Mr. Bates and Will arrived, each bearing a burden of clothes from the slop-chest. I advised the mate to go behind the mizzen-mast and shift his convict clothes at once. He seemed unnerved and wanting in spirit, as though broken down by the scenes and sights of the day and night, and obeyed me as if I had been Tom or his captain. Will was dressed as throughout; it had strangely happened that no convict had forced him to exchange clothes. He went to Tom’s cabin and brought up my bundle and monkey-jacket; the latter I slipped on, throwing Tom’s convict coat overboard with passion and loathing. Will told me that only two or three men were now awake in the cuddy; one had fallen under the table just as he had passed up through the steerage hatch.
I quitted the wheel to look through the skylight, but the waking men sat too far aft to be seen; I heard the murmur of their fuddled voices, and was sure by the tones that the noise must cease in a few minutes. The picture remained as I have described it; the convicts lay over the table and in twenty various postures. Under the table, and betwixt the table and the bulkhead, they were heaped up as though slaughtered. A dreadful smell rose through the open skylight. Fragments of broken pipes, shreds of wearing apparel, capsized pannikins and hook-pots, overset pails of rum covered the deck and table. I was sure that Tom was right in thinking that when those senseless, beastlike shapes came to be looked at in the morning, many would be found corpses. Mr. Bates, having changed his clothes, stood beside me dressed in a suit of black cloth and a cloth cap. He said: ‘Shall Johnstone and I start on provisioning the boat? I shouldn’t like to act without instructions from Butler.’
‘No time should be lost,’ I answered; ‘but where will you find provisions, Mr. Bates?’
‘We’ll look around,’ he said. ‘I hope it mayn’t come to our having to break out fresh stores.’
‘We shall want nothing if the brig receives us,’ said I.
‘True; but we must go away well provisioned nevertheless.’
Just then Tom came along the poop. He sprang on to the hencoop and placed some parcels in the boat, joined us and said: ‘I’ve secured the chronometer, a sextant, some charts and a tinder-box. All’s quiet now in the cuddy. What a terrible scene! I was obliged to tread upon the bodies of men to look into the cabins. Many lie capsized upon their backs, their legs upon the seats. The light’s bad, yet I made out Abram on the deck of a berth. There’s a whole hundred and thirty people below in that cuddy! Would any man credit the story of such a wholesale drugging and damning by drink? They lie thick under the break there, and the main-deck’s strewn with them. The forecastle’s empty. But all’s not quiet yet in the ship,’ said he, speaking very quickly and softly. ‘A fellow under the bulwarks yonder sat up and called me by name. I took no notice. Two or three men just now staggered off the gratings on the main-hatch to seek more comfortable resting-places. We must wait awhile.’
‘Shall Johnstone and I get the boat provisioned?’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Aye, do your best, Bates, and promptly. Provision us as though we were to be a fortnight afloat.’
He strained his eyes in the direction of the brig. My cousin and the other left the poop.
The time slipped by. I stepped to the skylight and found the hour ten minutes to one. Bates and Will came and went and came again, and at every trip they brought a load. I believe they found ship’s bread in the forecastle and some raw hams and drum-big tins of boiled meat in the galley. I asked no questions, however. The time of our departure was drawing near and I was frightened and nervous. I never could tell at what moment some of the convicts might get the better of their stupor and come upon the poop for the whiteness of the planks and for the airiness of the lodging it offered. I could not persuade myself that so vast a number of persons should be as drugged and lifeless as though a strong dose of laudanum had gone to every dram. Yet, whether I credited it or not, I had but to use my eyes to witness the truth. I had but to descend the cabin steps, I had but to walk around the quarter- and main-decks of that now silent shadowy convict ship, to know there was scarce a man but was stone-senseless with rum. Sometimes a beastlike cry broke from below, sometimes a drunken shout sounded forward. These noises were startling, but we speedily found they signified nothing.
