The salt water refreshed me greatly, and my cheeks burned like roses and my eyes shone when I had dried myself. A square of mirror hung near the washstand. I had thought to see myself looking ill and yellow and wretched; and my breast swelled at sight of my handsome, sparkling face, so proud did my beauty make me feel for Tom’s sake.
And yet I was now grown so used to my male attire that when I had clothed myself in my Woolwich dress, as I call it—and scarcely less strange than my own were the fortunes of this bundle of apparel—I found myself very uneasy. I missed the freedom of my legs. I don’t wonder that women should struggle from time to time to invent a dress that gives their limbs the liberty which men enjoy. However, I clothed myself very carefully, and when I had put on my hat I thought I looked the saucier and more piquant for my hair being cropped short. Do not call this egotism. It is my way of telling the story. I who relate it am old, and my youth and beauty are as the dust of half a century.
When I was dressed I stepped out to be of help. Will was at the little wheel in front of the house. He gave a jump and his dear face brightened up.
‘Hang me,’ he cried, ‘if that dress don’t bring Stepney close aboard! It is but a step to the Tower, surely! And when my trick’s up we’ll go a-rambling Epping way.’
Tom and the mate were at work at the pump. Tom kissed his hand and the mate lifted his cap. A few minutes later the water ceased to flow.
‘A tight little ship!’ cried Tom; and he and Mr. Bates came to me.
‘D’ye remember her now, Bates?’ said my sweetheart, looking at me proudly and with love.
‘Yes. And to think that I should have bullied you on the poop, Miss Johnstone, when your cousin brought you to ask me for a bed! I beg your pardon now,’ said the worthy fellow, and he slowly bowed low.
‘Marian,’ said Tom, ‘I wished you to rest; but you look so brisk I’ll allow you to keep awake for another hour. Hold this little wheel and keep the brig’s head just as it is. There’s much for the three of us to do, and, chiefest of all, there’s breakfast to get.’
I took the wheel and they went to work, and first they got the quarter-boat’s sail out of her and stretched it over my head as a shelter from the sun. This done, they hoisted the quarter-boat. Will found the carpenter’s chest, split up some wood, went into the fore-peak for coal and lighted the galley fire. Whilst this was doing Tom and Bates searched the brig and found her stock of fresh water in a considerable quantity just under the main-hatch. They explored the forecastle, but met with nothing to tell them whether the story on the cabin table was true or not. The sailors had left their blankets, but taken their traps. They were British sailors, and the weight of their clothes was not very likely to imperil the safety of the boat.
The morning was brilliantly beautiful; the breeze almost astern, the swell on the quarter, and the brig softly and silently rippled onward, gently heaving and breathing as she went, as she lifted with the long ocean folds flowing in pale blue out of the north-west. I found it easy to steer. The little vessel, like a thoroughbred to the lightest pressure of its rein, answered to a movement of the spokes; I held the course as I found it dead to the lubber’s mark; indeed, I think it is easier to steer with a wheel than a tiller.
I sank into a deep reflection over what had passed since yester-morning. Did I feel grateful for the mercies vouchsafed—mercies linked like miracles, so wonderfully and inexpressibly fortunate to us had the incidents since the outbreak proved in their succession down to this, our lighting upon an equipped, well-stocked, sound, and abandoned vessel? I fear I was not grateful. I did not lift up my heart in a single syllable of thanks. My spirit was savage with memory, spite of our gracious and consoling fortune; my passion for Tom overmastered me; as he felt, so I felt; what was in his mind that I could find in his eyes and speech instantly filled and possessed my own mind. Had he knelt in prayer I should have knelt; but he had told Mr. Bates that gratitude lay dead in him, so it slept in me. Luck had befallen us; but so much had gone before which was not luck, except it were of the devil’s sort, that I raged when I thought of it, and felt that nothing ever could happen good enough to thank Heaven for.
Will, who acted as cook this first morning, prepared a tolerable breakfast. Coffee had been found and marmalade; the lad fried a dish of the Childe Harold’s ham, and these things with biscuit and sugar furnished us with a meal. The provisions we had brought with us from the convict ship had been stowed by Bates and Tom in the store-room. Had we met with nothing on board, that stock we had come with would have lasted a month or six weeks.
