Between the Scenes—The Landing Stage
Chapter 5.
The morning of the next day—the morning on which the ships were to sail—came bright and breezy. Mrs. Crayford, having arranged to follow her husband to the water-side, and see the last of him before he embarked, entered Clara’s room on her way out of the house, anxious to hear how her young friend passed the night. To her astonishment she found Clara had risen, and was dressed, like herself, to go out.
“What does this mean, my dear? After what you suffered last night—after the shock of seeing that man—why don’t you take my advice and rest in your bed?”
“I can’t rest. I have not slept all night. Have you been out yet?”
“No.”
“Have you seen or heard anything of Richard Wardour?”
“What an extraordinary question!”
“Answer my question! Don’t trifle with me!”
“Compose yourself, Clara. I have neither seen nor heard anything of Richard Wardour. Take my word for it, he is far enough away by this time.”
“No! He is here! He is near us! All night long the presentiment has pursued me—Frank and Richard Wardour will meet.”
“My dear child! what are you thinking of? They are total strangers to each other.”
“Something will happen to bring them together. I feel it! I know it! They will meet—there will be a mortal quarrel between them—and I shall be to blame. Oh, Lucy! why didn’t I take your advice? Why was I mad enough to let Frank know that I loved him? Are you going to the landing-stage? I am all ready—I must go with you.”
“You must not think of it, Clara. There will be crowding and confusion at the water-side. You are not strong enough to bear it. Wait—I won’t be long away—wait till I come back.”
“I must and will go with you! Crowd? He will be among the crowd! Confusion? In that confusion he will find his way to Frank! Don’t ask me to wait. I shall go mad if I wait. I shall not know a moment’s ease until I have seen Frank, with my own eyes, safe in the boat which takes him to his ship! You have got your bonnet on; what are we stopping here for? Come! or I shall go without you. Look at the clock; we have not a moment to lose!”
It was useless to contend with her. Mrs. Crayford yielded. The two women left the house together.
The landing-stage, as Mrs. Crayford had predicted, was thronged with spectators. Not only the relatives and friends of the Arctic voyagers, but strangers as well, had assembled in large numbers to see the ships sail. Clara’s eyes wandered affrightedly hither and thither among the strange faces in the crowd; searching for the one face that she dreaded to see, and not finding it. So completely were her nerves unstrung, that she started with a cry of alarm on suddenly hearing Frank’s voice behind her.
“The Sea-mew’s boats are waiting,” he said. “I must go, darling. How pale you are looking, Clara! Are you ill?”
She never answered. She questioned him with wild eyes and trembling lips.
“Has anything happened to you, Frank? anything out of the common?”
Frank laughed at the strange question.
“Anything out of the common?” he repeated. “Nothing that I know of, except sailing for the Arctic seas. That’s out of the common, I suppose—isn’t it?”
“Has anybody spoken to you since last night? Has any stranger followed you in the street?”
Frank turned in blank amazement to Mrs. Crayford.
“What on earth does she mean?”
Mrs. Crayford’s lively invention supplied her with an answer on the spur of the moment.
“Do you believe in dreams, Frank? Of course you don’t! Clara has been dreaming about you; and Clara is foolish enough to believe in dreams. That’s all—it’s not worth talking about. Hark! they are calling you. Say good-by, or you will be too late for the boat.”
Frank took Clara’s hand. Long afterward—in the dark Arctic days, in the dreary Arctic nights—he remembered how coldly and how passively that hand lay in his.
“Courage, Clara!” he said, gayly. “A sailor’s sweetheart must accustom herself to partings. The time will soon pass. Good-by, my darling! Good-by, my wife!”
He kissed the cold hand; he looked his last—for many a long year, perhaps!—at the pale and beautiful face. “How she loves me!” he thought. “How the parting distresses her!” He still held her hand; he would have lingered longer, if Mrs. Crayford had not wisely waived all ceremony and pushed him away.
The two ladies followed him at a safe distance through the crowd, and saw him step into the boat. The oars struck the water; Frank waved his cap to Clara. In a moment more a vessel at anchor hid the boat from view. They had seen the last of him on his way to the Frozen Deep!
“No Richard Wardour in the boat,” said Mrs. Crayford. “No Richard Wardour on the shore. Let this be a lesson to you, my dear. Never be foolish enough to believe in presentiments again.”
