We towed down to Gravesend on a wet morning. Nature is incapable of a gloomier exhibition of wretchedness than the scene she will paint you of the Isle of Dogs and Bugsby’s Beach and the yellow stretch of water past Woolwich on a wet day. We had convict hulks moored in the river in those times, and they fitted the dark weeping weather as though they were creations of the spirit of the stream in its sulkiest and most depraved temper of invention. Their influence, too, as a spectacle was a sickness to the soul of the outward-bound, whilst the decks streamed and the scuppers gushed and the rigging howled to the whipping of the wet blast, and the greasy water washed into the wake in a sort of oily ironic chuckling, as though the filthy god of the flood was in tow, and laughing under the ship’s counter at the general misery aboard.
We moored to a buoy off Gravesend in the afternoon, and next morning, whilst it was still raining, the passengers arrived. Amongst the first to mount the gangway ladder were Captain Mills and his daughter. I received them and took them into the cuddy, and did my best to cheer up the old man; but to no purpose. He broke down when the three of us were by ourselves, and sobbed in a strange, dry-eyed, most affecting manner, often turning to his daughter and bringing her to his heart and blessing her in tones which I confess made my own vision dim. She was pale with weeping.
She cried out once when he turned to fondle her—
“Father, I don’t want to go! I don’t love him enough to leave you. Let me remain with you; we will return home together. It is not too late. Captain Cleaver will send my baggage ashore.”
This, I think, served to rally the old chap somewhat. He pulled his faculties together, and in a trembling voice bade his daughter remember that the man she was going to loved her, and was worthy to be loved in return. He himself was getting old, he said, and his closing days would be miserable if he believed he should die and leave her without a protector. A year is quickly lived through: she would soon be coming on a visit to England; or perhaps—who could tell?—he might himself go out the next voyage in this very identical ship, with his friend Cleaver, if he then commanded her.
When he was gone I called to the stewardess and bade her see to Miss Mills’ comfort in every direction of the cabin life. The rest of the cuddy passengers arrived quickly from Gravesend. I forget how many they were in all. I believe that every cabin was occupied. The people were of the usual sort in those days of the voyage to India by way of the Cape: a colonel and his wife, the colonel a black-faced man, with gleaming eyes that followed you to the extremities of their sockets; the wife a vast, shapeless bulk of a woman, her head covered by a wig of scarlet curls and her fingers with flashing rings, sheathing them to the first joints; several military officers of various ages; a parson; two merchants of Bombay; five or six ladies, and as many children.
We met with heavy weather down Channel. In this time I saw nothing of Miss Mills, though I was constant in my inquiries after her. She was not very ill, the stewardess told me. She ate and drank, but she chose to keep her cabin. One morning, when the ship was flapping sluggishly over a wide heave of swell, clothed to the trucks in misty sunshine, which poured like pale steam into the recesses of the ocean, the girl came on deck. She was charmingly attired (I thought); her dark red hair glowed like bronze under the proudly feathered hat. Her complexion was raised; her eyes shone; the Channel dusting had done her good, and I told her so, looking with helpless admiration into her beautiful face as I gave her my arm for a turn.
After this she was punctual at table and constantly on deck. I then considered it fortunate for the Rev. Joseph Moxon that our military passengers should be, without exception, married men; the two or three who were going out alone were either leaving or joining their wives: hence the attention the girl received was without significance. They hung about her; they ran on errands; they were full of business when she hove in sight, so as to plant a chair for her and the like: but it never could come to more than that. The wives looked on, and were civil and kind in a ladylike way to the girl; but I guess she was too pretty to please them; her looks and coquettish vivacity were too conquering; whenever she spoke at table there was an eager sweep of moustache, a universal rounding of Roman and other noses in the direction of her chair. I don’t think the wives liked it; but, as I have said, they were all very kind in a genteel way.
I had made up my mind, judging from the glances the girl had directed at the handsome mate Aiken in dock, that she would, though perhaps without losing her heart, yield to the influence of his manly beauty, and be very willing to carry on an aimless flirtation when I was out of sight and the man in charge of the ship. I had also made up my mind, if I caught the mate attempting to fool with the girl, to bring him up with a “round turn.” In fact, I chose to be a taut hand in those matters, quite irrespective of private feelings. Apparently, however, I was to be spared the trouble of bidding my handsome mate keep himself to himself and his weather-eye lifting for the ship and his duties only. Day after day passed, and I never caught him speaking to her.
Once only, and this was at some early date, when she and I were pacing the deck together, and Aiken was standing at the head of the weather-poop ladder, she asked me to tell her about him. Was he married? I said I believed not—I happened to know he was not. Who and what was his father? How long had he been at sea? When was he likely to get command? The subject was then changed, and afterwards, though I watched them somewhat jealously, I never detected so much as a glance pass between them.
The long and short of it was—I am bound to confess it—before we had struck the Canary parallels, I—myself—I—Captain Cleaver, commander of the ship Hecla—was seriously in love with the girl, and making my days and nights uneasy by contemplation of a proposal of marriage based on these considerations: first, that I was in love with her; next, that she was not in love with the Rev. Joseph Moxon; third, that I could give her a home in England; and then, again, her father was my friend, one of my own cloth, and I had no doubt he would be delighted if I brought her home with me as my wife.
No good, in a short yarn like this, to enter into the question of what was due from me to Joseph Moxon. Enough that I was in love with the girl, and that I had quite clearly discovered she had no affection for—she did not even like or respect—Joseph. I was eight-and-thirty years of age, and a young man at that, as I chose to think; yet somehow Miss Minnie, by no means unintentionally, as I now know, contrived to keep sentiment at bay by making me feel that in taking the place of her father whilst we were at sea I had become her father. Never by word of lip did I give her to know that I was in love with her; but I saw she was perfectly sensible that I was her devoted admirer, and that something was bound to happen before we should climb very far north into the Indian Ocean.
