"Come on deck," said he, "the air will refresh you."
And they went up the companion-steps, whilst the Newfoundland continued to sentinel the captain's door.
A glorious evening sky, in the west like a city on fire, clouds with brows glowing into scarlet as they sailed into the splendour abeam, the ship leaning with the breeze, and the white spume twinkling on the eastern blue in a trembling heaven-full of the lights of foam. Two sail were in sight, fairy gleams upon the lens-like edge on the port bow.
"Oh," cried the girl, with a swift look along the deck, "after an open boat! and one man groaning and then lying dead in her!"
They walked slowly to and fro to leeward, leaving Mr. Candy, who ogled them betwixt his white eyelashes, to pace the weather quarter-deck in the loneliness of command. The sailors had immediately seen how things stood. Nothing that happens at sea astonishes a sailor, unless it is the expected, which is often a real surprise, so full of disappointments, of leeway, head winds, misreckoning is the life. Here was the chief mate who had fallen in with a girl whom he knew.
"They might have kept company ashore," says Bill to Jim. "She was bound one way and he another. Ain't that sailor fashion?"
"Ain't she got a figure?" says Jim to Bill. "Wouldn't I like to put my arm round her waist if Dick and the little 'un was playing. It's damned hard on us sailor men that no female society's allowed aboard a ship."
"There's the figurehead if it's female," says Bill. "I've known a man so 'ard up that of a dog-watch, when there was plenty o' light, he'd slide down the dolphin-striker just to talk to the woman on the stem-head. He'd say it was the next best thing."
Perhaps it was, for some figureheads in those days were a little gorgeous. I have seen ladies under the bowsprit with long black hair and swelling bosoms, bright with golden stars. Their blush was deep, their lips scarlet, their smile alluring, they were always curtseying, and the sea in its loving humours flung snow-white nosegays at them.
But the shadow of the boy's death was still upon the ship, and so far the captain had treated his men as men, and they were sorry for him. You may take it that a man is no sailor who ill-treats a sailor, and despite tradition and the presence of the sea-lawyer, your ship's company, if they are British, will serve you honestly if their food is fit even for sailors, and if they are numerous enough to do the work of one man and half a man added per head, as against the one-man work which the shore exacts without expecting more.
As Hardy and the girl walked the deck, whilst the ship sailed along stately in the beautiful light of that evening, they talked again of home and then of the country to which they were voyaging. The sail upon the port bow leaned like tiny jets of red flame, and no star of heaven could have filled the liquid distance with more grace.
"It was certainly your destiny to make for Australia," said Hardy, "and I now say what I thought from the beginning, that your chances lie there. But we had to find you a berth."
"Captain Smedley was very kind to me," she answered. "He would sometimes invite me into his cabin and talk to me as pleasantly as though he had known me all his life. He gave me an introduction to the Bishop of Calcutta, and begged him to do everything that could be done for a girl placed as I am. I believe he talked to the passengers about me, for some were extremely good-natured and sympathetic, and would apologise for troubling me if I waited upon them."
"Any griffs aboard?" asked Hardy.
"Some young officers," she answered, with a half smile upon her lips, and looking down upon the deck, "but I kept as much to myself as I could."
"You'll find plenty of opportunities in Australia," said Hardy. "There are rich squatters in that country, and you can be driving about Melbourne and entertaining and doing what you pleased whilst he was a thousand miles off counting his sheep."
"Suppose all the rich squatters kept themselves a thousand miles distant whilst I was in Melbourne, could I return in this ship?"
She asked this question placidly, but her expression showed that she did not appreciate this reference to the squatters.
"You want position and you'll get it."
"Could I return in this ship?"
"We'll see," he answered, smiling at her. "A dinner and champagne to the head of the firm of agents might help us, and nature did not intend that you should ever plead in vain."
As he said this the captain came on deck, followed by Sailor. The Newfoundland, with the critical eye of an old salt, took a view of the horizon, and in a minute rushed forward on to the forecastle and reported two ships in sight on the port bow by a number of barks, which made the men, who were lounging about the knight-heads, laugh heartily. On seeing the captain, the mate touched his cap and walked right aft on the lee-side, where with folded arms he seemed to watch the sea, though he kept the captain and Julia in the corner of his eye.
The poor man approached the girl, who received him with a smile.
"Has Mr. Hardy looked after you?" he said, kindly and gently.
"Oh, yes, Captain Layard, I am very happy and comfortable, and thank you over and over again for your goodness. I believe I should have died by this time in that open boat, and I owe my life to you and this noble ship."
"I am very dull and lonely," he said in a musing way, clearly inattentive to her words. "Those ships yonder break the continuity of this everlasting circle, but they'll vanish shortly, and the full desolation of the night will encompass us. It is the night that I fear—it is the night that I fear!" he continued, almost whispering, and gazing at her as a man looks at another whose pity and help his heart is yearning for. "I miss him! If I dream of him I shall go mad to find it a dream. But you know where he is."
She hoped to divert his thoughts, and said: "I do not find the sea desolate, Captain Layard. On fine nights I could stand for hours looking at the stars; and is desolation on the sea when the sun is shining? If I were a man I would be a sailor, for, although it has nearly destroyed me, I have learnt to love the ocean."
She looked toward Hardy. The dog, having barked his report of two sail in sight, came trotting aft, and stood beside his master. The captain looked at him a little while in silence, his brow contracted in meditation.
"Which is real?" he asked, placing his foot upon the dog's shadow, "this or this?" and he put his hand upon the dog.
Julia, who found a necessity to humour him, answered:
"Some great thinker has written, 'Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue.'"
"How long grows one's shadow in the dying sun!" said Captain Layard, turning his face—filled with the yearning of grief and charged with that subtle expression of madness for which no words are to be found—toward the burning sky; "and soon we are nothing but shadows. Do you believe in God?" He looked at her suddenly with an extraordinary gaze of passionate anxiety.
"Oh, yes, Captain Layard," replied the girl. "I believe in him now if ever I did, and I have thanked him."
His face put on its triumphant look, but he was interrupted in the irrelevant sentiments he was about to deliver by the approach of the boatswain.
Julia crossed the deck to Hardy, glad to escape the pain of such talk.
"What is it?" said the captain.
"The men we picked up," answered the boatswain, "have asked me to come aft to say they're willing to serve as seamen aboard this ship."