Clara’s eyes still wandered suspiciously to and fro among the crowd.
“Are you not satisfied yet?” asked Mrs. Crayford.
“No,” Clara answered, “I am not satisfied yet.”
“What! still looking for him? This is really too absurd. Here is my husband coming. I shall tell him to call a cab, and send you home.”
Clara drew back a few steps.
“I won’t be in the way, Lucy, while you are taking leave of your good husband,” she said. “I will wait here.”
“Wait here! What for?”
“For something which I may yet see; or for something which I may still hear.”
“Richard Wardour?”
“Richard Wardour.”
Mrs. Crayford turned to her husband without another word. Clara’s infatuation was beyond the reach of remonstrance.
The boats of the Wanderer took the place at the landing-stage vacated by the boats of the Sea-mew. A burst of cheering among the outer ranks of the crowd announced the arrival of the commander of the expedition on the scene. Captain Helding appeared, looking right and left for his first lieutenant. Finding Crayford with his wife, the captain made his apologies for interfering, with his best grace.
“Give him up to his professional duties for one minute, Mrs. Crayford, and you shall have him back again for half an hour. The Arctic expedition is to blame, my dear lady—not the captain—for parting man and wife. In Crayford’s place, I should have left it to the bachelors to find the Northwest Passage, and have stopped at home with you!”
Excusing himself in those bluntly complimentary terms, Captain Helding drew the lieutenant aside a few steps, accidentally taking a direction that led the two officers close to the place at which Clara was standing. Both the captain and the lieutenant were too completely absorbed in their professional business to notice her. Neither the one nor the other had the faintest suspicion that she could and did hear every word of the talk that passed between them.
“You received my note this morning?” the captain began.
“Certainly, Captain Helding, or I should have been on board the ship before this.”
“I am going on board myself at once,” the captain proceeded, “but I must ask you to keep your boat waiting for half an hour more. You will be all the longer with your wife, you know. I thought of that, Crayford.”
“I am much obliged to you, Captain Helding. I suppose there is some other reason for inverting the customary order of things, and keeping the lieutenant on shore after the captain is on board?”
“Quite true! there is another reason. I want you to wait for a volunteer who has just joined us.”
“A volunteer!”
“Yes. He has his outfit to get in a hurry, and he may be half an hour late.”
“It’s rather a sudden appointment, isn’t it?”
“No doubt. Very sudden.”
“And—pardon me—it’s rather a long time (as we are situated) to keep the ships waiting for one man?”
“Quite true, again. But a man who is worth having is worth waiting for. This man is worth having; this man is worth his weight in gold to such an expedition as ours. Seasoned to all climates and all fatigues—a strong fellow, a brave fellow, a clever fellow—in short, an excellent officer. I know him well, or I should never have taken him. The country gets plenty of work out of my new volunteer, Crayford. He only returned yesterday from foreign service.”
“He only returned yesterday from foreign service! And he volunteers this morning to join the Arctic expedition? You astonish me.”
“I dare say I do! You can’t be more astonished than I was, when he presented himself at my hotel and told me what he wanted. ‘Why, my good fellow, you have just got home,’ I said. ‘Are you weary of your freedom, after only a few hours’ experience of it?’ His answer rather startled me. He said, ‘I am weary of my life, sir. I have come home and found a trouble to welcome me, which goes near to break my heart. If I don’t take refuge in absence and hard work, I am a lost man. Will you give me a refuge?’ That’s what he said, Crayford, word for word.”
“Did you ask him to explain himself further?”
“Not I! I knew his value, and I took the poor devil on the spot, without pestering him with any more questions. No need to ask him to explain himself. The facts speak for themselves in these cases. The old story, my good friend! There’s a woman at the bottom of it, of course.”
Mrs. Crayford, waiting for the return of her husband as patiently as she could, was startled by feeling a hand suddenly laid on her shoulder. She looked round, and confronted Clara. Her first feeling of surprise changed instantly to alarm. Clara was trembling from head to foot.
“What is the matter? What has frightened you, my dear?”
“Lucy! I have heard of him!”
“Richard Wardour again?”
“Remember what I told you. I have heard every word of the conversation between Captain Helding and your husband. A man came to the captain this morning and volunteered to join the Wanderer. The captain has taken him. The man is Richard Wardour.”
“You don’t mean it! Are you sure? Did you hear Captain Helding mention his name?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s Richard Wardour?”
