MY SHIPMATE LOUISE

VOL. II.

NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.

A FELLOW OF TRINITY. By Alan St. Aubyn and Walt Wheeler. 3 vols.

THE WORD AND THE WILL. By James Payn. 3 vols.

AUNT ABIGAIL DYKES. By George Randolph. 1 vol.

A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE. By Bret Harte. 1 vol.

RUFFINO. By Ouida. 1 vol.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.

MY SHIPMATE LOUISE

The Romance of a Wreck

BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1890

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME

MY SHIPMATE LOUISE

CHAPTER XV
A SINGULAR PLOT

It speedily ran amongst us of the cuddy that the dead sailor who had been so very impressively interred by old Keeling had returned to the ship, and was alive in some part of her, secure in handcuffs or in leg-irons; but so much was made of the fire which had broken out that Crabb’s reappearance lost as a miracle half the weight it would have carried had it happened alone. Besides, the sense of the people soon gathered that the business was a plot which had been managed with astonishing cleverness, and it all seemed plain as mud in a wine-glass when the whisper went round that Hemmeridge was under arrest as an arch-conspirator in the matter. And certainly it made one feel far from comfortable even to think that for the past weeks a ruffian of a true piratical complexion had been secreted in the ship’s hold, where his confederates would keep him supplied with tobacco and the means of lighting it, and where, in his borings and pryings, he was tolerably certain to have stumbled upon something inflammatory in the shape of spirits. Indeed, it made me draw my breath short when my mind went to the rum puncheons and the powder-magazine below, and to the vision of Crabb, drunk, stupidly groping with a naked light in his hand, during some midnight hour, maybe, when we were all in bed.

However, the imagination of the passengers would hardly go to these lengths. Their thoughts held to the fire, and their talk chiefly concerned it. When the skipper came below for a glass of grog that night, the ladies so baited him with questions that one pitied him almost for not being able to enjoy the privilege of venting his heated soul in a few strong words.

‘I cannot satisfy myself, Captain Keeling, that the fire is utterly extinguished,’ said Mrs. Bannister.

‘Might it not burst out again, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘There should be plenty of pails kept filled with water ready to empty if smoke is smelt.’

‘Perhaps something may be on fire even now!’ exclaimed Mrs Joliffe, ‘something that doesn’t make a smoke; and how then are the sailors to tell if all is right in the bottom of the ship?’

‘Captain Keeling,’ cried Mrs. Trevor, ‘is it quite safe to go to bed, do you think?’

‘If a fire should break out,’ said Miss Hudson in a trembling voice, as though shudder after shudder were chasing through her, ‘how can we depend upon being called? It is impossible to hear downstairs what is going on on deck.’

Poor old marline-spike made a bolt of it at last, fairly turning tail and rushing up the companion steps when it came to the colonel striking in and topping off the female broadsides by inquiries of a like nature delivered at the very height of his pipes.

However, the night passed quietly; and when next morning came and the people assembled at breakfast, all fear of fire was seemingly gone, and little more was talked about than Crabb and what his designs had been, the topic gathering no mean accentuation from the doctor’s vacant place. Somewhere about ten o’clock I was standing at the taffrail watching the ship’s wake, that was languidly streaming off in a short oily surface, and wondering whether, if we were to fall in with nothing brisker than these faint airs and draughts of wind, all hands would not have grown white-haired and decrepit by the time we were up with the Cape, leaving the Indian Ocean and Bombay out of consideration, when the head-steward came up to me.

‘Captain Keeling’s compliments, sir, and he’ll feel greatly hobliged, providing you’re not hotherwise occupied, by your stepping to his cabin, sir.’

‘Oh yes, with pleasure,’ said I. ‘Is he alone?’

‘He is not, sir.’

I went down the companion steps, knocked at the captain’s door, and entered. It was a roomy interior, a very noble ship’s berth, occupying hard upon the width of the deck right aft, saving, as I have before described, a sort of small chart-room alongside, bulkheaded off. There was a large stern window, after the olden fashion, with the blue line of the horizon gently sliding up and down it, and a shivering light lifting off the sea to the glass, sharp and of a sort of azure brilliancy, as though from diamonds set a-trembling. Keeling, in full fig, his face showing of a dark red against some maple-coloured ground of bulkhead or ship’s side, was seated at a table. He instantly rose on my entering, gave me one of his wire-drawn bows, and motioned me to a seat, thanking me in a few words for coming. On the starboard hand stood Crabb and the sailmaker, handcuffed, and on either side of them was a seaman with a cutlass dangling at his hip. On the port hand sat Dr. Hemmeridge, his legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head drooped. He was deadly pale, and looked horribly ill and worried. Near him was one of the sailors, a young fellow of some seven or eight and twenty, with a quantity of hair falling over his brow, a straggling beard, and small black eyes, which roamed swiftly in glances charged methought with the spirit of mutiny and menace and defiance. Mr. Prance was at the captain’s elbow; and the third mate was seated at an end of the table with a pen in his hand and some paper in front of him.

I bowed to Hemmeridge, but he took no notice. Until the captain addressed me, I stared hard at Crabb; for even now, with the ugly ruffian standing before me, my mind found it difficult to realise that he was alive; that the creature I gazed at was the man whom all hands of us, with an exception or two, supposed overboard a thousand fathoms deep. There was, besides, the fascination of his ugliness. The hunch-like curve of his back, his little blood-stained eyes looking away from his nose, as though they sought to peer at something at the back of his head, the greasy trail of carroty hair upon his back, the fragment of nose over his hare-lip, these and the rest of him combined into the representation of the most extravagantly grotesque, ill-favoured figure ever witnessed outside the bars of a menagerie. The sailmaker’s face was as white as one of his bolts of canvas, but it wore a determined look, though I noticed a quivering in the nostrils of his high-perched nose, and a constant uneasy movement of the fingers, as of dying hands plucking at bedclothes.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed old Keeling with the dignity and gravity of a judge, ‘I’ve taken the liberty to send for you, as I am informed by Mr. Prance that when that man there’—inclining his head towards Crabb without looking at him—‘was lying, as it was supposed, dead in his bunk, you accompanied Mr. Hemmeridge, the ship’s surgeon’—here he indicated the doctor with a motion of his head but without looking at him either—‘into the forecastle, and stood for some considerable time surveying the so-called corpse.’

‘That is quite true,’ said I.

‘Did Mr. Hemmeridge expose the man’s face to you?’

‘He did.’

‘What impression was produced upon your mind by the sight of the—of the—body?’

Crabb gave a horrible grin.

‘That he was stone-dead, Captain Keeling; so stone-dead, sir, that I can scarcely credit the man himself is now before me.’

Hemmeridge looked up and fixed his eyes upon me.

‘It is but reasonable I should inform you, Mr. Dugdale,’ continued old marline-spike, ‘that Mr. Hemmeridge is under arrest on suspicion of conspiring with Crabb, with Willett, and with Thomas Bobbins’—he glanced at the man who stood next to the doctor—‘to plunder the ship. Bobbins has given evidence that leaves me in no doubt as to the guilt of Crabb and Willett.’

Crabb uttered a curse through his teeth, accompanied with a look at the young seaman, in the one-eyed gleam of which murder methought was writ too large to be mistaken for any other intention. Old Keeling did not heed him.