"You are a full company," replied the captain, quickly. "I can't afford to pay and keep more sailors."
"They're likely men, sir," said the boatswain, speaking in a softened note of respectful compassion.
"They'll expect their wages."
The boatswain answered he thought that was likely.
"No," said the captain, "we'll transship them, and send them home."
He rounded on his heel, and sat upon the skylight, and gazed at the dying lights in the west. What could be more sane than this man's answers to the boatswain? Hardy had overheard them, and perplexity was deepened in him. Who was going to convince the sailors that their captain was mad unless he talked to them as he did to him and Julia? And the captain sat looking at the dimming glory, and did not seem to remember that he had been conversing with the girl, or to know that she had left him.
It was fine weather throughout that night, and the moon shone, and the heaven of stars swarmed in sparkling hosts toward the grave of the sun until the pallor of the dawn, like the face of the risen Christ, put out those fires of the dark; the ship, bathed in the ice-white radiance, stole phantom-like over the boundless cemetery of the drowned, the perished sailors whose tombstones were in every breaking surge. All had been quiet aboard that stealing ship, clad to her trucks in the raiment of her day. The captain would pass a long time in his cabin, then appear on deck, and walk it for a little space self-engrossed; and it seemed to Hardy when his watch came round, and when the captain showed himself, that the man's isolation and silence expressed, perhaps, a still dim but growing perception of the fate of his little boy, in which case the delusion would leave him, and his mind recover at least the strength it possessed when they made sail in the English Channel.
When the sun rose the ocean rolled in mackerel-tinted mounds, and the ship swayed as she floated onwards at about five knots. Stu'nsails had been set by order of the captain when he came on deck at dawn, and, whitening the air on high, the swelling cloths carried the sight to the heavens, which arched in a miracle of motionless feathers of cloud, a glorious canopy of delicate plumes, in sweet keeping with the airy graces of the queenly fabric which proudly bowed upon its mighty throne.
A sail was in sight on the starboard bow, and in two hours she would be abreast. The Newfoundland, coming on deck with the captain when the light broke, instantly barked its report of her, and now, a little after eight, Hardy was viewing her through the ship's telescope; for the sane instructions which had reached him were, that the four men were to be transferred to the first ship which would receive them.
The four men were on the forecastle watching the coming vessel; they were good specimens of the English seaman of those days, sturdy and whiskered, bronzed in face and bowed in back, with that steady air which made you know that, like most British sailors, they were to be trusted beyond all breeds of foreign mariners in the hour of sea peril, when the ship was grinding out her heart upon the rocks, when the belching hatches were blackening the air into a storm cloud, when the blow of the stranger's bows had riven the side into a gulf, when the yawn of the started butt was burdening the hold with tons of ship-drowning brine.
When the ships were abreast, the stranger proved American, bound for the River Thames. The beautiful flag of her great country shook its barred folds at the peak, and you thought of Bishop's Berkeley's prophetic line, "Westward the course of empire takes its way." Her yellow sheathing flashed in artillery spoutings as she rolled from the sun, her canvas with cotton was as white as milk, she was a wonder of sea architecture, the creation of a people whose sires had launched that exquisite structure, the Baltimore clipper.
Captain Layard was now on deck, and Hardy must discover that in matters of routine he was not going to work with the diseased half of his head. He hailed the American captain, and they exchanged the information they asked.
"What ship is that? Where are you from, and where are you bound to?"
And the American wanted to know the Greenwich time by the chronometers in Captain Layard's cabin.
Then was shouted across in words as sane as ever sounded from a quarter-deck the news of the recovery of four men from an open boat, and would the American captain carry them home? Of course he would, and within half an hour from the beginning of this rencounter the two ships had started on their separate courses with colours dipping in cordial good-byes—the seaman's hand-shake. And these were cousins.
CHAPTER XI. THE CAPTAIN'S BIRTHDAY
Now in this business of transferring the four men Hardy noticed that the captain made no reference to Miss Armstrong. Another captain would have asked her if she wished to go home: perhaps, indeed, would have sent her home without asking her. Was it because Captain Layard knew she had no home? Hardy hoped it might be that, but suspected it was not so. This ship wanted no stewardess; the girl was one more to feed, and owners do not love liberality in their captains. In short, the mate came to the conclusion that the captain's benevolence in keeping the girl and giving her a passage to Australia for nothing was due to hallucination, and the thought was uneasiness itself both for Julia's sake and the ship's.
It was the day following the transshipment of the men that he found an opportunity during the captain's absence to take a turn with the girl and talk to her. The sun was shining a little hotly, and the clouds were sailing fast. Each round of swell, as it came under-running the ship out of the northeast, was ridged and wrinkled with arches of foam, and the day was alive with the music in the rigging, with the speckled wings of sea-birds in the wake, and the smoke-like shadow of vapour floating through the sunshine on the water.
After the couple had talked a little, Hardy said:
"How does the captain treat you?"
"Very kindly," she answered.
"I keep an eye upon him," he said, "but it will not do to seem to hang near when he is talking to you. He might round and become fierce, for from madness you may expect anything. What is his talk about?"
"Chiefly his lost child."
A seaman who was in the main-rigging putting a fresh seizing to a ratline looked at the girl, and thought deep in himself, Oh, lovey, what a figure! But what that whiskered heart admired most was the coquettish cock of her head, the grace of one hand upon her hip, the charm of her motions as she walked, her posture when she turned aft or forward on the return that was like a pause in some sweet dancer's movements. Yes, Jack can keep a bright lookout when a girl heaves in sight, but the mighty Charles Dickens is right in holding that Jack's Nan is often the unloveliest of the fair.
"Does he go on thinking that you know where his child is?" said Hardy.
"Yes. It is a fixed delusion, though I cannot humour it—it is too sad—in spite of your wish."
"The oddest part to me," said Hardy, "is the reason he shows in his professional work. He doesn't confound things; the sail he talks of is the sail it is; he still knows the ropes. The flicker of the leach of a topgallantsail will set him wanting a small pull on the leebrace."
"How does he manage with the navigation?" asked the girl.
"He works it out as I do. He finds the ship's position to a second. This may be the effect of habit, but is not custom beaten into rags by insanity, like the head of an old drum? It's not so in this case, and the crew mayn't find him out till the pilot boards us, and guess nothing until they hear that the doctors have locked him up."