“Don’t ask me! I am as certain of it, as that I am standing here! They are going away together, Lucy—away to the eternal ice and snow. My foreboding has come true! The two will meet—the man who is to marry me and the man whose heart I have broken!”
“Your foreboding has not come true, Clara! The men have not met here—the men are not likely to meet elsewhere. They are appointed to separate ships. Frank belongs to the Sea-mew, and Wardour to the Wanderer. See! Captain Helding has done. My husband is coming this way. Let me make sure. Let me speak to him.”
Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife. She spoke to him instantly.
“William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the Wanderer?”
“What! you have been listening to the captain and me?”
“I want to know his name?”
“How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each other?”
“His name? has the captain given you his name?”
“Don’t excite yourself, my dear. Look! you are positively alarming Miss Burnham. The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to us. There is his name—last on the ship’s list.”
Mrs. Crayford snatched the list out of her husband’s hand, and read the name:
Second Scene—The Hut of the Sea-mew.
Chapter 6.
Good-by to England! Good-by to inhabited and civilized regions of the earth!
Two years have passed since the voyagers sailed from their native shores. The enterprise has failed—the Arctic expedition is lost and ice-locked in the Polar wastes. The good ships Wanderer and Sea-mew, entombed in ice, will never ride the buoyant waters more. Stripped of their lighter timbers, both vessels have been used for the construction of huts, erected on the nearest land.
The largest of the two buildings which now shelter the lost men is occupied by the surviving officers and crew of the Sea-mew. On one side of the principal room are the sleeping berths and the fire-place. The other side discloses a broad doorway (closed by a canvas screen), which serves as a means of communication with an inner apartment, devoted to the superior officers. A hammock is slung to the rough raftered roof of the main room, as an extra bed. A man, completely hidden by his bedclothes, is sleeping in the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside the lonely dwelling—no cry of bird or beast is heard. Indoors, and out-of-doors, the awful silence of the Polar desert reigns, for the moment, undisturbed.
Chapter 7.
The first sound that broke the silence came from the inner apartment. An officer lifted the canvas screen in the hut of the Sea-mew and entered the main room. Cold and privation had badly thinned the ranks. The commander of the ship—Captain Ebsworth—was dangerously ill. The first lieutenant was dead. An officer of the Wanderer filled their places for the time, with Captain Helding’s permission. The officer so employed was—Lieutenant Crayford.
He approached the man at the fireside, and awakened him.
“Jump up, Bateson! It’s your turn to be relieved.”
The relief appeared, rising from a heap of old sails at the back of the hut. Bateson vanished, yawning, to his bed. Lieutenant Crayford walked backward and forward briskly, trying what exercise would do toward warming his blood.
The pestle and mortar on the cask attracted his attention. He stopped and looked up at the man in the hammock.
“I must rouse the cook,” he said to himself, with a smile. “That fellow little thinks how useful he is in keeping up my spirits. The most inveterate croaker and grumbler in the world—and yet, according to his own account, the only cheerful man in the whole ship’s company. John Want! John Want! Rouse up, there!”
A head rose slowly out of the bedclothes, covered with a red night-cap. A melancholy nose rested itself on the edge of the hammock. A voice, worthy of the nose, expressed its opinion of the Arctic climate, in these words:
“Lord! Lord! here’s all my breath on my blanket. Icicles, if you please, sir, all round my mouth and all over my blanket. Every time I have snored, I’ve frozen something. When a man gets the cold into him to that extent that he ices his own bed, it can’t last much longer. Never mind! I don’t grumble.”
Crayford tapped the saucepan of bones impatiently. John Want lowered himself to the floor—grumbling all the way—by a rope attached to the rafters at his bed head. Instead of approaching his superior officer and his saucepan, he hobbled, shivering, to the fire-place, and held his chin as close as he possibly could over the fire. Crayford looked after him.
“Halloo! what are you doing there?”
“Thawing my beard, sir.”
“Come here directly, and set to work on these bones.”
John Want remained immovably attached to the fire-place, holding something else over the fire. Crayford began to lose his temper.
“What the devil are you about now?”
“Thawing my watch, sir. It’s been under my pillow all night, and the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of climate to live in; isn’t it, sir? Never mind! I don’t grumble.”
“No, we all know that. Look here! Are these bones pounded small enough?”
