The Tragedy of Ida Noble

by William Clark Russell

"Mind dat pistole," cried Don Lazarillo, recoiling a step.

"I take it," said the seaman named William Scott, gazing earnestly at the cutlass in his hand, "that these weapons are meant more to what they calls overawe the people in the house we're to surround than to be used agin 'em."

"We may have to exert force," said Don Christoval, who stood near listening; "if our lives are threatened we must be in a position to protect ourselves. Is not this as you would wish, men?"

There was a general murmur of assent.

"I claim my right—no more!" the tall Spaniard cried, with an impassioned gesture of his arm; "you will help me to assert my right? I trust no blood may be shed—if blood is shed it will not be our fault."

"That puts it correctly, I think, lads?" exclaimed Captain Dopping, in his harshest voice and with his most thrusting manner.

The sailors holding their weapons went forward. Were they to be trusted at a pinch, I wondered? Assuredly they were not to be trusted in any sense if the business they were about to enter upon should prove in the smallest degree different from the object of the expedition as represented by Don Christoval.

We continued to stand in for the land under small canvas, which, however, there was no further occasion to reduce, for as the sun sank the wind fined down, and at seven o'clock the breeze had scarce weight enough to hold our sails steady. The sun was astern of us, and his light streamed full upon the coast, which glowed red as copper in that atmosphere upon the dark blue of the water brimming to its base and against the violet of the eastern sky. When the little collier brig which had spoken us sank her topmost cloths past the rim of the ocean, the sea line ran flawless from St. Bees Head right away round to the point where the land melted out. It was hard to credit that we were in home waters, so deserted was that wide surface. The schooner might, indeed, have been softly rippling through the heart of some Pacific solitude.

With the aid of a powerful telescope, handed to me by Don Christoval, I could distinctly make out the bay where the boat was to go ashore, and the dark scar of gap or ravine vanishing in the land beyond. I had never before been off this coast, and ran the glass along the line of it, but I could see no houses, no habitation of any sort; it was sheer rugged cliff, whose character of forbidding desolation was not to be softened by the rich and beautiful light that at this hour clothed it. I asked Captain Dopping if he was acquainted with this coast, and he answered that many years before he had made a trip to Whitehaven, which lay round the corner to the north of St. Bees Head. That was all he knew of the Cumberland shore. Occasionally Don Lazarillo would descend into the cabin, and twice on glancing through the skylight I detected him in the act of pouring out with a trembling hand a full bumper of sherry, which he seemed to swallow furtively, but looking round instead of up, possibly forgetting the deck window through which I peeped. These draughts began to tell upon him; his face grew flushed, his fiery eyes moist, and his gait changed into a defiant strut when he moved restlessly about his friend, talking with extraordinary vehemence and a frequent snap of his fingers. Don Christoval, on the other hand, exhibited a new phase of mood. There was less of gloom in his face, more of animation. He smoked his cigar collectedly, with now and again a smile, and sometimes a laugh at what his flushed-faced, restless, gesticulating companion said. I took it that the English blood in his veins kept his nerves steady without obliging him to imitate Don Lazarillo's quest after courage in the contents of a decanter of wine.