"Then what does his madness signify?" said the girl. "He'll be as good as the sanest if we arrive safely."
"Ah, but it's the getting there! It's the what may happen to-morrow, or to-morrow, or to-morrow, and that is going to make my hair gray, Miss Armstrong."
"Call me Julia," she said, looking at him with a sudden light in her eyes.
"Why should I take that liberty?" he replied, smiling.
"Because I should love it," she answered.
"I'll not call you Julia before him," he exclaimed, with a note of fondness which brought a charming expression into her face, as the kisses of a shower freshen the perfume of the rose. "It must be a stiff Miss Armstrong or I am no mate," and then they fell to talking a little nonsense.
A day came, and it was the fifth day dating from the drowning of the little drummer, and it was a Friday, in all tradition a black day for the sailor; and nobody, I think, has taken notice that it was Friday when Nelson, full of instinctive assurance that he would never return alive, kissed his sleeping child and started to join his ship for Trafalgar.
The captain, Miss Armstrong, and Mr. Hardy sat at breakfast. The ship had made good way; not many parallels lay between her and the northern verge of the tropics. The sun poured his light in fire, and the flying-fish sparkled under the bows.
The sailors had noticed nothing in the captain to set them growling suspicion into one another's ears with askant looks aft. If Mr. Candy, who lived close to the skipper, had taken any sort of altitude of the poor man's mind, he kept his observation secret; or it might be that he believed the captain was a little upset by the loss of his child, and he had not the penetrating sagacity of Hardy.
The wind had fallen light, and the motions of the ship were as easy as a swimmer's. Hardy had noticed in the captain's face when they met that morning an expression of lofty triumph, of sublimated self-complacency such as a man deranged by conquest and acclamation might wear as he passes slowly through the huzzaing crowds. He seemed self-crowned, and might have reminded a better student than Hardy of one of Nat Lee's heaven-defying stage-kings.
"To-day is Friday," said the captain, addressing Miss Armstrong, "and what day do you think it is?"
Julia thought awhile, for she fancied he meant something in the almanac.
"I don't know, captain," she answered.
"It is my birthday," said the captain, "and Johnny is waiting somewhere to kiss me."
Hardy was about to deliver with all the respect of a mate a sentence of congratulation, but the closing words of the captain silenced him.
"I wish you many happy returns of the day," said Julia.
"You might like to know how old I am," said the captain, with an indescribable look at the girl, "but every man should respect the secret of his birth. Until we come to sixty we like to be thought much younger, and when we come to eighty we tell lies that our friends may think us ninety. I have good reason to congratulate myself upon my birthday. I cannot believe that the Red Ensign ever floated over a better seaman than I, a man who is both a gentleman and a sailor, and it has been my privilege," he continued, talking as though he was making an after-dinner speech, "to have dignified by my behaviour and breeding a service that in public opinion is in want of dignity."
Hardy burst into a laugh; he could not help it, but he instantly apologised by saying that the captain's words made him think of the first skipper he sailed with, betwixt whose legs, as he stood, you could have fitted an oval picture, and whose face for beauty might have been picked out of the harness cask.
The captain with a slight frown cast his eyes upon the mate, and said, "Johnny shall be a sailor. His mother would have desired him to serve the queen at sea, but he shall perpetuate me under the flag I serve."
This was followed by a short silence; the others found nothing to say. It was perhaps one of the saddest illustrations of madness on record, and it set the listeners' hearts pining to do something that was denied to their sympathy and distress.
"The men shall have a holiday," said the captain, who was scarcely eating. "It is my birthday, and they shall drink my health at eight bells. You will drink my health, Mr. Hardy, and you, Miss Armstrong?"
They answered that they would drink his health with the greatest pleasure.
"You and Mr. Candy in rum, Mr. Hardy; you'll drink with the men, for I like the officers of my ship to be associated with the crew on festive occasions."
"I will gladly drink with the men, sir," responded Hardy.
"Rum is not a fit drink for young ladies," continued the captain, with a faint smile, "and you, Miss Armstrong, will drink my health in claret—a wine which shall not hurt you, because 'tis light and old and nourishing."
Julia bowed. Hardy was wondering what the men would think, but if they thought this unusual deviation from sea routine odd, they would certainly like it and hope for more. It was an exhibition of insane generosity, of lunatic kindness, and the mate could see nothing else in it.
In obedience to the captain's instructions he went on deck, sending Candy below to his breakfast, and called the boatswain aft.
"It's the captain's orders," said he, "that the men shall knock off work all day."
The boatswain stared. "All day, sir?" he said.
"It's his birthday," answered Hardy. "And all hands will drink his health in good Jamaica rum at eight bells, served out on the capstan head."
Innumerable wrinkles overran the boatswain's face as grin after grin rippled about his gale-hardened skin. He looked as if he would like to say that here was a traverse that beat all his going a-fishing. But the immense pleasure that beamed in his expression was full assurance of the reception the crew would give the news.
He walked slowly forward, and the men wondered at his deep and constant grin. "One of the mate's stories, I reckon," thought Bill, and Jim also thought that some joke of the mate had started the boatswain on that smile. When he reached the forecastle the boatswain put his silver whistle to his lips and blew the shrill music of "All hands!" and a hundred little birds of the groves and woods seemed to be perched in song upon the yards and rigging.
The fellows who were below came tumbling up, startled by that call in fine weather. In a very little time the whole of the crew had gathered round their forecastle leader, who, after clearing his throat and gazing about him with his profound smile, said:
"Lads, it's the capt'n's birthday, and it's to be a holiday for you all right away through, with liquor at noon to drink his health in."
Sailors are usually so badly treated by all variety of shipowners' sullen deafness to their grievances, that when on rare occasions, sometimes originating in madness, they are well treated, their astonishment is a phenomenon of emotion. It seems unnatural, they think. A beautiful mermaid with a gilded tail and flowing hair of bronze, with her white revealed charms made entrancing by the soft blue of the water, could not amaze them more than a skipper's kindness taking the form of Layard's.
A brief spell of silence fell upon them as they looked at one another and at the boatswain.
"Ain't yer coddin' us?" said a man.
"Fill your pipes, and go a-courting," answered the boatswain. "I'm for taking advantage of it when it comes, which ain't ever too soon or often."