Tom went to the head of the starboard poop-ladder and looked and listened. He returned, descended the companion-steps, and, after looking and listening, put out all the lights. It was then about a quarter past two. The moon had made a deal of westing, and was red and shone no longer very brightly.
‘Johnstone,’ said my sweetheart, in a whisper, ‘have you a knife?’
‘Cut the gig’s and yonder boat’s falls short off just under where they are belayed. Quick, my lad! Bates, it must be done.’
‘God help them!’ said the mate. ‘But there are sailors who’ll show them what to do should it come to a sudden call.’
Will came from his job. The gripes of our boat were then noiselessly cast adrift.
‘Jump in, Marian! Jump in, Johnstone!’ said Tom.
Will and I sprang into the boat and sat low, and in a moment or two the dark side of the ship swarmed upward as we descended. The boat splashed when she floated. Some fellow at that instant halloed long and dismally. The melancholy, dreadful cry was re-echoed by the sails, and the voice was as that of a strong man mortally wounded and yielding up his ghost in a death shout.
‘Some beast shrieking in a dream,’ said Will.
As he spoke, the figures of Tom and the mate leaned to the falls, and they came down the tackles into the boat, hand over hand. The blocks were quickly unhooked, and Mr. Bates, with the boat-hook in his hand, poled us under the huge, dark counter of the Childe Harold. Three oars were noiselessly thrown over and paddled us clear of the ship.
Scarcely were we gone ten lengths when again we heard that strange, wild, melancholy, halloing cry. Tom said, ‘Is not that a man there on the fo’c’s’le?’
‘Yes,’ said Will; ‘he is reeling and waving. He’ll be overboard if he doesn’t mind his eye.’
The fellow let fly a sudden yell.
‘Curse him!’ cried Tom. ‘He sees us. Give way now.’
‘There he goes!’ cried Mr. Bates.
A cry like the scream of a gull came across the silent sea, and we heard the plunge and splash of the wretch. Mr. Bates and Will tilted their oars as though to put back.
‘Pull!’ cried Tom fiercely.
‘Won’t you return to pick him up?’ said the mate.
‘Pull!’ hissed Tom. ‘Return to that ship? Pull! Break your backs! A suicide in delirium. Let them all leap! There’s the peace of God over the side; there’s the devil’s own hell within board. Pull!’
He strained at his own oar with fury; the others plied with all their might. The boat buzzed over the smooth surface, the smudge of the craft for which we were making was dead-on-end over the bow. The moon hung low, large, and red; the situation of our boat put the convict ship right over against the satellite, and the vessel was painted upon the red surface of the orb. Never did the ocean offer a more impressive night-piece. An awful horror went into the ship out of the fancy of the man drowning alongside. Her sails showed as though cut out of black paper against the moon; her rigging ran in fine black lines; the ship looked to be afloat in vapour, so smoky was the obscurity which moved over the face of that black, greasy calm in folds like smoke.
There was no more halloing; so still was the breast on which the vessel lay that never a sound of the flap of canvas, the jar of a wheel chain, the clank of a topsail-sheet came from her. Slowly she receded to the impulse of our oars; then sliding out of the sphere of the moon, she glimmered dimly and hovered like a pale cloud rising off the edge of the sea.
Tom and the others rowed steadily; they had slackened their rage, and the boat foamed along to the steady sweep of the blades. They talked as they pulled.
‘Bates, I wouldn’t have put back,’ said Tom, ‘if fifty of them had sprung overboard. It was too late. Once away from such a ship as that, it must be away for ever with us.’
‘You’re in the right. It was just the impulse to save life, Butler.’
‘I smell wind,’ said Will.
The mate turned his head and exclaimed: ‘Yes, there’s a dark line of wind to the south’ard, Johnstone.’
‘What will happen to the convict ship if a strong wind should catch her as she lies, without a living creature on the look-out or at the wheel?’ said I.