One night at about eleven o’clock—six bells—I stepped on deck from my cabin to take a look round. The ship’s latitude was then about 25° south. It was a cool, very quiet, dark night, with a piece of dusky-red moon dying out bulbous and distorted in the liquid blackness north-west; a few stars shone sparely; the canvas rose pale and silent; saving the lift of the fabric on the long-drawn heave of the swell, all the life in her was in a little music of ripples, breaking from her stem and tinkling aft in the noise of a summer shower upon water.
I looked into the binnacle, and not immediately seeing the officer of the watch, went a little way forward, and perceived two figures to leeward standing against the poop rail. I walked straight to them quickly. One was Mr. Aiken and the other Miss Minnie Mills. She laughed when I stepped up to her, and exclaimed, “No scolding, I beg. I was disturbed by a nightmare, and came on deck to see if I was really upon the ocean instead of at Junglepore. Mr. Aiken has reassured me. I shall be able to sleep now, I think. So good night to you both,” and with that she left us and disappeared.
I was angry, excited, exceedingly jealous. I guessed I had been tricked, and that a deal had passed between these two, for many a long day gone, utterly unobserved by me. I gave Mr. Aiken a piece of my mind.
Never had I “hazed” any man as I did that fellow as he stood before me. He said it was not his fault; the girl had come on deck and accosted him: he was no ship’s constable to order the passengers about; if he was spoken to, he answered; I expected he would be civil to the passengers, he supposed.
I bestowed several sea blessings on his eyes and limbs, and bade him understand that Miss Minnie Mills was under my protection; if I caught him speaking to her I would break him for insubordination. He was mate of the ship, and his business lay in doing his duty. If he went beyond it, he should sling his hammock in the forecastle for the rest of the voyage.
I was horribly in earnest and angry; and when I returned to my cabin, I paced the floor of it as sick at heart as a jilted woman with jealousy and spleen. However, after a while I contrived to console myself with believing that their being together was an accident, and that it might have been as Aiken had put it. At all events, it made me somewhat easy to reflect that I had never observed them in company before, never even caught them looking at each other—that is, significantly.
She was in a sullen and pouting temper all next day.
“Why mayn’t I go on deck at night if I choose?” said she.
“Your father would object,” said I. “You are under my care. I am responsible for you,” I added, with a tender look.
“Would you prohibit the other lady passengers from going on deck at night?”
“You shall have your way in anything that is good for you,” said I.
She flashed an arch, saucy glance at me, then sighed, and seemed intensely miserable on a sudden. I believe but for having caught her in Aiken’s company I should then and there have offered her my hand.
For a week following she was so completely in the dumps it was hard to get a word from her. Sometimes she looked as if she had been secretly crying, yet I never could persuade myself that the appearance her eyes would at such times present was due to weeping. She moped apart. Some of the passengers noticed her behaviour and spoke to me about it, thinking she was ill. The ship’s surgeon talked with her, and assured me privately he could find nothing wrong save that she complained of poorness of spirits.
“She seems to hate the idea of India,” said he, “and wants to go home.”
And so she shall (thought I), but she must arrive in India first, where she may leave it to me to square the yards for her with the Reverend Joseph Moxon.
We blew westwards round the Cape before a strong gale of wind. One morning, at the grey of dawn, I was aroused by a knocking on my cabin door. The second mate entered. He was a man named Wickham, a bullet-headed, immensely strong, active seaman, the younger son of a baronet: he would have held command at that time but for “the drink.” He grasped a woman’s hat and handkerchief, and exclaimed—
“I’ve just found these in the port mizzen chains, sir. I can’t tell how they happen to have come there. It looks like mischief.”
I sprang from my cot partially clothed, as I invariably was on turning in, and taking the hat in my hand, and bringing it to the clearer light of the large cabin window, I seemed to remember it as having been worn by Minnie Mills. I snatched the handkerchief from the man, and saw the initials M. M. marked upon it. This sufficed. I swiftly and completely clothed myself and entered the saloon.
My first act was to send the second mate for the stewardess. The woman arrived out of the steerage, where she slept. I said—speaking softly that the people in the berths on either hand might not be disturbed—
“Go and look into Miss Mills’ cabin, and report to me if all is well there.”
She went, vanished, was some little while out of sight; then reappeared and approached me, pale in the ashen light that was filtering through the skylights.
“Miss Mills’ cabin is empty, sir.”
I was prepared for this piece of news; yet my heart beat with a fast sick pulse when, without speech, I went to the girl’s berth, followed by the stewardess. The bunk had been occupied—the bed-clothes lay tossed in it. My eye, travelling rapidly over the interior, was quickly taken by a note lying upon a chest of drawers. It was addressed to me, and ran thus:—
“I am weary of life, and have resolved to end it. The thought of living even for a short while with Mr. Moxon at Junglepore has broken my heart, and you are as tyrannical and cruel to me as life itself. Farewell, and thank you for such kindness as you have shown me, and when you see my father tell him that I died loving him and blessing him.”
“Good God! She’s committed suicide!” cried I.
The stewardess shrieked.
I felt mad with amazement and grief. I read and re-read her letter, and then looked round the berth again, wondering if this were not some practical joke which she intended should be tragical by the fright it excited. I then went to work to make inquiries. I roused up Mr. Aiken, and, showing him the girl’s note, asked him if he had seen her on deck during his watch—if he himself had at any time foreboded this dreadful thing—if he could help me with any suggestions or information. He read the letter and stared blankly; his handsome countenance was as pale as milk whilst he eyed me. I seemed to find the ghastly mildness of a dead man’s face in his looks. He had nothing to say. No lady had come on deck in his watch. He had not exchanged a sentence with Miss Mills since that night when I threatened to break him if I found him in her company.
The men who had steered the ship throughout the night were brought out of the forecastle: no man had seen any lady jump overboard or slip into the mizzen-chains—not likely! Wouldn’t the helmsman, seeing such a thing, yell out?