This convinced the crew, who delivered a loud cheer, and then began to talk and scatter, all of them feeling a bit aimless, for it wasn't like going ashore.
Hardy, who was keeping the deck whilst Candy breakfasted, watched the proceedings on the forecastle, and wondered if this stroke of the captain was going to give them any idea of the truth. But why should it? If they suspected, through this act of kindness, that the boy's loss had shifted the "old man's" ballast, they would only hope that a long time would pass before his mental cargo was trimmed afresh. But in truth they did not know that their captain was insane, and even Candy, who was below sitting at the table and listening to the skipper conversing with Miss Armstrong, would not have kissed the Book upon it.
Presently Mr. Candy came on deck, but Hardy, whose watch below it was, thought he would stay a little and talk to Miss Armstrong, and observe the captain if he should appear. Very soon after Mr. Candy arrived Julia rose lightly through the companion-hatch. She was now looking quite well, better indeed than she looked when Hardy first met her. Again he found himself admiring her faultless figure and the pose of her head, enchanting through its unconsciousness.
"Where is the captain?" he asked her.
"I left him at the table," she replied. "He was not in the cabin when I came out of my berth."
"I hope it won't end in his destroying himself," exclaimed Hardy. "There is a great deal of goodness and humanity in the poor fellow's heart, and it's dreadful to see a man struggling to conquer his brain's disease. Who can tell what passes in the minds of such people? But what am I to do? He is Prime Minister aboard this ship, and those are the people," said he, nodding toward the crew, "who must turn him out."
"Have you told them they are to have a holiday?" she asked.
"Don't they look like it?" he replied.
"How'll they spend it?" she inquired.
"In loafing and smoking and sleeping. If the captain's liberal with his grog— Well, the drummer's gone out of their heads—'tis the way of the sea: a bubble over the side, a broken pipe in a vacant bunk, and the ship sails on. They may dance and sing songs; and I hope they will, for God knows the captain is depressing enough, and I like to see the hornpipe danced."
Meanwhile where was Captain Layard? He was in his cabin seated close to the medicine-chest, which stood open, and reading a thin volume all about poisons, and the quantities to be administered when given for sickness. His great dog lay beside him. He read with a knitted brow, and sometimes sank the volume to lift with his right hand some bottle of poison out of its little square place. He would look at it and then refer to the book.
In this singular study, fearful with the menace of the light in his eyes, tragically portentous with the lifting look of triumph and the insane smile, he spent about half an hour, and then closing the lid of the medicine-chest, he stood up and looked at the drum, and softly wrung his hands with a heart-moving expression, whose appeal lay in the soul's perception seeking to pierce in vain the torturing and bewildering veil of disease; for it is not the immortal soul of man which is mad in madness, and this belief is God-sent; the soil buries and resolves to ashes the mania that destroys, and the purified soul is liberated to await the judgment of God—its Home.
After a few minutes he stepped into the cabin and called the attendant, who was handling crockery and glasses in the pantry. The fellow stepped out.
"Jump below into the lazarette," said the captain, "and draw a bucket of rum. I want plenty. This is my birthday, and all hands will drink my health."
The man was not at all astonished; he had got the news from the forecastle. He was a sort of steward, and knew the ropes in the lazarette. The little hatch was just abaft the captain's chair, and was opened by an iron ring. The man accepted the captain's orders literally, disappeared, and returned with a clean, big bucket.
The lazarette is an after-hold, a compartment of a ship in which in those times all sorts of commodities used to be stowed, chiefly edible, and for cabin use. The man lifted the hatch-cover—the hatch was no more than a man-hole—and by help of the light, which shone down upon a cask that was almost immediately under, pumped the bucket nearly full.
The captain went to the hatch and looked down, and exclaimed:
"Hand it up; I'll help you." He received the bucket and placed it on the deck, and the man sprang through the hatch and replaced the cover.
"Take it into my cabin," said the captain, "and bring it on deck when I send you for it."
And this was done, and the man went on deck whilst the captain entered his berth and closed the door.
"I have drawed enough to swim ye," said the cabin-attendant to Bill.
"'Tain't like being in port, though," answered Bill, whilst Jim and several others like him grinned at the news of the grog. "When I takes a drop, I'm for dancin', and where are the gurls?"
"Ah!" echoed Jim in a sigh born of lobscouse and the livid fat of diseased pork.
Finding that the captain did not make his appearance, Hardy kept the deck with Julia. Again they talked of the old home, the drunken stepmother, the withering indifference of the retired Commander R. N. to the loneliness and helplessness of his child, and to her prospects in life.
Hardy spoke of it with heat, and the girl's face was often hot with the passion of memory.
"What should I have done without you?" she said once and again, and still again. "But if I cannot find employment in Australia, I must return in this ship," and she looked at him with the eyes of a sweetheart.
"If anything happens to Captain Layard," said he, "no doubt I shall get command."
Now, "If anything should happen" is the roundabout of "If he should die," and people modestly thus speak of death as though it was anything, as though it was not the only thing that is real, to be expected without fear of disappointment.
"I believe he will grow quite mad long before we arrive at Melbourne," said Julia; "but even taking him as he is, would the agents trust him?"
"You want to come home in this ship, Julia?" said Hardy.
"You are the only friend I have in the world," she answered; and thus they cooed without billing, for Jack was in strength forward, and the second mate walked the deck to windward, and a sailor stood at the wheel.
About a quarter before noon, but not till then, the captain emerged with his sextant. If he had come up with a face of madness, the sextant he held would have clothed him with all the sanity he needed in the sailors' opinion. But his face showed no distinctive marks of the condition of his mind, the expression was even calm; he seemed as one who was about to realise the consuming hope of his life; the shadow of the coming event subdued him. The crew were on deck gathered forward in all variety of sprawling posture, smoking and talking, with teeth sharpened by the hard and bitter fare of the sea. Also seven bells having been struck some time since, they knew that noon and a bumper of old Jamaica were at hand, and every eye was directed aft.
Hardy disappeared and returned with his sextant, and Candy fetched his, and the three men fell to screwing down the sun till its lower limb was like a wheel upon the ocean line. The captain never spoke, and Julia studying his face noticed the subdued look and the calmness, and felt a little despairful, for, poor heart, she was in love, and wanted the captain to go raving mad that Hardy might get command and marry her at Melbourne, and bring her home. O God, what joy for a heart so long joyless! A home, a protector, a husband, on whose breast she could lean with her lips at his ear in softest murmurings of wifely confidence.