John Want suddenly approached the lieutenant, and looked at him with an appearance of the deepest interest.
“You’ll excuse me, sir,” he said; “how very hollow your voice sounds this morning!”
“Never mind my voice. The bones! the bones!”
“Yes, sir—the bones. They’ll take a trifle more pounding. I’ll do my best with them, sir, for your sake.”
“What do you mean?”
John Want shook his head, and looked at Crayford with a dreary smile.
“I don’t think I shall have the honor of making much more bone soup for you, sir. Do you think yourself you’ll last long, sir? I don’t, saving your presence. I think about another week or ten days will do for us all. Never mind! I don’t grumble.”
He poured the bones into the mortar, and began to pound them—under protest. At the same moment a sailor appeared, entering from the inner hut.
“A message from Captain Ebsworth, sir.”
“Well?”
“The captain is worse than ever with his freezing pains, sir. He wants to see you immediately.”
“I will go at once. Rouse the doctor.”
Answering in those terms, Crayford returned to the inner hut, followed by the sailor. John Want shook his head again, and smiled more drearily than ever.
“Rouse the doctor?” he repeated. “Suppose the doctor should be frozen? He hadn’t a ha’porth of warmth in him last night, and his voice sounded like a whisper in a speaking-trumpet. Will the bones do now? Yes, the bones will do now. Into the saucepan with you,” cried John Want, suiting the action to the word, “and flavor the hot water if you can! When I remember that I was once an apprentice at a pastry-cook’s—when I think of the gallons of turtle-soup that this hand has stirred up in a jolly hot kitchen—and when I find myself mixing bones and hot water for soup, and turning into ice as fast as I can; if I wasn’t of a cheerful disposition I should feel inclined to grumble. John Want! John Want! whatever had you done with your natural senses when you made up your mind to go to sea?”
A new voice hailed the cook, speaking from one of the bed-places in the side of the hut. It was the voice of Francis Aldersley.
“Who’s that croaking over the fire?”
“Croaking?” repeated John Want, with the air of a man who considered himself the object of a gratuitous insult. “Croaking? You don’t find your own voice at all altered for the worse—do you, Mr. Frank? I don’t give him,” John proceeded, speaking confidentially to himself, “more than six hours to last. He’s one of your grumblers.”
“What are you doing there?” asked Frank.
“I’m making bone soup, sir, and wondering why I ever went to sea.”
“Well, and why did you go to sea?”
“I’m not certain, Mr. Frank. Sometimes I think it was natural perversity; sometimes I think it was false pride at getting over sea-sickness; sometimes I think it was reading ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and books warning of me not to go to sea.”
Frank laughed. “You’re an odd fellow. What do you mean by false pride at getting over sea-sickness? Did you get over sea-sickness in some new way?”
John Want’s dismal face brightened in spite of himself. Frank had recalled to the cook’s memory one of the noteworthy passages in the cook’s life.
“That’s it, sir!” he said. “If ever a man cured sea-sickness in a new way yet, I am that man—I got over it, Mr. Frank, by dint of hard eating. I was a passenger on board a packet-boat, sir, when first I saw blue water. A nasty lopp of a sea came on at dinner-time, and I began to feel queer the moment the soup was put on the table. ‘Sick?’ says the captain. ‘Rather, sir,’ says I. ‘Will you try my cure?’ says the captain. ‘Certainly, sir,’ says I. ‘Is your heart in your mouth yet?’ says the captain. ‘Not quite, sir,’ says I. ‘Mock-turtle soup?’ says the captain, and helps me. I swallow a couple of spoonfuls, and turn as white as a sheet. The captain cocks his eye at me. ‘Go on deck, sir,’ says he; ‘get rid of the soup, and then come back to the cabin.’ I got rid of the soup, and came back to the cabin. ‘Cod’s head-and-shoulders,’ says the captain, and helps me. ‘I can’t stand it, sir,’ says I. ‘You must,’ says the captain, ‘because it’s the cure.’ I crammed down a mouthful, and turned paler than ever. ‘Go on deck,’ says the captain. ‘Get rid of the cod’s head, and come back to the cabin.’ Off I go, and back I come. ‘Boiled leg of mutton and trimmings,’ says the captain, and helps me. ‘No fat, sir,’ says I. ‘Fat’s the cure,’ says the captain, and makes me eat it. ‘Lean’s the cure,’ says the captain, and makes me eat it. ‘Steady?’ says the captain. ‘Sick,’ says I. ‘Go on deck,’ says the captain; ‘get rid of the boiled leg of mutton and trimmings and come back to the cabin.’ Off I go, staggering—back I come, more dead than alive. ‘Deviled kidneys,’ says the captain. I shut my eyes, and got ‘em down. ‘Cure’s beginning,’ says the captain. ‘Mutton-chop and pickles.’ I shut my eyes, and got them down. ‘Broiled ham and cayenne pepper,’ says the captain. ‘Glass of stout and cranberry tart. Want to go on deck again?’ ‘No, sir,’ says I. ‘Cure’s done,’ says the captain. ‘Never you give in to your stomach, and your stomach will end in giving in to you.’”