The morning was now advanced. The passengers came from their berths, and it was quickly known fore and aft that the beautiful young girl who had been moping apart for three weeks past as though slowly going mad with melancholy had committed suicide by jumping overboard. The doctor and I and the two mates spent a long time whilst we overhung the mizzen-chains in conjecturing how she had managed it. The cabin windows were small: she had certainly never squeezed her fine ripe figure through the porthole of her berth; therefore she had come on to the poop in some black hour of the night by way of the quarter-deck, passing like a shadow to leeward till she arrived at the mizzen-rigging, where the deep dye flung upon the blackness by the mizzen—for it had been a quiet night, the ship under all plain sail—completely shrouded her. The rest would be easy, and if she dropped from the chains, which, through the angle of the deck, were depressed to within a few feet of the water, her fall might have been almost soundless.
The blow to me was terrible, and for some days I was prostrated. So unnecessary, I kept on saying to myself. Good heavens! For weeks I had been on the verge of proposing to her. The offer of my hand would have saved her life. I could not reconcile so enormous an act with the insignificance of the occasion for it. Old Mills was no tyrant. He had not driven her to India. She had consented—with an ill grace perhaps, not caring for the man she was going to; but there had been acquiescence on her part too, enough of it, at all events, to make one wonder that she should have destroyed herself. How should I be able to meet the old captain? Where was I to find the spirit to tell him the story?
The stewardess, to satisfy herself, thoroughly searched the after part of the ship. It came to my ears that she did not believe that the girl had committed suicide, having neither cause nor courage for such an act. She fancied that one or another of the passengers had hidden her. But for what purpose? The fool of a woman could not answer that when the question was put to her. What end would the girl’s hiding achieve? She was bound to come to light on our arrival at Bombay. What motive, then, could she have for concealing herself, for denying herself the refreshment of the deck in the Indian Ocean, ultimately to be shamefully revealed as an impostor capable of the most purposeless and idiotic of deceits?
The beauty was overboard and dead, and my heart, what with disappointed love and grieving for her and sorrow for her poor old father, weighed as lead in me when I thought of it.
We were within a fortnight’s sail of Bombay, when there broke a dawn thick and dirty as smoke, with masses of sooty vapour smouldering off the edge of the sea in the west and darkening overhead till the trucks faded out in the gloom. Yet the glass stood high, and I made nothing of the mere appearance of this weather. It lasted all day, with now and again a distant groan of thunder. A weak, hot breeze held the canvas steady, and the ship wrinkled onward, holding her course, but sailing through a noon that was as evening for shadow.
We dined at seven. The deck was then in charge of the second mate, Wickham. Before going below I told him to keep a bright look-out, and took myself an earnest view of the sea. The dusk lay very thick upon the cold, greasy, gleaming surface of the ocean, there was not a star overhead, and maybe a man would not have been able to see a distance of half a dozen ship’s lengths.
About the middle of dinner I heard a great bawling, a loud and fearful crying out as for life or death. The mate, Aiken, who sat at the foot of the long cuddy table, caught the sound with a sailor’s ear as I did, and sprang to his feet, and we rushed on deck together. I had scarcely passed through the companion hatch when the ship was struck. She heeled violently over, listing on a sudden to an angle of nearly fifty degrees, and a dismal, loud, general shriek rose through the open skylight, accompanied by the crash of timber overhead. Along with this went a wild hissing noise and an extraordinary sound of throbbing.
I rushed to the side, and saw that a large steamer had run into us. She was a big black paddle-boat, one of the few large side-wheel steamers which formerly traded betwixt England and the East Indies by way of the Cape. The sky seemed charged with stars from the spangles of fire which floated along with the thick smoke from her chimney. She was full of light. Every cabin window looked like the lens of a flaming bull’s-eye.
I sprang on to the rail, and, hailing the steamer, asked him to keep his stem into us till we found out what damage he had done, and then roared to the mate, but obtained no reply. I yelled again, then shouted to Wickham to tell the carpenter to sound the well. The passengers came crowding on to the poop. I told them there was no danger; that, though it should come to our leaving the ship, the steamer would stand by us and take all aboard.
The well was sounded, and two feet of water reported. On this I instantly understood that the ship was doomed, that to call the hands to the pumps would be to exhaust them to no purpose; and, hailing the steamer afresh as she lay hissing on our bow, with her looming stem-head overshadowing our forecastle, I reported our condition, and told him to stand-by to pick us up.
We immediately lowered the boats and sent away the women and as many men as there was room for; a second trip emptied the Hecla of her passengers. Meanwhile the steamer, at my request, kept her bows right into us. At this time there were seven feet of water in the hold. It was very black, and we worked with the help of lanterns. The mate appeared amongst my people now, and I asked him with an oath, out of the rage and distress of that hour, where he had been skulking. He answered, he was from the forecastle. I told him he was a liar, and ordered him whilst the ship swam to take a number of the hands into the cabin and save as much of the passengers’ effects as they could come at.
Not much time was permitted for this: every minute I seemed to feel the ship settling deeper and deeper with a sickening, sullen lift of her whole figure to every heave of the swell, as though she rose wearily to make her farewell plunge. Now the vessels were disengaged, and the steamer lay close abreast. I lingered, almost heart-broken, scarcely yet realizing to its full height this tragic disaster to my ship and my own fortunes; and then, hearing them calling to me, I got into the mizzen-chains, thinking, as I did so, of Minnie Mills, wishing to God I was at rest and out of it all where she lay, and entered one of the boats.
The commander of the steamer received me in the gangway. The decks were light as noontide with lanterns. He was a grey-haired man, tall and somewhat stately, dressed in a uniform after the pattern of the old East India Company’s service. When he understood I was the captain he bowed, and said—
“It’s a terrible calamity, sir. I hope to live to see the day when they will compel all masters, by Act of Parliament, to show lights at sea at night.”
A lantern was sparkling on his fore-stay, but our ship was without side-lights, and when I turned to look at her the roar of her bursting decks came along in a shock hard as a blow on the ear, and the whole pale fabric of canvas melted out upon the black water as a wreath of vapour dies in the breeze.
The steamer was the Nourmahal, Bulstrode commander. She was half full of invalided soldiers and other folks going home, and when our own people were aboard she was an overloaded craft, humanly speaking; but after a consultation with me the captain resolved to proceed. He was flush with water and provisions, and had the security besides of paddles, which slapped an easy ten knots into the hull. And then, again, she lifted the yards of a ship of twelve hundred tons, and showed as big a topsail to the wind as a frigate’s.