‘Bobbins’s story,’ he continued, ‘is to this effect: that Crabb was to swallow a potion which would produce the appearance of death; that the sailmaker was to have a hammock weighted, shaped, and in all respects equipped to resemble the one in which Crabb would be stitched up: that in the dead of night, when the ship was silent, and the deck forward vacant, the sham hammock was to be placed upon the fore-hatch by the sailmaker and Bobbins, and the cover containing that man’—inclining his head at Crabb—‘conveyed into the sailmaker’s cabin, where it was to be cut open, the man freed, and secreted in the berth till consciousness had returned, and he was in a fit state to seize the first opportunity of sneaking into the hold. All this was done,’ old Keeling went on, Mr. Prance meanwhile looking as grave as an owl over the skipper’s shoulder, whilst every now and again a hideous grin would distort Crabb’s frightful mouth, though the sailmaker continued to stare at the captain with a white and determined countenance, and Hemmeridge to listen with a frowning worried look, his leg that crossed the other swinging like a pendulum. ‘The man Crabb got into the hold, was supplied with food and drink by Willett and Bobbins, and with tools to enable him to break into the mail-room’——

‘And I’d ha’ done it too,’ here interrupted Crabb in a voice like a saw going through a balk of timber, ‘if it hadn’t been for the stinking smoke of them blasted blankets.’

‘This inquiry,’ continued Keeling, ‘now entirely concerns Mr. Hemmeridge. You tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that Crabb seemed to you as a stone-dead man.’

‘The devil himself couldn’t ha’ told the difference,’ bawled Crabb. ‘He’s not in it,’ insolently motioning with his elbow towards the doctor. ‘Wouldn’t that blooming Bobbins ha’ said so?’ and he darted another murderous glance at the hairy young sailor.

‘I can assure you, Captain Keeling,’ said I, ‘that the man was perfectly dead. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Mr. Hemmeridge was fully convinced the body was a corpse. Convinced, captain, but dissatisfied too; and perhaps,’ said I, with a glance at Crabb, ‘it is a pity for more sakes than one that he did not carry out his idea of a post-mortem examination.’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge in a low, deep, trembling voice, ‘before God and man, I am innocent; and I hope to live to call Captain Keeling to account for this monstrous slander, this enormous suspicion, this dishonourable and detestable accusation.’

‘I’ve never heered,’ said the man named Bobbins, in a long-drawn whining voice, ‘that this gent was consarned. I remembered Crabb asking what was to be done if so be the surgeon should cut him up to see what he died of, and Mr. Willett kissed the Bible afore Crabb and me to this: that if the surgeon made up his mind to open Crabb, Willett was to show him the bottle of physic, and to tell him that Crabb had took it for some bad complaint, and that, though he might look dead, he worn’t so.’

Crabb hove a fearful curse at the man. The bushy-whiskered sailor who guarded him on the right significantly put his hand upon the hilt of his cutlass whilst he said something to him under his breath.

‘This is new to me,’ exclaimed Keeling, screwing his eye gimlet-fashion into the face of Bobbins, and then letting it drop, as if satisfied. ‘Mr. Hemmeridge, I have suspected you, sir; but it’s a little soon for you to talk of my having accused you. You are a medical man. If anybody knows death by looking upon it you should. Yet, though this man Crabb is merely counterfeiting death, you come aft to me and report him dead! What am I to infer? Your ignorance or your guilt, sir?’

‘Captain Keeling,’ cried I, ‘believe me when I promise you the man was not counterfeiting death. He was to all intents and purposes a corpse. How was this brought about? Surely by no exercise of his own art. The look of the eye—the droop of the jaw—the hue of the skin—Captain Keeling, it was death to the sight: no counterfeit—an effect produced by something much more powerful than the effort of such a will as that man has;’ and I pointed with my thumb at Crabb, who told me with a curse to mind my own business.

‘Mr. Dugdale, I thank you,’ said Hemmeridge, bowing to me.

Captain Keeling held up a long thin phial about three-quarters full of a dark liquor. I had not before noticed it.

‘This has been produced,’ said he, ‘by the man Bobbins, who states that it is the stuff which Crabb swallowed, and which caused the death-like aspect you saw in him.’ He put the bottle down; then clenching his fist, smote the table violently. ‘I cannot credit it!’ he cried. ‘I cannot be imposed on. Am I to believe that there is any drug in existence which will produce in a living being the exact semblance of death?’

‘Oh, I think so, sir,’ said Prance, speaking mildly.

Hemmeridge sneered.

‘A semblance of death,’ roared old Keeling, twisting round upon his chief mate, ‘capable of deceiving the eye—the practised eye of a medical man? You may give me a dose of laudanum, and I may look dead to you, sir, but not to Mr. Hemmeridge yonder. No, sir; I am not to be persuaded,’ and here he brought his fist down upon the table again. ‘It is either gross ignorance or direct connivance, and I mean to be satisfied—I mean to sift it to the bottom—I mean to get at the truth, by——!’

His face was full of blood, and he puffed and blew like a swimmer struggling for his life.

‘You’ve got the truth, and be so-and-so to you,’ broke in Crabb.

The armed sailor ground his elbow into the fellow’s ribs.

‘I am merely here to answer your questions, Captain Keeling,’ said I, ‘and must apologise for taking a single step beyond the object you had in calling me to you; but at least permit me to ask, cannot Mr. Hemmeridge explain the nature of the drug contained in that bottle?’

‘I do not know what it is,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge.

‘Suppose, sir,’ said Mr. Prance, ‘we give Crabb another dose; then you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’

‘You don’t give me no more doses!’ said Crabb. ‘Try it on yourselves.’

The captain sat a little, looking at me vacantly, lost in thought. He suddenly turned to Hemmeridge.

‘You are at liberty, sir; I remove the arrest.’

‘And is that all?’ exclaimed the other, after a brief pause, viewing him steadily. ‘I must have an apology, sir; an apology ample, abundant, satisfying.’

‘I will see you’—began old Keeling, then checked himself. ‘You can leave this cabin, sir.’

Hemmeridge rose from his chair. ‘I leave this cabin, sir,’ said he, ‘and I also leave my duties. Professionally, I do no more in this ship, sir. You have disgraced, you have dishonoured me. But,’ said he, shaking his finger at him, ‘you shall make me amends at Bombay, sir—you shall make me amends at Bombay!’

He stalked from the cabin, old Keeling watching him with a frown, but in silence.

‘Captain,’ I exclaimed, rising as the door closed behind the doctor, ‘I am persuaded that Mr. Hemmeridge is innocent of all participation in this bad business. You have on board a gentleman who, I believe, has a very extensive knowledge of drugs and herbs and the like—I mean Mr. Saunders. It is just possible he might know the nature of the contents of that bottle.’

Keeling reflected a minute, and then said: ‘Mr. Prance, send my compliments to Mr. Saunders, and ask him to my cabin.’

The mate went out; I was following him.

‘Pray, stay a little, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the skipper.—‘Men, take those fellows forward.—Remain where you are,’ he added, turning to Bobbins.

A seaman flung open the door, and Crabb and the sailmaker passed out, followed by the second armed sailor, who silenced some blasphemous abuse that Crabb had paused to deliver, by giving him a shove that drove him headlong into the cuddy.

‘I am sorry to detain you, Mr. Dugdale,’ said the captain. ‘Mr. Saunders is a rather nervous gentleman, and it might be agreeable to him to find you here.’

‘You do not detain me, Captain Keeling. This is an amazing business, almost too wonderful in its way to believe in. Have you ascertained how Crabb became possessed of that magical drug?—and magical it must be, captain, for I give you my word that never showed any corpse deader than that fellow when Hemmeridge removed the canvas from his face.’