Having stated the moral purpose of his story in those unanswerable words, John Want took himself and his saucepan into the kitchen. A moment later, Crayford returned to the hut and astonished Frank Aldersley by an unexpected question.
“Have you anything in your berth, Frank, that you set a value on?”
“Nothing that I set the smallest value on—when I am out of it,” he replied. “What does your question mean?”
“We are almost as short of fuel as we are of provisions,” Crayford proceeded. “Your berth will make good firing. I have directed Bateson to be here in ten minutes with his ax.”
“Very attentive and considerate on your part,” said Frank. “What is to become of me, if you please, when Bateson has chopped my bed into fire-wood?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“I suppose the cold has stupefied me. The riddle is beyond my reading. Suppose you give me a hint?”
“Certainly. There will be beds to spare soon—there is to be a change at last in our wretched lives here. Do you see it now?”
Frank’s eyes sparkled. He sprang out of his berth, and waved his fur cap in triumph.
“See it?” he exclaimed; “of course I do! The exploring party is to start at last. Do I go with the expedition?”
“It is not very long since you were in the doctor’s hands, Frank,” said Crayford, kindly. “I doubt if you are strong enough yet to make one of the exploring party.”
“Strong enough or not,” returned Frank, “any risk is better than pining and perishing here. Put me down, Crayford, among those who volunteer to go.”
“Volunteers will not be accepted, in this case,” said Crayford. “Captain Helding and Captain Ebsworth see serious objections, as we are situated, to that method of proceeding.”
“Do they mean to keep the appointments in their own hands?” asked Frank. “I for one object to that.”
“Wait a little,” said Crayford. “You were playing backgammon the other day with one of the officers. Does the board belong to him or to you?”
“It belongs to me. I have got it in my locker here. What do you want with it?”
“I want the dice and the box for casting lots. The captains have arranged—most wisely, as I think—that Chance shall decide among us who goes with the expedition and who stays behind in the huts. The officers and crew of the Wanderer will be here in a few minutes to cast the lots. Neither you nor any one can object to that way of deciding among us. Officers and men alike take their chance together. Nobody can grumble.”
“I am quite satisfied,” said Frank. “But I know of one man among the officers who is sure to make objections.”
“Who is the man?”
“You know him well enough, too. The ‘Bear of the Expeditions’ Richard Wardour.”
“Frank! Frank! you have a bad habit of letting your tongue run away with you. Don’t repeat that stupid nickname when you talk of my good friend, Richard Wardour.”
“Your good friend? Crayford! your liking for that man amazes me.”
Crayford laid his hand kindly on Frank’s shoulder. Of all the officers of the Sea-mew, Crayford’s favorite was Frank.
“Why should it amaze you?” he asked. “What opportunities have you had of judging? You and Wardour have always belonged to different ships. I have never seen you in Wardour’s society for five minutes together. How can you form a fair estimate of his character?”
“I take the general estimate of his character,” Frank answered. “He has got his nickname because he is the most unpopular man in his ship. Nobody likes him—there must be some reason for that.”
“There is only one reason for it,” Crayford rejoined. “Nobody understands Richard Wardour. I am not talking at random. Remember, I sailed from England with him in the Wanderer; and I was only transferred to the Sea-mew long after we were locked up in the ice. I was Richard Wardour’s companion on board ship for months, and I learned there to do him justice. Under all his outward defects, I tell you, there beats a great and generous heart. Suspend your opinion, my lad, until you know my friend as well as I do. No more of this now. Give me the dice and the box.”
Frank opened his locker. At the same moment the silence of the snowy waste outside was broken by a shouting of voices hailing the hut—“Sea-mew, ahoy!”
