' - 
 
 /
 
 Marooned ******* 
 
 A Sea Tale i********** 
 
 ***** by W. Clark Russell 
 
 Chicago and New York * * * 
 Rand, McNally & Company
 
 STACK 
 ANNEX 
 
 PR 
 
 MAEOONED 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I RECEIVE A LETTE3 
 
 I KETUENED to my lodgings in London one night in June in 
 the year eighteen hundred and something, and found a letter 
 lying upon the table. It was from my cousin, Alexander Fraser, 
 and was dated at Rio Janeiro. This was a man whom I had 
 neither seen nor heard of for some years. We had been sent to 
 sea as boys in the East India Company's service, arid together 
 had made three voyages in the same ship to Bombay ; which in 
 those ambling days of trade, when a four months' passage to the 
 Bay of Bengal was considered a good run, meant a Jong and 
 Intimate association. Through the death of my dear mother I 
 same into money enough to render me independent, and so I 
 quitted old ocean after three years of seafaring. Fraser made 
 <* fourth voyage and I then lost sight of him. When later on I 
 arrote to his sisters in the north of Scotland, I was told he had 
 left his ship at Bombay to accompany a tea-grower, who had 
 been a passenger in the vessel, to his plantations. That was the 
 last I heard ot him. As I held his letter in my hand, memory 
 recalled him as a fair, blue-eyed, bronzed young fellow, exceed- 
 ingly good-looking, a very nimble and alert seaman, fitter for 
 the navy indeed than for the tea- waggon service, full of spirit 
 and resolution and extremely impulsive. 
 
 He wrote to the following effect : first of all, he said, he had 
 heard of me and obtained my address from a friend of mine who 
 had sailed a few months before for Lima, but whose ship had 
 been obliged to put into Rio to repair some damage she had 
 sustained in a heavy gale off Cape Agostino. He had a long 
 story to relate about his misfortunes in India, how he had been 
 villainously deceived in the character of his associate and 
 almost ruined by him, and how, as he had no wish to die of 
 starvation, he had shipped as a foremast hand aboard a Yankee
 
 2 MAROONED 
 
 vessel from which he ran on her arrival at Pernambuco, where 
 he fell in with a sugar-grower belonging to Rio, who offered him 
 a good berth on his estate in the neighbourhood of that town. 
 He had not been long settled when he made the acquaintance of 
 a Mr. and Mrs. Grant, with whose only daughter, Aurelia, he 
 immediately fell in love. Mr. Grant was a Scotchman who had 
 married a Spanish lady of noble birth, and their daughter, Fraser 
 went on to say, was the most majestic, stately, and beautiful 
 woman that ever walked the earth. The parents consented to 
 their betrothal, but objected to the marriage until Fraser was in 
 a condition to support a wife in comfort. One right, very 
 suddenly, died Mrs. Grant. Her husband, who adored her, found 
 her dead at his side, and the shock was so great that both his 
 health and his mind gave way. He declared that he could not 
 support life in a town where every object which met his eye 
 reminded him of his loss ; and within a month of Mrs. Grant's 
 death he broke up his home and sailed with Aurelia for England. 
 Fraser added that folks at Rio spoke of Mr. Grant as a well-to-do 
 man, and talked of Aurelia as an heiress ; but the truth came out 
 when he was gone, :ind it was then understood that so far from 
 being rich, he had just contrived to come to a stand within a 
 few fathoms of the brink of insolvency. 
 
 The lovers of course agreed to write by every ship. Fraser 
 was cock-sure of being able to support a wife before another 
 year had run out, and it was settled that he was to send for or 
 retch her at the expiration of the twelvemonth, as there was not 
 the least likelihood of Mr. Grant returning to Rio. 
 
 Eight months after the arrival of the girl in England the 
 father died. She wrote to acquaint Fraser with her loss, and 
 hinted quite enough to intimate that she was not only friendless 
 in London, but in poverty. 'And now,' continued my cousin, 
 'I want you, who were as a brother to me when we were 
 together at sea, to stand me in a brother's stead again in about 
 as trying and perplexing a passage as ever formed part of a 
 man's life. The business I have charge of is so tender, it needs 
 such cherishing, such persistent personal attention, that I am 
 persuaded were I to Jet go cf it to fetch Aurelia I should return 
 to find myself bankrupt. The population of Rio comprises a 
 great number of rogues, and though the people I employ are not 
 worse than the rest, they are rascals nevertheless, ana I make 
 no doubt whatever that if I were to turn my back upon them 
 for three months they would ruin me. Now, my dear Dick, this 
 is what you will do for me : you will call upon Aurelia ' here 
 came in the address 'advance whatever money she may require, 
 engage a cabin for her in the next ship that sails for Rio, 
 furnish her with all such delicacies and comforts as your sea- 
 faring experiences, backed by a fastidious appetite, will suggest, 
 and then, all this being done, a-^ompany her yourself. You 
 start ! But, my dear boy, you will do this ! ay, indeed you 
 will ; for, d'ye see, you must, Dick. You will need but glance at
 
 I RECEIVE A LETTER 1 
 
 her to perceive instantaneously that she cannot be suffered to 
 embark alone. And consider how happy it will make her, 
 thrown as she must needs be into the company, not of our 
 polished glittering species the sparkling dandies of John 
 Company but of men with faces ^like walnut shells, with 
 voices hoarse and raw with hard drinking, whose language is 
 thickened and stiffened with horrid objectionable words how 
 happy, I say, it will make her to feel that she has the protection, 
 of her sweetheart's own cousin, a man of muscle and nerve, who 
 can tell the toughest salt of them all where the flying-jibboom 
 ends and how many gudgeons a liner's rudder hangs on ! 
 Consider the ease of mind that I shall enjoy through knowing 
 that you are at her side. Consider again the prodigious delight 
 it will give me to meet you to thank you to entertain you 
 to yarn with you over the past and hearken to the home news 
 you will bring with you. No excuse, as you love me ! You 
 must come, d'ye see, Dick. Yes, you must absolutely accompany 
 my poor lonely darling girl. You are an idle man, you know ; 
 your friend told me you were unmarried when he last saw you, 
 and I have a right to believe, as I certainly hope, that you are 
 single at this minute of reading my letter. The voyage is a 
 pleasant one. Once clear of the Bay, 'tis no more than the 
 pleasant fanning of the north-east trade wind, with a brief 
 instructive halt on the equator for a glance at John Sharkee 
 and the pretty little flying fishes, and then a delightful run to 
 the noblest bit of scenery the wide world over, Reflect a little 
 upon your health, and you are sure to discover that a change of 
 air will do you good. And name me an air sweeter than the 
 ocean breeze ! Beside, you were never in South America, and 
 cannot therefore imagine the delights in store for you in the 
 shape of the rivers, the mountains, the shining flowers and 
 exquisite fruits of this grand continent, or at all events of that 
 part of it to which I invite you.' 
 
 And so the letter went on, terminating in a whole jumble of 
 exhortations to me to come to squire hi* sweethpiit- to behold 
 from the summit of the regal Corcovado the magnificent harbour, 
 the sparkling city, the green country beyond aflame with 
 coloured growths. . . . 
 
 It was a letter to set me pacing the room. The voyage was 
 a considerable one ; and though 1 had gone to sea for love of 
 ships when I was a boy, a very few months sufficed to break 
 the spell, and I had long ceased, as I believed, to be sensible 
 of any sort of oceanic influence. I sat down, filled a pipe, and 
 entered into certain calculations. I reckoned that a tolerably 
 true course to Rio from the Thames would come hard upon five 
 thousand nautical miles, and as it was hopeless to expect that 
 any British South American trader would average more than a 
 hundred and fifty knots in the twenty-four hours. I judged 
 that, though all conditions should prove favourable, the outward 
 passage alone would run me into five or six weeks. Then of 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MAROONED 
 
 coarse I should have to return, so that I must look upon the 
 round voyage as promising me three solid months, at least, 
 upon a bosom that had ceased to rock me for some years. The 
 first movement of my mind was one of recoil, but after turning 
 the project over I got to think that, after all, the voyage would 
 prove a complete and healthy change, inexpensive too, and much 
 less troublesome than a trip across the Channel. Possibly the 
 old instincts which had driven me to sea as a lad, and which 
 I had thought dead long ago, lived still, and were now faintly 
 stirring to sudden visions of frothing billows, of the small green 
 moon shearing like a cannon-ball through the flying scud, of 
 the star-touched swell rolling in dark folds silently, of the 
 tropic shore that sweetens the warm breath of the languid 
 breeze with the odours of spices and the perfume of a nameless 
 vegetation. London was hot and dull ; the seaside tedious and 
 commonplace. My excursions abroad formed no genial memories, 
 
 for in I nearly died of fever at Brussels, and in lay ill 
 
 of a poisonous smell for close upon a month at Florence. Besides, 
 my cousin pleaded to me as a jbrother and a sailor, and I knew 
 him well enough to feel certain that if he were in my place he 
 would do me this service. 
 
 But what sort of a girl was this Miss Aurelia Grant? My 
 cousin expressed her perfections in the impassioned language 
 of love, and he might possibly be very right in all he said ; but 
 I remember a man who had passed some years in Spain, and 
 who knew the Spanish character well, telling me that he took 
 particular notice there was a deal of the mule mixed up in the 
 disposition of the women of that country a quality, as he 
 described it, of bland and even polite obstinacy, that was, how- 
 ever, very easily excited into a most unpleasant, clamorous, 
 peevish stubbornness. Miss Aurelia was indeed half English ; 
 but suppose the other half of her was not to my taste-? I do 
 protest on my word that I would rather go to jail for a fortnight 
 than be locked up in a ship for a month with a disagreeable 
 woman. Thus I sat debating ; but though I was some distance 
 on the road towards forming a resolution, I cannot say that I 
 had at all made up my mind when I went to bed. 
 
 NEXT morning I dressed myself with more care than I usually 
 took in this way, though twenty-six years old and not without 
 self-complacency in some respects, and about eleven o'clock 
 drove to the add ss given me by Fraser. 
 
 I found the house in a dull and dingy street out of the 
 Edgware Road. .Miss.Grant was at home. I sent up my name,
 
 MISS AUKELIA GRANT 
 
 and was shown into a little front parlour, gloomy with sallow 
 drapery and the bilious atmosphere peculiar to this part of the 
 metropolis. In a few minutes she entered, and I must confess 
 I sprang rather than rose to my feet, so surprised was I by the 
 girl's beauty and deportment. I had indeed conjectured a tall 
 figure in conformity with my cousin's description, but imagin- 
 ation had not gone beyond that and a pair of dark eyes and an 
 upper lip shaded with down. 
 
 Now Miss Aurelia Grant had as fair and delicate a complexion 
 as any that ever I witnessed in the most matchless English 
 woman's face. Her hair was brown, very plentiful, thick and 
 soft, and it had a kind of light of its own upon it as though 
 dusted with gold. ^ Her eyes were black profoundly so: 
 Spanish eyes in passion and power and meaning, but subdued 
 to an expression of beauty by, as I took it, the English heart in 
 her, that rendered them remarkable beyond my capacity of 
 expression. Her figure was extremely fine, full, yet girlish too. 
 She was dressed in mourning, and as she stood looking at me a 
 moment or two in the doorway, I said to myself, This is the 
 handsomest creature I have ever seen ! 
 
 There was a little blush on her cheeks that brightened the 
 light in her eyes : she smiled and gave me her hand. 
 
 ' I am indeed glad to see you, Mr. Musgrave. Alexander has 
 talked of you to me again and again. In a letter I received 
 from him yesterday he told me you would calL You are very 
 good to come so soon.' 
 
 'I shall be truly rejoiced if I can be of service to you,' said I, 
 still a trifle confused. ' My cousin's description of you eloquent 
 as his devotion would naturally make him' here I fumbled 
 for the letter, ' would perhaps, madam (we madam'd the ladies 
 in those days of high coat-collars, splendid waistcoats, and 
 immense breast-pins), ' you would like to read it.' 
 
 She took it eagerly, and her eyes grew so fond as she read, 
 whilst a look so yearning entered her face such an expression 
 as the memory of her loneliness might put into her when she 
 should meet her sweetheart again after their long separation 
 that I felt I acted sneakishly in watching her. She smiled 
 happily when she came to the part in which Fraser spoke of her 
 beauty, and when she had made an end she folded the letter 
 carefully as though it were something precious, and pressed it 
 between her hands as if it was her sweetheart's own fingers 
 she held. 
 