‘I beg your honour’s pardon,’ exclaimed Bobbins, preserving his lamenting and whining voice, and knuckling his forehead as he spoke, whilst I could see old Keeling lifting his eyes to him with disgust and aversion strong in his purple countenance. ‘Mr. Willett told me that Crabb ’ud say he’d got that there stuff off a travelling Jew that he fell in with at some Mediterranean port. He bought two lots of it, and tried a dose on a man who took it unbeknown, reckoning it good for spasms. He believed as it had killed the chap, sich was his corpse-like swound; but he come to all right arter four-and-twenty hours, and niver knowed nothen about it, and believed it still to be Monday when it were Toosday. This put the scheme he tried on here into his head.’

‘Has he ever attempted anything of the same sort before?’ inquired Keeling.

‘I dunno, sir. He’s a bad un. It ’ud make a marble heffigy sweat to hear him talk in his sleep.’

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Mr. Prance ushered in Mr. Saunders. The little chap looked very small as he entered, holding his large hat in his hand. He was pale, and stared up at us with something of alarm as we rose to his entrance, the skipper giving him the same hide-bound bow that he had greeted me with.

‘Is Mr. Saunders acquainted with the story of this business, Mr. Prance?’ old Keeling inquired.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the mate. ‘I gave him the substance of it in a few words as we came along.’

‘It is extremely startling,’ said the little man, climbing on to the chair into which old Keeling had waved him, and dangling his short legs over the edge as a small boy might.

‘Your knowledge of drugs and medicines, Mr. Saunders, is, I believe, very considerable?’ said the skipper. The little fellow bowed. ‘This,’ said Keeling, holding up the phial, ‘is a drug, the stupefying effects of which, I am informed, are so remarkable that any one who takes it entirely loses animation, and presents such an aspect of death as will deceive the eye of the most expert medical practitioner. Is such a thing conceivable, Mr. Saunders?’

The little man reflected very earnestly for some moments, with his eyes fixed upon Keeling. He then asked Mr. Prance to hand him the phial, which he uncorked, and smelt and tasted.

‘I cannot be positive,’ he exclaimed, with a slow, wise shake of his large head; ‘but I strongly suspect this to be what is known as morion, the death-wine of Pliny and Dioscorides. Mr. Dugdale, observe the strange, peculiar faint smell—what does it suggest?’

I put the bottle to my nose and sniffed. ‘Opium will it be, Mr. Saunders?’

‘Just so,’ he cried. ‘Captain Keeling, smell you, sir.’

The old skipper applied the bottle to his nostrils and snuffled a little. ‘I should call this a kind of opium,’ said he.

‘If,’ exclaimed Mr. Saunders, ‘it be morion, as I believe it is, it is made from the mandragora or mandrake of the kind that flourishes in Greece and Palestine and in certain parts of the Mediterranean seaboard.’

‘But am I to understand,’ said Keeling, ‘that a dose of it is going to make a man look as dead as if he were killed?’

‘The effect of morion,’ responded Mr. Saunders, ‘is that of suspended animation, scarcely distinguishable from death.’

‘Could it deceive a qualified man such as Dr. Hemmeridge?’ demanded the skipper.

‘I should think it very probable,’ answered little Saunders cautiously; ‘in fact, sir, as we have seen, he was deceived by the effects of that drug, be it morion or anything else.’

‘You can go forward,’ said the captain to Bobbins.

The fellow flourished a hand to his brow and left the cabin.

‘Mr. Saunders, I am obliged to you, sir, for your information,’ continued old Keeling. ‘I trust to have your opinion confirmed either in Bombay or in London. To me it seems a very incredible thing. Mr. Dugdale, I thank you for the trouble you have given yourself to attend here.’

He bowed; and little Saunders and myself, accompanied by Mr. Prance, entered the cuddy.

‘A most extraordinary business altogether,’ cried the little man: ‘it is wonderful enough, supposing the stuff to be morion, that a common sailor should be in possession of such a drug; but much more wonderful yet that it should occur to him to employ it as an instrument in probably the most audacious project ever adventured on board ship.’

‘Hemmeridge might have opened Crabb,’ said I.

‘Well, the rogue foresaw it, and provided against it, as we know,’ exclaimed Mr. Prance. ‘There is pocketable booty in the mail-room to the value of hard upon a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A man like Crabb will run risks for such plunder, Mr. Dugdale. If the sailmaker had kept his word and produced the bottle to Hemmeridge, the doctor would have been pretty sure to stay his hand.’

‘Why, likely as not,’ I exclaimed: ‘but tell me, Mr. Prance—that fellow Bobbins seems to have been coaxed very easily into peaching.’

‘Ay,’ said he; ‘there’d been an ugly quarrel between him and Willett ten days ago. I believe the rascal would not have split whilst Crabb lay snug and secret in the hold, but on his showing himself, Bobbins took fright, thought of his neck, and being actuated besides by hatred of Willett, came forward and volunteered the whole yarn.’

‘And how is he to be served?’ inquired Mr. Saunders.

‘Left to be at large, sir,’ answered the mate; ‘and punishment enough, too, as any one may suppose, of a false-hearted, lily-livered shipmate who has to swing his hammock three or four months among a forecastle full of hands. For my part,’ added he with a laugh, ‘if I were that miscreant, I’d rather be snug in irons along with Willett and the cast-eyed pirate, stowed safe out of sight.’

He entered his cabin, and Mr. Saunders and I stepped on to the quarter-deck.

CHAPTER XVI
WE SIGHT A WRECK

The wonder and excitement raised in us by the extraordinary forecastle conspiracy to plunder the ship’s mail-room passed away in two or three days. Monotony at sea is heavy and flattening. It passes over the soul as an iron roller over a lawn, and smoothes down every asperity of memory into the merest flatness of moods and humours. Hemmeridge showed himself no more. I never again saw him whilst I was in the Countess Ida. He lay hid in his cabin, where he was fed, by the captain’s orders, from the cuddy table; but he refused to leave his berth, swore he would not prescribe so much as a pill though a pestilence should fall upon the whole ship’s company, and virtually left us all without the means of obtaining professional advice. His part in Crabb’s and the sailmaker’s scheme was vehemently discussed, as you will suppose. The colonel of course was without a shadow of a doubt of his guilt; but the rest of us, saving Mr. Johnson, who declined to give an opinion, considered him as wholly innocent.

Little Saunders gave himself a small air of importance as a person referred to by the captain on his knowledge of herbs, and strutted on the merits of his suspicion that the liquor was what he called morion. He took me into his cabin, and climbing into his bunk, produced a folio volume half the size of himself, with which he dropped upon the deck, hugging the book to his heart as though it were his wife.

‘Here,’ said he, opening the volume and pointing at it and looking up into my face, ‘is an account of the growth out of which morion is extracted. That,’ continued he, still pointing with a little forefinger and a long white nail, ‘is a picture of the plant in flower. This is an illustration of the young fruit. Here is the ovary, and here is the stamen. It is, in short, the well known mandragora of Hippocrates. It consists of three or four species of stemless herbs, perennial,’ said he, carrying his eyes to the book, ‘and very hardy. Their roots are large and thick; and, as I told the captain,’ cried he with a little movement of triumph, and pointing to the sentence eagerly, ‘it is an inhabitant of the Mediterranean parallels.’

And then the little chap read out a long description of the flowers of the mandrake, of the corolla and lobes, of the berries and leaves, and I know not what else besides, in all of which my ignorant ear could find nothing of the smallest interest.

He afterwards went with his big book to the skipper, who, Mr. Prance told me, was impressed, though he was not to be persuaded.