I spied three eggs amongst the dead hens in the coop, and told Mr. Bates of them; they were the last efforts of the poor, unhappy, starved poultry. The mate wondered that the rats had spared them and the birds. He picked them up and Will cooked them, and they proved—ah! I laughed to see Mr. Bates holding his nose and throwing the cocks and hens overboard; such work fitted ill with the dignity of a man who was just now chief officer of one of the finest of the Blackwall liners.
That we might break our fast together whilst one of us steered, the dishes and cups were set upon the deck and we used our knees for tables. The brig went along so quietly that you could let go of the wheel for minutes at a time, without a quarter-point of deflection in the compass bearing. We were hungry and thirsty; the boat’s sail overhead cast a pleasant shade upon us; the breeze blew through the little gangway on either hand of the house and fanned us whilst we breakfasted.
Mr. Bates and Will talked much of the convict ship, of the chance of her people, and the like. Tom sat quiet, and I thought moody. Often he fastened his eyes upon me, but with a look as though he saw something beyond. I feared that he was overwrought and dead wearied, and I longed to pillow his head on my arm that I might watch him sleeping. All on a sudden he flushed up and, with a hard, small, satiric smile, whilst his eyes seemed to brighten into fire as though taking light from the contrast of the blood in his cheeks, he cried:
‘Bates—but what right have I to call you Bates? I should “mister” you, hey?’
‘Oh, Tom, dear!’ I exclaimed.
‘Why, see here, now,’ he continued, and he spoke fiercely: ‘I’m a convict, Bates. There’s no getting away from that. Do you call this liberty? No more than the liberty of a wretch who breaks from a hulk, who’s a convict while he swims, who’s a convict when he lands, who goes to his grave a convict, though he keeps free.’
The mate looked at me with alarm.
‘You’re a good fellow. I believe,’ Tom went on, ‘and you think me a wronged, innocent man. But I’m a convict always. Why, haven’t you watched me whilst I tramped in a gang to the tune of a fiddle, watched me at a felon’s work about the deck of the ship you were chief mate of, watched me with the irons upon my legs as I shuffled out of the hatch to the cries of a brother-convict? You’re a respectable man—oh, very respectable! So was I once, but they swore my liberty and honour away and broke my heart. Doesn’t this association with a convict and his familiar accost of you as “Bates” shock your respectability?’
I could not bear his wild looks nor to hear more. I flung my arms round his neck and burst into tears.
‘Butler,’ said the mate, ‘this is uncalled-for. What you were when I first knew you, you still are. A more honourable heart never beat in a sailor’s breast. Did they make me a convict yesterday by clothing me as one? No more they made you a malefactor by sentencing you. Soothe the poor lady and give me your hand, old man.’
I drew my arms from Tom. He took the mate’s hand and stooped his head to it. Will, whose face worked with sympathy and distress, motioned to me as though he would have me give my sweetheart time to rally. Presently Tom lifted his face. Tears were in his eyes, likewise an expression that warned me not to seem to heed him. The mate, with the tact of a gentleman, talked to Will about Captain Sutherland, whose lady he knew. He named certain ships which Sutherland had commanded. Thus he gossiped on, meanwhile proceeding with his breakfast.
Tom got up and walked to the bulwarks, and stood looking at the sea over the rail. I watched him with impassionate anxiety. I could not gauge his mood, and knew not what dreadful impulse might suddenly govern him. He rejoined us, and said, looking at the mate:
‘Your wish, of course, is to return to your wife and children?’
‘No unnatural wish, I hope, Butler,’ answered Mr. Bates, forcing a laugh.
‘What is to be done?’ exclaimed Tom, measuring a short length of deck with swift paces. ‘There’s no home for me to return to. I hate the thought of England. Let me establish my innocence, and still I detest England.’
‘Establish your innocence,’ said the mate, ‘and they’ll grant you a free pardon, and the old country would be as it ever was to you.’