All that could be done was done for us. Men turned out of their cabins to accommodate the ladies and children, and a cot was slung for me in the chief officer’s berth. But I needed no pillow for my head that first night. There was nothing in laudanum short of a death-draught that could have given me sleep.
But to pass by my own state of mind, that came very near to a suicidal posture. At eight bells next morning, the mate whose cabin I shared stepped in and exclaimed, “Did you know you had a woman dressed up as a man amongst your passengers?”
“No!” I exclaimed, “not likely. I should not permit such a thing.”
“It’s so, then,” said he: “our doctor twigged her at once, and handed her over to the stewardess, who has berthed her aft. She’s a lady, and a devilish pretty woman,—mighty pale, though, with a scared, wild blind look, as though she had been dug up out of darkness, and couldn’t get used to the light.”
“What name does she give?” said I.
“I don’t know.”
I wished immediately to see her. An extraordinary suspicion worked in my head. The mate told me she was in the stewardess’s berth, and directed me to it. I knocked. The stewardess opened the door, and I immediately saw standing in the middle of the berth, with her hands to her head, pinning a bronze tress to a bed of glowing coils, Miss Minnie Mills!
I stared frantically, shouted “Good God!” and rushed in. She screamed and shrank, then clasped her hands, and reared herself loftily with a bringing of her whole shape, so to speak, together.
“So,” said I, breathing short with astonishment and twenty conflicting passions, “and this is how they commit suicide in your country, hey?”
The stewardess enlarged her eyes.
“I don’t mean to marry Mr. Joseph Moxon,” said the girl.
“In what part of the ship did you hide?” I exclaimed.
She made no answer.
“Was Mr. Aiken in the secret?”
Still no reply.
“Oh, but you should answer the captain, miss,” cried the stewardess.
The girl burst into tears, and turned her back upon me. I stepped out and asked for Captain Bulstrode. He received me in his cabin, and then I told him the story of Miss Minnie Mills.
“I never would take charge of a young lady,” said he, half laughing, though he was a good deal astonished, “after an experience I underwent in that way. I’ll tell it you another time. Let’s send for your mate, and see what he has to say for himself.”
Presently Mr. Aiken arrived. He was pale, but he carried a lofty, independent air; the fact was, I was no longer his captain. The ship was sunk, and Jack was as good as his master. I requested, representing Captain Mills as I did, that he would be candid with me, tell me how it stood between him and Miss Mills, if he had helped her in her plot of suicide, where he had hidden her in the ship, and what he meant to do. I thought Bulstrode looked at him with an approving eye. I am bound to repeat he was an uncommonly handsome fellow.
“Captain Cleaver,” he said, addressing me with a very frank, straightforward face and air, “I am perfectly aware that I have done wrong, sir. But the long and short of it is, Miss Mills and I are in love with each other, and we mean to get married.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so?” I said.
He looked at me knowingly. I felt myself colour.
“Well,” said I, “anyhow, it was so confoundedly unnecessary, you know, for her to pretend to drown herself, and for you to hold her in hiding.”
“I beg your pardon—you made it rather necessary, sir—you will remember that night——”
“So unnecessary!” I thundered out in a passion.
“Where did ye hide her?” said Captain Bulstrode.
“I decline to answer that question,” replied Aiken.
And the dog kept his word, for we never succeeded in getting the truth out of him, or the girl either; though if she did not lie secret in the blackness of the after-hold, then I don’t know in what other part of the ship he could have kept her: certainly not in his own cabin, which the ship’s steward was in and out of often, nor in any of the cuddy or steerage berths.
To end this: there was a clergyman in the ship; and Bulstrode, who, without personal knowledge of Captain Mills, had heard of him and respected him, insisted upon the couple being married that same forenoon. They were not loth, and, the parson consenting, they were spliced in the presence of a full saloon. I shook the girl by the hand when the business was over, and wished her well; but from beginning to end it was all so unnecessary!
THE MAJOR’S COMMISSION.
My name is Henry Adams, and in 1854 I was mate of a ship of 1200 tons named the Jessamy Bride. June of that year found her at Calcutta with cargo to the hatches, and ready to sail for England in three or four days.
I was walking up and down the ship’s long quarter-deck, sheltered by the awning, when a young apprentice came aft and said a gentleman wished to speak to me. I saw a man standing in the gangway; he was a tall, soldierly person, about forty years of age, with iron-grey hair and spiked moustache, and an aquiline nose. His eyes were singularly bright and penetrating. He immediately said—
“I wanted to see the captain; but as chief officer you’ll do equally well. When does this ship sail?”
“On Saturday or Monday next.”
He ran his eye along the decks and then looked aloft: there was something bird-like in the briskness of his way of glancing.
“I understand you don’t carry passengers?”
“That’s so, sir, though there’s accommodation for them.”
“I’m out of sorts, and have been sick for months, and want to see what a trip round the Cape to England will do for me. I shall be going home, not for my health only, but on a commission. The Maharajah of Ratnagiri, hearing I was returning to England on sick-leave, asked me to take charge of a very splendid gift for Her Majesty the Queen of England. It is a diamond, valued at fifteen thousand pounds.”
He paused to observe the effect of this communication, and then proceeded—
“I suppose you know how the Koh-i-noor was sent home?”
“It was conveyed to England, I think,” said I, “by H.M.S. Medea, in 1850.”
“Yes; she sailed in April that year, and arrived at Portsmouth in June. The glorious gem was intrusted to Colonel Mackieson and Captain Ramsay. It was locked up in a small box along with other jewels, and each officer had a key. The box was secreted in the ship by them, and no man on board the vessel, saving themselves, knew where it was hidden.”
“Was that so?” said I, much interested.
“Yes; I had the particulars from the commander of the vessel, Captain Lockyer. When do you expect your skipper on board?” he exclaimed, darting a bright, sharp look around him.
“I cannot tell. He may arrive at any moment.”