 It seemed to me as I surveyed her that my cousin exhibited 
 uncommon courage in confiding so much beauty as this to the 
 care and attention of a man whom he knew to be young and 
 single, to say no more, for a spell of shipboard that might last 
 for two or even three months. Our eyes met: her colour 
 deepened somewhat, but her brilliant gaze was as steady as 
 the shining of a star. There was a singularly engaging, most 
 unaffected quality or tone of frankness in her voice.
 
 6 MAROONED 
 
 'Alexander has asked you to do him a great favour. It is 
 really too great.' I seemed to dissent. 'It is positively enough, 
 Mr. Musgrave, that you should hire a cabin tor me. To make 
 the voyage also ! And yet I know he would be overjoyed to see 
 you. Still it is a tedious journey, and if you are like Alexander 
 you detest the sea.' 
 
 ' No,' said I, ' I believe I shall enjoy a few weeks on the ocean. 
 The fact is, madam, I want time to realize the thing, so to speak, 
 not to understand it, for of course it is intelligible enough, 
 but to accustom my thoughts to it, you know ; ' and here I 
 coughed and brought myself up ' all standing,' as sailors say, for 
 indeed there was something in her shining steadfast gaze that 
 caused me to talk as though I was ill at ease. 
 
 ' Should you decide to be my companion, Mr. Musgrave,' said 
 she, ' the voyage will be something to look forward to, greatly 
 as I dislike the sea, or rather existence on board ship.' I bowea. 
 ' But you will not dream of doing more than securing a cabin 
 for me and helping me in one or two other ways if you have 
 the least reluctance. It is quite possible that I may find a 
 pleasant companion among the passengers if there should be 
 ladies on board. As a rule the captains and mates of the ships 
 that trade to South America are a very rough and rude set of 
 men. Should I be the only passenger, it is natural,' she said, 
 with a little droop of the head, ' that I should not choose to be 
 alone in such society.' 
 
 This was like an appeal in its way, and her manner of speaking 
 rendered it irresistible. Besides, there was Fraser's letter calling 
 upon me to protect her, imploring me as one who was as a 
 brother to do him this great service, and these considerations 
 coming on top of my concern for her loneliness and helplessness, 
 my sympathy with her in the grief that was still rftcent, and 
 above all the perception that she desired my company, and that 
 I should be acting unchivalrously to refuse her, made me whip 
 out, 'Miss Grant, it is settled. We sail together. There is nothing 
 to keep me ashore. It will be delightful to meet Fraser again, 
 and I shall find immense satisfaction in feeling that my enjoy- 
 ment of your society also includes the pleasure of obliging you.' 
 
 She clapped her hands with a gesture that was like telling 
 you she had something besides English blood in her. 
 
 ' How good you are ! How glad you make me, Mr. Musgrave ! 
 I wonder what kind of ship we shall sail in ? ' she cried, with the 
 vivacity of a mind that has suddenly lost its burden. ' She must 
 prove swift ! She cannot sail too fast for me ! ' and here she 
 told me of the vessel in which she and her father had made the 
 voyage home a clumsy, round-bowed polacca, apparently, that 
 stirred to nothing less than half a gale of wind, and so leaky that 
 the crew were at the pumps for fourteen hours out of the twenty - 
 four; with a bow-legged, oeef -faced old swab for captain, whose 
 favourite boast was that he had once swallowed at a draught 
 a bowl of punch containing ten half -pints of . rum, whiskey,
 
 MISS AUKELIA GRANT T 
 
 brandy and water. She described this man and his habits with 
 so much humour as to give me a high opinion of her talent as 
 an observer ; and she made me laugh heartily by an account of 
 a quarrel between him and his mate over a pudding the latter 
 (an Irishman) beginning it by swearing that he had seen dried 
 currants and rasms growing naturally like capers on trees, and 
 the captain ending it by grasping a lump of the hot and steam- 
 ing stuff and flinging it plump into the mate's face. Maybe 
 something of the merriment of the tale and her delivery of itlay 
 to my mind in the contrast between the rough sea anecdote and 
 the dignity, refinement, and beauty of the speaker. But I confess 
 I liked her the better for her archness and for her easy recital 
 of a story which Miss Prim would consider rather vulgar, since 
 ' it referred to such very common people. 
 
 Our conversation presently went to her father. He died in 
 the house in which she was still lodging, and she declared that 
 when, after the funeral, she sat down to reflect she did not know 
 what in the world she should do. She had not a friend in Eng- 
 land, and of her mother's relatives in Spain she knew nothing. 
 The few pounds her father had left were fast giving out, and she 
 frankly told me that the money she still had would not have 
 carried her on another month. 'Why did you not call upon 
 me?' I asked her. But it seems that Fraser had omitted to give 
 my address in the last letter but one he sent to her, and it was 
 only a week or two before he wrote that he had learnt it from 
 my friend whose ship had been forced into Rio. 
 
 I was with her for two hours, and never did time pass more 
 pleasantly and quickly. We arranged that I should call for her 
 next day and accompany her to the shops she had occasion to 
 visit, and afterwards make inquiries about the next ship, and 
 start on all the necessary preparations for the voyage. She cried 
 when she said good-bye to me. Indeed she had suffered griev- 
 ously, and now that the darkness was passing she could not meet 
 the first of the dawn without tears. 
 
 As to myself, I hardly knew whether my resolution made me 
 glad or sorry when I came to turn it over. The girl was ex- 
 ceedingly handsome, but then she was not my sweetheart. Had 
 her heart been her own, a voyage with her must have yielded me 
 a prospect that could not have left me doubting whether I was 
 right in this adventure. But as my cousin's betrothed she was the 
 same to me as if she was his wife. There was no room for sen- 
 timent I was young enough to take this into consideration, 
 and I say, when I reflected upon my determination I could not 
 satisfy myself that my judgment was as brilliant as my heroism. 
 
 On the following morning I called at her lodgings, and after- 
 wards passed some hours in watching her Vv'hilst she shopped 
 and in paying for her purchases. There was a dignified frankness 
 about her that was very fascinating, and not the less so because 
 it was tinctured with melancholy. Her line eyes expressed so 
 much spirit, there was so much power in the curve and set of
 
 S MAROONED 
 
 her lips, such suggestion of self-reliance in the peculiar floating 
 pose of her head, I felt persuaded that a very great deal of the 
 heroine went to her composition, that she was a woman whose 
 qualities would best discover themselves in a time of extremity. 
 a person by nature so ardent that no theory about her coula 
 touch the limits of the romantic exploits she was equal to in the 
 service of the man she loved. These were my thoughts as I sat 
 watching her whilst she handled the stuffs the shopmen put 
 before her, frequently turning to me to speak, when I would 
 notice that every sudden confrontment of her full beauty sur- 
 prised me as a fresh revelation. 
 
 She managed to buy all she needed in one day ; which I thought 
 very clever and very kind also. ' How long,' said I, * will it take 
 you to prepare for the voyage ? ' 
 
 * Oh,' she answered, ' if you were to tell me the ship sails to- 
 morrow I should be quite ready.' 
 
 I told her that I would devote the next day to making 
 inquiries and arrangements, and would do myself the pleasure 
 to call in the evening and let her know what I had done. * At 
 all events,' said I, ' you would wish me to book ourselves for the 
 next ship ? ' 
 
 ' If you please,' she answered with anxiety. 
 
 * In which case,' I observed, ' we must not be fastidious. The 
 best procurable cabins will satisfy us, and the skipper's appear- 
 ance need not count. Yet it will not do to sail away in a vessel 
 whose seams yawn and whose hold has been abandoned by the 
 rats. I have some small knowledge of ships, and if the first that 
 offers is not as she should be, we must wait for the next.' 
 
 'I will leave everything to you,' she said, 'only,' looking 
 around her with a light snudder, we were conversing in her 
 lodgings, ' I am so very weary of this gloomy house, this dull 
 street ; so longing to see my dear one again, and the bright sun 
 and the flowers of my own home.' 
 
 ' I will do my best, I exclaimed ; 'there should be, and perhaps 
 will be, a choice of ships. If we have to wait you will suffer me 
 to find you pleasanter quarters.' 
 
 And with that I bade her good-bye and left her. 
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 THE 'IKON CEOWN' 
 
 IN those days a large number of vessels bound to all parts of 
 the world loaded in the Pool, a little way below London Bridge. 
 Steam then was young and not much was made of it. I have 
 lived to see steamers trading to South America big enough to 
 stow away in their holds many of the sailing vessels which 
 were then carrying goods and passengers to all parts of the
 
 THE 'IRON CROWN' 9 
 
 world. It is difficult in this age to realize the kind of experiences 
 our forefathers suffered when they took ship it mattered little 
 to what countries, if it were not the ports to which the India- 
 men were dispatched. I have heard my mother say that in her 
 young days country people who proposed a trip to London 
 would make their wills before entering the coach. I do not 
 know that the coach was much more dangerous than the loco- 
 motive, but I am certain that there were no limits to the perils 
 which menaced the ocean-borne traveller in the time of the 
 little passenger ship and smaller passenger brig ; when the 
 sailor was still an exceedingly rough son of a gun, charged to the 
 throat with the traditional infirmities of his calling ; when no 
 ""special qualifications were insisted upon as conditions of a man 
 taking charge of a vessel ; when ships sailed without side-lights, 
 and when collisions were averted by the easy remedy of whip- 
 ping the lamp out of the binnacle and flourishing it over the 
 rail ; when the cabin provisions were only a little less coarse 
 than the forecastle fare, and when a passage that is now made 
 in a week occupied two or three months. 
 
 I had obtained the addresses of a few brokers and owners in 
 the South American trade, hoping thus to tind^two or three ships 
 proceeding much about the same time, but it turned out that 
 the first vessel on the berth sailed next day, and that her cabin 
 accommodation was full. Her name, I remember, was the 
 Amazon. The next vessel, a brig named the Iron Crown, did 
 not sail until the 23rd, so that even if she satisfied me we 
 should have to wait eight days. The office of the owner of this 
 craft was in Tower Hill, ana whilst I was inquiring about her 
 cabin accommodation, the person to whom I was speaking, 
 motioning towards a man who had entered a moment before, 
 exclaimed, 
 
 'Here is the master himself, sir, Captain Guy Broadwater, 
 and he will tell you that a stouter, swifter, more comfortable 
 ship than the Iron Crown never sailed out of an English port. 
 Captain, you will confirm me. What is it now,' inclining his 
 head and screwing up one eye as if in thought, 'on a bowline 
 with you? A cool thirteen, I "believe? Indeed,' he cried, chafing 
 his hands and grinning, ' we may safely consider the good ship 
 Iron Crown the one favourite trader between Rio and the 
 Thames.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Captain Broadwater in the hoarse voice of a man 
 who has broken his pipes by rum and years of bawling aloft in 
 gales, ' it isn't for me to praise the Iron Crown, sir. She can 
 speak for herself. She only needs to know that a man's eye is 
 upon her to talk out. Handsome ! Well, I knew old Jarge 
 Rowley who laid her keel, and always reckoned him a man 
 without the least flavey of sentiment in his intellectuals until 
 this here Iron Crown was launched and lay floating, and then 
 I says to myself, " Broadwater," I says, *'_swaller your own 
 precious eyes, mate, if Jarge ain't a poet I'"'
 
 10 MAROONED 
 
 ' You hear what the captain says, sir 1 ' cried the other, con- 
 tinuing to chafe his hands. 
 
 I took a short survey of Captain Guy Broadwater, and there 
 stood before me a wide-shouldered, exceedingly muscular man 
 of fifty, short, with iron-gray hair and a beard that hung like a 
 bush at his throat, the chin being shaved. He had the smallest 
 eyes I ever saw, and their colour as I now took stock of them 
 seemed red, but I afterwards discovered that this was due to 
 congestion caused by rheumatism, or punch, or both. His nose 
 was of the exact shape of a pear, and being purple at tho 
 nostrils and point, looked as if it had been lately stung by a bee. 
 His mouth on the other hand was so small as to correspond, as 
 a deformity, with his eyes. When he was not speaking he 
 seemed from the posture of his lips to be trying, but in vain, to 
 whistle. The skin of his face was much burnt by the weather, 
 and it was adorned with a strange, subcutaneous filigree-work, 
 or net rather let me term it, of dusky crimson meshes. He was 
 dressed in pilot-cloth, and carried in his hand a bell-shaped 
 beaver, the brim of which was large enough to furnish out a 
 bishop. Yet ugly and queer as he was, there was nothing 
 whatever in his appearance to offend or prejudice me. I put 
 him down at once as a coarse, unlettered, but good-natured 
 sailor of the hearty lively type, whose physical peculiarities 
 were to a certain extent to be attributed to bad victuals in 
 early life, to too much liquor later on, and throughout to the 
 rough usage of the vocation of the sea when followed before 
 the mast. I told him that I was glad to make his acquaintance, 
 %nd that I had called with the intention of taking a passage in 
 his ship, though I would not decide until I had inspected her. 
 