Chapter 8.
The sailor on watch opened the outer door. There, plodding over the ghastly white snow, were the officers of the Wanderer approaching the hut. There, scattered under the merciless black sky, were the crew, with the dogs and the sledges, waiting the word which was to start them on their perilous and doubtful journey.
Captain Helding of the Wanderer, accompanied by his officers, entered the hut, in high spirits at the prospect of a change. Behind them, lounging in slowly by himself, was a dark, sullen, heavy-browed man. He neither spoke, nor offered his hand to anybody: he was the one person present who seemed to be perfectly indifferent to the fate in store for him. This was the man whom his brother officers had nicknamed the Bear of the Expedition. In other words—Richard Wardour.
Crayford advanced to welcome Captain Helding. Frank, remembering the friendly reproof which he had just received, passed over the other officers of the Wanderer, and made a special effort to be civil to Crayford’s friend.
“Good-morning, Mr. Wardour,” he said. “We may congratulate each other on the chance of leaving this horrible place.”
“You may think it horrible,” Wardour retorted; “I like it.”
“Like it? Good Heavens! why?”
“Because there are no women here.”
Frank turned to his brother officers, without making any further advances in the direction of Richard Wardour. The Bear of the Expedition was more unapproachable than ever.
In the meantime, the hut had become thronged by the able-bodied officers and men of the two ships. Captain Helding, standing in the midst of them, with Crayford by his side, proceeded to explain the purpose of the contemplated expedition to the audience which surrounded him.
He began in these words:
“Brother officers and men of the Wanderer and Sea-mew, it is my duty to tell you, very briefly, the reasons which have decided Captain Ebsworth and myself on dispatching an exploring party in search of help. Without recalling all the hardships we have suffered for the last two years—the destruction, first of one of our ships, then of the other; the death of some of our bravest and best companions; the vain battles we have been fighting with the ice and snow, and boundless desolation of these inhospitable regions—without dwelling on these things, it is my duty to remind you that this, the last place in which we have taken refuge, is far beyond the track of any previous expedition, and that consequently our chance of being discovered by any rescuing parties that may be sent to look after us is, to say the least of it, a chance of the most uncertain kind. You all agree with me, gentlemen, so far?”
The officers (with the exception of Wardour, who stood apart in sullen silence) all agreed, so far.
The captain went on.
“It is therefore urgently necessary that we should make another, and probably a last, effort to extricate ourselves. The winter is not far off, game is getting scarcer and scarcer, our stock of provisions is running low, and the sick—especially, I am sorry to say, the sick in the Wanderer’s hut—are increasing in number day by day. We must look to our own lives, and to the lives of those who are dependent on us; and we have no time to lose.”
The officers echoed the words cheerfully.
“Right! right! No time to lose.”
Captain Helding resumed:
“The plan proposed is, that a detachment of the able-bodied officers and men among us should set forth this very day, and make another effort to reach the nearest inhabited settlements, from which help and provisions may be dispatched to those who remain here. The new direction to be taken, and the various precautions to be adopted, are all drawn out ready. The only question now before us is, Who is to stop here, and who is to undertake the journey?”
The officers answered the question with one accord—“Volunteers!”
The men echoed their officers. “Ay, ay, volunteers.”
Wardour still preserved his sullen silence. Crayford noticed him. standing apart from the rest, and appealed to him personally.
“Do you say nothing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Wardour answered. “Go or stay, it’s all one to me.”
“I hope you don’t really mean that?” said Crayford.
“I do.”
“I am sorry to hear it, Wardour.”
Captain Helding answered the general suggestion in favor of volunteering by a question which instantly checked the rising enthusiasm of the meeting.
“Well,” he said, “suppose we say volunteers. Who volunteers to stop in the huts?”
There was a dead silence. The officers and men looked at each other confusedly. The captain continued:
“You see we can’t settle it by volunteering. You all want to go. Every man among us who has the use of his limbs naturally wants to go. But what is to become of those who have not got the use of their limbs? Some of us must stay here, and take care of the sick.”
Everybody admitted that this was true.
“So we get back again,” said the captain, “to the old question—Who among the able-bodied is to go? and who is to stay? Captain Ebsworth says, and I say, let chance decide it. Here are dice. The numbers run as high as twelve—double sixes. All who throw under six, stay; all who throw over six, go. Officers of the Wanderer and the Sea-mew, do you agree to that way of meeting the difficulty?”
