as though but one oar was wielded at either gunwale, the boat came with flashful iteration of feathered blade, a pulse of sparkling locomotion each side of her, and the something that glittered astern beside the coxswain enlarged swiftly into the proportions of a midshipman twenty years old.
He gained the deck with the scrambling bounds of a kangaroo as he sprang from the rail saluting the ship with some convulsion of thumb near the bottom button of his waistcoat. His freckled face was well bred; his looks had the ardency of the youthful British sailor. You felt that here was a young man, perhaps an honourable, perhaps a lord, who at the call of duty would do his "bit," and do it well.
He stared hard at the girl whilst he walked slap up to Hardy.
"What's the matter with this ship?" said he, and his accost made Hardy feel as though he were a north-country Geordie skipper with an auld wife in the companion-hatch darning his stockings.
"I am stumpended with work," said Hardy, "and must sit, or I shall fall." And he sat down.
"You look like the end of a long voyage," said the midshipman.
"And you look as if the roast beef of Old England smokes in the gunroom," answered Hardy.
"So help me God, then," cried the midshipman with heat, "nothing has fed us since Rio but salt horse. Where's your crew?" and he looked at the girl without greatly admiring her, for Julia was very draggled and broken about the hat, and dejected about the hair and white and worn, and she knew she was all this with a girl's distress.
"The crew are before you," replied Hardy, languidly pointing at the dog.
"What do you want?" said the midshipman, directing his eyes aloft.
"The help of the nation represented by your ship of state," answered Hardy.
The midshipman, who was a gentleman, perceived that the grim, unshorn, labour-wearied man on the chair was a gentleman, whatever might be his rating aboard a merchantman, and his manner changed.
"You are in a very odd situation," said he. "What a magnificent dog! What is your story, that I may return and report it to the captain?"
It took Hardy ten minutes to relate the ship's adventure, and the midshipman listened to it with parted lips, just as his face would overhang a thrilling novel which is true with all those touches that make the world akin.
"Well," said he when Hardy had finished, "I always thought going into the Navy was going to sea, but that's the real flag of adventure," he added, with a glance at the inverted ensign. "You want help and deserve it, and I'll go to the ship, and report."
He touched his cap with a look of pitying admiration at Julia. It was not the admiration of a man for a pretty face, but for the heart of a lioness.
The boat left the York and Hardy continued to sit, and Julia stood beside him. It was fine weather above the fore-royal truck, and the gloom was thinning in the northwest. Where the brightness had broken the sea was darkening its blue; a breeze was coming up that way, and it would prove a homeward bound breeze to the York, with a sparkling sun to dry her and to cheer her.
"I do not think that midshipman greatly respects the Merchant Service," said Julia.
"Midshipmen occasionally condescend to us," answered Hardy, "but the majority of naval officers have good sense, and wherever there is good sense our flag is respected, because the naval officer has read history and sometimes contributes to it."
The girl looked at the steamer and the boat that was foaming to her to its dazzling line of oars.
"It is a fine service!" said Hardy, taking the steamer in from streaming pennon to the dip of the red-tongued wheel. "I might just as easily have been there as here. One is the butterfly rich with the wing of the peacock tail; the other is the plain white butterfly"—he looked afloat—"that blows like a piece of paper about the summer garden. But deprive them of their wings and you'll find their bodies very much alike."
"What are they going to do?" said Julia.
"We shall soon find out," answered Hardy. "British men-of-war are not accustomed to keep people long waiting to find out."
Though the ships lay at a fair seaworthy distance from each other, men and matters were visible to the naked eye aboard either.
Hardy saw the midshipman conversing with the commander on the bridge. He did not choose to level a glass, it might be deemed impertinent, but he saw the commander lift a binocular to his eyes in evident wonder; certainly the gallant officer had never heard a stranger story of the sea. Officialism could not neutralise curiosity, and the man, the girl, and the dog being within easy reach of the sight helped by the magnifying lens, the commander watched whilst the midshipman talked.
What was to happen was to be speedily understood. The pipe shrilled and trilled, kits and hammocks were flung into the cutter, and in a few minutes the large boat containing twenty-one men and a warrant officer came alongside. Twelve men climbed out of her into the ship, first throwing up to a few who had preceded them their sea wardrobes and bedding. They were followed by the warrant officer—the man-o'-war's boatswain. His ruddy face flamed betwixt two red whiskers; his small, sharp blue eyes shot a bayonet glance in twenty directions in two seconds. He and his men had come to stay, and the cutter laboured to her sea mother to the stroke of five oars controlled by a helmsman.