 'Sir,' said he, ' I am going aboard myself when I have done my 
 business with this gentleman, and if you don't mind lettin' go 
 your anchor here for five minutes, I'll carry ye straight to the 
 vessel.' 
 
 They withdrew to an inner office, where I could hear the 
 growling voice of my captain mingling with the sharp-edged 
 tones of his owner, as though there were a mastiff and a pug 
 tumbling and larking behind the door. 
 
 The skipper presently emerged and put on his broad-brimmed 
 hat, in which he made so strange a figure that I could scarce 
 forbear a laugh. We walked to the river, and were rowed to a 
 brig that was moored in mid-stream. 
 
 'Here she is!' cried Captain Broadwater; 'look at her, sir! 
 Was there ever beautifuller lines ! Observe the lovely swell of 
 the side ! It might be the breast of a duck, sir. Mark how 
 clean she comes to the starnpost. In my opinion she's too good 
 to use ; she's properer for a show.' 
 
 There is no reason why he should not have been in earnest, 
 for, as her master, it was conceivable that he should be proud 
 of her. For my part, however, I could find no hint of the 
 charms which threw him into raptures. The vessel was a stout
 
 THE -.' IRON CHO WN ' 1 1 
 
 brig of three hundred tons, a,n excellent sea-boat, no doubt, with 
 the scantling of a Line-of -battle ship, but she was certainly no 
 beauty. She was painted black, with a narrow yellow streak 
 running the length of her sides, and had been newly coppered to 
 the bends : the lustre of the bright metal was under her, and 
 she seemed to float in a little surface of pale sunshine. Sho 
 was loftily rigged for a craft of her size and carried exceedingly 
 square yards, whence I inferred that with her studding-sails 
 abroad she could expand canvas enough in a breeze of wind to 
 start an island from its moorings. We gained the side, climbed 
 up a stout rope-ladder, and jumped aboard. 
 
 There was a lighter on the starboard bow, and a number of 
 intoxicated lumpers were hoisting in cargo. It should have 
 been no new scene to me, yet I found it confusing enough. The 
 sails were unbent, and the running rigging unrove, so there 
 were no ropes' ends to trip over. Nevertheless the decks were 
 encumbered with all sorts of ' raffle,' as sailors term lumber 
 casks, hencoops, sacks, planks, and I know not what else 
 besides. There was a full-rigged ship a short distance otf 
 getting her anchor, and the fellows at the windlass were roaring 
 out with hurricane lungs one of the many working songs with 
 which the British seaman inspires his heart and nerves his 
 hands and legs. The melody awoke echoes long ago silent in 
 me. It was at Cape Town that I had heard it last, and the 
 rough salt air brought the picture before me in a vision so clear, 
 sunbright, real the blue waters of the wide haven, the groups 
 of ivory-white houses upon the low shore, the polished azure 
 back 01 the huge Atlantic comber poising its arched summit in 
 a ridge of glassy opal light for a breath ere thundering its 
 burthen of snow upon the beach, the great mountains beyond 
 with streaks of lace-like mist crawling along their brows as 
 though the viewless spirits of the blue atmosphere up there 
 were spinning a white fabric of exquisite delicacy out of their 
 airy looms for the adornment of those giants' heads that I 
 seemed to waken with a start to Captain Broadwater's invita- 
 tion to step below and view the cabin. 
 
 One hears of the Swiss weeping when some one tunes up 
 their national cow-strain. Mariners are a people who have no 
 tears to spare : what they possess in that way they devote to 
 their private woes ; but I do think nothing so stirs a man who 
 has been a sailor as the melody of a forecastle chorus. Tis 
 like the wand of a wizard : the curtain rises to it, and there 
 before you lies the past the rolling ocean, the gallant fabric 
 in whose heart you scoured your thousand leagues of sea, your 
 hearty shipmates, the gay Saturday carousal, the girl in the 
 distant home from whose sunny head you snicked the golden 
 wisp, which manv a ti me you have pressed to your lips in some 
 tnid-ocean solitude, when there was nobody but the man in the 
 moon and the man at the wheel to see what you were at. 
 
 'I have been a sailor myself, captain,' said I, as I followed
 
 12 MAROONED 
 
 him to the companion-hatch: 'and the sound of that stormy 
 chorus out yonder makes me feel a bit swabbish, do you know, 
 for quitting the old life.' 
 
 'Bin a sailor yourself, hey f ' he cried, rounding when at the 
 bottom of the ladder to take a view of ma 4 Well, an' I dessay 
 it did ye no harm. There's worse people knocking about the 
 world than sailors, though I haven't much respect for that 
 class of 'em which goes by the name of Hands.' 
 
 ' I see. Your sympathies are aft.' 
 
 'Well, I don't know about that either,' he exclaimed rather 
 warmly, as though he objected to my considering that he had 
 any sympathies at all, and methought that his pear-shaped nose 
 as ne spoke took a deeper dye ; then with a flourish of the arm 
 he said, * This here's the cabin. A noble room, sir. Must board 
 the Indiamen to find the like of it.' 
 
 The vessel had so much beam that her cabin was larger than 
 I had expected to find it. The furniture was simple enough : 
 a table, lockers for seats, snuff-coloured bulkheads without any 
 sort of ornamentation. At the after end were four cabins, two 
 of a side, whilst forward were other but smaller berths. 
 
 'That end's for the passengers,' said the captain, pointing aft. 
 
 I inspected the accommodation and found it airy and roomy. 
 
 ' Which are to let I ' I asked. 
 
 *A11,' he replied ; 'how many of you are there, sirt* 
 
 1 Myself and a lady.' 
 
 'I reckon there '11 be no more then,' said he. 'Here's four 
 beautiful bedrooms to choose from.' 
 
 * Where do you sleep ? ' 
 
 4 Forwards there,' said he, pointing with his nose as a negro 
 does with his chin. ' Me an my first mate lodges there. The 
 bo'sun who sarves as second mate lies in the fo'k'sle. There's 
 no interference. You'll be as private as a chick in its egg. 
 Case of more coming I'd take the two foremost berths if I was 
 you. The helm don't feel to kick so much there, and if the 
 chap at the wheel should warm his toes by stamping you won't 
 hear him plain.' 
 
 I should have been better pleased with a vessel of twice the 
 burthen of this craft ; but then, to be sure, we should start in the 
 height of the summer, when the Bay of Biscay is least formidable 
 though let me remember that the hea viest gale I was ever in 
 was fifty miles south of Ushant in the month of July and 
 once clear of those waters we had a right to look for quiet 
 weather during the rest of the passage. The short chat I had 
 with Broadwater on returning on deck confirmed my first im- 
 pression of him : he was indeed no very polished companion for 
 ladies, but he was well enough as sea-captains of his class and 
 in his trade then went. I was not surprised to find that the 
 vessel did not carry a stewardess. You had to look to the 
 height of the Indiamen in those days for luxuries of this kind. 
 I asked him what sort of table he kept
 
 WE EMBARK 18 
 
 'An A 1 copper bottom table/ he answered. ' Salt beef of the 
 primest roast pork poultry twice a week currant dumplings 
 taking it all round, a list nigh as long as my arm.' 
 
 ' Pretty substantial/ I exclaimed. 
 
 ' Ay,' said he, grinning, ' there's never no twopenny kickshaws 
 to be found aboard of me. No hishee-hashees here, sir, with 
 French names. All's good solid eating, dishes which makes a 
 man feel that he's dined when he gets up. Give me food that 11 
 coil a chap's appetite down for him. That's why, to my notion, 
 there's ne'er a bit of vittles on this airth to beat a good leg 
 o' roast pork.' 
 
 I gathered from these observations that Miss Grant and I 
 ' were not likely to be invariably entertained to our tastes, and 
 that it would therefore be necessary to lay in a stock of wines 
 and stores for our separate use ; and having ascertained that I 
 was at liberty to fill one of the hencoops with poultry for our- 
 selves, and that if the other cabins were unlet one of them was 
 at my service as a larder, I took leave of him, and was rowed 
 ashore, and without further ado walked to Tower Hill and 
 engaged two berths in the brig Iron Crown, Broadwater master. 
 Also, at this office, to save time, I wrote a letter to my cousin, 
 in which I named the vessel we were to sail in and the date of 
 our departure, and handed it to the owner of the Iron Grown to 
 transmit with dispatches of his own to Bio by the ship Amaaon 
 proceeding next day. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WB EMBAKK 
 
 As the brig did not sail for another week, and as we intended 
 to join her at DeaL which would give us two or three days 
 ashore beyond the date of her departure from the Thames, I 
 procured rooms for Miss Grant in a private hotel near Bond 
 btreet, so that I was within convenient reach and saw much of 
 her. In truth the poverty and melancholy of the street in which 
 she had lodged rendered the very name of it intolerable to her, 
 and the gloomy influence of the house upon her spirits was made 
 more oppressive yet by the recollection of her father's sufferings 
 and death and her own privation in it. 
 
 The change from such lodgings to the comforts of a hotel, the 
 sudden removal from her mind of the distracting burthen of 
 poverty and anxiety, the feeling that I was by her side and that 
 she had a protector in me, and that in a few weeks she would be 
 with her sweetheart and married to him, combined to make 
 another woman of her in those eight or ten days. Her eyes 
 shone with a clearer light, and their dark luminous depths 
 gathered a softness beyond description from the happiness that
 
 14 MAROONED 
 
 was in her. A delicate bloom lay upon her cheeks, her laugh 
 was sincere, her smiles full of an honest gaiety. As we walked 
 together I would notice that both men and women stopped to 
 stare after her. I remember an old dandy, with his hat cocked 
 and a tuft on his chin, coming to a dead stand on seeing her, 
 then following us and passing as an excuse to turn again to 
 have another look. I will not say that she was insensible to the 
 admiration she excited she would have been no true woman to 
 feign such a thing but I cannot conceive that any girl could 
 have shown herself less affected by it. 
 
 We took the coach for Deal early on a Friday morning. The 
 journey was long and tedious. It was after sunset when we sat 
 down to the dinner I had ordered in a quaint hotel that looked 
 directly upon the sea ; but the moon rode high, clear as crystal 
 in the dark blue air, and her glorious reflection came to the very 
 margin of the beach, upon whose shingle the rippling summer 
 breakers trembled into snow, in a fan-shaped path of glory that 
 floated as steadily upon the quiet surface as the orb nerself in 
 the breathless sky. 
 
 After dinner we walked to the Esplanade. The luggers lying 
 high and dry looked hoary in the clear and icy light ; the sea- 
 ward-gazing windows sparkled out to the gush of the radiance 
 in silver stars ; every shadow lay like an ebony carving upon a 
 sand-white ground. Far away, past the yellow winking spots 
 of the signal lanterns floating off the Goodwins, was the fitful 
 flashing of violet lightning. The planets hung large and burnt 
 richly, and clear of the sphere of mist-like radiance that circled 
 the moon, the stars shone in such numbers that I never remem- 
 ber witnessing the heavens so crowded. After the roaring of 
 metropolitan streets, the low washing sound of the surf along 
 the coast was inexpressibly soothing and refreshing, and one's 
 blood coursed to the cool sweetness of the ocean atmosphere as 
 to a draught of rare and generous cordial. 
 
 There were many ships in the Downs, wan and spectral in the 
 moonshine. Their riding-lights resembled a swarm of fire-flies. 
 By bending the ear you^ caught from the nearer vessels the 
 sounds of laughter, the thin strains of a concertina, the clank of 
 a^ chain cable dragged along the deck; or from the further 
 distance the faint chorusing of a crew pulling and hauling 
 aboard some hidden craft that had softly sneaked into the 
 Downs on the top of the subtle tide. 
 
 ' Which amid that ashen muddle of ships out yonder will be 
 ours, I wonder ? ' said I. 
 
 ' How ghostly is the atmosphere that is made by moonlight at 
 sea!' exclaimed Miss Grant, sending her glance along the 
 shining wake of the luminary, and then looking into the eastern 
 darkness and talking as if she spoke to herself. ' It must be the 
 low-lying stars, I think, which cause the distance to appear so 
 terribly remote. The beauty of such a night as this used to awe 
 me when we were coming to England- it does so now, though I
 
 WE EMBARK 16 
 
 am on dry land. It should be as lovely to me as to others, but 
 it is not so. The mystery of it is too great the mystery of the 
 silence and the pale air and the whispering of the sea along the 
 shore.' 
 