"Eight bells! Make it the bell eight!" and the four double chimes rang gladly along the decks and up aloft.
"Pass the word for the cabin servant," said the captain, speaking and looking as collectedly as the sanest of skippers might show in that first command of tacking, "Ready about!"
The man came aft in a hurry, impelled by the thirsty yearning of the forecastle mob, and in a couple or three minutes he was standing at the capstan just abaft the mast with a bucket on the "head," and a tot measure in his hand. The captain stood close to the man, and the crew gathered around. The Newfoundland stood at his master's side. Now was to be seen the most glowing canvas in the panorama which unfolds this ship's adventure. The picture was alive with its crowd of faces of seamen watching the lips of their commander, alive with the colour and diversity of their apparel, with the silent breathing of the white breast soaring to the height of the fiery streak of bunting, which trembled in a dog-vane from the main-royal truck. The sea was soft in caress and note, and Julia thought of the wayside fountain to which she as well as Hardy had listened in the night, when, in the pause, she heard the fall of the shower under the bow.
"My lads," began the captain, and Hardy watched him with strained attention, believing that the crew would see it, "this is my birthday, and I am departing from the custom of the sea in making a general holiday of it."
He grew pale and paler as he spoke, but his voice did not falter, and no change was visible in his expression save that a light as of secret exultation brightened his eye and accentuated his pallor.
"I have always tried to make a good master to my men, and to treat them like men and sailors, and not as dogs which other captains seem to find them."
This was attended by a growl of appreciation.
"So, my lads," continued the captain, "as this is my birthday, one and all of you, the mates, and the lady last, but not least, shall drink my health, and the health of the little boy who has left his drum behind him."
"May God bless you and him!" said one of the men, for this proved to be one of those touches of nature which made all those rough hearts akin.
"Now serve out—serve out, and handsomely!"
The boatswain drank first. And again and again and again the measure was filled until all hands of the sailors, saving the man at the wheel, had swallowed the fiery draught, many with a smack and a smile of relish. Then the wheel was relieved, and another bumper was swallowed with a "Many 'appy returns of the day, sir."
"Drink," said the captain to the attendant, and the man drained a full dose.
"Sweeten the measure for the two mates," said the captain.
This was quickly done. And then Hardy drank and then Candy, for both had the throats of the sea, which seem lined with brass when 'tis ten per cent. above proof. "Your health, sir"—and—"your health, sir," and the mates took it down.
"Now, Miss Armstrong, you will drink my health," said the captain, and with the gallantry of an old beau he took her by the hand and led her into the cabin. She glanced at Hardy with a smile before she vanished.
The men scattered as they went forward to get their dinner. The captain took a wine-glass from a rack, and a bottle from a locker, and filled the glass with red wine.
"Drink to me and to the boy I am seeking, and then tell me where he is," he exclaimed as he extended the glass. She took it, and said with forced cheerfulness to humour him:
"Your health, Captain Layard, and many happy returns of this day, and my heart's gratitude to you for your kindness to me. And God will some day show you where your child is."
She drank half the contents of the glass. His eyes sparkled, and his face was grotesque with the workings of his dreadful exultation.
"Oh, you must drain it—you must drain it, Miss Armstrong, or it'll be bad luck and no pledge."
She drank the glass empty, and put it down upon the table. He gazed at her with extraordinary intentness as though he listened to hear her words, then swiftly entered his cabin, closed and bolted the door, and pulling out a loaded revolver from under the pillow in his bunk, seated himself, and with the weapon upon his knee in his grasp sat hearkening, with his eyes fastened upon the door.
The time slowly passed and still he continued to sit, grasping the pistol upon his knee, with his eyes of madness fixed upon the door. His face was now revolting with its look of burning expectation and triumph. Suddenly a stream of sunshine moved slowly, like a spoke of a softly revolving wheel, over the carpeted deck of the captain's cabin, and any one might have known by the motions of the ship that she was not under command. You heard faint, vague sounds of trampling above, a dim noise as of a sick crowd poisoned by vapour and feebly struggling to escape, and in the midst of it the captain's door was struck: the blow was languid and repeated three or four times only, and no noise attended it.
The madman sprang from his chair and stood erect with the revolver half raised from his side, and his eyes sparkled in his face that was dark with murderous intent. Thus he stood whilst the spoke of light through the port-hole moved gradually round the cabin until it vanished, by which time all was silent without. The unhappy man resumed his seat and former posture, and thus it went for half an hour at least; then, always grasping his murderous weapon, he walked like one in the chamber of death, carefully opened the door, and peered out.
The first sight he witnessed was the figure of the chief mate, Hardy, stretched at its length and on its side within a pace or two of the threshold, and upon the locker on the port side of the table, a cushioned locker as comfortable as a couch, lay the form of Julia Armstrong; her right arm hung down, and she lay as apparently dead as Hardy. The captain stepped across the body of the mate and looked with devouring, sparkling eyes at the girl, while he seemed to listen for sounds above. Nothing was to be heard save the inner grumbling of the ship as she swayed helpless in arrest. Now and again the wheel chains clanked to the blow of the sea upon the rudder.
The captain went to the girl's side and looked at her: her face was placid, pale, ghastly, and her lips a bright red. Thus exactly did Hardy's face show, and any one experienced in the symptoms of poisoning by laudanum or morphia would have known that these two people had been heavily drugged, even perhaps unto death.
It was the birthday of a madman in search of his drowned child, and they had drunk his health and the little drummer's. His face took on an air of hurry and bustle, and, always gripping his revolver, he stepped nimbly to the companion-steps and mounted them. He raised his head just above the companion-hood and looked; he saw that the man who had stood at the wheel was lying motionless beside it. Almost abreast of the companion was the curved form of Candy, who seemed to have been doubled up and then reeled into lifelessness. A few prostrate forms were to be seen forward, in the waist and about the forescuttle. They lay lifeless in the sleep or death of the drugged draught in which they had pledged their captain. In the forecastle lay the rest, some on the deck, some in their bunks, and every face showed as Hardy's and the girl's, placid, pale, and ghastly, and the lips a bright red. All the symptoms had been expended, the first pleasurable mental excitement, then the weariness, the headache, the intolerable weight of limb, the spinning and sickening giddiness, the drowsiness, the stupor, and now insensibility or death.
