The Tragedy of Ida Noble

by William Clark Russell

"As she goes," said he with a significant nod, angry with the scarlet flash of hair and whisker which accompanied it.

"Right," said I, and fell to pacing the deck, while he disappeared down the companion-way.

Athirst as I was for information, I was determined that my curiosity should not be suspected. Be the errand of this little ship what it might, I was always my own master, able to say "No" to any proposals I should object to, though taking care to give due effect by willingness in all honest directions to the gratitude excited in me by my deliverance. I would find the fellow at the helm watching me with an expression on his weather-darkened face that was the same as saying he was willing to tell all he knew, but I took no notice of him, contenting myself with merely observing the vessel's course and seeing that she was kept to it. The voices of the two Spaniards and Captain Dopping rose through the little skylight, one of which lay open. They spoke in English, and occasionally I heard my name pronounced with now and then a sharp hissing "Explain" from Don Lazarillo, but I did not catch, nor did I endeavor to catch, any syllables of a kind to furnish me with a sense of their discourse.

All this afternoon the weather continued rich, glowing, summer-like. One seemed to taste the aromas of the land in the eastern gushing of the blue and sparkling breeze. The three white spires of a tall ship glided like stars along the western rim, but though we were in the great ocean high-way nothing else showed during the remainder of the hours of light. Beyond a little feeling of stiffness and of aching in my joints I was sensible of no bad results of my night-long bitter and perilous exposure in the jolly-boat of the Ocean Ranger. I had, indeed, been too long seasoned by the sea to suffer grievously from an experience of this sort. Night after night off the black and howling Horn, off the stormy headland of Agulhas, amid mountainous seas, in frosty hurricanes whose biting breath was sharpened yet by hills and islands of ice glancing dimly through the snow-thickened darkness, I had kept the deck, I had helped to stow the canvas aloft, I had toiled at the pumps, waist-high in water, my hair crackling with ice, my hands without feeling. No! I was too seasoned to suffer severely from the after-effects of exposure in an open boat throughout an August night in the Portuguese parallels.

At five o'clock, when I glanced through the skylight, I spied the negro lad named Tom laying the cloth in the little cabin. Occasionally a whiff of cooking, strong with onions or garlic, would come blowing aft in some back-draught out of the canvas. I judged that the crew were well fed by observing one of them step out of the galley and enter the forecastle, bearing a smoking round of boiled beef and a quantity of potatoes in their skins; then by seeing another follow him with pots of coffee or tea, two or three loaves of bread, and other articles of food which I could not distinguish. Fare so substantial and bountiful seemed to my fancy a very unusual entertainment for a forecastle tea or "supper," as the last meal at sea is commonly called.

I found myself watching everything that passed before me with growing curiosity. The hideous cook Mariana, followed by the negro boy bearing dishes, came aft with the cabin dinner, and presently, when I peeped again through the skylight as I trudged the deck in the pendulum walk of the look-out at sea, I perceived the two Spaniards at table. The several dyes of wines in decanters blended with the brilliance of silver—or of what resembled silver—and other decorative details of flowers and fruit, and the square of the skylight framed a picturesquely festal scene. It was possible to peep without being observed. The Spaniards talked incessantly; their speech rose in a melodious hum; for to pronounce Spanish is, to my ear, to utter music. But the majestic dialect was as Greek to me. Don Lazarillo gesticulated with vehemence, and I never glanced at the skylight without observing him in the act of draining his glass. Don Christoval was less demonstrative. He was slow and stately in his movements, and when he flourished his arm or clasped his hands, or leaned back in his chair to revolve the point of his mustache with long, large, but most shapely fingers, he made one think of some fine actor in an opera scene.

It was six o'clock by the time they had dined, and at this hour the seamen taking the privilege of the "dog watch"—but, indeed, it was all privilege from morning to night in that schooner—were pacing the deck forward, four of them, every man smoking his pipe—the fifth man being at the tiller. I might now make sure that there went but five seamen to this ship's company. The ugly cook leaned in the door of his galley puffing at a cigarette. The sun was low, his light crimson; his fan-shaped wake streamed in scarlet glory under him to the very shadow of the schooner, and the little fabric, slightly leaning from the soft and pleasant breeze, floated through the rose-colored atmosphere, her sails of the tincture of delicate cloth of gold, her bright masts veined with fire, her shrouds as she gently rolled catching the western light until they burned out upon the eye as though of polished brass.

The two Spaniards arrived on deck, each with an immensely long cigar in his mouth. Don Christoval addressed me pleasantly in his excellent English. He asked me with an air of grand courtesy if I now felt perfectly well, inquired the speed of the schooner, my opinion of her, my experiences of the Bay of Biscay in this month of August, and inquired if I was acquainted with the coast of England, and especially with that part comprised between St. Bees Head and Morecambe Bay. His friend eagerly listened, keeping his fiery eyes fastened upon my face, and whenever I had occasion to say more than "yes" or "no," he would call upon Don Christoval to interpret.

Shortly after the tall Don had ceased his questions—and I found no expression in his handsome face and in the steady gaze of his glowing impassioned eyes to hint to me whether my replies satisfied him or not—Captain Dopping came up out of the cabin.