 ' It may be that what is mysterious cannot be beautiful,' said 
 I, finding talk of this sort a little above mine art, though not 
 wanting her to think that I did not understand her either. * Yet 
 I don't Know. I have seen eyes in my time as secret as the dark 
 sea yonder, and they were wonderfully beautiful, I assure you.' 
 
 As I said this a rumbling voice close behind me exclaimed, 
 'Bort, sir? beautiful noight for a row, sir I Water smooth as 
 satin, lady.' 
 
 I turned and observed a Deal boatman. 
 
 ' No we shall have enough of the sea presently. Can you tell 
 me if a vessel named the Iron Crown has brought up off here?' 
 
 ' What's she Ipike '( ' he asked. 
 
 'A brig,' I said, 'three hundred tons, newly sheathed, painted 
 black with a yellow stripe.' 
 
 ' Is her capt'n a man with werry small eyes an' a nose loike a 
 sailor's duff?' 
 
 'That's right' 
 
 ' Then she brought up just afore sundown. Oi was off fishin* 
 with a party at the time, and the chap Oi've described sung out 
 to me to git out of the road,' and he pointed seawards with a 
 shadowy hand ; but it was impossible to distinguish any one 
 ship among the congregation there. He hung about me a little 
 as_ though he would engage me in further conversation, and then 
 said, 'Werry thirsty weather, sir.' I gave him the value of a 
 glass of ale and he left us. 
 
 'At the head of human disenchanters,' said I, 'stands the 
 British longshore-man with his cry of " Bprt, sir." ' 
 
 ' Hark ! ' exclaimed my companion, lifting her linger. 
 
 It was half-past nine, and the bells out upon the water were 
 sounding the hour. There were probably two hundred sail in 
 the Downs. The tinkling ran in ripples, as though a wave of air 
 raised scores of metallic echoes of different tones as it swept 
 onwards. Some of the bells sounded simultaneously ; some 
 followed one another in chimes ; a few were mellow, many shrill, 
 more yet of a silver singing cadence. From the pallid remote- 
 ness the tones came in faint and tiny sounds, after which fell 
 the silence, and you heard nothing but the fountain-like seething 
 of foam upon the shingle. 
 
 We returned to the hotel, but I lingered, after Miss Grant had 
 retired, for a long hour upon the balcony overlooking the sea, 
 smoking a cigar and musing much on the girl and my cousin 
 Fraser, and the voyage on which we should probably start 
 next day. The moon hung over the Downs, and through the 
 steady rain of her silver twinkled the yellow sparks of the 
 ships lights. There was a lugger heading for Deal and coming 
 fair down the middle of the ice-like path upon the waters. . She
 
 16 MAROONED 
 
 floated black against the tremulous shining that went up behind 
 her to the sea-line, and as you marked her sweeps or long oars 
 rising and falling, you would have imagined her some gigantic 
 marine insect stealthily creeping shorewards. From overy lifted 
 blade the water dripped to the moonshine in diamonds, and the 
 cheep, cheep of the oars grinding betwixt the thole-pins sent the 
 fancy roaming to the tropic swamp and to the mysterious 
 croakings of the tree-toad. 
 
 I was up betimes, but Miss Aurelia was before me. She looked 
 as fresh and as fragrant as Cowper's rose newly washed by a 
 shower. 
 
 ' The sea,' said I, ' promises to use you kindly.' 
 
 4 Yes, and I feel well too, which is better than looking so.' 
 
 She was robed in black, her dress fitted her excellently, 
 her hair was coiled into the likeness of a crown, her dark eyes 
 were full of fire and life. I did not much like to think of her as 
 being obliged to sit and converse with such a man as Broadwater 
 and with such people as his mates were tolerably certain to 
 prove. But it could not be helped ; though when the captain's 
 purple face came into my head, I felt that I should have been 
 ungenerous and mean indeed to have suffered her to sail alone. 
 There was a light breeze from the southward. The upward- 
 bound vessels had got under way, and the picture was gay and 
 brilliant with the crowded white canvas of the numerous craft, 
 the sparkling of the sun in the running waters, the fitful flash- 
 ings of the wet oars of boats, the light blue sky with a stretch 
 of ivory-like crescents of clouds, resembling new moons linked 
 and compacted, going down to the sea-line, where a leaning sail 
 or two gleamed like Little obelisks of Parian marble. Miss Grant 
 came to my side and we stood gazing together. Presently a 
 waiter arrived, asked if my name was Musgrave, and said there 
 was a gentleman inquiring for me. A moment or two afterwards 
 Captain Broadwater entered. 
 
 He gave Miss Grant a bow that was a sheer convulsion in its 
 way, and said, 'I thought I'd look in here, sir, afore I went 
 aboard. There '11 be nothing to keep us when you and the lady 
 are over the side. There's not much weight in this here wind, 
 but the tide sarves. and I'm never for waiting when there's a 
 chance to get away. 
 
 4 You are very right,' said I ; 'but we haven't breakfasted yet, 
 captain. There's time enougn for that I hope ? ' and thinking 
 he was going to obiect, I added, 'You'll join us? Nothing like 
 shoregoing food ana cooking down to the last moment.' 
 
 He answered that he had already breakfasted, but that on 
 reflection he felt himself equal to another meal, and the waiter 
 arriving with the ham and coffee, we sat down. I have seen men 
 with immense appetites in my day, but no man who ever came 
 near to Broadwater in this way. It was not only the quantity 
 he devoured : it was the rapidity with which he ate. He took 
 ft hot roll, tore the crumb out, buttered and then bolted the whole.
 
 WE EMBARK 17 
 
 without winking and in a breath. He picked up an egg-spoon, 
 and after inspecting it an instant called the waiter, and asked 
 him what it was. The waiter explained. * Bring me a proper 
 spoon ! ' he roared in a voice that caused Miss Grant to start 
 and glance at me with a little air of consternation. The man 
 handed him a dessert spoon, with which he struck the egg as 
 though it had been a sailor's head, then scooped out the inside 
 and swallowed the whole, afterwards seizing another egg, all so 
 quickly that it was like watcliing the performance of a conjuror. 
 He never offered to speak a word until he had eaten as much 
 breakfast as would have sufficed me for a week, though he made 
 an end before Miss Grant and I had fairly begun. My com- 
 panion looked at me as if she would say, I told you what sort of 
 people the captains are in this trade ! I was more struck, how- 
 ever, by his manner of roaring to the waiter than by the rest of 
 his behaviour. ' If this is not a ship's bully all of the olden time,' 
 I thought to myself, ' let his appetite be called delicate.' 
 
 He now began to tell me in a hoarse voice about his passage 
 down the river to the Downs, and how a West Indiainan in 
 bringing up at midnight had fouled his cable and nearly run 
 aboard him. 'But,' said he, 'there's no seamanship to be 
 expected from the men who gets command of them big ships. 
 They're hired for their faces and their tricks of speechifying and 
 caper-cutting and grinning out answers without losing their 
 tempers when the ladies bother 'em with questions. Put them 
 into a situation that requires real nautical knowledge and they 
 can only stand and look on. If you want to be cut down or 
 your spars brought about your ears, them's the gents to show 
 ye how it's done. 
 
 All this was very pig-headed talk ; but if he should prove, as 
 I suspected, full 01 salt-prejudices and antique sea-notions, I at 
 all events should not be without one favourite source of diversion 
 during the voyage. 
 
 Our baggage was on board the brig. The little we had with 
 us was conveyed to one of the vessels boats that was lying off 
 the beach waiting for the captain. Miss Grant sprang to the 
 gunwale and thence to a thwart with inimitable grace that was 
 full of a generous disdain of the extended hand of one of the 
 seamen. I followed, and Broadwater bundled in after me. 
 'Shove off!' he bawled as though in a passion. The boat's 
 head was slewed for the brig, and the three men fell to their oars. 
 
 There were fifty things to admire as our little keel was swept 
 forwards : the gray bald stare of the Foreland point with the 
 sheen of the chalk trembling off it upon the blue atmosphere 
 beyond; the ships still at anchor growing large to our ap- 
 proach, their glossy sides twinkling to the rippling lustre in the 
 water like the tremble of sunlight amid the shadows of dancing 
 leaves : the sudden flash of a cabin window to the movement 
 of the null, as though a cannon had been fired from it ; the vari- 
 ous colours and devices of a dozen. different nations' ensigns 
 

 
 18 MAKOONED 
 
 languidly fluttering their bright folds from masthead and peak ; 
 the line of green and yellow coast sweeping into an airy dimness 
 of pallid cliff as wan in tne distance of the brilliant north as 
 the crescent of the moon floating in the noontide heavens ; the 
 quaint aspect of the hearty old smuggling town, whose fore- 
 ground ot brown shingle gleamed black to the recoil of the 
 washing breaker, whilst it offered the saltest imaginable picture 
 in the shape of fleets of yellow luggers high and dry, and the 
 figures of boatmen lounging, scrubbing, mending nets, and 
 boiling pitch-pots. 
 
 There were plenty of things, I say, to look at, yet I do not 
 remember that I took notice of much outside the three men 
 who were rowing us to the brig. They belonged of course to 
 the ship's company. One was a half-blood of a dark olive 
 complexion and eyes like sloes resting on slices of lemon. His 
 hands were as small as a girl's, beautifully shaped, though 
 corned and horny and palm-blackened by the tar and drudgery 
 of shipboard. The others were plain ginger-haired British 
 lobscousers one with a beard of stubble that projected from 
 his chin like the thatch of a sou'- wester, both knob-nosed and 
 rugged as the shell of a walnut. Their feet were naked, their 
 mossy breasts lay bare to the light, their nervous muscular arms 
 were decorated with bracelets, crucifixes, anchors, female figures, 
 pricked in with the pale blue of the sailor's pigment. All three 
 of them wore a sullen look not the expression of evil-minded 
 men, but of persons rendered sulky and resentful by ill-usage. 
 I saw the half-blood glance at Miss Grant, and a sort of light 
 broke upon his face and swept the dogged air out of it as a 
 smile clears a sour brow ; but his eye instantly went from her 
 to Broad water and fell, a singular look of loathing and hate 
 darkened his countenance, and I witnessed the impulse of a 
 violent emotion in him in the quick savage swing he gave his oar. 
 It was like a curse ! 
 
 Here were tokens not to please me. who, as a man that had 
 passed some years at sea, had preserved an eye for the interpret- 
 ation of sailors' meanings. If the crew were dissatisfied at this 
 early stage, then old Broadwater and his mates must have gone 
 to work with an incredible promptitude to make their true 
 characters known to them. Had they a grievance? Their 
 provisions would have been fresh meat and loaves of bread 
 down to this point, and they could not therefore know what 
 the forecastle stores were like. Was the vessel leaky ? It was 
 to be hoped she was not. No ; it could be nothing less than 
 Broadwater. Well, if the men were growling now, what would 
 be their posture later on ? I was sufficiently well acquainted 
 with the character of merchant seamen to know that often the 
 very best sailors amongst them are those who curse the deepest 
 in their gizzards. I was also aware that there was nothing 
 uncommon in a crew finding plenty of time and excuses to 
 mutiny in a run from BlackwaU to the Forelands, going ashore
 
 THE VOYAGE BEGINS 19 
 
 bag and baggage in a body, and obliging the ship to wait off 
 Deal until the crimps coula roll a ne\y crew into her forecastle. 
 All this was, as it still is, in the ordinary course of the ocean 
 life. But the looks of the three thinly-clad fellows made you 
 think of something more significant than the familiar causes of 
 the forecastle rebellion. 
 
 However, they pulled too briskly to give me time to consider 
 them very attentively. The boat buzzed through the water, 
 and the brig ahead rapidly enlarged unon the view. 
 
 ' Is that the ship ?' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 
 I answered yes. 
 
 4 Is there anything afloat to beat her ? ' exclaimed Broadwater 
 in a deep-sea voice. 
 
 The half-blood turned his head upon his shoulder as if he 
 would have his mates observe what was in his mind by his look. 
 
 ' Oars ! ' bawled the captain. ' Out boat-hook, you dog ! ' to 
 the man in the bows. ' Good thunder ! ' he growled ; ' what is 
 there to make the sojers who ship as sailors nowadays skip if 
 it ain't gunpowder in their shoes and a lighted match 'twbtt 
 tliHJr toesT 
 
 \7e swung alongside and gained the deck. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE VOYAGE BEGINS 
 
 THE moment Captain Broadwater'a foot was on shipboard he 
 shouted out, ' Mail the windlass, Mr. Bothwell ! Get this here 
 boat hoisted, some or youj Jump, bullies, jump ! There's wind 
 enough to blow us away if ye don t stop to curl your hair ! ' which 
 said, he forthwith fell to bundling about on his rounded shanks, 
 running here and there, looking round and aloft, bawling to the 
 mate who had gone forward, and apparently employing every 
 art of which he was master to render the scene of commotion 
 one of sheer distraction. 
 