‘He will not believe,’ said the chief officer, ‘that there can be any aspect in a living body to deceive a medical man into a belief that the person is dead. I said to him: “How about the folks that are buried alive, sir?” He answered: “They are unhappy wretches, whom ignorant and gross persons, calling themselves medical men, lightly glance at and pronounce dead, and hurry away from. Hemmeridge would know better, sir. He does know better. I cannot satisfy myself that he could not distinguish life in that man Crabb. And what’s the inference then? No matter, sir. I will have this thing gone closely into when we arrive at Bombay.” Captain Keeling is an obstinate old sailor, Mr. Dugdale,’ continued the mate. ‘In truth, Hemmeridge is as innocent as you or I.’

Three days passed away. All this while the Indiaman was scarcely doing more than rippling through it. It was hard to realise that we were out in the mid-heart almost of one of old earth’s mightiest oceans, so peaceful was the water, so still the heavens, so placid the dim sultry distances, where sky and sea were blended in a blue faintness, out of the north-west corner of which the light wind blew without power enough to swing the foot of the courses or to put a twinkle into the tall moon-coloured cloths of the topmast studdingsails.

It was a Monday morning, as very well indeed do I remember. I went on deck at about seven o’clock for a bath; and on looking over the forecastle rail, down away upon the starboard bow I caught sight of something sparkling that might very well have passed for the reflection in the water of a brilliant luminary. The old Scotch carpenter was leaning against the forecastle capstan smoking a pipe, his weather-hardened face of leather drooping over his folded arms.

‘Pray, what is that object shining down there?’ said I.

‘Well, it puzzled me, sir,’ he answered, slowly raising his head, and then leisurely staring in the direction of the appearance: ‘It’s naething mair nor less than a ship’s hull, sir.’

By this time I was able to distinguish a bit clearer, and could trace, amid the delicate haze of silver glory that was hanging all over the sea that way, as it came in gushing and floating folds of magnificence from the sun that was already many degrees above the horizon, the outline of the hull of a small vessel, the proportions so faint as to be almost illusive. She was too far distant to exhibit much more than the mere flash she made, yet she was an object to constrain the attention in that wide blank shining calm of sea, and I lingered a little while looking at her, meanwhile yarning with the old carpenter about Crabb and the sailmaker and the incident of the fire, and such matters.

At breakfast there was some talk about this hull, and Mr. Emmett told the captain that he hoped a shot would be sent at her, as who was to know but that another cargo of monkeys might be exorcised out of the fabric.

‘I should rather like to visit a wreck,’ I heard Miss Temple say across the table to Mr. Colledge: ‘I mean, of course, an abandoned vessel floating in the middle of the ocean.’

‘I protest I would rather die than think of such a thing,’ exclaimed her aunt.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Colledge; ‘it would be something to do and something to talk about. Did you ever board a wreck, Captain Keeling?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I would choose a wreck,’ continued Miss Temple, in her clear, rich, somewhat trembling voice, but with an air that let you know she confined her speech to Mrs. Radcliffe and the young sprig opposite, and old marline-spike, as I love to call him, ‘that had been abandoned for months, indeed for years, if such a thing could be: a hull covered with shells and weed and grass, into which the spirit of the enormous loneliness of the wide ocean had entered, so that you could get to think of her as a creation of the sea itself, as an uninhabited island is, or a noble seabird. Think,’ she continued, fixing her large dark eyes upon Colledge with a light, almost sarcastic smile flickering about her lips, as though she was perfectly sensible that her thoughts and language were a trifle taller than that honourable young gentleman’s intellectual stature rose to—‘think of being utterly alone during a long, breathless, moonlit night on board such a wreck as I am imagining. The stillness! the imaginations which would come shaping out of the shadows! By putting one’s ear to the hatchway, as you sailors call it, Captain Keeling, what should one be able to hear?’

‘The noise of water washing about below, ma’am—I don’t see what else,’ answered the old skipper, stiffening up his figure, whilst he adjusted his cravat, and gazing at her with a highly literal countenance over the points of his shirt collars.

She did not seem to hear him; her head had drooped, as though to a sudden engrossing thought, and her gaze rested upon something which her delicate fingers toyed with upon the table.

‘What very odd fancies you have, Louise,’ exclaimed Mrs. Radcliffe with a peck of her face at the girl’s handsome profile.

‘Rather a good subject for a descriptive article, Johnson,’ exclaimed Emmett aside with a drawl.

‘Or for a picture,’ answered Johnson; ‘better on canvas than on paper, I think; don’t you, Mr. Saunders? Calm sea—a moon up in the air—a wreck showing black against the white reflection under the planet—a haughty young lady’—here he softened his voice—‘inclining her head to the fore-hatch with her hand to her ear.—A first-class idea, Emmett. Seize it, or it may occur to another man.’

Miss Temple was speaking again, but the rude imbecile jabber of the journalist prevented me from hearing her; and bestowing a sea-blessing on his head under my breath, I left the table and went on deck.

There was every promise of a dead calm anon. The sea looked like ice in places with the bluish glint of the brine that softened the lines and curves betwixt the crawlings of the air into a tender contrast for the lustrous azure of the water where it was touched by the wind. It was a high, hot, cloudless morning, the topmost canvas, white as milk, looking dizzy up in the blue, as though it trembled in some sultry belt of atmosphere there. I went to the rail to view the wreck, and instantly made out on the other side of her the shining square of a sail—some ship on the rim of the horizon that had crawled into sight since six bells of the morning watch, and was now creeping down the smooth plain of sea with her yards braced somewhat forward, making a wind for herself out of what was scarce more than a catspaw to us, who had the thin fanning nearly over the stern.

Prance came up from the breakfast table with a telescope in his hand and stood by my side.

‘That ship down yonder grows,’ he exclaimed, pointing the glass and speaking with his eye at it; ‘there’ll be more air stirring down there than here; but little enough anywhere presently, though I tell you what, Mr Dugdale, there’s drop enough in the mercury to inspire one with hope.’

He brought the telescope to bear upon the hull, and was silent for a few moments, whilst I waited impatiently for him to make an end, wanting to look too.

‘I don’t think I can be mistaken,’ said he presently in a musing voice: ‘look you, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘At what?’ said I, as I took the glass from him.

‘At the hull yonder.’

I put the telescope upon the rail and knelt to it. Points which were invisible to the naked sight were clear enough now. The wreck was that of a vessel of some two hundred and fifty tons. She sat very light or high upon the water, and it was a part of the copper that rose to her bends which had emitted the flash that caught my eye on the forecastle. Her foremast was standing, and her foreyard lay crossed upon it. Her bowsprit also forked out, but the jib-booms were gone. Lengths of her bulwark were smashed level to the deck; but gaunt as her mastless condition made her look, miserable as she showed in the mutilation of her sides, the beautiful shape of the hull stole out upon the sight through the deformities of her wrecked condition, as the fine shape of a woman expresses itself in defiance of the beggar’s rags which may clothe her.

‘By George, then, Mr. Prance—why, yes, to be sure! I see what you mean,’ I cried all on a sudden—‘that must be our buccaneering friend of the other day!’

‘Neither more nor less,’ said he; ‘an odd rencontre certainly, considering what a big place the sea is. And yet I don’t know: such a clipper will have sailed two feet to our one, though she exposed no more than her foresail. She’ll have run as we did, and the light airs and baffling weather which followed will easily account for this meeting.’

‘She is not yet the handful of charred staves you thought her, Mr. Prance,’ said I; ‘they managed to get the fire under anyway, though they had to abandon the brig in the end. What is that fellow beyond her? She has the look of a man-of-war: a ship, I believe: yes, I think I can catch sight of the yards on the mizzen peeping past the sails on the main.’

