Will went to the rail to look for her. The rippling of the waters, parted by the brig’s bows, was sweet as music; it was easy to guess our speed at between three and four knots; unless some convict’s good angel should steer the Childe Harold she’d come aback and float motionless till the self-drugged creatures and the sailors awoke and arose and looked around, so that by daybreak, which was yet two hours off, we should have added a full six miles to the five at which the brig had been stationed when we sighted her. But then by daybreak would there be ever a man of the whole sodden mob equal to lifting his eyelids, and realising how we had served them? There was nothing to fear from that ship and her freight; and still I would not rest, for I wished to watch with Tom and to behold the daybreak and view the scene of ocean it disclosed, with my own eyes.
The waiting until the light of the morning glimmered in the east was long and weary. Yet through that time the weak breeze blew and the brig stemmed softly onward with a now steady swaying of her trucks and a pendulous flap of her canvas, for on a sudden a heave of swell had come rolling through the ocean; it was out of the north-west, and Mr. Bates thought there would be wind behind it. We talked of the people who had been sent adrift yesterday morning, wondered how they had fared throughout the night, whether they would be picked up, what would become of them. We talked of the convicts. Tom told the mate that for three weeks the conspiracy had been maturing; by a single word he could have preserved the ship and the lives of those who had been slain, and he sooner would have torn out his tongue. I related my own experiences; exactly acquainted Mr. Bates with Will’s share in my stowaway adventure, and described my sufferings in the store-room under the forecastle. Thus we conversed; we had much to tell.
Mr. Bates said that by the convicts’ uprisal he had lost about two hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of property. Tom laughed low and savagely.
‘How do I stand?’ said he. ‘Would two hundred and fifty pounds buy me back what has been taken from me?’ Then, giving a loud unnatural laugh, he clapped the mate on the back and cried, ‘There’ll be more than two hundred and fifty pounds in this brig for you as a salvage job. You came off with your life yesterday morning. That was good. This morning you clamber aboard more than the value you have been plundered of. That’s good still. Why, Bates, cheer up. Did I ever ask if you were a married man?’
‘I have a wife and two children, Butler.’
‘Where do you live when you’re with them at home?’
‘Rotherhithe.’
‘D’ye remember, Bates, that I boarded the Childe Harold with Miss Johnstone and this lad in the docks? You were at the main-hatch, and I shook hands with you, and you asked me who was that fine girl. We’ve seen some changes since then.’ He sighed heavily and put his hand upon mine. ‘Yes, I should have known you were married, Bates. I think you told me—was it at Callao?—of the birth of a little one whilst you were away. A sweet, noble and manly calling is the sea. How it does promote love between husbands and wives by long separation! How faithful are sailors’ wives to their husbands ashore! How loyal their husbands when abroad! And how munificently does the calling of the sea reward us, Bates! How many volumes would be needed to contain the names of the rich sailors who live in mansions in England and ride in coaches! How gentle, virtuous, religious, are the hearts which the ocean slips into the hairy breasts of mariners! I was a good friend to Rotch. I never knowingly spoke an ill word to Nodder. I am innocent as surely as Christ sits on the right hand of God! Oh, the devils! the devils!’ He started up and walked to the bulwarks and stood motionless and silent for many minutes.
None of us spoke till he rejoined us. I longed to go to stand beside him with my arm round his neck, but there had been a fierce cry for loneliness in his final words, an impassioned appeal to be left to himself in his manner of going from us which I must have been deaf and blind not to have heard and seen.
The dawn broke in a faint lilac all along the eastern seaboard. We stood up to look around. It was quickly a shining morning, and the rim of the sea ran round the brig flawless. Not a feather-tip of distant topmost canvas broke the continuous sweep of the horizon. My cousin, at Tom’s command, trotted up into the maintopmast crosstrees, and at that elevation surveyed the great expanse of sea. He looked and looked, and then shouted down that there was nothing in sight. A few clouds in the north-west, whence the swell was running; but the breeze was still out of the north and east—a light wind that, with the small canvas the brig expanded, gave us about four knots.