 There seemed about fourteen of a crew not counting the captain 
 and mate. A few of them came to the davits to get the boat up, 
 the rest laid hold of the windlass handles and began to heave. 
 You heard the clank, clank of the pawls and the grinding chink 
 of the cable coming in link by link. ' Sing out, my liyelies ! 
 heave to the girls, lads ! heave and sing ! heave ana raise the 
 dead ! sing out, men ! clap a tune to your muscles, my splicers ! 
 heave ! ' cried out the mate (as I supposed the dark young fellow 
 who spoke these words to be), and 1 was not a little relieved to 
 hear after a minute or two the peculiar long-drawn notes of a 
 seaman breaking into a working song, followed at the proper 
 interval by the whole body of men delivering the chorus with 
 tUo true old hurricane ixote. _ It would have been a bad sign luid
 
 20 MAROONED 
 
 they not sung. Only a sailor would appreciate the meaning of 
 silence among the crew of a merchantman getting her anchor. 
 
 I took Miss Grant below to show her her berth. There was 
 no smiling and curtseying stewardess to receive her ; no obliging 
 steward and his mates to fly to my bidding. The very cabin-boy 
 was at the windlass, and there was nothing living under deck if 
 it were not a lurking cockroach or a concealed rat. But then 
 happily we could not miss what we had not been used to, nor 
 complain of the omission of what we had no reason to expect. 
 Put the mail-boat traveller of to-day back fifty years, and he 
 would probably be the most forlorn and melancholy sea-borne 
 object under the sky. I had forgotten to ask Captain Broad water 
 if there were other passengers, but there was no further need to 
 trouble him : the doors of the berths were open, and a single 
 glance sufficed to let me know that Miss Grant and I were alone. 
 All for the best no doubt, thought I ; think of some fellow here 
 in these pent-up quarters with a snore like the escape of steam, 
 or of some lean splenetic Spaniard, constantly ill, and full of 
 growings in smooth water and of aves and litanies in stormy 
 weather ! 
 
 * It is not every one who would choose to sail with Captain 
 Broadwater,' said Miss Grant, evidently surprised at our being 
 the only passengers. 
 
 'You do not like him! I am sorry. I was glad to get an 
 early ship ' 
 
 ' No, no, Mr. Musgrave, I do not mean that. How could you 
 tell what sort of a person he would prove to be ? I think you 
 will find that he treats his crew inhumanly.' 
 
 I lifted my eyebrows; I had not imagined she would have 
 seen so quickly into such a matter as that. 
 
 * Nor,' continued she, smiling, ' do I fancy that we shall find 
 him a very agreeable table companion. But no matter. Rio is 
 not so very, very far off now ! ' 
 
 We exchanged these sentences whilst we stood before our 
 cabin doors. Our luggage lay in a heap aft against the transom, 
 but it was better there than in the hold. There was no one to 
 help us, and so we shifted for ourselves. Between us we dragged 
 the boxes and portmanteaux into our berths, and I found a new 
 quality to admire in Miss Grant in the form of a sturdy spirit 
 of independence. No complaints, no regrets, no peevish mur- 
 murs over our being neglected. I recollect that I thought, 
 Were we to be cast away, here is the girl to show the sailors how 
 to manage. Little did I imagine what was before us when that 
 fancy passed through my head ! 
 
 The necessary furniture for sleeping lay in my bunk, but it 
 was evident I should have to make my own bed. In the spare 
 cabin next mine was our private stock of provisions. I cast my 
 eyes over the hampers and cases, and knowing what they con- 
 tained, considered that, taking our live stock into account, we 
 should fare on the whole tolerably enough. Calling to Miss Grant
 
 THE .VOYAGE BEGINS 21 
 
 that she would find me on deck, I mounted the companion-ladder, 
 and on emerging discovered that the crew had tripped the anchor 
 and were running about making sail. There were many vessels 
 getting under way at this time, and the picture was full of 
 animation and colour. The jib had been hoisted, and the brig's 
 head was slowly paying off; hands aloft were shouting to the 
 people below to hoist away and sheet home ; the men on deck 
 were hoarsely bawling as they dragged upon the sheets and 
 halliards j purple-faced old Broad water standing near the wheel 
 was roaring out orders in whole volleys, and the mate in the 
 waist, who nad a singularly shrill voice for a man, heightened 
 the general clamour by re-echoing the captain's orders in notes 
 .which sounded like screams. As if all this were not distracting 
 enough, the pigs under the long-boat, irritated by neglect, by 
 fasting, or by the hubbub about them, were squealing as though 
 somebody were stirring them up, whilst the concert was still 
 further intensified by the crowing and the cackling of the cocks 
 and hens in the coops. That the sailors should sing out at the 
 ropes was reasonable and desirable ; seamen as they haul take 
 time from their songs, otherwise the business of hoisting, brac- 
 ing up, sheeting-home would be like drawing teeth. But what 
 purpose could Captain Broadwater serve by roaring to his crew 
 as it they were a company of villains whom nothing short of 
 noise and execrations could urge to exertions ? 
 
 As I stood looking on, my eye was taken by the mate. He 
 was a man apparently of my own age, tall and thin, with 
 nothing of the air of a sailor about him. His complexion was 
 exceedingly sallow, but his features were strikingly handsome 
 such a nose, mouth, and forehead as you would expect to find 
 only in some marble fancy of a heathen deity. His eyes were 
 large and black and amazingly rapid in their movements, inso- 
 much it seemed incredible that glances could be darted with 
 the swiftness I witnessed in this man. An extraordinary point 
 was, his hair was that of a negro : as sheer curly black wool as 
 ever adorned the pate of a Mumbo-Juinbo. It was a very 
 puzzling feature, for assuredly there was no more of the African 
 in him than there was in me. He had a small moustache^ and 
 only needed a sombrero hat, a cutlass, and a girdle full of pistols 
 to offer the completest imaginable copy of a pirate. His shrill 
 words leapt as rapidly from his lips as his glances from his eyes, 
 but he seemed incapable of delivering even the most common- 
 place order without temper. His English was that of an educated 
 man, nor could I discover that it was tainted in the least degree 
 by a foreign accent. 
 
 Before long all plain sail had been made, and the brig with 
 her bowsprit pointing to a down-Channel course was leaning 
 slightly under the pressure of the summer breeze, and pushing 
 gently through the trembling blue surface. The men had ceased 
 their songs ; there was no further occasion for the captain to 
 bawl, and something like silence was upon the little ship. .Well,
 
 22 MAROONED 
 
 thought I, here am I fairly started at last ! and as I looked "atf 
 the town of Deal sparkling to the high sun, and at the old chalk 
 ramparts soaring to the brow of the Foreland giant, a queer 
 feeling thickened niy sight for an instant, though it vanished 
 with the ' Pshaw ! ' it evoked from me. But this was an old weak- 
 ness. I believe had I used the ocean for twenty years, and was 
 still going a voyage every twelvemonth, the sight of the cliffs 
 of the old home quietly sliding away on the quarter and melting 
 into the blue atmosphere would affect me as it did in my boyhood.' 
 
 I turned to join the captain, and was confronted by Miss Grant. 
 The joyousness in her face seemed to rebuke me. She had 
 brought her hands together, and was gazing from the sails to 
 the land with her lips parted, her breath coming and going 
 quickly, her eyes full of gladness. 
 
 * There is one gay heart aboard,' said I quietly. 
 
 *It is like a dreaip to me, Mr. Musgrave, she exclaimed, 
 *when I think of my dull lodgings, and the thoughts that terri- 
 fied me there the artfad of never seeing Alexander again and 
 now to find myself going to him only a few weeks between us, 
 a kind friend by my side I, who a few days ago had no friend ' 
 She paused and repeated almost in a whisper, 'It is like a 
 dream to me.' 
 
 'It is real enough,' I exclaimed; 'yonder is stuff much too 
 substantial to serve as a fabric for the manufacture of visions,') 
 and I glanced in the direction of Captain Broad water, who, now 
 that his ship was fairly under way, had started on the regular 
 pendulum walk of the quarter-deck a true sea-sawing from 
 abreast of the wheel to forward of the main shrouds, with a stare 
 aloft, a look to windward, and then a spin of the heels for another 
 turn : and so on as I have seen the thing done right through a 
 four hours' watch. 
 
 ' Who is that man ? ' asked Miss Grant, indicating the chief 
 mate, who was standing in the gangway with his eye aloft to 
 witness, if he could, any imperfection in the trim of the yards 
 and the set of the sails. I told her, and added, ' He looks fitter 
 for the stage than for shipboard. I hope I dp not misjudge him ; 
 but if he would not knife a sailor with as little compunction as 
 he would harpoon a dolphin, then the cut of his jib badly libels 
 his soul.' 
 
 Shp watched him with fast failing curiosity, an<* presently sent 
 her gaze seawards. The draught of air had slightly freshened ; 
 we were slipping past the South Foreland and opening the 
 broad range of the Channel over the starboard bow. There was 
 a small swell here too, just enough to give a slight lift and fall 
 to the jibboom, and to raise a faint seething noise at the cut- water, 
 along with the airy tinkle of foam-bells sliding iridiscent as 
 beads of oil into the eddies of the short wake under the counter. 
 There were ships all about us, and upon the far sea-line you 
 saw the snow-like sliining of canvcs, serenely luminous as any 
 r, and the dim pearly shadow beyond of the cou.-.;t of Franco.
 
 THE VOYAGE 'BEGINS 123 
 
 I walked aft with Miss Grant to survey the brig from the best 
 place in which a ship is to be viewed when you are aboard her, 
 and here we were joined by Broadwater, who, as he approached 
 us, pulled out and cast his little eyes upon an immense, almost 
 round, silver watch. ^- 
 
 'Pretty nigh time to go to dinner,' said he. 'It's a blessed 
 ehing to be born with a good appetite. There's never no harm 
 in a man that eats hearty. I'd rather judge of a fellow-being's 
 conscience by his appetite than by his actions.' 
 
 ' What country does your chief mate belong to ? ' I inquired. 
 
 ' That's more than I can tell you, sir,' he replied. ' He calls 
 himself a Scotchman, but his hair don't look North Country. 
 His name's Both well Neil Both well. He's the proper sort of 
 man for sailors. Never was a chap who could work up old iron 
 like him.' 
 
 *Are sailors animals, that they require working up, as you 
 term it 1 ' inquired Miss Grant. 
 
 'Well, perhaps they ain't, Miss,' he replied. 'Animal's too soft 
 a term tor 'em. The proper word's beast wild beast, mum ; 
 there ye have it ! ' 
 
 I observed that whenever this captain laboured under any 
 sudden excitement his nose reddened to it, as though emotion 
 could find no other feature to express itself in, owing to his 
 eyes being much too small to convey his mind, and to the purple 
 meshes which overspread his countenance like a net that pre- 
 vented any particular expression of intelligence from rising to 
 the surface. Methought there was something malevolent in the 
 air with which he turned his eyes from Miss Grant to cast a 
 glance aloft. 
 
 'Nothing off! nothing off!' he suddenly shouted, whipping 
 round upon the fellow that was steering ; ' where d'ye think 
 the ship's bound to, you scowbanker ? Keep her to her course 1 ' 
 He rolled menacingly to the wheel and addressed the man in a 
 low voice, whilst he thrust his face into the binnacle. The fellow 
 put the wheel down by a spoke or two with a dogged look and a 
 sullen twist of his eye upon the captain. I think he believed the 
 skipper had meant to strike him. A sheath knife lay upon his 
 hip, and the muscles of his anus, which were bare to the elbow, 
 stood up like ridges of iron under the weather-browned flesh, 
 Broadwater after some further muttering returned to us. 
 
 ' You were speaking of sailors, m'am,' said he ; ' there's but 
 one way of finding out the sort of people they are. You must 
 take command of a ship. Of course there's nothing good enough 
 for 'em. They come to the vessel imbe-cile with drink out of 
 the alleys in which they live when ashore, with nothing to wear 
 but the rags they stand up in, and without having tasted food 
 for & week maybe ; and they're no sooner aboard than up turns 
 their noses to whatever's offered to them, and the growlin' 
 begins. What's their wittles 1 Beef, pork, tea, bread, mollasses, 
 winegar things they'd uever have knovved the names of if they
 
 24 MAROONED 
 
 hadn't been sailors ; for as landsmen they couldn't have earned 
 as much as would have brought their eves to the sight of 'em. 
 They like the money they take up, but the work don't suit their 
 delicate constitutions. Tell 'ee what it is : there's been a great 
 deal too much said about the British sailor. He's been led into 
 such fancies of his own consequence that he's now ate up with 
 wanity. " Ne'er another nation. I'm told," he says, says he, " can 
 produce the likes of me ! " An he don't know how right he is. 
 Ne'er another nation do t For what's the name of the country 
 whose sailors are within hailing distance of him in the art of 
 loafing, growling, mutineering, and giving trouble all round t ' 
 
 ' Your crew are contented, I hope f ' said L 
 
 ' Me and the mate '11 keep 'em satisfied, I warrant ye/ he 
 answered. 
 