‘Let the masts be ripped out of her,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘She’ll be fallen in with. Lie with dogs and rise with fleas! The mere seeing her people, the mere listening to them makes a man feel a beast, because he’s shaped like them. Oh, Bates, Bates, think of months of living with them! Where’s the brig?’
She was now showing in a big dark blotch at the distance of about two miles. Already the water was rippling to a light breeze, but no weight was in it to cause anxiety, by which I mean no vessel could be propelled by the draught as fast as we could row.
Tom said: ‘Bates, you will leave it to me to explain. You and Miss Johnstone and her cousin will hear me spin my yarn. There’ll be little to say. Only let this be understood: You’re the mate and I’m the second mate.’
‘Do you know, Tom,’ said I, ‘that you are still wearing the convict trousers and shirt?’
‘By Heaven, I had forgotten!’ he cried, jumping up. ‘Marian, take my seat and hold this oar.’
He went into the bows. Often had I pulled an oar upon the Thames and loved the diversion. I rowed now heartily with the others, and little was lost by Tom leaving his seat. He shifted with a sailor’s smartness in a few minutes, and hove his abominable convict apparel overboard. His dress was composed of such slops as the mate was attired in, black cloth and a cloth cap. He took the oar from me, and I seated myself again in the stern-sheets.
‘That brig is hove to,’ said I. ‘Look at her. She seems to be waiting for us.’
I said this when she was half a mile off. She was then plain in sight; a small brig under topsails and maintopgallant-sail; the squares of those sails were outlined against the stars. She showed no light and hung visionary and silent in the voidlike gloom, the sea and the night being blent into a sort of flowing darkness by the blowing of the wind. We drew close, and Tom, throwing in his oar, stood up and hailed her. He got no answer. He hailed her four or five times, but all remained deathlike on board.
‘The look-out sleeps well,’ said Mr. Bates.
‘She is derelict,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been thinking so ever since soon after I first saw her. Shove alongside; get aboard and trim if there’s no one to do it for us; this breeze’ll help to put the Childe Harold behind the horizon before dawn.’
The vessel had, as most craft had in those days, platforms called channels at her side, for spreading her lower rigging. She was a little brig. The channels sat low and were but a step from our gunwale. I easily got over the side with the others, and Will took a turn with the boat’s painter to secure her. The low moon gave no light now to see by, the starshine was faint, and the decks of the brig ran dark fore and aft. We made out a house running the length of the quarter-deck. The door was closed. Tom threw it open and shouted long and loud. No voice answered. Not a sound was returned in answer. You heard nothing but the rippling of the breeze-stirred waters along the bends. The mate went forward and beat upon the forescuttle and bawled, and still we got no answer.
It was sure we had lighted on an abandoned ship, so far as life went; that she had been the theatre of a tragedy and was yet freighted with some secret horrors remained to be discovered.
‘Has she a boat forward, Bates?’ called Tom.
‘No boat, sir.’
‘Jump into the quarter-boat, Johnstone, and hand the things out of her. She’ll tow astern till daylight.’
‘There is the hand of God in this, Butler,’ said Mr. Bates, solemnly, whilst he received the things from Will out of the boat.
‘Is the hand out yonder amongst those drenched sleepers?’ answered Tom, sullenly and gloomily. ‘Who the devil are we to sail away with Providence? You flatter yourself, Bates. Is everything out of that boat, Johnstone?’
The lad answered, ‘Yes,’ climbed over the side, gave the tinder-box and matches to Tom, then helped the boat astern with the painter.
‘We’ll trim sail,’ said Tom.
‘What course, sir?’ said the mate.
‘Oh, south—south!’ cried my sweetheart. ‘A sure course for somewhere by-and-by; but to the south’ard now—to the south’ard now!’
The wind was about north-east. Tom put me to the wheel, which was fixed in the old-fashioned style in front of the after-deck house. My sweetheart tried the helm, then bade me hold the spokes, and the three of them squared the yards on the fore and the main masts.