The captain rose in the hatch to his full height and stepped on to the deck, followed by the dog, which went to Candy and smelt him, and then with a low, uneasy growl went to the figure beside the wheel and sniffed at it. With a dreadful smile of hope and rejoicing the captain thrust the pistol into a side pocket and, going to the wheel, put the helm hard a-starboard, and secured it by several turns of the end of the mainbrace.
This done, always preserving his horrible expression of lofty exaltation, he took the breaker out of the bow of the port quarter-boat, filled it from the scuttle-butt, and replaced it. God knows how he was directed in what he did; the instincts of habit and knowledge must have governed him. It is certain that he made his preparations for departure with the sanity of a healthy brain. His dog closely followed him, and seemed afraid. He then went below into the pantry and returned with his arms full of food, which he placed in the stern-sheets along with a tumbler which he pulled out of his pocket. He moved rapidly and his lips often worked, and he'd flash his gaze along the decks at that memorable, tragical picture of ship with lifeless figures upon the planks, with all her white canvas curving inwards, stirless in the stream of the breeze. She seemed to have been drugged too, and rolled with a kind of stagger upon the soft folds of the swell.
He went below again, the dog at his heels, and, entering his cabin, took a dog-collar and chain out of a locker and secured the noble animal to a leg of the table, which was cleated and immovable. When he had done this he pressed his lips to the dog's head and sobbed dryly and sighed, for the light in his eyes was too hot a fire for tears. The dog whined and wagged its tail, and looked a hundred questions with its gentle eyes.
"I shall bring him back, I shall bring him back, Sailor!" the captain muttered to the Newfoundland.
And all this time Hardy lay close beside the dog as dead to the eye as any corpse under the ground.
The captain went to the side of the girl and picked her up off the cushioned locker with the ease of a man lifting a child. With her motionless form in his arms he gained the deck and laid her in the boat, passing her under the after-thwart, so that her head lay low in the stern-sheets. He sprang for a colour in the flag-locker and placed the bunting that was ready rolled under her head. She never sighed, she never stirred. Not paler nor calmer could her face have shown on the pillow of death.
Now the boat was to be lowered, and he went to work thus: he cast adrift the gripes which had held the boat steady betwixt the davits, and then he slackened the falls at the bow, belaying the tackle, and then he slackened the falls at the stern, belaying the tackle; and so by degrees the boat sank in irregular jerks to the surface of the water. He sprang on to the bow tackle and descended with the nimbleness of a monkey, with wonderful swiftness unhooked the blocks, and the boat was free. Next he stepped the mast upon which the sail lay furled, then the rudder; then shoved clear and hoisted the small square of lug, and in a few minutes he was blowing away gently into the boundless blue distance, looking all about him with a proud but ghastly smile for a sight of his missing boy, whilst the girl lay like the dead in the bottom of the boat.
CHAPTER XII. JULIA CALLS "JOHNNY!"
It was about half-past two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun shone hotly. The breeze was a pleasant wind for that boat, and the captain put her dead before it and blew onwards into the boundless distance, squarely seated at the amidship helm, with the white and placid face of the drugged girl at his feet.
He would often look at her with a passionate eagerness, and then direct his brilliant eyes over the sea, and his countenance was now shocking with its expression of real madness, charged with the ghastly illumination of his one maniacal belief, that the girl, who was fresh from the sea when he missed his boy, knew where he was and would take him to the child, and then they would return to the ship, and once more the drum would rattle and the whistle awaken the birds in the rigging.
Never before in all human tradition of ocean life had fate painted upon the bosom of the deep a picture more wonderful by virtue of its secret and tragic meaning. There would be nothing in the mere scene of a beautiful clipper ship under all plain sail, her canvas hollowing inwards visibly, to all intents and purposes derelict; there would be nothing in the spectacle of a little open boat borne onwards by the humming heart of its swelling square of canvas, steered by a lonely figure, the other being hidden. It might be to a distant eye the flight of a single survivor from a floating pest-house. But it was the story of the thing which makes it so extraordinary that I who am writing pause with astonishment, dismayed also by the lack of the exquisite cunning I need to submit the truth.
The girl had been drugged with morphia, but in what dose, and in what doses the men, it is impossible to conjecture. The madman reading the book of directions may have understood it, but insanity had rendered memory useless when it came to his mixing the poison with the liquor and the wine. But she was not dead; he would have found that out if he had bared her breast and put his ear to the white softness. But would she die in that sleep which was as death? for I believe it is the heart's action that fails in such cases, and at any moment her soul might return to God.
But he! poor unhappy wretch, if he understood what his mad but most moving love for his child had impelled him to do, his perception would not be as ours. His heart burned with desire that she should awake and tell him in which direction he should steer, for already the ship was a toy astern, three spires of ice-like radiance dipping to the eye on the brows of the blue swell as the boat rose and sank, jewelling the water with two foam-threaded lines of little yeasty bubbles.
Would she ever awaken? How long would she continue in sleep? To some a dose of morphia professionally prescribed will yield a long night's rest not wholly unrefreshing, though the drug is obnoxious to the brain, which in time it murders. Therefore she might sleep into the early hours of the night.
But these were not his speculations. His mind was intent on one object, and he held the boat straight before the wind, waiting for her to look at him and rise, and point to the spot where his boy was.
It passed into about an hour before sunset.
From time to time the captain had laid his hand gently upon the girl's brow, believing she would open her eyes and speak to him. He was like a child whose grave or tragic act was beyond his mind's capacity to understand. He was painfully haggard, and sweat drops were on his forehead and cheeks, but the dreadful fire was always in his eyes. And once he stared fixedly over the port bow of the boat as though his poor brain had shaped the vision of his child: he stared as though he beheld the phantom, and when it vanished out of the perfidious cell which had created it he sighed and frowned.
He took no heed of sensation; thirst and hunger may have been his, but he never left the helm to drink or eat. At the hour I have named the westering sun was beginning to empurple the east, and he was steering toward the point where the evening star would rise. More than half the moon was hanging in a broken shape of dim pearl over the boat's bows. All at once the captain's ceaseless stare at the ocean brought his eyes to an object almost directly ahead. He was a sailor, and his afflicted reason could not deceive him. Right ahead and within half an hour's sail—so low seated was the gunwale of that boat—lay a small vessel, partly dismasted and deep sunk. She was painted black. Her lower masts were white, and both foresail and mainsail were hanging, but the trysail was stowed.
