BOOK II
ABOARD SHIP IN THE SOUTH SEAS
The Murderous Mutineers and the Woman
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH I AM PUNISHED FOR MY PRESUMPTION
I PASS over the events of the next six months without comment, but not because they were uninteresting. Oh, no. One could not sail from Plymouth, England, to the South Seas, touching at Madeira, the Canaries, Rio and Buenos Ayres and rounding the mighty and fearsome Cape Horn, without seeing many things of interest and participating in scenes as dangerous as they were exciting. But I am not writing a book of travels, though perchance I may some day endeavor to set forth for your delectation some of my far voyagings in unknown seas. Suffice it to say that we passed safely from the much traversed Atlantic to the lonely Pacific, and were drawing near to the island we sought according to the calculations of good Captain Matthews and myself, when something happened.
I had brought it on myself, I realized, but that made it no more bearable. Indeed, I was mad, mad all through; outraged in dignity, humiliated in self-respect, and were it not foolish to speak so of a man of my years and standing, I should say I was broken in heart. I suppose that I should feel the wound to my affections more than that to my pride later, but at that present moment feelings of indignation predominated. I had been a fool, of course, and I should have expected nothing else; equally, of course, perhaps I should even have anticipated this, and probably if I had been in my right senses on that day I would have known it. But then you see, I was not in my right senses, and that was the secret of my disgrace. And that it all happened after half a year of the friendliest, most pleasant intercourse between a man and a maid only intensified the bitterness of the situation.
My little mistress had been so kind to me that I had dwelt in a fool’s paradise. I awoke to realize that she had not forgot the difference between our stations. She had been born in the castle, I in the gardener’s lodge; she was of the great house, I was of the cottage. I had forgot it in these long months at sea—by heaven, the sight of her was enough to make a man forget anything if he loved her as I! There, the secret is out, though I make no doubt you guessed it long before—but it seems she had not. There was no mirror in the cabin, but I could well guess that the sight of me was not sufficiently prepossessing to make any woman forget our respective merits and stations.
In birth, in breeding, in education, in everything, she stood immeasurably removed from me; so far removed that association on any terms scarcely seemed possible. Yet she had been so kind. I was her only confidant or companion in the ship. I had forgot all that lay between, or else, remembering, I had yet endeavored to leap the gap. I had fondly hoped that the one thing in me that was truly great, my passion for her, would land me safely by her side. I did not see how she could fail to comprehend it, though I did try to disguise it.
Well, that love of mine—it had not brought her nearer. On the contrary it had put me under lock and key! And here I was, shut up like a criminal in my own cabin in her ship, or mine for that matter. Come to think of it, that moment I believe love had completely disappeared. I could recall—and can to this day—the fierce, burning rush of color to her cheek where I had kissed it; the fire of rage and surprise mingled which sparkled in her eyes. The Duke of Arcester I had marked for life for less than this, I recalled in shame.
I hardly recollected the fierce blow of her hand upon my face. That was nothing. I had laughed at it as she had recoiled from me when I had released her—actually laughed! I was not laughing at her, God knows, but at her impotence physically compared to my strength. She was a small slender little body, I could have carried her easily with my one hand—and I have often done so since—yet she struck hard when she did strike.
As I recalled it, I suppose that laugh was my undoing. Perhaps she thought I laughed at her. Well, what mattered it? Whatever the cause, I was undone. All the patient devotion of years, all the restraint of the long voyage had come to naught.
There had been plenty of bright starlight on deck. She had stepped out from the dark shadow of the spencer and I had followed hard on her heels. The first night watch had not yet been called and the men idle about the decks, waiting the boatswain’s shrill whistle, had noted it all. I can see their sneering, laughing faces even now. God! I could bear anything from her but nothing from them, and but for the sorry figure I must have cut in a low brawl with the ruffians, I would have leaped upon them and fought them until they killed me.