All the officers agreed, with the one exception of Wardour, who still kept silence.
“Men of the Wanderer and Sea-mew, your officers agree to cast lots. Do you agree too?”
The men agreed without a dissentient voice. Crayford handed the box and the dice to Captain Helding.
“You throw first, sir. Under six, ‘Stay.’ Over six, ‘Go.’”
Captain Helding cast the dice; the top of the cask serving for a table. He threw seven.
“Go,” said Crayford. “I congratulate you, sir. Now for my own chance.” He cast the dice in his turn. Three! “Stay! Ah, well! well! if I can do my duty, and be of use to others, what does it matter whether I go or stay? Wardour, you are next, in the absence of your first lieutenant.”
Wardour prepared to cast, without shaking the dice.
“Shake the box, man!” cried Crayford. “Give yourself a chance of luck!”
Wardour persisted in letting the dice fall out carelessly, just as they lay in the box.
“Not I!” he muttered to himself. “I’ve done with luck.” Saying those words, he threw down the empty box, and seated himself on the nearest chest, without looking to see how the dice had fallen.
Crayford examined them. “Six!” he exclaimed. “There! you have a second chance, in spite of yourself. You are neither under nor over—you throw again.”
“Bah!” growled the Bear. “It’s not worth the trouble of getting up for. Somebody else throw for me.” He suddenly looked at Frank. “You! you have got what the women call a lucky face.”
Frank appealed to Crayford. “Shall I?”
“Yes, if he wishes it,” said Crayford.
Frank cast the dice. “Two! He stays! Wardour, I am sorry I have thrown against you.”
“Go or stay,” reiterated Wardour, “it’s all one to me. You will be luckier, young one, when you cast for yourself.”
Frank cast for himself.
“Eight. Hurrah! I go!”
“What did I tell you?” said Wardour. “The chance was yours. You have thriven on my ill luck.”
He rose, as he spoke, to leave the hut. Crayford stopped him.
“Have you anything particular to do, Richard?”
“What has anybody to do here?”
“Wait a little, then. I want to speak to you when this business is over.”
“Are you going to give me any more good advice?”
“Don’t look at me in that sour way, Richard. I am going to ask you a question about something which concerns yourself.”
Wardour yielded without a word more. He returned to his chest, and cynically composed himself to slumber. The casting of the lots went on rapidly among the officers and men. In another half-hour chance had decided the question of “Go” or “Stay” for all alike. The men left the hut. The officers entered the inner apartment for a last conference with the bed-ridden captain of the Sea-mew. Wardour and Crayford were left together, alone.
Chapter 9.
Crayford touched his friend on the shoulder to rouse him. Wardour looked up, impatiently, with a frown.
“I was just asleep,” he said. “Why do you wake me?”
“Look round you, Richard. We are alone.”
“Well—and what of that?”
“I wish to speak to you privately; and this is my opportunity. You have disappointed and surprised me to-day. Why did you say it was all one to you whether you went or stayed? Why are you the only man among us who seems to be perfectly indifferent whether we are rescued or not?”
“Can a man always give a reason for what is strange in his manner or his words?” Wardour retorted.
“He can try,” said Crayford, quietly—“when his friend asks him.”
Wardour’s manner softened.
“That’s true,” he said. “I will try. Do you remember the first night at sea when we sailed from England in the Wanderer?”
“As well as if it was yesterday.”
“A calm, still night,” the other went on, thoughtfully. “No clouds, no stars. Nothing in the sky but the broad moon, and hardly a ripple to break the path of light she made in the quiet water. Mine was the middle watch that night. You came on deck, and found me alone—”
He stopped. Crayford took his hand, and finished the sentence for him.
“Alone—and in tears.”
“The last I shall ever shed,” Wardour added, bitterly.
“Don’t say that! There are times when a man is to be pitied indeed, if he can shed no tears. Go on, Richard.”
Wardour proceeded—still following the old recollections, still preserving his gentler tones.
“I should have quarreled with any other man who had surprised me at that moment,” he said. “There was something, I suppose, in your voice when you asked my pardon for disturbing me, that softened my heart. I told you I had met with a disappointment which had broken me for life. There was no need to explain further. The only hopeless wretchedness in this world is the wretchedness that women cause.”