It was the blackest of the dark hours, and the brig slowly floated forward in deep shadow. The only noise was the rippling and jerking of the Childe Harold’s quarter-boat in our wake. Will asked if he should light the binnacle lamp. Tom said no; he’d show no light on deck. The next thing to be done, he said, was to sound the well and make a light secretly in the deck-house cabin to read the rod by. They left me at the wheel, steering by a bright star at the starboard fore-topsail yardarm, and after they had searched a while gropingly for the rod, the mate put his hand upon it. They were obliged to draw the pump to sound. Tom and Bates then carried the rod into the deck-house, where they chipped a light and read the rod by the small glare of a sulphur match.
Tom came out and said to me, ‘There are eighteen inches of water in the hold—nothing to take notice of, if she’s been long abandoned. Johnstone, you and I will take first spell at the pump.’
They drew their coats off, and in a very little while the pump was pulsing steadily to their muscular, sailorly strokes, and the water sobbed as it gushed to the scuppers and spouted into the sea.
‘I don’t care what Captain Butler says,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates, standing alongside of me, ‘there’s the finger of God in this!’ And he pulled off his cap and turned his face up to the stars. ‘There is something solemn and wonderful to me in this escape. Look how it all seems to have been planned. The drunken revelry of the convicts; the light air of wind blowing us into sight of this craft, then falling, as though to leave her within reach of us; then this brig herself, instead of an open boat—not the better for being abandoned, though but for that she’d not be here. I say it’s solemn and wonderful, and I’m grateful!’ And he again upturned his face.
I made no answer.
After a bit, the mate went to the pump, which they plied for some twenty minutes before dropping the rod again, when such a sensible decrease of water was observed as to satisfy Tom and Bates that the brig was tight. At the expiration of half an hour they came to the wheel to rest. Will fetched chairs out of the deck-house and we sat, the mate keeping the wheel steady, though he was seated; indeed, the brig, with square yards and a sea nigh as smooth as a plain of ice, wanted little or no steering.
‘There’s a big sheet of paper lying on the cabin table,’ said my cousin.
‘A chart, perhaps,’ said Tom.
‘How did this abandonment come about?’ exclaimed Mr. Bates. ‘Everything’s right aloft; I reckon the hull’s sound; she looks a staunch little craft. What drove the men out of her?’
‘Are they out of her?’ said Tom.
‘I once boarded an abandoned schooner when I was second mate,’ he answered; ‘she was deep with wheat. Everything was as right with her as it is with this brig. I looked into her forecastle and found five men dead on her deck, and in the cabin lay a sixth corpse. Bates, sailors hear and see so much that they soon forget to wonder and they never ask questions.’
‘True, Butler. A deal’s happened since yesterday. And I don’t see the end of the traverse yet.’
‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘you are frightfully tired. Oh, Bates,’ he cried passionately, ‘think of what this lady has undergone for me and is still undergoing! So good, so loyal, so—so——’ His voice broke, he ceased, and I put my arm round his neck. ‘Dearest,’ he said, after a minute or two, ‘we’ll find a spare sail and make you a bed in that house there.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. Let me be with you till we are sure that all’s well.’
‘All is well.’
‘I’ll wait for daybreak,’ said I. ‘I want to know the convict ship’s out of sight.’
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.
When we saw that the ocean was bare, we gazed with curiosity at the little ship we were aboard of. Tom told Bates that he reckoned her about two hundred tons. I have her before me as though I stood on her deck at this moment. She was brig-rigged. Her lower masts were painted white. Her bulwarks were tall and pierced for six guns, three of a side. She carried, however, but two small carronades, one on either hand amidships, and a small pivoted brass piece on her forecastle. The inside of her bulwarks was painted green; the planks of the deck were white; and she looked a very staunch, strong, clean little ship. A tiny caboose stood just abaft the forecastle. Her long-boat was gone, and she was without a boat. The after-part of her deck was filled with a long house, with a narrow gangway on either side to enable you to pass aft. This house sparkled with little windows; it was painted white and green, and a short flight of steps conducted you to the roof, that was somewhat elegantly protected by a brass rail. Everything that met the eye was fine and smart. The harness cask, for instance, was handsome and hooped with brass; the binnacle was as pretty a quarter-deck ornament as ever I saw; the rigging was good, the sails fairly new, and all things in their place. The keen eyes of Tom and Mr. Bates found nothing amiss anywhere. Yet she had a somewhat mildewed look, as of a craft that had been for some time drifting about without men, and in a short hencoop on the main-deck lay eight or nine dead cocks and hens.