“The having charge of a stone valued at fifteen thousand pounds, and intended as a gift for the Queen of England, is a deuce of a responsibility,” said he. “I shall borrow a hint from the method adopted in the case of the Koh-i-noor. I intend to hide the stone in my cabin, so as to extinguish all risk, saving, of course, what the insurance people call the act of God. May I look at your cabin accommodation?”
“Certainly.”
I led the way to the companion hatch, and he followed me into the cabin. The ship had berthing room for eight or ten people irrespective of the officers who slept aft. But the vessel made no bid for passengers. She left them to Blackwall liners, to the splendid ships of Green, Money Wigram, and Smith, and to the P. & O. and other steam lines. The overland route was then the general choice; few of their own decision went by way of the Cape. No one had booked with us down to this hour, and we had counted upon having the cabin to ourselves.
The visitor walked into every empty berth, and inspected it as carefully as though he had been a Government surveyor. He beat upon the walls and bulkheads with his cane, sent his brilliant gaze into the corners and under the bunks and up at the ceiling, and finally said, as he stepped from the last of the visitable cabins—
“This decides me. I shall sail with you.”
I bowed and said I was sure the captain would be glad of the pleasure of his company.
“I presume,” said he, “that no objection will be raised to my bringing a native carpenter aboard to construct a secret place, as in the case of the Koh-i-noor, for the Maharajah’s diamond?”
“I don’t think a native carpenter would be allowed to knock the ship about,” said I.
“Certainly not. A little secret receptacle—big enough to receive this,” said he, putting his hand in his side pocket and producing a square Morocco case, of a size to berth a bracelet or a large brooch. “The construction of a nook to conceal this will not be knocking your ship about?”
“It’s a question for the captain and the agents, sir,” said I.
He replaced the case, whose bulk was so inconsiderable that it did not bulge in his coat when he had pocketed it, and said, now that he had inspected the ship and the accommodation, he would call at once upon the agents. He gave me his card and left the vessel.
The card bore the name of a military officer of some distinction. Enough if, in this narrative of a memorable and extraordinary incident, I speak of him as Major Byron Hood.
The master of the Jessamy Bride was Captain Robert North. This man had, three years earlier, sailed with me as my chief mate; it then happened I was unable to quickly obtain command, and accepted the offer of mate of the Jessamy Bride, whose captain, I was surprised to hear, proved the shipmate who had been under me, but who, some money having been left to him, had purchased an interest in the firm to which the ship belonged. We were on excellent terms; almost as brothers, indeed. He never asserted his authority, and left it to my own judgment to recognize his claims. I am happy to know he had never occasion to regret his friendly treatment of me.
He came on board in the afternoon of that day on which Major Hood had visited the ship, and was full of that gentleman and his resolution to carry a costly diamond round the Cape under sail, instead of making his obligation as brief as steam and the old desert route would allow.
“I’ve had a long talk with him up at the agents’,” said Captain North. “He don’t seem well.”
“Suffering from his nerves, perhaps,” said I.
“He’s a fine, gentlemanly person. He told Mr. Nicholson he was twice wounded, naming towns which no Christian man could twist his tongue into the sound of.”
“Will he be allowed to make a hole in the ship to hide his diamond in?”
“He has agreed to make good any damage done, and to pay at the rate of a fare and a half for the privilege of hiding the stone.”
“Why doesn’t he give the thing into your keeping, sir? This jackdaw-like hiding is a sort of reflection on our honesty, isn’t it, captain?”
He laughed and answered, “No; I like such reflections, for my part. Who wants to be burdened with the custody of precious things belonging to other people? Since he’s to have the honour of presenting the diamond, let the worry of taking care of it be his; this ship’s enough for me.”
“He’ll be knighted, I suppose, for delivering this stone,” said I. “Did he show it to you, sir?”
“No.”
“He has it in his pocket.”
“He produced the case,” said Captain North. “A thing about the size of a muffin. Where’ll he hide it? But we’re not to be curious in that direction,” he added, smiling.
Next morning, somewhere about ten o’clock, Major Hood came on board with two natives; one a carpenter, the other his assistant. They brought a basket of tools, descended into the cabin, and were lost sight of till after two. No; I’m wrong. I was writing at the cabin table at half-past twelve when the Major opened his door, peered out, shut the door swiftly behind him with an extraordinary air and face of caution and anxiety, and, coming along to me, asked for some refreshments for himself and the two natives. I called to the steward, who filled a tray, which the Major with his own hands conveyed into his berth. Then, some time after two, whilst I was at the gangway talking to a friend, the Major and the two blacks came out of the cabin. Before they went over the side I said—
“Is the work finished below, sir?”
“It is, and to my entire satisfaction,” he answered.
When he was gone, my friend, who was the master of a barque, asked me who that fine-looking man was. I answered he was a passenger, and then, not understanding that the thing was a secret, plainly told him what they had been doing in the cabin, and why.
“But,” said he, “those two niggers’ll know that something precious is to be hidden in the place they’ve been making.”
“That’s been in my head all the morning,” said I.
“Who’s to hinder them,” said he, “from blabbing to one or more of the crew? Treachey’s cheap in this country. A rupee will buy a pile of roguery.” He looked at me expressively. “Keep a bright look-out for a brace of well-oiled stowaways,” said he.
“It’s the Major’s business,” I answered, with a shrug.
When Captain North came on board, he and I went into the Major’s berth. We scrutinized every part, but saw nothing to indicate that a tool had been used or a plank lifted. There was no sawdust, no chip of wood: everything to the eye was precisely as before. No man will say we had not a right to look: how were we to make sure, as captain and mate of the ship for whose safety we were responsible, that those blacks under the eye of the Major had not been doing something which might give us trouble by-and-by?
“Well,” said Captain North, as we stepped on deck, “if the diamond’s already hidden, which I doubt, it couldn’t be more snugly concealed if it were twenty fathoms deep in the mud here.”
The Major’s baggage came on board on the Saturday, and on the Monday we sailed. We were twenty-four of a ship’s company all told: twenty-five souls in all, with Major Hood. Our second mate was a man named Mackenzie, to whom and to the apprentices whilst we lay in the river I had given particular instructions to keep a sharp look-out on all strangers coming aboard. I had been very vigilant myself too, and altogether was quite convinced there was no stowaway below, either white or black, though under ordinary circumstances one never would think of seeking for a native in hiding for Europe.