‘Grant me a free pardon!’ cried Tom, stopping in his walk and looking at the mate. ‘What am I to be pardoned for? Sins I never committed! Pardon me? Curse them! Where would I go? I must think. Give me a globe of the world. Stab through England—through the heart of that little bog of land that bands and irons and exiles its honourable toilers—and where the point comes on out t’other side is the spot I’d choose, if you grant me but a rock there to live on.’
‘My dear Butler,’ exclaimed Bates, ‘there is no need for me to assure you, I hope, that I quite see how you are situated. You have your liberty, and you must keep it.’
‘Aye, indeed!’ cried I.
‘You must sail to some place where you’ll be safe,’ continued the mate. ‘I owe you my life, and with your leave I’ll stick to you till I see you safe. We’re brother-sailors, Butler. I know what’s expected of me, and I know my own heart.’
‘Mr. Bates, I thank you,’ said I.
‘It won’t be human to carry you where I shall wish to go!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘They’ll get news of the convict ship at home, and your wife will think you dead. And, then, here’s Johnstone.’ He placed his hand upon the lad’s shoulder. ‘Must I carry him about with me till I’ve fixed a spot? He’s got a good home and fond parents. And then there’s his calling. Why, what kind of a precious outlook is this sort of thing for man, boy, or beast?’ he exclaimed, with a sneer.
‘It’s seeing the world,’ said Will.
Tom laughed, but with no face of merriment.
‘What place is in your mind, Butler?’ said the mate.
My sweetheart made no answer; his eyes were fixed upon me. Bates repeated his question, and still Tom gazed at me in silence.
‘Marian,’ said he presently, ‘you are with me, dearest. Is it your wish to remain with me?’
‘Where you go I must go, if you would not break my heart.’
‘What’s there to prevent your living in England, Captain Butler?’ here interrupted Will. ‘Aren’t there wilds and solitudes in England in which a man could burrow as secretly as in the loneliest island in the ocean?’
I frowned, observing Tom’s face, and bade the boy hold his tongue.
‘I’d run no risks if I were you, Butler,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘Would ye take a suggestion or two amiss?’
‘What d’ye want to say, Bates?’
‘You’ll want a place where there are no English. No need to lift the Southern Cross into view to find it.’ He looked at me. ‘There are scores of villages in Spain, away over in Austria and Hungary, down in Italy and other Mediterranean nations, in any one of which, under any sort of colour you choose to fly, you’d flourish as secure—you and this lady as your wife—as if you mined a lodging for yourselves in a Galapagos rock.’
‘We’ll not live in Europe,’ said I; ‘London is always too close there.’
‘London’s the safest place in the world to hide in,’ said Will.
‘Don’t talk of hiding,’ cried I, angrily.
‘Bates,’ said Tom, turning his eyes from me to the mate, ‘it’s under the Southern Cross you named just now that I mean to seek my lodging for life. Since it’s come to this, I would to God this lady were my wife. But it’s to be brought about. Patience! Patience! Oh, Bates, how often have I whispered this word “patience” to myself! But the consideration kinks the line for running, Bates. Long ago my mind was resolved that if ever I stole or got my liberty and had this true heart at my side, I’d dwell in the middle of the ocean in the very loneliest of the islands that are washed by salt water. D’ye know Tristan d’Acunha?’
‘Tristan d’Acunha!’ muttered Will, staring at me.
‘It’s inhabited,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been ashore there, talked with Corporal Glass, sat in his house, made him presents.’
‘An Englishman?’ said I.
‘Once an English soldier, getting on to be an old man now, Marian; ill of a cancer that will kill him; an honest man who’ll welcome us. But there’s no clergyman; there was none in my time.’
‘The Cape isn’t many weeks off,’ said Bates.
‘No, and that’s in my mind, too. There are parsons there,’ said Tom, ‘and vessels to carry us to the island again; you and Will ’ll take the salvage you’ll get on this brig at Cape Town, and so home.’
‘English men-of-war touch at Tristan,’ said Will.
‘One in about eighteen years; whalers often enough, Marian, to find us fresh safety in the South Seas should a fit of flitting take us. There are goods under here,’ said he, stamping the deck, ‘that’ll earn us a cordial hand-grip at Tristan. They’ll represent my share of the salvage. Why, it’s right that a convict should take what he wants, hey, Bates? My life will be in your hands, of course.’