Tom overhung her side, and said that she was black, with a gilt line running her length. He sounded the well when the light came, and found the water exactly at the height at which it had stood when they had left off pumping.
‘Bates,’ said he, ‘we’ll get that quarter-boat aboard presently. First let’s overhaul the vessel and see what sort of yarn about herself she can spin us. Will, hold the wheel. My lad, you look half dead; you used not to look so when we went our walks with Marian. You shall take rest soon—but there’s something to be done first.’
He picked up my bundle of clothes off the deck, and I and Mr. Bates followed him into the deck-house.
Here all was as bright and clean as though the brig were fresh from the hands of the artificers. The sunshine streamed through a central skylight. I counted six cabin-doors, three of a side. The furniture consisted of an oblong table, chairs, a couple of lamps, a tell-tale compass, and other such matters. The first thing that took our sight was a large square of paper nailed to the table. It was the back of a white chart, and upon it was a quantity of writing in a large, sprawling hand. Tom twisted it round without pulling it from the nail, and the mate and I stood beside him and gazed at the giant missive. Close to where the paper was perforated was the drawing of a coffin; upon the coffin lid in relief was sketched the figure of a man. The face of the man was undoubtedly a portrait. It was a rude performance, but good. To the left was a skull, well done; to the right, cross-bones. Under ‘To all concerned,’ Tom read aloud:
‘This brig is the Old Stormy, of Liverpool, bound to Cape Town with a small general cargo. John Wilson, master (his portrait’s on the coffin); William Nash, mate, now mince-mate, and thanks be to God for the smallest kindness shown to sailors.
‘We sailed out of the Mersey. Our ship’s company was five seamen and a cook. The provisions were middling good till we got out to sea, then the little that was sweet had been scoffed, and what came next was rot and stench—rot in the bread-bag where the worms were and stench in the harness cask where the meat was.
‘We had been promised a daily allowance of rum. Clear of Soundings the rum gave out. The captain said there had been a mistake in the shipping of the stuff, and we got no more.
‘But what was this to his and the mate’s usage of us? To you, if it concerns you, the bleeding mongrel, half-stripped by the mange, gone mad and chased with pitchfork and brickbat, was tenderly served, compared with us forecastle hands.
‘Yet we kept all on turning to, and we endured till patience dropped dead and Cain stepped aboard. It happened just to the nor’ard of the Equator, and when it was over there were six pale men left, but never a thumb-nail width of mess. No, and there’d been no noise. No, and swift was the job. Next thing to be done was to get away out of it. Vom-us! was the word. Not a man could measure the sun’s height, so we’ve agreed to go. And our reasons are twenty. You, if you’re concerned, find them out. So here I sit, on a Friday night, writing this down as a warning with a moral in its tail: Take heed, all you ruffian skippers and mates, how you ill-treat good men.
‘W. M., A.B.’
Tom ceased, and we looked at one another.
‘The man who wrote that never sailed in a ship’s forecastle,’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Why not?’ said Tom. ‘There was a University man before the mast in one of my ships. Is it the education here that palls ye? I believe every word of it.’
‘Butler, the brig’s been boarded,’ said Mr. Bates, ‘and found abandoned, and some joker scrawled out this piece of humour before leaving.’