"He will be there! he will be there!" cried the captain in a voice that swept like a shriek from his lips, and as the words left him the girl, with a long, strange sigh, opened her eyes full upon the wild nightmare face that was on a line with her head, for he had sprung to his feet.
"He is there!" he shouted again.
Then looking down he saw her watching him, and had he been sane would have witnessed the awakening reason in her darkening into horror. She tried to sit up, but her body was heavy as lead.
"Oh, what is this? Where am I?" she asked, more in a mutter than in clear speech.
"He is there!" he cried, pointing with a frantic gesture, "and you have known it throughout your sleep. Look!" He stooped, put his hands under her arms and lifted her out of the bottom of the boat into the stern-sheets, against whose back-board she sank.
Now morphia gives you but sleep if it does not kill you, and reason with many is immediately active when slumber is ended; but the captain's face alone would have sufficed to stimulate the most sluggish consciousness into clear perception, and without understanding the reason of it she grasped her situation.
She was alone in a boat with the mad captain of the York, and there was nothing in sight save the everlasting circle of the sea girdling a small broken vessel toward which the boat was running, for the captain had his hand upon the yoke, and the little fabric was dead before it once again.
Despair laid the ice-cold hand of death upon the poor girl's heart. What could she do? What would he do?
As the sun slowly floated down the slope he was glorifying, the moon brightened her broken face. Julia's lips were dry; her tongue had the rasp of a cat's upon the roof of her mouth.
"Is there water here?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. You shall have water. Put your hand upon this. What sha'n't you have who have helped me to find him!"
She extended her hand and held the yoke steady, and he went into the bows with the glass and filled it from the breaker, all as sensibly as though he was right in mind; but he stood two or three moments to look at the vessel they were nearing and talk to her.
She drank with the thirst of fever, and then perfect realisation possessing her, a little impulse of hope quickened the beat of her heart, for she thought to herself, made cool by hope, "There are people in that ship, and I shall be saved."
The vessel was a small brig, floating on a cargo of timber. She showed a tolerable height of side, and judging from her condition she had started a butt, and the inrush had overmastered the pump, and as her davits were empty her people had no doubt got away in the boats. She made a churchyard picture for forlornness, with the broken moon hanging over her, though daylight still throbbed in folds of cloud in the deep west.
Julia saw with a fainting heart that the brig was deserted, and she turned her eyes up to God and asked what should she do?
The captain stood in silence, with one hand backward upon the yoke, his head inclined forward with intent, searching stare.
"He may be in that brig," at last he said. "What moved then? No, 'twas the swing of the forebrace. And if he is not in that vessel," he continued, in a voice of cunning, "you who know where he is will tell me where to steer."
She brought the whole of her wits together in her resolution to live, and remembered that she had given some order to this man's insanity by her system of answering his talk. She exclaimed with all the tranquillity she could summon:
"If he is not in that vessel, Captain Layard, you will let me rest in her for the night, because if you keep me sitting in this open boat I shall be worn out, or I might die—I am not strong—and how, then, could I help you to find little Johnny?"
"Right! You are right," he answered, swiftly; "you shall rest in that brig if he is not there; but if he is there," changing his voice into a note of triumph, he added, "we must rejoin the ship, because I want the men to see him. And I am dying for his company at night, and for the sound of his drum."
As he spoke these words the boat was alongside the abandoned timberman, and with the dexterity of a sailor—for in all professional work he was as sane as the sanest—he put the helm down, sprang to let go the halliards of the lug, and secured the boat by passing her painter through a channel plate.
This brig had old-fashioned channels, which were platforms secured to the ship's side so as to give a wide spread to the shrouds and backstays. The boat sat close beside the main-channel. With the resolution of one who works for life the girl seized the lanyards of the dead-eyes, and with the ease which her graceful figure would have promised gained the platform of channel, and a minute later the deck.
With aberration disciplined by professional habit the captain went to work, his intentions being perfectly sane, save that he discovered an extraordinary anxiety and eagerness to get on board the brig. He knew that he and the girl were to pass the night in the vessel, and so, with the quick motions of madness and with the strength which madness often confers, he got the breaker of water into the main-channel, then placed beside it the stock of provisions he had stowed away aft, and called to Julia:
"Do you see him?"
"Come on deck, and we will look," she answered, for now that she stood on a solid deck her nerve had returned.
"Steady this breaker on the rail," he called.
He handed it on to the rail, and she held it. He then threw the provisions on to the deck, leapt inboard, and placed the breaker betwixt a couple of loose planks. The moon was shining brightly, and its light rippled in lines of lustrous pearl. The heave of the sea was slow and solemn, the wind was soft and weak, and the west was still scored with streaks of crimson; but night was at hand, and some stars were trembling in the east.
She was one of those little brigs which are among the quaintest of the marine objects of the port or harbour. Her forward-deck from the main-hatchway was heaped with timber cleverly stowed, with room for a little caboose and a narrow alley to it from the hatch. Some of the running rigging lay loose about the decks, and this gave her a look of confusion. Otherwise, from the appearance of her deck cargo, it was clear that she had not been hurt by weather. A deck-house nearly filled the quarter-deck; there was just room on either hand for a man to walk.
The captain stood silent for a minute staring about him. He then muttered:
"Nothing moves; I see nothing alive. He may be there. Come, for it will be you to see him first."
He went to the door of the deck-house, and Julia followed. Two windows stood on either side the door, and four windows ran down either wall. But when they entered the moon made so faint a light through the door and the windows that it was difficult to see. Yet distinctive features of the interior were visible: a table, three or four chairs, and a bulkhead abaft, which might screen from the living-room two holes for the skipper and his mate to sleep in.
"Call him," whispered the captain, as though he stood in a dead-house.
"Johnny!" cried the girl, "come to father if you are here, Johnny!"
She had a wonderful spirit to say this. She felt the horrible mockery of it and the recoil of its ghastly derisiveness upon her heart, but she knew that Hardy could not be far off, and would seek her. The passion of life was strong in her, and she judged that her only chance lay in inspiriting the poor man's dreadful conviction that she could help him to find his son.