“And the only unalloyed happiness,” said Crayford, “the happiness that women bring.”
“That may be your experience of them,” Wardour answered; “mine is different. All the devotion, the patience, the humility, the worship that there is in man, I laid at the feet of a woman. She accepted the offering as women do—accepted it, easily, gracefully, unfeelingly—accepted it as a matter of course. I left England to win a high place in my profession, before I dared to win her. I braved danger, and faced death. I staked my life in the fever swamps of Africa, to gain the promotion that I only desired for her sake—and gained it. I came back to give her all, and to ask nothing in return, but to rest my weary heart in the sunshine of her smile. And her own lips—the lips I had kissed at parting—told me that another man had robbed me of her. I spoke but few words when I heard that confession, and left her forever. ‘The time may come,’ I told her, ‘when I shall forgive you. But the man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met.’ Don’t ask me who he was! I have yet to discover him. The treachery had been kept secret; nobody could tell me where to find him; nobody could tell me who he was. What did it matter? When I had lived out the first agony, I could rely on myself—I could be patient, and bide my time.”
“Your time? What time?”
“The time when I and that man shall meet face to face. I knew it then; I know it now—it was written on my heart then, it is written on my heart now—we two shall meet and know each other! With that conviction strong within me, I volunteered for this service, as I would have volunteered for anything that set work and hardship and danger, like ramparts, between my misery and me. With that conviction strong within me still, I tell you it is no matter whether I stay here with the sick, or go hence with the strong. I shall live till I have met that man! There is a day of reckoning appointed between us. Here in the freezing cold, or away in the deadly heat; in battle or in shipwreck; in the face of starvation; under the shadow of pestilence—I, though hundreds are falling round me, I shall live! live for the coming of one day! live for the meeting with one man!”
He stopped, trembling, body and soul, under the hold that his own terrible superstition had fastened on him. Crayford drew back in silent horror. Wardour noticed the action—he resented it—he appealed, in defense of his one cherished conviction, to Crayford’s own experience of him.
“Look at me!” he cried. “Look how I have lived and thriven, with the heart-ache gnawing at me at home, and the winds of the icy north whistling round me here! I am the strongest man among you. Why? I have fought through hardships that have laid the best-seasoned men of all our party on their backs. Why? What have I done, that my life should throb as bravely through every vein in my body at this minute, and in this deadly place, as ever it did in the wholesome breezes of home? What am I preserved for? I tell you again, for the coming of one day—for the meeting with one man.”
He paused once more. This time Crayford spoke.
“Richard!” he said, “since we first met, I have believed in your better nature, against all outward appearance. I have believed in you, firmly, truly, as your brother might. You are putting that belief to a hard test. If your enemy had told me that you had ever talked as you talk now, that you had ever looked as you look now, I would have turned my back on him as the utterer of a vile calumny against a just, a brave, an upright man. Oh! my friend, my friend, if ever I have deserved well of you, put away these thoughts from your heart! Face me again, with the stainless look of a man who has trampled under his feet the bloody superstitions of revenge, and knows them no more! Never, never, let the time come when I cannot offer you my hand as I offer it now, to the man I can still admire—to the brother I can still love!”
The heart that no other voice could touch felt that appeal. The fierce eyes, the hard voice, softened under Crayford’s influence. Richard Wardour’s head sank on his breast.
“You are kinder to me than I deserve,” he said. “Be kinder still, and forget what I have been talking about. No! no more about me; I am not worth it. We’ll change the subject, and never go back to it again. Let’s do something. Work, Crayford—that’s the true elixir of our life! Work, that stretches the muscles and sets the blood a-glowing. Work, that tires the body and rests the mind. Is there nothing in hand that I can do? Nothing to cut? nothing to carry?”
The door opened as he put the question. Bateson—appointed to chop Frank’s bed-place into firing—appeared punctually with his ax. Wardour, without a word of warning, snatched the ax out of the man’s hand.
“What was this wanted for?” he asked.
“To cut up Mr. Aldersley’s berth there into firing, sir.”
“I’ll do it for you! I’ll have it down in no time!” He turned to Crayford. “You needn’t be afraid about me, old friend. I am going to do the right thing. I am going to tire my body and rest my mind.”
The evil spirit in him was plainly subdued—for the time, at least. Crayford took his hand in silence; and then (followed by Bateson) left him to his work.