List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident

by William Clark Russell

The sun was now low, and the west was on fire. The sea came like blood from the rim of the western line to midway the ocean plain, where the fierce light drained into thin blue that went darkening into melting violet eastward. The brig had drifted very nearly due south of the island, opening the reefs, and baring the harbor to our sight, and disclosing the verdure that clothed a portion of the northern rocks. The longboat lay alongside the beach, and the figures of her people came and went. I thought to myself, a pity if Yan Bol and his sweet and manly fellows don’t take a fancy to the derelict, agree among themselves to attempt to warp her afloat, and consent to remain on the island if Greaves will give them the boat; food enough they will find in the ship and on the beach.

Though the island stood steeped in the red light of sunset, it reflected nothing of the western splendor. Grimy, melancholy, livid—an ocean cinder heap did it look in that fair evening radiance, a spadeful out of Neptune’s dust bin. I picked up the telescope to view the ship in the cave before the shadows closed the wondrous object out, and with the tracery of the spars and rigging, dim in the lens, I conceived myself on board. I imagined the hour of midnight, I heard in fancy the distant groan of surf, I heard the sobs of the black water within the cave, a faint creak from the heart of the sepulchered vessel; and I figured fear growing in me even unto the beholding of apparitions, until a shiver ran through me as chill as though it had come out of the cold hold of the ship herself.

I put down the glass, meaning to laugh away my fancies to Greaves, and beheld the lady Aurora de la Cueva in the act of rising through the companion way.

Though Greaves and I had only just now been talking about her, I stared as though I had not known she was aboard. It was indeed strange, after all the months of Greaves and Yan Bol and the Dutch and English beauties forward, to find a woman in the brig; to see a fine, handsome, sparkling-eyed girl stepping out of the cabin as though she had been there from the hour of leaving the Downs, but secret. She bowed, I lifted my cap, Greaves struggled to his feet with his face full of pain. I begged him to sit, and ran below for a chair, which I placed near his for the lady Aurora. She had found out that he was in pain, that he had met with an accident, and was addressing him as I put her chair down, her large, Spanish, glowing eyes very wistfully fastened upon his face. He understood her, for, as I have told you, Greaves read Spanish indifferently well, and faintly understood it when spoken, but he wanted words and could not utter the few he possessed. He smiled and touched his hat, and then pointed to the island.

It was not for me to linger near them. I went to the rail and watched the boat and the movements of the fellows upon the beach, but I also found several opportunities in this while for observing the lady Aurora. She had slept and was refreshed. The fine, delicate, transparent olive of her complexion—I may say it was a very pale olive, well within the compass of the admiration of those whose love is for the white and yellow part of the sex—was touched slightly with bloom as from recent slumber. Her eyes were large and splendid with light, remarkable for their long lashes, and of a shade that made you think of the sea at night, black and luminous, their depths filled with wandering fires as she struggled with the oppression of silence or gazed at you as though she would speak. Her nose was slightly Jewish, rather small than big for her face, the nostrils the daintiest piece of graving I ever saw in that way. Her teeth were very good, strong and white, a little large. The quality of her clothes might have been very grand; one would judge of that perhaps by the rings, for this sort of thing goes on all fours as a rule; but the fit or fashion was monstrously vile to my taste. You guessed that underlying all that spread and sprawl of skirt and bodice there sat, or stood, or reposed the figure of a Hebe. Hints of secret perfections there were in plenty; but all grace of shape was overwhelmed by the cut of her gown; it stood upon her like a candle extinguisher, and in shape was not even fit for a nun.

“I am unable to understand the lady, Fielding,” exclaimed Greaves. “Is Antonio forward?”

I spied the Spaniard leaning over the bows looking toward the island. He had gone away in the boat on the first journey to show the men where the water was. On her return with her freight of fresh water, he had crept over the side and sneaked forward to loaf and lounge and smoke in Jack Spaniard fashion. How did I know this? Because I knew that Antonio had been sent in the boat to point out the spring, and his lounging in the bows with a pipe betwixt his lips now, while the boat was ashore and the men busy, told me the little yarn of loafing from start to finish.

I called, and he put his pipe in his pocket and came aft.

“Interpret what this lady says,” exclaimed Greaves.

She poured forth some sentences of Spanish. I could trace no fatigue, no reactionary debility, such as might attend the strain and passion of deliverance from peril tremendous above all words to her as a woman.