All her canvas had risen, but nothing of her hull, saving the black film of her bulwark hovering upon the horizon with an icy gleam betwixt it and the sea-line, as though there was no more of her than that. When the others came on deck there was no little excitement amongst them on learning that the hull was neither more nor less than the veritable wreck of the brig whose presence had filled us with alarm and misery a few days before. Glasses of all sorts were brought to bear upon her, and by this time it was to be ascertained without doubt that she was absolutely deserted; ‘unless,’ I heard Mr. Emmett say to Mr. Prance, ‘her people should be lying concealed within, hoping to coax us to visit her by an appearance of being deserted, when, of course, they would cut us off, and plunder our remains—I mean, those who would be fools enough to board her out of curiosity.’

‘Likely as not,’ Mr. Prance answered with a sour smile. ‘I would advise you not to attempt to inspect her.’

‘Not I,’ answered the painter; and the chief officer turned abruptly from him to smother a laugh.

It was not long, however, before the delicate miracle of distant canvas shining past the hull upon the calm blue like some spire of alabaster was recognised as a man-of-war, not alone by the cut of her canvas and by other peculiarities aloft readily determinable by the seafaring eye, but by the chequered band upon her hull, that had mounted fair to the firm crystal-like rim of the ocean, and by the line of white hammock-cloths that crowned her tall defences. She was some small corvette or ship-sloop, with her nationality to be sworn to even all that way off.

‘An Englishman, do you think, Captain Keeling?’ asked Colonel Bannister.

‘Oh, God bless my heart, yes, sir,’ answered the skipper.

‘Now, how do you know, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson.

‘By my instincts as a Briton, ma’am,’ he answered; ‘patriotism so enlarges the nostril that a man can taste with his nose whenever anything of his country’s about in the air.’

‘To think of it now!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hudson. ‘I’m sorry the robbers have left that wreck. I should like the pirates to have been caught by the man-of-war and hung up.’

The hour of noon had been ‘made,’ as it is called at sea, and it was then a dead calm, with the clear chimes of eight bells ringing through a wonderful stillness on high, so faint was the undulation in the water, so soft the stir in the canvas to the gentle swaying of the tall spars. The wreck of the brig lay about two miles distant off the starboard beam, and by this hour the corvette, as she now proved to be, with the crimson cross fluttering at her peak, had floated to within a mile and a half or thereabouts on the other side of the hull; and thus the three of us lay. The corvette, slewing her length out to us to the twist of some subtle current upon the still surface, showed a very handsome stately figure of a ship, at that distance at least. Her sails had the fairy-like delicacy of silver tint you observe in the moon when she hangs in an afternoon sky; they fitted the yardarms to perfection, and I stood admiring for a long quarter of an hour at a time the graceful lines of the bolt-ropes faintly curving to the yardarm sheave-holes, each clew looking a little way past the corner of the sail beneath it. A gilt figure-head of some royal device flashed at her bows and shed a ruddy gleam upon the water under it. There was the glistering of gilt about her quarter-galleries, and the sparkle of glass there. But Mr. Prance said that he would swear she was an old ship, her timbers as soft as cheese, and her chain-pumps nearly worn out with plying, for all that she looked in the perspective of that azure atmosphere as airy a beauty as ever gave the milk-white bosoms of her canvas to the wind.

I went down on the quarter-deck to smoke a pipe, and whilst I lay over the bulwark rail watching the man-of-war, my eye was taken by a somewhat curious appearance in the line of the ocean away down in the south-west quarter. It was a sensible depression in the edge of the sea, as though you viewed it through defective window-glass. It was an atmospheric effect, and an odd one. The circle went round with the clearness of the side of a lens, save to that part, and there it looked as though some gigantic knife had pared a piece clean out—with this addition: that there was a curious sort of faintness as of mist where the sky joined the sea in the hollow of this queer dip. I ran my eye over the poop to see if others up there were noting this appearance, but I did not observe that it had won attention. For my part, I should have made nothing of it, accepting it as some trick of refraction, but for it somehow entering into my head to remember how the second mate of the ship I had made my first voyage in once told me of a sudden shift of weather that had taken his craft aback and wrecked her to her tops, and that it had been heralded, though there was no man to interpret the sign, by just such another horizontal depression as that upon which my eyes were now resting.

However, on dismounting from the bulwarks for a brief yarn with little Saunders, the matter went out of my mind and I thought no more of it.

Whilst we were at lunch, Mr. Cocker came down the companion steps cap in hand, and said something to the captain.

‘All right, sir,’ I heard old Keeling answer: ‘it will be a visit of curiosity rather than of courtesy. How far is the boat?’

‘She’s only just left the wreck, sir.’

‘Very well, Mr. Cocker.’

The second mate remounted the steps.

‘The corvette,’ exclaimed old Keeling, addressing us generally, ‘has sent a boat to the wreck, presumably to overhaul and report upon her. The boat is now approaching us. I have little doubt that the corvette is homeward bound, in which case, ladies and gentlemen, you might be glad to send letters by her. There will be plenty of time. The calm, I fear, threatens to last.’

There was instantly a hurry amongst the passengers, most of whom rushed away from the table to write their letters.

I emptied my wine-glass and went on deck, and saw a man-of-war’s boat approaching us; the bright ash oars rose and fell with exquisite precision, and the white water spat from the stem of the little craft as she was swept through it by the rowers, with a young fellow in the uniform of a naval lieutenant of that day steering her. She came flashing alongside; up rose the oars, the lively hearty in the bows hooked on, and the officer, lightly springing on to the rope ladder which had been dropped over the side for his convenience, gained the deck with a twist of his thumb that was meant as a salutation to the ship.

Old Keeling was now on the poop, and Mr. Cocker conducted the lieutenant to him. I happened to be standing near, talking with Colledge and Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Temple not yet having returned with the letter which she had gone to her cabin to write. The skipper received the naval officer with a gracious bow.

‘Our captain,’ exclaimed the young fellow, in a gentlemanly easy way, ‘instructed me to overhaul yonder wreck, and then come on to you to see if we can be of any service;’ and I saw his eye rest with an expression of delight upon Miss Hudson, who rose through the companion at that instant and drew close to hear what passed.

‘Sir,’ cried old Keeling, with another bow, ‘I am obliged to your captain, sir. It is, sir, very considerate of him to send. My passengers are preparing letters, and we shall be very sensible of your goodness in receiving and transmitting them.’

‘Pray, what ship is this, sir?’ exclaimed the lieutenant, glancing about him with the curiosity of a stranger, and then taking another thirsty peep at the golden young lady.

‘The Countess Ida, sir, of and from London for Bombay, so many days out. And pray, what ship is that?’

‘His Majesty’s ship Magicienne.’

Colledge started. ‘Beg pardon,’ he exclaimed. ‘Isn’t Sir Edward Panton her commander?’

‘He is,’ answered the lieutenant.

‘By George, my cousin!’ cried Colledge; ‘haven’t seen him these seven years. How doocid odd, now, to fall in with him here!’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said the lieutenant, with a hint of respect in his manner that might have been wanting in it before. ‘May I venture to ask your name?’

‘Colledge.’

‘Ah! of course; a son of my Lord Sandown. This will be news for Sir Edward.’ He sent a look at the corvette, as though measuring the distance between the vessels.

‘Sir,’ here said old Keeling, ‘I believe that luncheon is still upon the table. Let me conduct you below, sir. It will have been a mighty hot ride for you out upon those unsheltered waters.’

The lieutenant bowed, and followed the skipper to the companion. Colledge put his arm through mine and led me to the rail.