"I'm the bo'sun of her Majesty's ship Magicienne," said the flaming seaman, coming up to Hardy with a salute. "My orders are to help you to carry this ship home."
"It is very good of your captain," said Hardy, deeply moved, and smiling with an expression that accentuated the weariness of his soul, and that also emphasised the manly nature of his character, which instantly won the recognition of the boatswain because he was a sailor in the presence of a sailor.
"Do I understand your discipline? I give my orders through you. Your men would not accept my command."
"Quite right, sir," answered the boatswain, cheerfully, "and if you will turn me to at once I will turn them men to immediately after. But I beg you won't overtire yourself, sir. And the lady has helped you! And that's a beautiful dog of yourn. A small ship's company, sir; and, begging your pardon, you and the lady both look as if a good night's rest would do you good."
"What is your name?" said Hardy.
"Harper, sir."
"Mr. Harper, will you kindly see that the men make themselves comfortable in the forecastle? You will then bend fresh sails and make all sail. I will show you where everything you want is to be found."
He sat as he spoke, and the boatswain, touching his cap, went amongst his men and executed Hardy's orders.
The two lovers watched the steamer. A man-o'-war, even when she carries paddle-boxes, is always a gracious object. Yonder ship's rails were embellished with a snow-white line of hammocks, and snow-white lines of furled canvas brightened the yards with a gleaming streak of sunshine. The full philosophy of spit and polish was to be found in that steamer. It spoke in the flash of brass; it lurked in the gleam of glass; it was visible in many colours in paint work. Every rope was hauled taut; the yards were unerringly square. The boat rose without a song, the wheels revolved, the foam of a harpooned whale fell in dazzling masses from under the sponsons, and the splendour of the yeast under the square counter flamed like the rising day-star in the windows of the stern.
Hardy staggered to the signal halliards; his motions were seen—he could not salute with the distress signal. With somewhat shaking hands, therefore, he unbent and rebent the Red Ensign and hoisted it and dipped, and the courtesy found its response in the graceful sinking and heavenward soaring of the White Flag of our country.
Before the sailors came out of the forecastle, the queen's ship was on a line with the York's port cathead, merrily slapping her way to England.
Mr. Harper came aft. His salute was respectful, his manner sympathetic.
"If you will tell me where the spare sails are kept, sir, I will see to everything, that you and the lady may go below and take the rest you stand in need of."
Hardy told him all that was necessary, thanking him also, whilst Julia looked at the fifteen men that were gathered forward and admired their well-fed appearance, trim attire, manly shapes, and the whiskers of those who wore them. The discipline of a ship of state was in their postures, different from the longshore, lounging attitude of Jack Muck when waiting, and yet some of the best of those men had been Jack Mucks in their day; one had even been mate of a ship, and the look he sent aloft was charged with recognition of familiar conditions.
"Well, Mr. Harper," said Hardy, "I will leave the ship to you. There are plenty of provisions and there is plenty of fresh water, and there is rum for you to serve out as you think proper."
Saying this, he took Julia by the arm, conducted her to the companion, and followed her into the cabin.
And now occurred another extraordinary incident in this ship's adventure. It had indeed once occurred visibly before, but it will not be credited in this age of the religious novel. When Hardy was in the cabin he put his cap upon the table, and going to a cushioned locker knelt beside it. Julia immediately approached him and likewise knelt, shoulders touching. When they had thanked God—and it was meet that they should thank him for their very merciful deliverance—they ate some food, drank some wine, and went to their cabins.
The sleep of the wearied mariner is profound, and the sleep of the toil-worn girl at sea is likewise profound. Hardy was the first to awake. Through the little port-hole or scuttle in the ship's side he witnessed the scarlet of the dying afternoon; he also observed the creaming curl of the breaking sea streaming swiftly past. In the plank with his feet he felt the buoyancy of sea-borne motion, the floating lift, the floating reel of a fabric winging over the deep. He shaved himself, and emerged a clean, a manly though a pallid sailor, still something gaunt but with eyes brightened by sleep, and with an expression gallant with hope and with victory.
He looked round for Julia. She was still in her cabin, and he would not awaken her. At the foot of the companion-steps lay the Newfoundland; Hardy knelt beside the noble creature and put his cheek to the wet muzzle, and the dog groaned in pleasure and gratitude. Then they went on deck together.