On either hand of the Jessamy Bride’s cabin five sleeping-berths were bulkheaded off. The Major’s was right aft on the starboard side. Mine was next his. The captain occupied a berth corresponding with the Major’s, right aft on the port side. Our solitary passenger was exceedingly amiable and agreeable at the start and for days after. He professed himself delighted with the cabin fare, and said it was not to be bettered at three times the charge in the saloons of the steamers. His drink he had himself laid in: it consisted mainly of claret and soda. He had come aboard with a large cargo of Indian cigars, and was never without a long, black weed, bearing some tongue-staggering, up-country name, betwixt his lips. He was primed with professional anecdote, had a thorough knowledge of life in India, both in the towns and wilds, had seen service in Burmah and China, and was altogether one of the most conversible soldiers I ever met: a scholar, something of a wit, and all that he said and all that he did was rendered the more engaging by grace of breeding.
Captain North declared to me he had never met so delightful a man in all his life, and the pleasantest hours I ever passed on the ocean were spent in walking the deck in conversation with Major Byron Hood.
For some days after we were at sea no reference was made either by the Major or ourselves to the Maharajah of Ratnagiri’s splendid gift to Her Majesty the Queen. The captain and I and Mackenzie viewed it as tabooed matter: a thing to be locked up in memory, just as, in fact, it was hidden away in some cunningly-wrought receptacle in the Major’s cabin. One day at dinner, however, when we were about a week out from Calcutta, Major Hood spoke of the Maharajah’s gift. He talked freely about it; his face, was flushed as though the mere thought of the thing raised a passion of triumph in his spirits. His eyes shone whilst he enlarged upon the beauty and value of the stone.
The captain and I exchanged looks; the steward was waiting upon us with cocked ears, and that menial, deaf expression of face which makes you know every word is being greedily listened to. We might therefore make sure that before the first dog-watch came round all hands would have heard that the Major had a diamond in his cabin intended for the Queen of England, and worth fifteen thousand pounds. Nay, they’d hear even more than that; for in the course of his talk about the gem the Major praised the ingenuity of the Asiatic artisan, whether Indian or Chinese, and spoke of the hiding-place the two natives had contrived for the diamond as an example of that sort of juggling skill in carving which is found in perfection amongst the Japanese.
I thought this candour highly indiscreet: charged too with menace. A matter gains in significance by mystery. The Jacks would think nothing of a diamond being in the ship as a part of her cargo, which might include a quantity of specie for all they knew. But some of them might think more often about it than was at all desirable when they understood it was stowed away under a plank, or was to be got by tapping about for a hollow echo, or probing with the judgment of a carpenter when the Major was on deck and the coast aft all clear.
We had been three weeks at sea; it was a roasting afternoon, though I cannot exactly remember the situation of the ship. Our tacks were aboard and the bowlines triced out, and the vessel was scarcely looking up to her course, slightly heeling away from a fiery fanning of wind off the starboard bow, with the sea trembling under the sun in white-hot needles of broken light, and a narrow ribbon of wake glancing off into a hot blue thickness that brought the horizon within a mile of us astern.
I had charge of the deck from twelve to four. For an hour past the Major, cigar in mouth, had been stretched at his ease in a folding chair; a book lay beside him on the skylight, but he scarcely glanced at it. I had paused to address him once or twice, but he showed no disposition to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable, I observed a restless, singular expression in his face, accentuated yet by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea, or glances at the deck forward, or around at the helm, so far as he might move his head without shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labour with some scheme. A man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of a play, or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of a novel piece of mechanism.
On a sudden he started up and went below.
A few minutes after he had left the deck, Captain North came up from his cabin, and for some while we paced the planks together. There was a pleasant hush upon the ship; the silence was as refreshing as a fold of coolness lifting off the sea. A spun-yarn winch was clinking on the forecastle; from alongside rose the music of fretted waters.
I was talking to the captain on some detail of the ship’s furniture, when Major Hood came running up the companion steps, his face as white as his waistcoat, his head uncovered, every muscle of his countenance rigid, as with horror.
“Good God, captain!” cried he, standing in the companion, “what do you think has happened?” Before we could fetch a breath he cried, “Some one’s stolen the diamond!”
I glanced at the helmsman, who stood at the radiant circle of wheel staring with open mouth and eyebrows arched into his hair. The captain, stepping close to Major Hood, said in a low, steady voice—
“What’s this you tell me, sir?”
“The diamond’s gone!” exclaimed the Major, fixing his shining eyes upon me, whilst I observed that his fingers convulsively stroked his thumbs as though he were rolling up pellets of bread or paper.
“Do you tell me the diamond’s been taken from the place you hid it in?” said Captain North, still speaking softly, but with deliberation.
“The diamond never was hidden,” replied the Major, who continued to stare at me. “It was in a portmanteau. That’s no hiding-place!”
Captain North fell back a step. “Never was hidden!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t you bring two native workmen aboard for no other purpose than to hide it?”
“It never was hidden,” said the Major, now turning his eyes upon the captain. “I chose it should be believed it was undiscoverably concealed in some part of my cabin, that I might safely and conveniently keep it in my baggage, where no thief would dream of looking for it. Who has it?” he cried with a sudden fierceness, making a step full of passion out of the companion-way; and he looked with knitted brows towards the ship’s forecastle.
Captain North watched him idly for a moment or two; and then, with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in a quiet, level voice—
“I shan’t be able to help you. If it’s gone, it’s gone. A diamond’s not a bale of wool. Whoever’s been clever enough to find it will know how to keep it.”
“I must have it!” broke out the Major. “It’s a gift for Her Majesty the Queen. It’s in this ship. I look to you, sir, as master of this vessel, to recover the property which some one of the people under your charge has robbed me of!”
“I’ll accompany you to your cabin,” said the captain; and they went down the steps.