‘I wish there was no other risk,’ said the mate.
‘Marian, this is not my scheme of this moment,’ said Tom, sitting down beside me. ‘I found it there,’ said he, pointing to the sea and meaning the convict ship. ‘But a new thought has come out of Bates’s words; we’ll touch at the island and I’ll have a talk with Glass, get help to carry us to a port, and we’ll return in a hired craft man and wife.’
I gave him my hand to hold; I could have wept with happiness to hear him talk thus. I had feared throughout that, loving me too well to yoke me to his fate, he would oblige me to go home with Will and the mate, and hide himself alone.
‘Are you in earnest, Butler?’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Brutally in earnest.’
‘Saints, Marian! What’ll father and mother think to hear of you as living on Tristan d’Acunha?’ cried Will.
‘That’s where it is!’ exclaimed Tom fiercely, rounding upon the boy, ‘I shan’t be safe!’
‘Not as my cousin’s husband?’ said Will. ‘Who’d talk?’
I frowned to silence him. I wanted no ill feeling between these two.
‘Who’s this Glass you speak of, Butler?’ said the mate.
‘When Cloete’s garrison was withdrawn, Glass was left as a volunteer in charge of a wreck and some military stores. That was in ’24. Two seamen of the St. Helena squadron settled on the island with him. You know, of course, that Tristan was occupied by a detachment of our artillery while Bonaparte was at St. Helena?’
‘Where did they find wives?’ said the mate.
‘Glass brought a mulatto woman from the Cape; the other settlers got negresses from St. Helena. The population was about forty when I was there; though some of the women are well-built and handsome, their complexions run from milk to chocolate.’
‘Suppose the convicts steer foul of the island,’ said Will.
‘Any houses?’ said the mate.
‘Cottages. They build them with blocks of lava.’
‘What’s to eat there?’ inquired the mate, who listened with a sober face of interest.
‘I can’t tell off-hand; fish and potatoes, I know; there’s a little fruit; they grow crops, and Glass told me of a number of wild goats and spoke of so many heads of cattle belonging to some of the people, along with poultry and pigs.’
‘We shan’t starve,’ said I, laughing.
‘There’s over eight thousand feet high of rock for me to hide under, Marian; and away down in the mightiest of all ocean solitudes too—’twixt the two Capes—and the climate’s delicious.’
‘Who’ll cash cheques there for you, Marian?’ said Will.
‘Tom,’ said I, ‘one question I’ll ask—what’ll be your story to the Governor Glass?’
‘Ay,’ said he, ‘that’ll be for you and me to think out. Bates, there may be fifty respectable reasons why a man should loathe what’s called his native country and expatriate himself. Or call it a whim. My wife and I,’ said he, fondling my hand and faintly smiling as he looked at me, ‘have a mind to live in mid-ocean. Whose business but ours is that? I’ve lost my ship. I’m a broken-hearted bankrupt. Who’ll give me the lie? My brave girl loves me, and nothing must separate us. And so, Governor Glass, I say, with your good leave, I’ll sail away and get married, and come back to you with my bride. Eh!’ he cried, looking eagerly and hotly from Bates to Will. ‘There’s no lie there, I believe?’
‘Why, sir, you have the yarn!’ exclaimed my cousin.
‘Johnstone spoke of cashing a cheque at Tristan,’ said Bates, with a grin, which vanished in an earnest look. ‘I shall get home, I hope, and if I can be of the least use——’
‘Oh, thank ye, Bates; thank ye,’ interrupted Tom. ‘We’re bound to go to civilisation to get married, you know, and there’ll be Miss Johnstone’s opportunity for making the arrangements she may think proper.’
The mate gravely bowed his head.
‘Marian, get to your cabin, dearest, and rest,’ said Tom.
He rose, and I rose instantly with him. He took me by the hand, and we entered the berth he had bid me use. He tossed the bedding out of the bunk, leaving the mattress, which was new and clean.
‘Sleep, dear one,’ said he. ‘God knows you need it.’
I was about to speak. He checked me, and said that rest was needful; that there was work to be done outside; that if he began to talk he’d keep me waking for hours, so full was his mind; then kissed and left me.