Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

As I have before said, I considered Mr. Harris eccentric, unpleasantly well meaning, and not a man to be angry with because he spoke bluntly and said things which were disagreeable and even offensive to hear. But the language he had held destroyed my night’s rest. I could not sleep for thinking of his miserable talk about the workhouse and asylums for destitute females. What he meant by saying that he wished to be something more than a friend to me did not trouble my head. All that I could think of was the picture he had drawn of the arrival of the Deal Castle in dock, of my being without memory, and stepping ashore unable to recollect the name of a friend likely to help me.

Many to whom my story is known have since that miserable time expressed wonder that Captain Ladmore did not put me on board a homeward-bound ship—that is to say, a ship proceeding to England—with a request to her captain to inform the owners of the Deal Castle in what manner their vessel had fallen in with me, and to beg them to make my case public in the newspapers, so that if I had friends in England they could come forward and claim me.

But then, as I have already explained in a preceding chapter, Captain Ladmore did not know whether I had a home or friends in England or not. For all he could tell I might be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, or the surviving occupant of one of the boats which had put off before the ship went down, and if that were so—and there was nothing improbable in the supposition—then I might have been a passenger coming from America, or Australia, or India. It would not follow, according to his humane reasoning, that, because I was undeniably an Englishwoman, I lived in England and had friends in that country. And if I had no friends and no home in England, then his sending me there at the first opportunity whilst my memory remained a blank would be nothing short of cruelty; for when I landed I should be destitute, without money and without friends, and, being without memory, more helpless and worse off than the veriest beggar that might crawl past me in rags. But by keeping me on board his ship he hoped to give my memory time to recover its powers, so that, as he himself had said, whatever steps he took to restore me to my friends would be sure, for he would know where to send me. Then, again, it must be remembered that I had begged and prayed to remain on board whilst my memory continued dark, and that I had spoken with horror and with tears of the prospect of being landed without a shelter to go to.

This, then, is my answer to the wonder that has been expressed by my friends since this frightful passage of my life came to an end, and I enter it here as much to explain Captain Ladmore’s motives as to accentuate his humanity.

Propelled by pleasant winds, which sometimes blew over the stern and sometimes off the beam, the fine ship Deal Castle stemmed her way into the tropics, and every twenty-four hours brought the equator nearer to us by many leagues. All day long the deck was kept shadowed by the awning, in whose violet-tinted coolness lounged the passengers. It was growing too hot for active exercise. The deck quoit was cast aside, the walk to and fro the white planks was abandoned for the American folding-chair, the piano was but languidly touched, seldom were the voices of the singers amongst us heard, and there were hours when it was too sultry to read.

But the weather continued gloriously beautiful, the sky cloudless, the ocean a rich dark blue with the slopes of the swell wrinkled by the wind, and here and there a glance of foam as the ship stole through the waters, rippling the blue into lines as fine as harp-strings, which the sun turned into gold as they spread from the bows. And the flying-fish flashed from the side, and steadily in the blue calm of the water astern hung the slate-coloured shape of a shark, the inevitable attendant of the mariner in those fiery waters.

I was now going about without my veil. Mrs. Richards had advised me to bear being looked at for a little while, promising me that the curiosity of the passengers would rapidly pass, and she proved right. The people took little or no notice of me, and I was able to enjoy the freedom of my own face, which was no trifling comfort, for often I longed for all the air I could get, and the veil was like a warm atmosphere upon my forehead.

Nor was I so unsightly as I had been when I first came on board the Deal Castle. The wound had healed. The scar was indeed visible and gave an air of distortion to the brow it overran; but this was remedied to the eye by some toilet powder which Mrs. Webber gave me. I applied it plentifully with a puff, and the powder not only concealed the scar but paired with my remaining eyebrow, which, as I have told you, had turned white with my hair.

By this time I had much improved in health and in some respects in appearance. My eyes had regained their brightness, and there seemed no lack of the light of intelligence in them, though, as I should have supposed, in a person without memory, one would expect to find the gaze dull and slow and the glow of the sight dim. My figure had improved. I held myself erect, and a certain grace had come to my movements from my capacity as a dancer—for I was always thought a very good dancer—to take the moving platform of the deck. My cheeks had grown plump; the hollows had filled up, and the haggard look was gone. Nevertheless my face still showed as that of a woman of forty I remember once saying to Mr. McEwan, ‘What could have caused those fine lines to be drawn over my face?’

‘Nerves,’ he answered, in his short abrupt way.