‘I say, Dugdale,’ he exclaimed. ‘I should like to see my cousin. It would be rather a lark to visit his ship, wouldn’t it? Not too far off, is she, d’ye think?’ he added, cocking his eye at the vessel.

‘Why, no; not on such a day as this.’

‘Will you come if I go?’

‘With the greatest pleasure.’

‘Oh, that’s downright jolly of you, by George. We’ll go in my cousin’s boat, and he’ll send us back. I like the look of those men-of-war’s men. It makes one feel safe even to see them rowing. Ah, there goes something to drink for the poor fellows. Upon my word, old Keeling buttons up a kind heart under that queer coat of his.’

‘I presume,’ said I, ‘that the lieutenant will make no difficulty in consenting to carry us in his boat. I am ignorant of the rules which govern his service. Suppose you step below, and arrange with him? If he may not take us, Keeling will lend us a boat, I am sure.’

Down he went full of eagerness, his handsome face flushed with excitement. Mrs. Radcliffe had joined two or three ladies, and stood with them asking questions of Mr. Cocker about the corvette and the wreck. On glancing through the skylight presently, I saw the lieutenant picking a piece of cold fowl at the table, with a bottle of champagne at his elbow. Old Keeling sat at his side, and opposite were Colledge and Miss Temple. The four of them were chatting briskly. I took a peep at the boat under the gangway. It was a treat to see the jolly English faces of the fellows, and to hear the tongue of the old home spoken over the side. A number of our seamen had perched themselves on the bulwarks and were calling questions to the men-of-war’s-men whilst they watched them draining the glasses which the steward had sent down to them in a basket. From the answers the fellows made I gathered that the Magicienne was from Simon’s Bay, having been relieved on the coast, where she had been stationed for I will not pretend to remember how long. Small wonder that the bronzed, round-faced, bullet-headed, but exceedingly gentlemanly lieutenant should have fixed a transported eye on the sweet face and golden hair and the violet stars of Miss Hudson after his unendurably long frizzling months of West African beauties.

In about twenty minutes he made his appearance upon deck, followed by Keeling and Miss Temple and Colledge, who came sliding up to me to say that it was all right: the lieutenant would convey us with pleasure and bring us back: and what did I think? Miss Temple was to be of our party.

‘Humph!’ said I; ‘any other ladies?’

He made a grimace. ‘No,’ he responded in a whisper; ‘the lieutenant suggested others; but I could twig in Miss Temple’s face that if others went she would remain. You know there’s not a woman on board that she cares about. I rather want,’ said he, returning to his former voice, ‘to introduce her to my cousin. He will be seeing my father when he returns, and is pretty sure to talk,’ said he, giving me a wink.

‘Does Miss Temple know that you’ve invited me?’

‘She does, Trojan.’

‘And how did she receive the news?’

‘With rapture,’ he cried.

‘A fig for such raptures! but I’ll go, spite of her delight.’

By this time Miss Temple had made known her intentions to her aunt. I became aware of this circumstance by the old lady uttering a loud shriek.

‘It is entirely out of the question; I forbid you to go,’ she cried, with a face of agony on her.

‘Nonsense!’ answered Miss Temple: she and her aunt and old Keeling and the lieutenant were slowly coming towards the break of the poop, where Colledge and I waited whilst this altercation proceeded; so everything said was plainly to be heard by us. ‘It is as calm as a river,’ exclaimed the girl, sending one of her flashing looks at the sea.

‘You may be drowned; you may never return. I will not permit it. What would your mother think?’ cried poor Mrs. Radcliffe vehemently, pecking away with her face, and clapping her hands to emphasise her words.

‘Aunt, do not be ridiculous, I beg. I shall go. It will amuse me, and I am already very weary of the voyage. Only consider: at this rate of sailing we may be five or six months longer at sea. This is a little harmless, safe distraction. Now, don’t be foolish, auntie.’

The old lady appealed to Captain Keeling. He was looking somewhat dubiously round the horizon when the lieutenant broke in; then Colledge indulged in a flourish, and though I can’t trace the steps of it, nor recollect the talk, somehow or other a little later on the three of us were in the boat, a bag of letters on a thwart, the lieutenant picking up the yoke-lines as he seated himself, the bow-oar thrusting off, with a vision through the open rail of the poop of old Captain Keeling stiffly sawing the air with his arms, in some effort, as I took it, to console Mrs. Radcliffe, who flourished a handkerchief to her face as though she wept.

CHAPTER XVII
THE ‘MAGICIENNE’

The corvette looked a mighty long distance away from the low elevation of the boat’s gunwale—almost as far as the horizon, it seemed to my eyes, though from the height of the deck of the Indiaman the sea-line showed something above the bulwarks of the man-of-war. One hardly noticed the movement in the sea on board the Countess Ida, so solemn and steady was the swing of the great fabric, a movement stealing into one’s thoughts like a habit, and leaving one unconscious of it; but the heave was instantly to be felt in the boat, and I own that I could not have believed there was so much swell until I felt the lift of the noiseless polished fold and marked the soft blue volume of the water brimming to the hot and blistered sides and green sheathing of the Indiaman.

A huge lump of a ship she looked as we were swept away from her; her masts soaring in three spires with the flash of a vane above the airy gossamer of the loftiest cloths; groups of passengers watching us from the violet-tinted shadow under the awning, heads of seamen at the rail, or figures of them upon the forecastle near the huge cathead that struck a shadow of its own into the water under it. The great bowsprit went tapering to the delicacy of the flying-jib-boom end marshalling the flight of white jibs; a stream of radiance floated in the water under each large window. Inexpressible is the effect she produced taken along with the dwindling of her to the impulse of our oars, with the fining down into thinnest notes of the voices of the people, and with the soft and still softening sounds of her canvas lightly swaying.

‘A grand old ship,’ exclaimed the lieutenant.

‘I had no idea she owned such a handsome stern,’ said Colledge; ‘quite a blaze of gilt, I do protest, Miss Temple. How gloriously old Keeling’s cabin-window sparkles amid the gingerbread magnificence of decoration.’

‘What is there in the art of painting to reproduce such a picture as that?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, with her dark eyes glowing to the mood of delight raised in her by the beautiful spectacle. ‘It is like looking at an image in a soap-bubble. What brush could fling those silver-bluish daintinesses of tint upon canvas, and make one see the ship through this atmosphere filled with ocean-light?’

‘Ocean-light!’ exclaimed the lieutenant, viewing her with an air of profound admiration; ‘that is the fit expression, madam. Light at sea is different from light on shore.’

‘As how?’ cried Colledge.

‘Oh, my dear fellow, see what a reflecting eye the ocean has,’ said I; ‘it stares back in glory to the glory that looks down upon it. Mould and clay can’t do that, you know.’

‘True,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Pray,’ said I, addressing him, ‘when you overhauled that hull yonder, did you meet with anything to warrant our suspicion that she was a rover?’

‘I found no papers,’ said he; ‘forward, she is burnt into a shell. All her guns are gone—dropped overboard, I suppose, to keep her afloat. She has a little round-house aft, and in it sits a man.’

‘A man?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘He sits in a musing posture,’ continued the lieutenant; ‘he frowns, and seems vexed. He holds a feather pen in one hand, and supports his head on the elbow of his left arm, but he doesn’t write: possibly because there is no ink and the wind seems to have blown his paper away.’

‘Is he dead?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘Quite,’ responded the lieutenant, with a smile of enjoyment of her beauty.

‘God bless me!’ cried Colledge, staring at the hull under the sharp of his hand.

‘Is she a picaroon, think you, sir?’ said I.