"Call him again," said the captain, and again she called.
He advanced a step, and she saw him in the faint suffusion straining in a posture of desperate gaze, of desperate hearkening, as though his teeth were set and the sweat of blood was on his brow, and the palms of his hands were bloody with the penetration of the finger-nails.
At that moment she heard a single stroke of a bell. She started with a cry, with instant rejoicing, for she believed there were men in the vessel.
"What was that?" said the captain.
"A bell!" she exclaimed.
"O God! it may be Johnny!" he shouted, and he rushed through the open door.
She quickly followed; she was not a superstitious fool, she was a girl at sea, and, as a girl might, she supposed that if a bell were struck upon a ship's deck it was by a man.
A small bell was hung betwixt the foremast and the foremost end of the galley or caboose, and immediately under it lay, bottom up, secured to the deck, a small tub of a boat. It was easy to understand why the bell should have tolled. It had been struck by some bight of buntline or clewline in the sway of the brig as she heeled to the fold, and the sharp return of the bell jerked the tongue against the metal side in a single stroke.
But the captain was too mad to understand this, and Julia was a girl at sea without eyes for bights of running gear. She was startled, nay, a sudden horror of superstition visited her when following the captain. She stood near the bell and saw no signs of human creature. She cast looks of fear all about; one, even one, man would protect her against the horrible yokedom of this passage. The planks had the sheen of satin in the moonlight, and the power of the satellite sufficed to fling dark shadows upon the decks, and these shadows moved as the brig rolled. But she saw no man; and what ghostly hand then had struck that bell? For the night might go before the swing of the bight of gear should, by adjustment of the rolling of the vessel, exactly hit the bell again and make it ring.
The captain began to call, "Johnny, Johnny, where are you? Come out of your hiding-place, little sonny. Here's father waiting for you."
He breathed deep, listening and gazing about him; but no other reply reached his ear than the sob of water under the bow, the moan of night wind in the rigging, the sullen slap of canvas against the mast.
"Do you see him?" the captain asked, and the eyes of madness sparkled in the moonshine as he turned his gaze upon the girl.
She answered, huskily, "No, I do not see him. Who struck that bell?"
"He did," said the captain. "O God! O everlasting Father! Why does he hide himself from me?"
He clasped his hands and raised them and looked up, and in that posture he muttered as though he prayed, and all the while Julia was staring about her, faint with fear, and with the sight of that imploring figure of afflicted manhood; for who had struck the bell? And did the dead come to life again in phantoms? And was the spirit of Johnny invisibly present?
Poor Julia!
"He may come out of his hiding-place if we go aft," said the captain in his voice of cunning. "Stop!"
He stepped to the little caboose and entered it.
"Not here, not here," he groaned as he came out, "but we must have patience. We will sit and wait. We'll sit and watch the deck, and at any moment you may see his little figure coming along."
Weak with fear and superstition, and the horror of her ghastly situation, she followed the miserable man to the deck-house. He entered and brought out two chairs, which he placed in front of the door, and they sat down. It was certain that the man believed the child to be in this abandoned vessel, and this was assurance to Julia that he would not compel her to enter the boat and sail away in search of the boy. The thought inspired some faint hope; she knew that this was no unfrequented tract of ocean, and that even if Hardy did not seek her, any hour next day might bring along some ship which she could signal to by flourishing her handkerchief. But Hardy! She began to think whilst her dreadful companion sat beside her staring along the moonlighted deck, and waiting for his boy to come. She fully understood that she had been drugged; her thoughts went to the medicine-chest; had the captain poisoned Hardy and the rest of the crew that he might steal her from the ship? This puzzled her, for if the crew had been drugged they might have been drugged to death by the irresponsible hand of this madman, and Hardy would be lost to her for ever, and his ship would not come to rescue her.
These were her thoughts "too deep for tears," but it was fortunate that she had slept soundly and well in the boat, for now, though wearied in bone and faint at heart, she was as sleepless as the poor, tireless creature beside her. She could not have endured to enter the deck-house and rest there; she needed the companionship of the moon and the stars, and the visible surface of the deep blackening out from either hand the wake of the luminary to its limitless recesses. The whisper of the wind in the rigging was companionship, but the movements of the shadows upon the whitened planks were a perpetual fear, for who had struck the bell? and was the vessel haunted? Her throat was parched and she asked for water.
"Certainly; oh, yes. He is long in coming, but when he comes we'll rejoin the ship," the captain said as he rose, and quite sanely he went to the breaker, filled the tumbler, and returned with a glassful and a biscuit.
There was the courtesy of good breeding in the poor fellow as he handed her the glass, for the soul that is never mad will shine through disease, and Captain Layard, who was born a gentleman, proved a gentleman even when insane. She drank gratefully and ate the biscuit.
He took the glass from her and filled it for himself, but did not eat. Then he returned to his chair, and that dreadful watch on deck again began. Often he would say:
"Do you see him? Why should he keep in hiding?"
And sometimes he would quit his seat and go to the rail, and look into the sea over the side.
The water swarmed with fire this night; the chilly sea-glow started in fibres, in clouds like luminous smoke, in coils like revolving eels, and it is conceivable that the crazed eye which was bent upon these lights should fashion them into phantasms, into grotesque shapes, into the crowd of brassy faces which the sealed but waking vision beholds when the brain is drugged. He would spend twenty minutes in searching the waters, and then cross to the other side and spend a quarter of an hour in a like hunt. Always when he returned to his chair he would mutter to himself, "Why doesn't he come?" And once he started up with a frantic cry which was frightful with inarticulateness; he dashed his hand to his forehead and held it there, with his left arm stiffened out and the fingers curled with the agony of his mind.
At that moment the bell was again struck, and now it was Julia who shrieked. She started up and bent her head forward, thinking to see the figure that had struck the bell. The captain broke into a wild laugh.
"I see him! I see him!" he cried. "O Johnny, I'm your father!" and he started into a run with his arms outstretched, as if to seize the phantom he beheld.
He ran past the bell, and crying, "I am coming, Johnny, I am coming!" climbed on to the top of the deck load, and in a strange croaking voice, as though it proceeded from some huge sea-bird sailing overhead, he exclaimed:
"There you are at last, my Johnny! Father is coming to you!" and sprang overboard.
Julia fell upon the deck and lay lifeless in a swoon.