 I must confess I did not like this man's views and talk. But 
 then I reflected that sailors are, on the whole, a long-suffering 
 people ; that in every crew there is a proportion of sensible men 
 who keep the others straight by their resolution to out- weather 
 the captain, even if he should prove Old Nick himself, sooner 
 than be betrayed by injurious usage into an act that would 
 procure the forfeiture of their wages. I likewise considered 
 that Broadwater had doubtless been master for some years, and 
 that he had experience enough to distinguish the line where 
 surly and dissatisfied obedience ends, and mutiny defiant, reck- 
 less, and often deadly begins. Meanwhile I held my tongue, 
 for I was in no humour to enter into an argument with him 
 upon the virtues and vices of the British sailor. I observed that 
 Miss Grant watched him furtively, but with attention. Yet his 
 face was but little better than a mask. It was impossible to 
 decipher his mind by looking at him. He had no other faculty 
 of self-interpretation than his speech, Nature had restricted 
 his capacity of expression to that. 
 
 Shortly after this the cabin-boy arrived to announce dinner. 
 The time had slipped away swiftly, and it was now one o'clock. 
 
 'The lad must mean lunch/' saia L 
 
 ' No fear ! ' said Broadwater ; ' dinner, sir, dinner I ' 
 
 * And pray what is the next meal called 1 ' I asked. 
 
 * Supper, sir ; sarved at half -past five ; much as a man can eat 
 or ought to eat 'long with tea. Should ye feel faint towards 
 bed-time, there's biscuit, cheese, an' pickles. No chance of pas- 
 sengers starving aboard me/' 
 
 ' Oh, we shall manage very well, I have no doubt,' I exclaimed 
 soothingly. 
 
 He trudged below, leaving Miss Grant and me to follow. 
 
 'A true sea-bear, Mr. Musgrave,' she whispered. 
 
 'Yet he was fairly well spoken ashore,' said L *But to keep 
 one's temper is the great secret of happiness. And, besides, we 
 need see as little of him as we choose. 
 
 He kept us waiting, and when he emerged from his cabin his 
 face shone from what he himself would have called a * wash*
 
 THE VOYAGE BEGINS 25 
 
 down/ You might have thought he had soaped his hair as well 
 as his face : it lay as a skull-cap on his head and glistened in 
 the light, and I took notice of a polished spike of it projecting 
 beyond either ear. as though the old fellow had rounded off his 
 toilet with a couple of notes of admiration. It is not many years 
 since I made a voyage to the West Indies in a mail steamer 
 that would have carried me on to Eio, had I desired to visit 
 that port, and I well remember that this, our first meal aboard 
 the Iron Crown, recurred to me as vividly as though it had been 
 an experience of yesterday, when I sat down in the shining 
 saloon of the great steam palace at a table, white, rich, glitter- 
 ing with damask and glass and silver, and a waiter behind my 
 chair to attend to my selections from a bill of fare which no 
 excellent hotel could go far beyond. The cabin-boy of the Iron 
 Grown was a tall, knock-kneed, dejected-looking youth, who was 
 making his first voyage ; he was already oppressed with nausea, 
 and his anxiety and fear of the captain were horrible. I think 
 I see him now, breathing hard as he put a tureen of hot pea- 
 soup (at which he was too ill to glance) before old Broadwater, 
 ana then staggering back with his eyes half out of his head, as 
 though persuaded he had blundered in some way, and that the 
 captain would instantly rise and fall upon him. Our repast 
 and I will ask you to consider the time of year consisted 
 of this same soup, a boiled leg of pork, a dish of potatoes 
 smoking in their jackets, and a pudding of the shape and 
 appearance of a small bolster, spotted with currants. The 
 captain drank rum-and-water, and ate like a shipwrecked 
 man ; and that he might not think us fastidious, and so ground 
 and justify to himself a still more objectionable manner than 
 he' had as yet discovered, Miss Grant and I partook of the 
 soup and toyed with a slice of the pork, but declined the 
 pudding on th plea that the excellent breakfast we had made 
 had left us without appetite. The skylight lay open, but the 
 atmosphere was nevertheless oppressive, and I was not a little 
 grateful that the brig should be sailing along on a level keel ; 
 for though I was never sea-sick in my life, I am persuaded that, 
 had the vessel's motion been lively, the hot atmosphere of the 
 cabin, coupled with the strong fumes of the repast, would have 
 rendered me very uneasy. Broadwater was so well pleased 
 with his dinner that he suffered the cabin-boy to stagger through 
 the task of waiting without giving him one injurious word ; but 
 the terrified concern of the lad satisfied me that though the 
 brig had sailed from the Thames but a day or two before, he had 
 in that brief time undergone discipline enough to make him 
 heartily wish himself at home again with his friends. 
 
 As I handed Miss Grant up the companion-steps, she ex- 
 claimed, 'I fear you will have to thank me for some uncomfort- 
 able experiences and yet think of me alone in this vessel ! ' 
 
 ' Never trouble yourself about me. Miss Grant*' said I ; ' I shall 
 begin to enjoy myself presently. Here am I face to face
 
 Jf> MAROONED 
 
 an aspect of life quite worth examining, believe me. One might 
 wish indeed that there were other passengers, for Broad water has 
 the look of a man in whom decorousness is only to be contrived 
 by a combination of fares. But he shall help to divert us yet ! ' 
 I returned to the cabin to get a deck-chair I had purchased, 
 together with a parcel of books, and made her comfortable. But 
 there was nothing in literature to detain her eye or mine just 
 then. The breeze had freshened yet,it blew a little before the 
 beam, and the brig with her port tacks aboard had just heel 
 enough to suggest speed by her posture. We were hauling out 
 from the land that trended away to starboard in streaks of dim 
 green and white and brown, -with here and there a brilliant star- 
 like shining upon it from some object that sent back the sunlight. 
 About a quarter of a mile to windward of us was a large India- 
 man, bound as we were, and passing us, but slowly. The rounded 
 bosoms of her canvas were towards us and one thought of the 
 creamy breasts of women as the eye noticed the garnishing, on 
 those yearning heights, of the silver fringe of the reef-points. 
 There were soldiers aboard her, and the line of the forecastle and 
 main-deck was spotted with bright red uniforms ; whilst, from 
 under the violet twilight of the awning stretched over the poop- 
 deck, you caught the glance of twinkling lace and metal buttons, 
 and the fluttering coloured drapery of ladies standing or walk- 
 ing. Her large cabin windows trembled back the shivering 
 lustre that rose to them off the flashing hurry of waters. Her 
 wake followed her like a narrow band of white satin, and as the 
 dark blue curl at the cut-water arched its luminous ridge into 
 snow, the leap of the froth to the afternoon splendour resembled 
 a scattering of gems or the shattering of a fragment of rainbow. 
 That, is the sort of ship to make a voyage in, I thought to myself ; 
 but it would not have been kind to say BO. Miss Grant's gaze 
 was full of delight and admiration. She let me know that she 
 had a sailor's eye for atmospheric effects when she bade me 
 observe how the white light of the canvas appeared to overflow 
 the boundaries of the gleaming spaces, ana dissolve upon the 
 blue beyond like the sheen from the sky-line of snow-clad hills 
 standing fair against the liquid sapphire of the winter heavens. 
 But though the Indiaman was soon ahead of us, we were sailing 
 too, and there was comfort in knowing it. Bound as were the 
 bows of the Iron Crown, I judged that she had the trick of bl w- 
 ing along whenever the wind found her a chance, and that her 
 run to Rio might prove nimbler than her shape, as she lav in 
 the Pool, had promised me. Thus we slipped onwards, diminish- 
 ing the land until it fell into blobs of film and hovering streaks 
 of blue ; and by sundown we might have been in the heart 
 of one ol ocean's deepest solitudes, but for three or four orange- 
 tinctured sail, like dashes of light in the far distance, and but 
 for the water our stein wag rending being of a hue as different 
 from the deep, dark, beautiful pure blue of the fathomless 
 surge 8 were old Broadwator's eyes from those of Mi&> Au relit*
 
 A CHANNEL* INCIDENT 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A CHANNEL INCIDENT 
 
 HAD I embarked on this voyage despondently^ I believe I 
 should have found a reason for the gloom on my mind in a very 
 extraordinary incident that occurred on this the first night of 
 our departure from England. 
 
 Supper had been served at half -past five. Broad-water thus 
 spoke of this meal because it was, as it still is, one of the perver- 
 sities of the forecastle parlance, so to entitle the hook-pot of tea, 
 the pieces of ship's bread, and the remains of the contents of the 
 noontide kid of beef or pork, which form the last of the mariner's 
 three repasts. I had requested the captain to order one of my 
 fowls to be killed and cooked as a provision against the 
 oppressively substantial fare of the cabin ; and though, to be 
 sure, the bird came to the table somewhat tough for the want of 
 keeping, and somewhat prickly with unplucked quills, it at least 
 provided us with a lighter entertainment than we should have 
 iound in the cold leg of pork, in the dish of fried slices of 
 pudding, and in the liver and bacon which the cabin-boy placed 
 upon the table. A great tea-pot was put before Broadwater, 
 who poured put cupf uls of a liquor black as ink ; from the 
 depths of which, on stirring it, there arose quite a little planta- 
 tion of twigs and leaves. He told us that there was milk enough 
 on board to last until to-morrow, after which we must be 
 satisfied to take our tea ' neat,' as he called it. 
 
 4 Few vessels of the size of this brig carry cows, I suppose t ' 
 said I. 
 
 ' No,' he answered, ' nor goats neither. It's astonishing that 
 the art of feeding people on board ship should have rose to what 
 it is, considering how few vittles there are which ain't of a 
 perishable kind. They'll put up effigies to chaps who write books, 
 to play-actors, to folks like politicians who get on for themselves 
 and don't do nobody else any good ; but if ever mortial man in 
 this here bloomin' world desarved a statue, it was the fellow who 
 first hit on the notion of steeping beef in brine to keep it fit and 
 sweet for sailors' use. Think of being able to get when afloat 
 mind ye, Miss, I says afloat such a dinner as we've had to-day I 
 The mere sight of such food at sea not an ounce of salt in the 
 whole biling neither is enough to make a man think his eyes 
 must have gone wrong ! ' and he lifted his hands and gazed up- 
 wards with the air of a person overwhelmed with astonishment. 
 
 At this early stage it was difficult to teU whether he desired 
 us to accept him as a humorist. But it was not long before I 
 discovered that lie was neither a wit nor a wag, and that he was 
 only comical when he had not the least intention of being so. 
 
 Whilst we were at supper the mate came below and took his 
 seat quietly, saluting Miss Grant and me with a bow. But for
 
 28 MAROONED 
 
 his hair I must certainly have thought him one of the hand- 
 somest men I had ever seen, now that I could view him closely 
 and observe the delicacy of his lineaments. His woolly crop 
 was, however, fatal to him. It was a feature that neutralized 
 all others, even when his head was covered ; the effect of the 
 exposure of the whole growth fell little short of a shock. I tried 
 to engage him in conversation ; but he was very reserved, 
 answering merely in monosyllables, with a constant reference in 
 his manner to old Broad water, whose presence I supposed kept 
 him quiet. Once or twice he glanced at Miss Grant, but so 
 swiftly it was scarcely possible that he should be conscious he 
 looked at her. He dispatched his meal quickly, rose, bowed to 
 us again, and went to his berth in the forward part of the cabin. 
 
 ' Is your mate a smart sailor ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' There never was a smarter,' answered Broadwater. * See him 
 aloft. He'll spring to the yard-arm from the slings, and '11 be 
 jockeying of it when the liveliest of the hands isn't up with the 
 futtock shrouds.' 
 
 ' Have you known him long t ' 
 
 * He was my mate last voyage,' he replied, lifting the lid of the 
 locker next to him and pulling out a bottle of rum ; and then 
 calling for water, he mixed himself as stout a nor'-wester as ever 
 sailor put to his lips, though he had already swallowed three 
 large cups of tea. 
 
 'He has not the air of a seaman,' said Miss Grant. 
 