‘Impossible to say,’ he answered; ‘there are stands of small-arms in her cabin below, and a sweep of ’tweendecks full of piratic bedding. She will have been crowded with sailors, I should think, sir.’

The six men-of-war’s men were making the fine little cutter hum as they bent to their oars, one hairy face showing past another, the eyes of each man upon his blade, though now and again one or another would steal a respectful peep at Miss Temple. What exquisite discipline their demeanour suggested! One hardly needed to do more than glance at them to sound to the very depths the whole philosophy of our naval story. How should it be otherwise than as it is with a nation that could be the mother of such children as those fellows?

The lieutenant was very talkative, and had a deal to say about the West Coast of Africa and Cape Town; and he had a great many questions to ask about home. Miss Temple constantly directed her eyes over the side, as though affected and even startled by the proximity of the mighty surface. And boundless the light blue heaving plain looked as it went swimming to the far-off slope of sky that it seemed to wash—the vaster, the more enormous for the breaks of toy-like craft upon it; for the Indiaman and the corvette were standards to assist the mind into some perception of the surrounding immensity, and never to me did the heavens seem so high nor the curve of the ocean boundary so remote as I found them from the low seat of the cutter, with the corvette growing over the bow, and the Indiaman astern dwarfed to the dimensions of a boy’s model of a ship.

It was a longer pull than I should have believed, and roastingly hot, thanks to the flaming reflection that filled the heart of the sea, and to the motionless atmosphere, which was scarcely to be stirred even into the subtlest fanning of the cheek by our passage through it. Miss Temple’s face in the shadow of her parasol resembled some incomparable carving in marble, and but little of vitality was to be seen in it outside of her rich, full, eloquent eyes, when she fell into some pause of thought and looked away into the dim blue distance as though she beheld a vision down in it. The corvette appeared deserted, with her high bulwarks topped yet with a line of hammocks; but it was easy to see that it was known on board the lieutenant was bringing a lady along with others to visit the man-of-war, for there was already a proper gangway ladder over the side, with a grating to step out on, though the broad-beamed craft swayed more to the swell than the Indiaman, and so dipped the platform that it needed a deal of manoeuvring to save Miss Temple from wetting her feet.

Sir Edward Panton, a tall, exceedingly handsome man, with iron-grey hair and a sun-reddened complexion, received us at the gangway. He seemed scarcely able to believe his eyes when Colledge called out to him. He welcomed Miss Temple with an air of lofty respectful dignity that would have sat well upon some nobleman of magnificence welcoming a royal visitor to his home. Chairs were brought from the cabin and placed on the quarter-deck in the shelter of the awning, along with a little table, upon which were put some excellent sherry, claret, and seltzer-water, and a box of capital cigars. The look of this ship, after the Indiaman’s encumbered decks broken by their poop and topgallant forecastle, was a real treat to the seafaring eye. She was flush fore and aft: every plank was as white as a peeled almond; the black breeches of her artillery gave a noble, massive, imposing character to her tall, immensely thick bulwarks; the ratlines showed straight as thin bars of iron in the wide spread of shrouds and topmast rigging; the running gear was flemish-coiled; the brass-work sparkled like burnished gold; the snow-like cloths of the fore-course gathered an amazing brightness from their mere contrast with the red coat of a marine pacing the forecastle; the sailors, in white clothes, straw-hats, and naked feet, sprang softly here and there to the light chirrupings of a pipe, or went on with the various jobs they were about on deck and in the rigging amid a silence that one might ask for in vain among a crew of merchantmen. Far away down upon the starboard beam was the Indiaman, blue in the airy distance, with a sort of winking of shadows upon her square and lofty canvas, as the cloths swung in and out, brightening and dimming.

Sir Edward was delighted to see his cousin, and it seemed as if there was to be no end to their talk, so numberless were the questions the commander put about home, his family, doings in London, matters political, and so on, and so on. I had a chance, whilst Colledge was spinning some long twister of private interest to Sir Edward, to exchange a few words with Miss Temple, whose behaviour in the main might have easily led me to believe that she was absolutely unconscious of my presence; in fact, I shouldn’t have addressed her then but for finding in the domestic and personal gossip of the two cousins an obligation of either talking or walking away.

‘The Countess Ida looks a long distance off, Miss Temple.’

‘Farther, I think, than this ship looks from her.’

‘That is owing to a change in the atmosphere. We shall be having some weather by-and-by.’

‘Not before we return, I hope.’

‘The blue thickens yonder,’ I exclaimed, indicating that quarter of the sea where I had noticed the depression of the horizon.

She gazed listlessly; her eyes then went roaming over the ship with a sparkle in them of the pleasure the whiteness and the brightness and the orderliness of all that she beheld gave her.

Presently Sir Edward exclaimed: ‘Miss Temple, you would like to inspect this vessel, I am sure. I wish to show Stephen my wife’s portrait, and I want you to see it. Mr. Dugdale, you will join us.’

Down we went into a very pleasant cabin, and the captain produced a water-colour sketch of his lady.

‘A sweet face!’ exclaimed Miss Temple; whilst Sir Edward gazed at the picture with eyes full of the yearning heart of a sailor long divorced from his love.

‘Have you found your charmer yet, Stephen?’ said he. ‘Any girl won your budding affections?’

The youth looked at me suddenly and turned of a deep red. I believe he would have said no at once, and with a cocksure face, had I not been there. Miss Temple’s gaze rested upon him.

‘Why, who is it, Stephen, eh?’ exclaimed Sir Edward with a merry laugh. ‘See how he blushes, Miss Temple! a sure sign that he has let go his anchor, though he is riding to a long scope all the way out here. Who is it, Steve?’

‘Oh, hang it, Ned, never mind; you bother a fellow so,’ answered Colledge with a fine air of mingled irritation and confusion, and a half-look at me that was just the same as saying, ‘What an ass I am making of myself!’

‘Miss Temple,’ exclaimed Sir Edward, laughing heartily again, ‘he may possibly have confided the lady’s name to you? Pray satisfy my curiosity, that I may congratulate him before we part.’

‘I am as ignorant as you are,’ she replied, with an expression of cold surprise in her face.

I marched to a porthole to look out, that I might conceal an irrepressible grin.

‘I say, show us the ship, will ye, Ned?’ shouted Colledge; ‘there’s a long pull before us, and we’re bound to India, you know.’

Captain Panton led the way out of the cabin, and went in advance with Miss Temple, pointing here and explaining there, and full of his ship. Colledge sidled up to me.

‘Dugdale,’ he exclaimed in a whisper, ‘do you believe that Miss Temple will guess from my idiotic manner just now that I’m engaged to be married?’

‘Oh yes; I saw her gaze sink right into you and then go clean through you. It is best as it is, Colledge. You may breathe freely now.’

He smothered an execration, and continued gloomy and silent for some time. There was not very much to be seen below. We were presently on deck; and after another ten minutes’ chat, during which Colledge seemed to regain his spirits, the boat was ordered alongside.

‘It shall be my secret as well as yours, Stephen, long before you are home from your tiger-hunts!’ exclaimed Sir Edward at the gangway, waggishly shaking his forefinger at his cousin.

We shook hands, entered the boat; the lieutenant took his seat, the oars sparkled, and away we went with a flourish of our hats to the commander, who stood for some time in the open gangway watching us.

‘There’s a trifle more swell than there was, I fancy,’ said I to the lieutenant.

‘I think there is,’ he answered, looking over the sea as if he thought of something else.

‘What a confounded quiz Ned is!’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘He’s rather too fond of a laugh at other people’s expense. I think that sort of thing a mistake myself.’

‘He is a very handsome gentleman,’ said I.