I stood motionless, gaping like an idiot into the yawn of hatch down which they had disappeared. I had been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the Major’s berth, that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment. Small wonder that neither Captain North nor I had observed any marks of a workman’s tools in the Major’s berth. Not but that it was a very ingenious stratagem, far cleverer to my way of thinking than any subtle, secret burial of the thing. To think of the Major and his two Indians sitting idly for hours in that cabin, with the captain and myself all the while supposing they were fashioning some wonderful contrivance or place for concealing the treasure in! And still, for all the Major’s cunning, the stone was gone! Who had stolen it? The only fellow likely to prove the thief was the steward, not because he was more or less of a rogue than any other man in the ship, but because he was the one person who, by virtue of his office, was privileged to go in and out of the sleeping-places as his duties required.
I was pacing the deck, musing into a sheer muddle this singular business of the Maharajah of Ratnagiri’s gift to the Queen of England, with all sorts of dim, unformed suspicions floating loose in my brains round the central fancy of the fifteen thousand pound stone there, when the captain returned. He was alone. He stepped up to me hastily, and said—
“He swears the diamond has been stolen. He showed me the empty case.”
“Was there ever a stone in it at all?” said I.
“I don’t think that,” he answered quickly; “there’s no motive under Heaven to be imagined if the whole thing’s a fabrication.”
“What then, sir?”
“The case is empty, but I’ve not made up my mind yet that the stone’s missing.”
“The man’s an officer and a gentleman.”
“I know, I know!” he interrupted, “but still, in my opinion, the stone’s not missing. The long and short of it is,” he said, after a very short pause, with a careful glance at the skylight and companion hatch, “his behaviour isn’t convincing enough. Something’s wanting in his passion and his vexation.”
“Sincerity!”
“Ah! I don’t intend that this business shall trouble me. He angrily required me to search the ship for stowaways. Bosh! The second mate and steward have repeatedly overhauled the lazarette: there’s nobody there.”
“And if not there, then nowhere else,” said I. “Perhaps he’s got the fore-peak in his head.”
“I’ll not have a hatch lifted!” he exclaimed warmly; “nor will I allow the crew to be troubled. There’s been no theft. Put it that the stone is stolen. Who’s going to find it in a forecastle full of men—a thing as big as half a bean, perhaps? If it’s gone, it’s gone, indeed, whoever may have it. But there’s no go in this matter at all,” he added, with a short, nervous laugh.
We were talking in this fashion when the Major joined us; his features were now composed. He gazed sternly at the captain and said loftily—
“What steps are you prepared to take in this matter?”
“None, sir.”
His face darkened. He looked with a bright gleam in his eyes at the captain, then at me: his gaze was piercing with the light in it. Without a word he stepped to the side and, folding his arms, stood motionless.
I glanced at the captain; there was something in the bearing of the Major that gave shape, vague indeed, to a suspicion that had cloudily hovered about my thoughts of the man for some time past. The captain met my glance, but he did not interpret it.
When I was relieved at four o’clock by the second mate, I entered my berth, and presently, hearing the captain go to his cabin, went to him and made a proposal. He reflected, and then answered—
“Yes; get it done.”
After some talk, I went forward and told the carpenter to step aft and bore a hole in the bulkhead that separated the Major’s berth from mine. He took the necessary tools from his chest and followed me. The captain was now again on deck, talking with the Major; in fact, detaining him in conversation, as had been preconcerted. I went into the Major’s berth, and quickly settled upon a spot for an eye-hole. The carpenter then went to work in my cabin, and in a few minutes bored an orifice large enough to enable me to command a large portion of the adjacent interior. I swept the sawdust from the deck in the Major’s berth, so that no hint should draw his attention to the hole, which was pierced in a corner shadowed by a shelf. I then told the carpenter to manufacture a plug and paint its extremity of the colour of the bulkhead. He brought me this plug in a quarter of an hour. It fitted nicely, and was to be withdrawn and inserted as noiselessly as though greased.
I don’t want you to suppose this Peeping-Tom scheme was at all to my taste, albeit my own proposal; but the truth is, the Major’s telling us that some one had stolen his diamond made all who lived aft hotly eager to find out whether he spoke the truth or not; for, if he had been really robbed of the stone, then suspicion properly rested upon the officers and the steward, which was an infernal consideration: dishonouring and inflaming enough to drive one to seek a remedy in even a baser device than that of secretly keeping watch on a man in his bedroom. Then, again, the captain told me that the Major, whilst they talked when the carpenter was at work making the hole, had said he would give notice of his loss to the police at Capetown (at which place we were to touch), and declared he’d take care no man went ashore—from Captain North himself down to the youngest apprentice—till every individual, every sea-chest, every locker, drawer, shelf and box, bunk, bracket and crevice, had been searched by qualified rummagers.
On this the day of the theft, nothing more was said about the diamond: that is, after the captain had emphatically informed Major Hood that he meant to take no steps whatever in the matter. I had expected to find the Major sullen and silent at dinner; he was not, indeed, so talkative as usual, but no man watching and hearing him would have supposed so heavy a loss as that of a stone worth fifteen thousand pounds, the gift of an Eastern potentate to the Queen of England, was weighing upon his spirits.
It is with reluctance I tell you that, after dinner that day, when he went to his cabin, I softly withdrew the plug and watched him. I blushed whilst thus acting, yet I was determined, for my own sake and for the sake of my shipmates, to persevere. I spied nothing noticeable saving this: he sat in a folding chair and smoked, but every now and again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth and talked to it with a singular smile. It was a smile of cunning, that worked like some baleful, magical spirit in the fine high breeding of his features; changing his looks just as a painter of incomparable skill might colour a noble, familiar face into a diabolical expression, amazing those who knew it only in its honest and manly beauty. I had never seen that wild, grinning countenance on him before, and it was rendered the more remarkable by the movement of his lips whilst he talked to himself, but inaudibly.
A week slipped by. Time after time I had the man under observation; often when I had charge of the deck I’d leave the captain to keep a look-out, and steal below and watch Major Hood in his cabin.
