Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

The companion steps were almost up and down; on the right, at the bottom of the ladder, was a sleeping berth, a sort of cupboard with a sliding door like a smacksman's bedroom; on the left was the main cabin, a larger interior than I expected to see. It was well lighted by a frame of windows overhead and round scuttles in the walls, and furnished with a table, locker seats, and a few camp stools. Forward was a brightly polished brass fireplace. Three small berths were bulkheaded off this living room, one of which the captain told me was a sail and boatswain's locker, and the other a bread and store locker; 'but we can clear 'em out,' said he, 'when they come to be wanted.'

I was satisfied, and then and there resolved to hire this brig and sail quickly for that far-off ice-clad island. I sat down on one of the lockers and asked the captain to take pen and paper, and we talked about what would be required, making notes, and reckoning up the expenses till I bethought me of my engagement with Mr. Hoskins. And with reluctance and a hearty handshake took my leave.

I was rowed ashore, and on the way to the boarding-house called at the bank whose manager had been my father's clerk. He was astonished and delighted to see me; he had known me, indeed, ever since I was an Eton schoolboy. I had no time on this occasion to enter fully into the cause of my being at the Cape; my immediate purpose was served when he assured me that I was welcome to draw upon the bank to the amount I wanted.

At five o'clock Mr. Hoskins drove up to the boarding-house, and we at once started for the cemetery. He was alone in a closed carriage, and was dressed in mourning as deep as man's apparel will express grief. I, too, had been careful to clothe myself in black. I had not seen Mr. Hoskins since the arrival of the 'Cambrian,' and his voice and presence carried me on board again, renewed the quiet incidents of the passage, and returned me in imagination to Southampton on that memorable day of my departure. He was pale and melancholy, and his spirits seemed depressed with thought of the distressing ceremony we were bent upon.

'I am sorry now,' said he as he drove along, 'that I solicited permission to inspect the remains. The photographs were perfectly convincing, and still I felt it—I feel it—my duty to make as sure as opportunity admits. Captain Oilier will expect me to tell him all that it was in my power to learn. Nor, perhaps, should I feel perfectly satisfied to erect the monument I intend for my poor child without looking into her coffin to see that it is she herself who will be under it.'

I answered that this melancholy undertaking was even less needful to me than to him; but that, like himself, I saw the necessity of confirming my own opinion by every possible testimony, for the peace of my own heart as well as for the satisfaction of Miss Otway's father.

We then talked of my chances of finding Marie in the hull upon the island, and I told him how I had hired the brig 'Albatross' and intended myself to sail in her as soon as she discharged her cargo and was ready for sea, which I hoped would be about the close of the following week.

I saw little of the scenery we were driven by; we passed a number of gigantic aloes on the roadside; the hard-blue mountains, towering into the heavens with keenly cut skylines, with great spaces of their sides lustrous with the trembling and delicate foliage of the silver tree, wound with us as we wound, or shadowed us as we drove; they were an eternal presence, like the cloudless blue over them.

Whilst Mr. Hoskins was telling me how he contrived to obtain an order for the exhumation of the remains, we arrived at the cemetery where we alighted, and my companion conducted me to the grave whose situation he was exactly acquainted with. A number of persons were beside the grave, two were sextons armed with mattocks, or spades, the others were strangers and remained so to me; but one, I believe, was a medical man, and another a government official. They raised their hats to us, and after the exchange of a few commonplace greetings, decorously attuned, the diggers went to work.

The body had lain in this grave since August—four months. The heat thrilled in a sort of surging wave that closed upon the respiration with a sense of suffocation whilst we stood watching the diggers. I shuddered at the idea of looking. I had come to Cape Town conceiving that this body was Marie's, I now knew it was not hers; nevertheless, I guessed that the aspect of the dead face, at rest and out of sight under the cleaving spades, must become a memory that would be inseparably associated with Marie's image, whether I was to behold her again or not, and my spirits shrunk as I stood watching.