 ' So little,' I exclaimed, ' that I am surprised, captain, to hear 
 you speak of him as a taut hand.' 
 
 'Taut?" well, that's perhaps the word, sir. I don't know that 
 he's not almost as taut as me, and in saying that I pay him as 
 handsome a compliment as one man could give to another ; for 
 let me tell you, Mr. Musgrave, that you might coast the whole 
 of Great Britain and not meet with a shipmaster who could hold 
 a candle to me in the art of managing sailors.' 
 
 ' Glad to hear it,' said I, rising, not very well pleased by the 
 languishing glance he cast at the bottle, as though debating 
 whether to take another sup or return the liquor to the locker. 
 
 The afternoon had been hot and blinding with sunshine. The 
 evening that now stole down upon us from astern, with a single 
 jewel glittering upon its brow, albeit the western sky was still 
 crimson, with lagoons of delicate green amid the amber and rose 
 and scarlet of the light high clouds there, was delicious and 
 tranquillizing, full of dewy softness and the balm of the shadows 
 which trail in the wake of a glaring day. The moon shone with 
 the glory of the preceding night ; she merged sea and sky into 
 liquid gloom in the north and west, though as the horizon swept 
 towards the effulgent path upon the water, it ran with a clearer 
 and yet clearer line to the silver there, till under the planet it 
 hung like the head of a long breaker arching into foam. Through 
 the pale shadows of the night sailed the bng, lightly inclined by 
 . radiance was so illusive that the sea looked to go
 
 A CHANNEL INCIDENT 28 
 
 bare to its confines, and the sense of solitude you got when you 
 gazed over the rail could not have been more complete had the 
 Iron Crown been floating deep in the heart of the Pacific. 
 
 Miss Grant and I paced the deck, greatly enjoying the coolness 
 and repose of the night. Our talk was chiefly about her early 
 life, her father and mother, Eio, Fraser, and the like. It seems 
 that on her mother's side she came of a race of grandees, one of 
 whom was an officer under Don Pedro de Valdez when that 
 Admiral surrendered to Drake, and she said it was a tradition 
 in the family that he was the only man aboard the Spaniard 
 who exhibited any kind of reluctance to being made a prisoner 
 by Sir Francis. Her mother took her to old Spain, as she called 
 it, when she was a child, but though she met several relatives, 
 she could recollect nothing of them beyond their haughty 
 manners and grandiose airs. Indeed, I gathered that her 
 mother's noble connections accepted her marriage as a blow 
 to the family dignity. ' And yet my father,' said Miss Grant, 
 ' came of as good a stock as any in Scotland. Pray what Spanish 
 woman of title is too good for a Scotch gentleman ot high 
 descent ? I ought to love my mother's native country ; but she 
 is poor, and has sunk so low that until she can take her old place 
 in Europe again, the pretensions of her ancient nobility must 
 continue to be almost too ridiculous to laugh at.' 
 
 Whilst we walked and chatted the time insensibly slipped 
 away. Once Broadwater rolled over to us puffing a pipe. He 
 offered no apology to Miss Grant for smoking in her presence, 
 though those were days when behaviour of this sort was con- 
 sidered a barbarous incivility to a lady. 
 
 ' There is grog and biscuit to be had below,' he exclaimed, ' if 
 you or the lady nas a mind for a sup before turning in.' 
 
 'Thank you, we require nothing more.' 
 
 * The boy locks up at half -past nine,' said he, ' but the cabin 
 light's left burning all night. There's never no need for groping 
 aboard of me. What I says to my owner is, treat your pas- 
 sengers well and they '11 stick to ye. I'm not a man to be scared 
 by a ha'porth of ile. Tell 'ee, Mr. Musgrave, how to read a man's 
 character : watch him carve, sir ! There's some as '11 help ye as 
 though when what they're a sarving put is gone there ll be 
 nothing more left to eat on this blooming airth. Others '11 act 
 as though they understood you was a man. That's my kind. 
 Aboard me everything's up to the knocker.' 
 
 He uttered a loud unmeaning laugh that instantly flavoured 
 the atmosphere with the odour of rum. 
 
 ' We must consider ourselves very fortunate to fall into such 
 good hands,' said L A man of purple cheer, to use the language 
 of the poet, is a person quite to my liking.' 
 
 His eyes were so small that it was impossible to judge 
 whether they were unsteady or not. He seemed to look at me 
 as if he suspected a sarcasm in my words, and an objectionable 
 meaning in my employment of the word 'purple ; he then
 
 SO MAROONED 
 
 with a flourish of the stem of his pipe to his forehead 
 over to the binnacle, and after blowing some clouds of smoke, 
 with many a long look around and up at the canvas, knocked 
 the ashes out of his bowl, gave some directions to the boatswain, 
 who, acting as second mate, had charge of the deck, and went 
 below. 
 
 ' He thinks of nothing but eating,' said Miss Grant. 
 
 * I hope that may be all,' I answered : then checking some 
 expression of dislike and mistrust I was about to utter, I 
 changed the subject by calling her attention to the lovely effect 
 of the moonlight upon the sails of the brig. By daylight the 
 vessel was the sheerest bit of commonplace ; but now that the 
 magic pencils of the moon were busy with her, every feature 
 was chastened, the homeliest and coarsest detail softened by 
 the rich clear glow into a fairy delicacy^ of airy outline and 
 silvered substance. She floated clothed with beauty, and swam 
 like a sweet imagination through the shining air. Her decks 
 gleamed out with the whiteness of the peeled almond ; the 
 black line of every seam between the planks lay as sharp to 
 the sight as the ebon shadows of the rigging sliding to and fro 
 to the sleepy stirring of the vessel ; there was weight enough in 
 the draught of air to hold the canvas tremorless, and every 
 hollow, filled with the white radiance that had something of a 
 golden tincture in its gushing, too, was like the image of a sail 
 carved in alabaster. The boatswain stumped the weather-deck, 
 and his shadow at his feet was more keenly black there than 
 his figure against the sky. The fellow at the wheel stood stir- 
 less, but for an occasional movement of his arms, and you 
 would have thought it was the stare that ran as they slipped 
 up and down past him, so imperceptible was the curtseying of 
 the brig. The dew along the rail sparkled crisplv, as though, 
 since moonrise, some secret fingers had encrusted the line of 
 bulwarks with gems. Forward all was still ; save under the 
 yawn of the forecourse I could distinguish the figure of the 
 look-out man stepping athwart the forecastle, sometimes paus- 
 ing to lean over the side to send his gaze into the pale distance 
 ahead. There was no gleam of light along the range of the 
 starboard seaboard where the coast was. 
 
 'If this were to last,' exclaimed Miss Grant, 'the voyage 
 would be delightful, in spite of the disagreeable obligation of 
 having to take our meals with the captain.' 
 
 | Delightful, yes ; but too long I fear,' said L ' "We want wind, 
 Miss Grant ; we need what the shipbrokers term dispatch. 
 This moonlight, this quiet sea, this gentle wind, the transform- 
 ation of this old bucket into a fabric of marble and diamonds 
 and pearl are enchanting indeed, but conditions fit only for 
 pleasure-making. You are in a hurry, and I shall not be reluctant 
 to see Rio heave into view either. Give me, instead of the 
 beauty of such a night as this, the thunder of half a gale of 
 wind blowing over our quarter, a high green frothing sea chasing
 
 A CHANNEL 1NCLDEN1 SI 
 
 as, that same moon up yonder whisking like a silvor round- 
 hot from the edge of one dark cloud to another, and the brig 
 with a reef in her foresail and the main-topgallant-sail set over 
 the double-reefed topsail burling through an acre of foam of her 
 own making, with the white seething and hissing smother boil- 
 ing into her wake that stretches to the very line of the 
 tumbling horizon ! ' 
 
 'An excellent description, Mr. Musgrave, and it is what we 
 want, as you say. You have not forgotten your old calling. 
 You talk easily enough of reefs and sails.' 
 
 'When,' said I, 'a man has dipped his hand into the tar-pot 
 the stain of the stuff never quits him. Once a sailor, always 
 A sailor.' 
 
 At this moment five bells were struck by some one on the 
 main-deck. 
 
 4 What time is that ? ' she inquired. 
 
 ' Half -past ten,' I answered. 
 
 ' So late ! ' she exclaimed ; 'it is time to go to bed. Good-night, 
 Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 ' Let me see you to your cabin,' said I, and clown we went. 
 
 The lamp had been dimmed spite of the skipper's indifference 
 to ha'porths of oil, but there was light enough to see by. I 
 was glad to find the little bracket lamps in our cabins alight. I 
 suppose it was a part of the boy's duty to see to this, but there 
 was really so little to expect in the way of attention in a craft 
 of this kind, that I was grateful for the most trifling illustration 
 of our being looked after. I stepped into my cabin for a 
 cheroot, not choosing to turn my back on so fair a night yet 
 awhile. Slightly as the brig swayed, the bulkheads and strong 
 fastenings creaked as though a score of rats were worrying one 
 another, and I guessed, unless I should turn in thoroughly 
 sleepy, these bothersome noises promised to keep me awake all 
 night. Cigar in mouth I walked the deck for some time, finding 
 a constant pleasure in the moonlit scene, and greatly enjoying 
 the delicious hush that rested upon the vessel and the ocean. 
 After all, thought I. this is a voyage to do me a great deal of 
 good. It is a complete change ; there is no cold weather to be 
 dreaded, no Cape Horn, no Southern Ocean in June. There 
 should be some fun to be got out of old Broadwater, though I do 
 not like him. And then I fell to thinking of Miss Aurelia. 
 There had been so much moonlight mixed up in our oceanic 
 intercourse so far, that it seemed to me as if I should never be 
 able to cast my eyes upon the planet without thinking of her. 
 Well, no woman could desire a lovelier fancy and habit of associ- 
 ation in a man's mind. My humour took a poetic turn ; Byron's 
 line, ' She walks in beauty like the night,' came into my head, 
 along with Shelley's fine thought ' Moonlight and music ana 
 feeling are one.' Here is plenty of moonlight, thought I, but 
 even if I should call Miss Aurelia the music, where is the feeling 1 
 But what wonderful eyes she has 1 I mused ; what spirit, power,
 
 82 MAROONED 
 
 life, intelligence 1 She talks very finely too, by George I Fraser 
 is her dear boy, and deserves to be so, I don t doubt ; but the 
 shape of his head must have vastly changed since he was my 
 shipmate at sea, if he is able to understand one half of the 
 fancies which take her. 
 
 Presently, feeling somewhat lonesome, I crossed the deck to 
 where the boatswain was quietly pacing. 
 
 'A fine night,' said L 
 
 * It is, sir ; lovely indeed,' he replied, coming to a stand and 
 touching his cap very civilly. 
 
 'You are the second mate, I believe?' 
 
 * Second mate and bo'sun, sir.' 
 
 ' Pray do not stand, I will walk with you.' 
 
 We started to pace the length of the quarter-deck together. 
 I particularly observed in him a very respectful quiet manner, 
 the sort of sailor-like civility one wanted to hear of in such a 
 ship as the Iron Crown. The moonshine gushed so clearly that 
 my companion's face could not have been more visible had I 
 viewed it by daylight. He was a hearty-looking man of about 
 five-and-fprty ? clean shaven saving a streak of iron-gray whisker ; 
 a real splicer in aspect down to such minutiae as the hang of his 
 arms and the curl of his fingers as he walked. 
 
 * Is this your first voyage with Captain Broad water, Mr. ? ' 
 
 * Gordon's my name, sir Zana Gordon. Yes, this is my first 
 voyage with Captain Broadwater.' 
 
 I suppose he is reckoned a pretty smart seaman 1 ' 
 
 * I don t know I'm sure, sir.' 
 
 'The crew at least strike me as a lively lot. They tumble 
 about very briskly, a good sign in men newly shipped. But of 
 course most of them will run when the brig arrives at Rio. 
 Jack has his peculiarities as have other folks.' 
 
 ' He has a right to be peculiar, sir. His life's a good deal out 
 of the common ; little understood too save by them who have to 
 eat and drink and jump aloft with him. And it isn't enough 
 that he's expected to work for twenty-four hours in the day, 
 and that hes got to eat victuals which no man ashore who 
 values his dog would give it, unless it went mad and had to be 
 choked ; and that his labour's of a sort ne'er a landsman would 
 undertake, no, not if instead of signing for three pounds a 
 month he agreed for a hundred. That isn't enough, I say. It's 
 what lies behind, sometimes deep, and nearly always out of sight, 
 that's the worst part of all that s bad in the seafaring calling.' 
 