It was a Sunday, I remember. I was lying in my bunk half dozing—we were then, I think, about a three-weeks’ sail from Table Bay—when I heard the Major go to his cabin. I was already sick of my aimless prying; and whilst I now lay I thought to myself, “I’ll sleep; what is the good of this trouble? I know exactly what I shall see. He is either in his chair, or his bunk, or overhauling his clothes, or standing, cigar in mouth, at the open porthole.” And then I said to myself, “If I don’t look now I shall miss the only opportunity of detection that may occur.” One is often urged by a sort of instinct in these matters.
I got up, almost as through an impulse of habit, noiselessly withdrew the plug, and looked. The Major was at that instant standing with a pistol-case in his hand: he opened it as my sight went to him, took out one of a brace of very elegant pistols, put down the case, and on his apparently touching a spring in the butt of the pistol, the silver plate that ornamented the extremity sprang open as the lid of a snuff-box would, and something small and bright dropped into his hand. This he examined with the peculiar cunning smile I have before described; but, owing to the position of his hand, I could not see what he held, though I had not the least doubt that it was the diamond.
I watched him breathlessly. After a few minutes he dropped the stone into the hollow butt-end, shut the silver plate, shook the weapon against his ear as though it pleased him to rattle the stone, then put it in its case, and the case into a portmanteau.
I at once went on deck, where I found the captain, and reported to him what I had seen. He viewed me in silence, with a stare of astonishment and incredulity. What I had seen, he said, was not the diamond. I told him the thing that had dropped into the Major’s hand was bright, and, as I thought, sparkled, but it was so held I could not see it.
I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the Major came on deck. The captain said to me, “Hold him in chat. I’ll judge for myself,” and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol-case. This I did, and he went below.
I joined the Major, and talked on the first subjects that entered my head. He was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face; wore a lofty manner, and being half a head taller than I, glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way. This behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his “injured air.” He’d occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain’s insensibility to his loss, and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Capetown.
Presently looking down the skylight, I perceived the captain. Mackenzie had charge of the watch. I descended the steps, and Captain North’s first words to me were—
“It’s no diamond!”
“What, then, is it?”
“A common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing.”
“What’s it all about, then?” said I. “Upon my soul, there’s nothing in Euclid to beat it. Glass?”
“A little lump of common glass; a fragment of bull’s-eye, perhaps.”
“What’s he hiding it for?”
“Because,” said Captain North, in a soft voice looking up and around, “he’s mad!”
“Just so!” said I. “That I’ll swear to now, and I’ve been suspecting it this fortnight past.”
“He’s under the spell of some sort of mania,” continued the captain; “he believes he’s commissioned to present a diamond to the Queen; possibly picked up a bit of stuff in the street that started the delusion, then bought a case for it, and worked out the rest as we know.”
“But why does he want to pretend that the stone was stolen from him?”
“He’s been mastered by his own love for the diamond,” he answered. “That’s how I reason it. Madness has made his affection for his imaginary gem a passion in him.”
“And so he robbed himself of it, you think, that he might keep it?”
“That’s about it,” said he.
After this I kept no further look-out upon the Major, nor would I ever take an opportunity to enter his cabin to view for myself the piece of glass as the captain described it, though curiosity was often hot in me.
We arrived at Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions he gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high-bred, polished gentleman who had sailed with us from Calcutta.
The first to come aboard were the Customs people. They were almost immediately followed by the harbour-master. Scarcely had the first of the Custom House officers stepped over the side when Major Hood, with a very red face, and a lofty, dignified carriage, marched up to him, and said in a loud voice—
“I have been robbed during the passage from Calcutta of a diamond worth fifteen thousand pounds, which I was bearing as a gift from the Maharajah of Ratnagiri to Her Majesty the Queen of England.”
The Customs man stared with a lobster-like expression of face: no image could better hit the protruding eyes and brick-red countenance of the man.
“I request,” continued the Major, raising his voice into a shout, “to be placed at once in communication with the police of this port. No person must be allowed to leave the vessel until he has been thoroughly searched by such expert hands as you and your confrères no doubt are, sir. I am Major Byron Hood. I have been twice wounded. My services are well known, and, I believe, duly appreciated in the right quarters. Her Majesty the Queen is not to suffer any disappointment at the hands of one who has the honour of wearing her uniform, nor am I to be compelled, by the act of a thief, to betray the confidence the Maharajah has reposed in me.”
He continued to harangue in this manner for some minutes, during which I observed a change in the expression of the Custom House officers’ faces.
Meanwhile Captain North stood apart in earnest conversation with the harbour-master. They now approached; the harbour-master, looking steadily at the Major, exclaimed—
“Good news, sir! Your diamond is found!”
“Ha!” shouted the Major. “Who has it?”
“You’ll find it in your pistol-case,” said the harbour-master.
The Major gazed round at us with his wild, bright eyes, his face a-work with the conflict of twenty mad passions and sensations. Then bursting into a loud, insane laugh, he caught the harbour-master by the arm, and in a low voice and a sickening, transforming leer of cunning, said, “Come, let’s go and look at it.”
We went below. We were six, including two Custom House officers. We followed the poor madman, who grasped the harbour-master’s arm, and on arriving at his cabin we stood at the door of it. He seemed heedless of our presence, but on his taking the pistol-case from the portmanteau, the two Customs men sprang forward.
“That must be searched by us,” one cried, and in a minute they had it.
With the swiftness of experienced hands they found and pressed the spring of the pistol, the silver plate flew open, and out dropped a fragment of thick, common glass, just as Captain North had described the thing. It fell upon the deck. The Major sprang, picked it up and pocketed it.
“Her Majesty will not be disappointed, after all,” said he, with a courtly bow to us, “and the commission the Maharajah’s honoured me with shall be fulfilled.”
The poor gentleman was taken ashore that afternoon, and his luggage followed him. He was certified mad by the medical man at Capetown, and was to be retained there, as I understood, till the arrival of a steamer for England. It was an odd, bewildering incident from top to bottom. No doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow, whose mind was then fast decaying, reading about the transmission of the Koh-i-noor, and musing about it with a madman’s proneness to dwell upon little things.