‘I believe every word of it,’ repeated Tom, running his eye over this huge ocean address to those concerned. ‘How long would it take you to draw those things and think and write this out? No man would come prepared with it. Where’d he get the facts? We’ll look for the papers.’ He tried to draw the nail, broke the sheet from it, glanced at the other side (the Portuguese coast) and rolled it up.
The foremost berth on the port side had been the captain’s. Seemingly nothing had been touched. Some clothes hung against the bulkhead; there was bedding in the narrow fore and aft bunk. All the necessary appliances for the navigation of the vessel were here: Two good chronometers snugly stowed in hair in a locker, a sextant and a quadrant, mathematical instruments, such charts as the voyage might demand, and the needful navigating books. A little hinged table stood open in a corner; upon it was a plain writing-desk with the key in the lock, and inside a parcel of letters in a woman’s writing, some note-paper and a bag of sovereigns, which Tom counted and made twenty-two.
‘Where’s the log-book?’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Here’ll be her papers,’ said Tom, after opening a locker.
He pulled out a tin box and read the papers with the quickness of a man used to such documents.
‘This is the brig Old Stormy,’ said he. ‘Two hundred and twelve tons—cargo consigned to Cape Town—a rich freight!’ he added, whistling low, ‘pianos, pictures, vases, books, furniture, clocks, ornaments, clothes, and linen.’
Then he read out by whom the goods had been shipped, and to whom they were consigned. The name of the master was John Wilson, of the mate William Nash, and W. M. might be the seaman down as William Metcalfe.
The berth opposite had been the mate’s; here was found the vessel’s log-book, from the last entry in which we discovered that the Old Stormy had been abandoned about a fortnight since, a few leagues north of the Equator, so that she had drifted in that time to the southward through several degrees of latitude. This might very well have happened, seeing the canvas she was under. Two berths on the port side were empty, though equipped for use. I mean there were bunks and the other berth furniture. On the starboard side the two cabins abaft the mate’s we found respectively fitted as a store-room and pantry. All the provisions for cabin use appeared to have been stowed in the store-room, and the little pantry was as well-stocked in crockery, glass, and the like as the Childe Harold’s before the convicts broke it up.
This survey was quickly made. Tom said:
‘There’s plenty to eat for four people and good rooms to sleep in. What’ll be the stock of fresh water? That’s next with us, Bates. Then pump her out and whip the quarter-boat aboard.’
‘It’s a solemn and wonderful deliverance,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates.
‘It’s lucky,’ said Tom, coldly. He looked at the mate and burst out fiercely: ‘Get sentenced as an innocent man to the hulks, and all the gratitude you’ll be capable of afterward shall fill the skin of a flea.’ Then controlling himself he added: ‘You’ll have been a reader of the shipping papers in your day, Bates. There’s nothing of the miraculous in the derelict. How many after this and bigger patterns are fallen in within a year?’ He then said to me: ‘Marian, here are your clothes. Which cabin do you choose?’
‘Choose one for me, Tom.’
‘The best,’ said he; and he carried my bundle into the cabin which we had first explored.
I said nothing; his will was my law; he could have broken my heart by a fierce look or an angry speech.
‘You have worn this masquerade too long,’ said he, putting his hand upon it. ‘It unsexes my noble girl. Here is everything for comfort. I will fetch you water. I want to see my Marian refreshed and dressed—my proud and handsome girl again—as she was when I deserved her.’
‘Tom, you thank me sadly for following you. Deserve me! Never was man loved as you are now. And you reproach me for following you? Suppose I had taken the next ship. The outbreak has happened in the meantime. We should have been separated for ever.’
‘I’d have found you! I’d have found you!’ he cried, passionately pulling me to him and kissing me, heedless of Mr. Bates, who stood in the open door looking about him; but, indeed, I minded as little as Tom that the mate should see us.
My sweetheart went out, and presently returned with a bucket of sparkling brine.
‘Now, Marian,’ said he, ‘see to yourself whilst we see to the brig. Come along, Bates. She’s but two hundred and twelve tons, and there are three of us.’