A fortnight later I was prowling up and down the cabin outside their closed state-room door, my fingers twitching with nervousness, and a lump continually rising in my throat that threatened to choke me; for within that tiny space, the captain, all unaided except by his great love and quiet common sense, was elbowing a grim shadow that seemed to envy him his treasure. Now and then a faint moan curdled round my heart, making it ache as if with cold. Beyond that there was no sign from within, and the suspense fretted me till I felt like a bundle of bare nerves. Overhead I could hear the barefooted step of the mate, as he wandered with uncertain gait about the lee side of the poop under the full glow of the passionless moon. At last, when I felt as worn as if I had been swimming for hours, there came a thin, gurgling little wail—a new voice that sent a thrill through the curves of my brain with a sharp pang. And then I felt the hot tears running down my face—why, I did not know. A minute later the door swung open, and the skipper said, in a thick, strange tone, “It’s all right, Peter; I’ve a son. And she’s grand, my boy, she’s grand.” I mumbled out something; I meant well, I’m sure, but no one could have understood me. He knew, and shook hands with me heartily. And presently I was nursing the bonny mite as if I had never done aught else—me that never had held a baby before. It was good, too; it lay in my arms on a pillow, and looked up at me with bright, unwinking eyes.
Then came three weeks of unalloyed delight. Overhead the skies were serene—that deep, fathomless blue, that belongs of right to the wide, shoreless seas of the tropics, where the constant winds blow unfalteringly to a mellow harmony of love. On board, every thought was drawn magnet-wise to the tiny babe who had come among us like a messenger from another sphere, and the glances cast at the tender mother as she sat under the little awning, like a queen holding her court, were almost reverential. Never a man of us will forget that peaceful time. Few words were spoken, but none of them were angry, for every one felt an influence at work on him that, while it almost bewildered him, made him feel gentle and kind. But into the midst of this peaceful time came that envious shadow again. How it happened no man could tell; what malign seed had suddenly germinated, after so long lying dormant, was past all speculation of ours. The skipper himself fell sick. For a few days he fought man-fashion against a strange lassitude that sapped all his great strength and overcame even his bright cheery temper until he became fretful as a sickly babe. At last there came a day when he could not rise from his cot. With a beseeching look in his eyes he lay, his fine voice sunk to a whisper and his sunny smile gone. His wife hovered about him continually, unsparing of herself, and almost forgetting the first claim of the babe. The children, with the happy thoughtlessness of their age, could not be kept quiet, so, for the most part, they played forward with the crew, where they were as happy as the day was long. Every man did his best to entertain them; and when sailors make pets of children, those children are favoured by fortune. Meanwhile, in the cabin, we fought inch by inch with death for our friend. But our hands were tied by ignorance, for the rough directions of the book in the medicine chest gave us no help in dealing with this strange disease. Gradually the fine frame of the skipper dwindled and shrank, larger and more wistful grew his eyes, but after the first appalling discovery of his weakness he never uttered a complaining word. He lay motionless, unnoticing, except that into the deep wells of his eyes there came an expression of great content and peace whenever his wife bent over him. She scarcely ever spoke, for he had apparently lost all power of comprehension as well as speech, except that which entered his mind by sight. Thus he sank, as lulls the sea-breeze on a tropical shore when twilight comes. And one morning at four, as I lay coiled in a fantastic heap upon one of the settees near his door, sleeping lightly as a watch-dog, a long, low moan tugged at my heart-strings, and I sat up shivering like one in an ague-fit, although we were on the Line. Swiftly I stepped into his room, where I saw his wife with one arm across his breast and her face beside his on the pillow. She had fainted, and so was mercifully spared for a little while the agony of that parting—for he was dead.
Up till that time every device that seamanship could suggest had been put into practice to hurry the ship on, so that she was a perfect pyramid of canvas rigged wherever it would catch a wasting air. But all was of little use, for the wind had fallen lighter and lighter each day until, at the time of the skipper’s passing, it was a stark calm. Then, as if some invisible restraint had been suddenly removed, up sprang the wind, strong and steady, necessitating the instant removal of all those fragile adjuncts to her speed that had been rigged everywhere possible aloft. So that no one had at first any leisure to brood over our great loss but myself, and I could only watch with almost breathless anxiety for the return of that sorely-tried, heroic woman to a life from which her chief joy had been taken away. She remained so long in that death-like trance that again and again I was compelled to reassure myself, by touching her arms and face, that she was still alive, and yet I dreaded her re-awakening. At last, with a long-drawn sigh, she lifted her head, looked steadfastly for a while at the calm face of her dead husband, then stooped and kissed him once. Then she turned to me as I stood at the door, with the silent tears streaming down my face, and said, in a perfectly steady voice (I can hear it now), “Are my children well?” “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, “they are all asleep.” “Thank you,” she murmured; “I will go and lie down with them a little while. I feel so tired. No” (seeing I was about to offer), “I want nothing just now but rest.” So she turned into their little cabin and shut the door. I went on deck and waited until the mate (now skipper) was free, and then told him how she was. He immediately made preparations for the burial, for we were still a week’s sail from port. In an hour all was ready, and silently we awaited the re-appearance of the chief mourner. She came out at breakfast-time, looking like a woman of marble. Quietly thanking the new skipper for what he had done, she resumed her motherly duties, saying no word and showing no sign of the ordeal she was enduring.
All through the last solemn scene, except for a convulsive shudder as the sullen plunge alongside closed the service, she preserved the same tearless calm, and afterwards, while she remained on board—which was only until we arrived at Barbadoes—she preserved the same automaton-like demeanour. The mail steamer arrived the day after we anchored, and we took her on board for the passage to England; her bitter tragedy moving most of the passengers to tears as the history of it spread like wildfire among them. And as the Medway steamed out of the harbour, we all stood on the poop of our own vessel, with bared heads, in respectful farewell to, and deepest sympathy for, our late captain’s wife.
A SCIENTIFIC CRUISE
Five and twenty minutes, I believe, was the extreme limit of time it took me to discover that my new ship was likely to provide me some of the queerest experiences I had yet met with in all my fishing. But after a month’s weary munching the bread of the outward-bounder, and in Calcutta too, I was so hungry for a berth that I would have shipped as mess-room steward in a Geordie weekly boat, and undertaken to live on the yield of the dog-basket from the engineers’ table, if nothing better had offered. So when Romin Dass, a sircar that I was very chummy with, hailed me one morning at the corner of the Radha Bazaar, with a quotation from Shakespeare to point his information that he had heard of a second-mate’s berth for me on board the Ranee, a fine iron ship moored off Prinseps Ghât, I was so glad that I promised him the first five dibs I could lay hands on. Trembling with eagerness, I hurried down to the ghât and wheedled a dinghy-wallah into putting me on board. The mate, a weary looking man, about my own age, met me at the foot of the gangway ladder with that suspicious air common to all mates of ships abroad, especially when they see an eager looking stranger with a nautical appearance come aboard uninvited. In a diffident uncertain way, born of a futile attempt, to conceal my anxiety and look dignified, I inquired for Captain Leverrier.
“He isn’t aboard,” snarled the mate, “an’ not likely to be to-night. What might your business be?”
“Well, you see—the fact is—I thought—that is,” I blundered, getting red in the face as I saw a sarcastic grin curdling the mate’s face. “I—I thought you wanted a second mate, an’ I——”
“Oh, why the devil didn’t you say so,’thout gay-huppin’ about it like that. I begun ter think you was some beach-comber tryin’ on a new bluff. Come an’ have a drink.”