It was a strange, new, surprising sight to Hardy and perhaps to the dog: a British man-of-war's man stood at the wheel of the ship; up and down the quarter-deck stumped the stout figure of Mr. Harper in all pomp of commanding strut. It was the first dog-watch, and some of the sailors were walking about the forecastle smoking pipes, and some of them, also smoking pipes, lurked about the galley door. A fresh breeze was sweeping down upon the quarter. The ship was under full sail from main-royal to flying jib, from mizzen-royal to spanker. The weather-clew of the mainsail was up, and—what was that yonder, right ahead? By heaven! the Magicienne slapping along at ten and pouring incense of soot to the very extremity of the visible universe, and the York was doing twelve and overhauling her with foam to the figurehead, with derisive laughter aloft, with all graceful scorn of the wind-swept structure in every leap, that brought closer yet to the eye the laborious ploughing of the paddles.
Hardy and Mr. Harper touched their caps to each other.
"This is business, sir," said the boatswain, "and this ship is going to point a moral to that there steamer!"
Hardy sent a critical gaze aloft. Everything was set to a hair and rounded firm as a boiler full of steam. Everything was doing the work of a boiler and more than the work of a boiler, as witness yonder sky-blackening fabric, like panting Time, toiling to elude the Camilla of the sea.
"Your captain has sent me some good men," said Hardy. "It did not take you long, I reckon, to bend new canvas."
The boatswain smiled loftily betwixt his red whiskers.
"It isn't all New Navy yet, sir," he answered; "but it's coming."
He sighed like a risen porpoise.
"There'll be no call for sailors when it's to be nothing but that, with pole-masts and so built"—he was pointing as he spoke to the steamer—"that a dock-master might fitly sing out to the skipper, Which end of you is coming in?"
He suddenly drew himself up as though on drill, and Julia stepped out of the companion-hatch. Sleep had touched her cheeks with a delicate bloom. She had refreshed herself with soap and water; her abundant hair was gracefully dressed; with the cunning fingers of a woman she had somehow, I do not know how, effaced in effect at least from her attire the soiling and creasing influence of hard weather upon the single robe. She had managed to warp her hat to its old bearings, and it sat cocked in its old coquettish pride upon her head. Her gaze was full of rapture as she looked at the ship, the straining sweep of white water over the side, the easy, manly figure of the man at the wheel, the Magicienne, which if this breeze lasted the ship must presently shift her helm to pass.
"What do you think of this?" said Hardy to her.
"Is it a dream, Mr. Harper?" said the girl. "Shall Mr. Hardy and I awaken to find ourselves on board an abandoned wreck?"
"Call it a dream, mum," answered the boatswain, "and when you awake it will be England!"
This story of the ship's adventure is told. Because what you wish and expect is bound to happen when safety and home are to be reached and realised by a noble, well-found clipper ship in charge of two sailors of the manliest character, and manned by fifteen splendid examples of the man-of-war's men of the Navy of that age.
The merciful eye of God was upon this ship, for certainly the strength of our courageous couple had been expended in a long strife with the gale, and the dog, and the watch-tackle, and the winch without human help would have been of no use. Hardy would have been forced to take the first assistance that offered. It came to him in the triumphant spirit which informs the whole of this couple's adventures. Our sailor yearned for an estate for himself and for the girl that was to be his wife. He richly deserved the reward he desired. Had any ship but a man-of-war assisted him to get home the salvage claimed would have diminished his proportion to a sum which at the present rate of interest would not have yielded him the value of the pension of the retired naval bluejacket. The British man-of-war demands no salvage, and this is but just, because her very existence depends upon the safety of the British merchantman. If you extinguish the Merchant Service, you extinguish the need for a Navy and you extinguish the nation herself, because we are surrounded by the ocean, we are fed by the merchant sailor, and the bluejacket is paid to protect him whilst he brings us the daily bread for which we pray every Sunday in church, and sometimes more often than every Sunday.
I have never heard of a single instance in which the Admiralty have claimed salvage for services rendered to a British merchantman. Possibly they may have sent in a claim for the value of stores expended in the salvage services. In the case of a successful salvage it has sometimes happened that the owners of the ship have by permission of the Admiralty presented a service of plate for the officers' mess, or they have made personal gifts to the officers and a dinner or supper ashore to the crew. Thus it will be gathered that Hardy reaped the harvest he had sown and held in view; and having said this no more need be asked, for the hand that has penned these lines has no cunning as a reporter of the Marriage Service.
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.