‘Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen him,’ said Colledge. ‘He’s a dear good fellow, only—— I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip, Miss Temple?’

‘Thoroughly, thank you; it is a delightful change. How strange to think of that toy yonder as being our home for some months to come! It is like fancying one’s self as dwelling in a star, to see her floating out there in the blue haze, as though she were poised in the atmosphere.’

She fastened her eyes on the Indiaman as she spoke. One saw in this that she had a sailor’s observation for atmospheric effect. Star-like the ship looked in the distance—a dash of misty light in the blue haze, hovering, as it were, above the junction of sea and sky, where the blending of the elements was so dim and hot that you couldn’t tell where they met.

‘Isn’t it thickening up a trifle, somehow?’ said I to the lieutenant. ‘Look to the right of the wreck there—what is that appearance?’

‘What do you see?’ he exclaimed.

‘Why, to my fancy, it is as though there were a dust-storm miles away yonder.’

He smiled, and answered: ‘Mere heat. One doesn’t need many months on the West African coast to grow used to that sort of aspects. They suggest nothing but quinine to me.’

‘What time is it?’ said Colledge.

We pulled out our watches: it was half-past four.

‘I am sorry we are returning to the Indiaman,’ said he. ‘I should like to get away from her for a little while; then one would find something of freshness in her when one returned. I am not thirsting to meet Mr. Johnson and Mr. Emmett and Mr. Greenhew again. Are you, Miss Temple?’

She slightly smiled, and said, ‘I wish Bombay were as near to us as the Magicienne is to the Indiaman.’

‘I have an idea!’ cried Colledge, whose shining eyes, methought, seemed to suggest the influence of the last large bumper of sherry he had tossed down before leaving the corvette. ‘Let us kill another hour by boarding the wreck.’

‘I shall be very pleased to put the boat alongside,’ said the lieutenant. ‘What do you say, Miss Temple?’

She looked at the Indiaman, and then sent a swift glance at me, as though she would read my face without having me know she had peeped at it.

‘Will there be time before it falls dark?’ she answered. ‘I am in no hurry to return; but I do not want to make my aunt miserable by remaining out upon the water until after sunset.’

‘Oh, we have abundance of time,’ said the lieutenant.

‘It will give us so much to talk about,’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘I want to see what sort of a ship it was that frightened us so abominably the other day.’

‘What do you say, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple.

‘I am thinking of the lonely sentinel this gentleman was telling us about as we came along,’ said I.

‘Oh, one peep! one peep at him, just one peep!’ cried Colledge: ‘don’t let us go back to the Indiaman too soon. At this rate,’ he added, turning up his slightly flushed face to the sky, ‘we may have another six months of her.’

The lieutenant laughed, and, anxious to please him, as I supposed, quietly pulled a yoke-line and swept the boat’s head fair for the hull. His making nothing of the appearance I had called his attention to was reassuring. I should have thought nothing of it either but for the indent in the horizon that morning, and the recollection that grew out of it, as I have told you. But then old Keeling had let us start from his ship without a hint, and Sir Edward had uttered no caution, though, to be sure, in those days the barometer was not the shaper of marine speculations it has since become; and the silence of these two skippers, and the smile and careless rejoinder of the lieutenant, should have been amply satisfying. Nevertheless, there was no question but that the light swell heaving out of the north-west was sensibly gaining in volume and speed, and that it was the mere respiration of the ocean I could by no means persuade myself, though it might signify nothing.

Colledge grew somewhat frolicsome; indeed, I seemed to find an artificiality in his spirits, as though he would clear Miss Temple’s memory of Captain Panton’s badinage by laughter and jokes. The lieutenant fell in with his humour, said some comical things, and told one or two lively anecdotes of the blacks of that part of the coast the corvette was fresh from. The men-of-war’s men pulled steadily, and the keen stem of the cutter sheared through the oil-smooth surface with a noise as of the ripping of satin; but now and again she would swing down into a hollow that put the low sides of the wreck out of sight, whilst, as we approached, I noticed that the hull was leaning from side to side in a swing which did not need to greatly increase to put the lieutenant to his trumps to get Miss Temple aboard.

But by this time the girl was showing some vivacity, smiling at the lieutenant’s jokes, laughing lightly in her clear, rich, trembling tones at Colledge’s remarks. It seemed to me as if her previous quietude had produced a resolution which she was now acting up to. She was apparently eager to inspect the wreck, and said that such an adventure would make a heroine of her at home when she came to tell the story of it.

It was a long, dragging pull over that heaving, breathless sea, and through that sweltering afternoon, with its sky of the complexion of brass about the zenith. The three craft, as they lay, formed a right-angled triangle, the apex, to call it so, being the derelict, and the getting to her involved a longer stretching of the Jacks’ backs than, as I suspected, the lieutenant had calculated on. The sweat poured from the men’s brows, and their faces were like purple rags under their straw hats as they swung with the precision and the monotony of the tick of a clock over the looms of their oars.

‘She’s rather unsteady, isn’t she?’ exclaimed Colledge as we approached the hulk.

‘So much the better,’ said the lieutenant; ‘her bulwarks are gone, and every dip inclines her bare deck as a platform for a jump.’

‘She may be sinking,’ cried Miss Temple.

‘Dry as a bone, madam, I assure you,’ said the officer. ‘I looked into her hold, and there’s scarce more water than would serve to drown a rat.’

‘I see her name in long white letters under her counter,’ I exclaimed. ‘Can you read it, Colledge?’

‘The Aspirante,’ said the lieutenant.

We now fell silent, with our eyes upon the hull, whilst the officer manœuvred with the yoke-lines to run the cutter handsomely alongside. A single chime from a bell came thrilling with a soft silver note through the hushed air. Miss Temple started, and the officer grinned into Colledge’s face, but nothing was said. She was a very clean wreck. Her foremast stood stoutly supported by the shrouds; but the braces of the foreyard were slack, and the swing of the spar, upon which the canvas lay rolled in awkward heaps, roughly secured by lines, as though the work of hands wild with hurry, somehow imparted a strange, forlorn, most melancholy character to the nakedness of that solitary mast. She showed no guns; her decks appeared to have been swept; the rise of her in the water proved that her people must have jettisoned a deal of whatever they were able to come at; her wheel was gone, and her rudder slowly swayed to every heave. There were a few ropes’ ends over her side, the hacked remains of standing-rigging; but the water brimmed clear of wreckage to her channels.

‘Oars!’ cried the lieutenant. The bowman sprang erect; and in a few moments we were floating alongside, soaring and falling against the black run of her, with the deck gaping through the length of smashed bulwark to the level of our heads when we stood up, each time she came lazily rolling over to us. The clear chime of the bell rang out again.

‘What is it?’ cried Miss Temple.

‘The ship’s bell,’ said the lieutenant; ‘it has got jammed as it hangs, and the tongue strikes the side when the heave is a little sharper than usual.’

He followed this on with certain directions to the men. Two of them, watching their chance, sprang on to the slope of the deck, and then went hoisting up away from us as the hull swayed wearily to starboard. ‘Stand by now!’ bawled the lieutenant. ‘Miss Temple, let me assist you on to this thwart.’ She leapt upon it with something of defiance in her manner, and the officer, grasping her elbow, supported her. I thought Colledge looked a little uneasy and pale. We waited; but an opportunity was some time in coming.

‘Mr. Colledge,’ said the lieutenant, ‘be kind enough to take my place and support the lady.’ He jumped lightly into the main-chains, and was on deck in a jiffy. ‘Haul her in close, men. Now, Miss Temple. Catch hold of my hand and of this sailor’s when I say so.’