 'You mean bullying, brutal treatment, injurious language?' 
 He was silent. ' I should understand you,' said I. ' In coming 
 aboard this morning I found a bigger hint than would have 
 sufficed me in the faces of the boat's crew. I was a sailor 
 myself for three years, and one doesn't want to serve longer 
 than that to make plain words of the looks of seamen.' 
 
 He still held his peace, but he had said enough to let me know 
 bis silence was mere wariness. . When we got on to other topics
 
 33 
 
 he was as talkative as I could desire. I found he had been able 
 seaman aboard the Indiaman I had first gone to sea in, though 
 he had left her before I joined. She had been commanded in 
 his time by the same man who had her when I was a midship- 
 man ; so here was a topic that was enough to at once establish 
 a sort of bond between us. 
 
 Whilst we were pacing the deck the man on the look-out 
 forward hailed rny companion as he seemed to think. Neither 
 of us caught what he said, and Gordon hallooed back. The man 
 sang out again, but without making himself heard ; on which the 
 boatswain went forward to see what was wanted. He left me 
 Standing near the wheel. There yet remained half of my cheroot 
 to smoke out. Six bells eleven o'clock had been struck some 
 ten minutes before; but the loveliness of the night still detained 
 me, and I was in no mood yet to exchange the warm sweetness 
 of the ocean night-breeze for the atmosphere of my cabin. On 
 a sudden the man who was steering started violently, let go the 
 wheel, and ran to the vessel's side, where he hung in a strained 
 listening posture, with one hand to his ear. I hastily crossed 
 the deck, wondering what on earth he could have heard to cause 
 him to start so wildly, and above all to desert his post at the 
 helm as though he had gone out of his mind. The moonshine 
 streamed full upon him, and the complexion of that light, com- 
 bined with his extreme pallor, made the face he slowly turned 
 upon me ghastlier than any dead man's for the very life that 
 worked with a sort of grin in it. 
 
 'Did you hear him? he inquired in the low tremulous voice 
 of a man newly recovered from a faint. 
 
 ' Hear whom ? ' I answered, staring my hardest into the 
 distance, misty with the radiance. 
 
 ' Something away yonder called me ! ' said he, still speaking in 
 the same voice, weak with terror and astonishment. 
 
 ' You ! ' I exclaimed ; ' called you ! But there's nothing there, 
 man nothing in sight, anyway. What should there be then for 
 a human voice to sound from t ' 
 
 ' Hark ! There again ! ' he cried, with another violent start as 
 though he had been electrified. I had heard nothing. 
 
 ' What is your name ? ' I asked. 
 
 'Jesse Cooper, sir,' he responded, trembling pitifully. 
 
 I had begun to think that the fellow was ill, or that he had 
 suddenly gone wrong in his head, when he lifted his hand as if 
 to motion silence, and then I certainly did seem to hear a faint 
 sound coming from God knows where, that might have passed 
 for a feeble human cry, though it syllabled nothing that was 
 intelligible to my ears. No doubt it was no more than the sheer 
 imagination in me wrought on by some delicate murmur of wind 
 aloft, or by the stir of one rope lying in the chafe of anothei, or 
 by the jerk of a sheet to the gentle strain of the sail, or the 
 creak of parrel or truss. But for the moment I was hardly less 
 startled than the man himself. 
 
 D
 
 34 MAKOONED 
 
 'Very extraordinary ! ' I said. 
 
 'You heard it, sir?' he cried, looking wildly at me. 
 
 'I certainly heard something confoundedly like a human 
 voice hailing,' I answered, peering with all my eyes at the 
 sea, as though I must certainly see something there if I stared 
 long enough. 
 
 ' my God ! O my God ! ' he groaned. ' You heard it too, sir ! 
 It's no fancy then. I'm called, and must go. It was father's 
 voice. He was drowned at sea, and three years afterwards 
 called my brother, who fell from aloft and was killed the same 
 night. And now he's called me ! ' 
 
 I saw how it was, and felt very sorry that I should have owned 
 I heard the souna, for I was now persuaded it was pure fancy 
 on my part, that is to say, pure fancy in taking the noise I had 
 heard to be a human voice : though by my owning I had caught 
 the note, be it what it would, I was like to drive the poor 
 superstitious creature clean out of his mind. 
 
 ' The brig will be aback in another minute,' said I. ' Catch 
 hold of the wheel, man. There's nothing in all this nothing 
 but nerves. Dead men can't call out you ought to know that ! 
 If they could there'd be nothing but voices hailing the world 
 day and night.' 
 
 He grasped the wheel without answering me, and brought the 
 brig to her course. Just then the boatswain came aft. 
 
 'Nothing wrong forward, I hope ?' said I. 
 
 ' No, sir. The look-out called to a mate for a chew of tobacco, 
 and thought, when I answered, that I was the man he had sung 
 out to.' 
 
 4 Glad it's no worse,' said I. ' We've had a bit of a scare aft 
 here, all happening in a minute too odd of its kind to require 
 improving by anything of the same sort forward,' and then I 
 told him what had happened. 
 
 We stood in the shadow cast by the main-rigging as we con- 
 versed. He cast a glance in the direction of the wheel, and said, 
 in a voice made up of pity and contempt, 
 
 ' There's always sailors knocking about with notions of that 
 kind. I've seen a man plump down upon his knees and pray in 
 a loud voice all because he caught sight of acompreesantaburn- 
 ing at the yard-arm. That there Cooper struck me, on first 
 setting eyes on him, as having a queerish look in his face. If 
 there was more learning in forecastles there'd be a deal less of 
 these here fanciful gallivantins. Fancy a chap supposing that his 
 father, who was drownded t'other side o' Cape Horn, believing he 
 could hail him after all these years out o' the English Channel ! ' 
 
 ' Yet wiser men than this same Cooper, Mr. Gordon, hold and 
 stoutly cling to stranger beliefs than the midnight hallooing of 
 drowned men ! ' said I, hammering at a flint for a light for my 
 fragment of cigar. ' If any mortal being has a right to believe 
 in ghosts, it should be the sailor. Look aloft, Mr. Gordon ! ' he 
 turned up his weather-beaten face ' Mark how spectrally those
 
 A CHANNEL INCIDENT 38 
 
 sails show out to the moonlight. What, to a fanciful eye, should 
 the flitting of the shadows up there to the swaying of the 
 masts signify but the pinions of spirits hovering over those 
 glimmering heights ? and what, to the imaginative ear, should 
 the mutterings of the breeze in the shrouds mean but the dark 
 and secret whispered conversation of beings as little like you 
 or me, Mr. Gordon, as the moon is like the sun ? Again, look 
 over the side it is all wide, white silence : mere sea and moon- 
 shine to you and me, but to the lonely, distempered vision the 
 fittest canvas the wide world over for the magic-lantern of the 
 mind to cast its imaginations on.' 
 
 He tilted the peak of his cap on to his nose as he scratched the 
 back of his head, and said, k Well, if a man's weak enough to 
 believe in ghosts I don't doubt he'd get more ideas about them 
 out of such a night as this upon the ocean than maybe he'd 
 collect out of the most crowded of graveyards ashore. But 
 supposing such things as sperrits to be, who's going to make 
 me believe they ha'n t got too much sense to choose the sea to 
 knock about in? A spectre's right enough in an old country 
 house and the likes of them places ashore ; for he's not only 
 got a roof over his head and a hre to warm himself at when the 
 weather draws up cold, but the pick of the best room to lay in, 
 and a larder to help himself from if so be a sperrit ever gets 
 hungry. But what does a ghost do at sea 1 If he's a land ghost 
 he'll stop ashore ; and is it imaginable, d'ye think, sir, that if he's 
 the ghost of a sailor he'd retarn, without being forced, to the 
 life he was bound to hate when he was flesh and blood, and 
 keep company, of his own accord, with such people as skippers 
 and mates, and endure again the cold and wet that 'ud send 
 him from the deck or from aloft streaming like a soaked rag 
 to his thin blanket and leaking bunk ? ' He shook his head in a 
 way that showed him fully convinced by his own reasoning. 
 
 'Isn't that a sail out yonder?' I exclaimed, at that instant 
 catching sight of some tiny object gleaming like a faint dash of 
 light on the sea-line, and doubting for a moment whether it 
 was a star or a ship's canvas or the play of white water. 
 
 He looked, and said, ' Yes, sir ; a yacht, I allow, by the sheen 
 of her sails.' 
 
 It was as though a paring of pearl reflected the moonlight, 
 so exceedingly dainty and delicate was the lustre of the 
 fabric against the dark obscure of the horizon. I noticed, 
 however, whilst I kept my eye fastened upon it, that it moved 
 with a velocity quite meteoric in its way, for when I had first 
 descried it, it showed out a hand's-breadth forward of the fore- 
 most main-shroud, whilst before I could have counted ten it 
 had slided midway to the fore-rigging. 
 
 I glanced aft. 'Why, Mr. Gordon,' I said, 'the wheel's 
 deserted ; the brig's coming round ! ' 
 
 He sprang to the helm, and ground at the spokes till the tiller 
 chains rattled again, meanwhile looking right and left. 
 
 Da
 
 38 MAROONED 
 
 'Where's Cooper, sir?' he cried; 'he hasn't gone forward, 
 ni swear he never passed us ; he wouldn't quit the helm unless 
 he was mad ! ' 
 
 There was a grating abaft the wheel ; I sprang on to it and 
 strained my sight at the wake astern. The moon was westering 
 and looking over our foretopsail yard-arm, and her light was 
 very clear and broad. I could see nothing. The wake went 
 away slowly in small black holes and little seething clouds, 
 with here and there a faint flash of green light, as though a 
 strange fish with a green eye floated up to the surface to take 
 a view of us now and again. 
 
 'He is overboard drownded hisself!' cried the boatswain. 
 ' Man overboard ! ' he roared. ' Lay aft, the watch ! lively, or y e'll be 
 too late ! ' and he fell to grinding at the wheel again to steady it. 
 
 The brig came round slowly. His cry was electrical in its 
 effect. I had seen nothing stirring save the man on the look- 
 put, and now in an instant the planks re-echoed the thump- 
 ing and slapping of the booted or naked feet of the watch 
 tumbling aft as if for their lives. They were busy with the 
 boat, clearing away the falls and casting off the gripes, when 
 up came old Broad water. 
 
 ' What's the matter 1 what's the matter ? ' he bawled. 
 
 ' Man overboard, sir ! ' shouted the boatswain. 
 
 ' Where is he ? where is he ? Anybody see him ? ' roared the 
 skipper, springing with his oval shanks on to the grating 
 alongside me. 
 
 * I have been looking, but can make out no signs of him,' I 
 answered. 
 
 * How long has he been overboard ? ' he shouted. 
 
 ' Three or four minutes, I expect,' answered the boatswain. 
 
 'How did he git there?' ne bellowed; 'was he knocked 
 overboard ? ' 
 
 ' Good God ! ' I cried, wild to think of the precious time the 
 old fool was losing by these questions, ' there's a man overboard, 
 captain, and he must drown if you don't instantly seek him, if 
 indeed he's still afloat.' 
 
 ' Keep all fast with the boat,' he vociferated ; ' if he's only been 
 overboard three or four minutes he ought to be visible if he's 
 on the surface, and since he ain't it's a proof he's under.' 
 
 'It's murder ! ' said an angry voice amongst the men standing 
 near the davits. 
 
 Just then the mate sprang through the companion. 
 
 'Who was it said it's murder?' shouted Broad water, half 
 suffocated with passion. ' Mr. Bqthwell, find out the man ! find 
 out the man ! I must know who it is ! ' 
 
 ' Captain Broadwater,' I exclaimed, ' the poor fellow has only 
 been overboard a few minutes, and you really ' 
 
 'Mind your own blasted business, sir,' he shouted in such a 
 raging way that I have no pen to portray it with. ' Find me th 
 man who said it's murder, Mr. Both well ! Find me that man, sir I '
 
 87 
 
 t Disgusted by the old fellow's insolence and temper, and 
 sickened by his indifference to human life, I walked a little way 
 forward clear of the men 2 and stood leaning against the rail 
 with my arms folded, waiting for what was next to happen. 
 The mate thrust in lithe as steel amongst the sailors, flashing 
 his eyes first into one's then into another's face, whilst with 
 shrill imperious tones which came back in echoes from the 
 hollows of the canvas he demanded to know who had spoken 
 the words. Broadwater, dismounting from the grating, danced 
 in a very delirium of wrath in and out among the seamen, looking 
 for all the world in the transfiguring light of the moon like a 
 gigantic crab masquerading in man's attire, whilst he whipped 
 out at the top of his pipes with all sorts of menaces, threatening 
 I know not what unless the man who had said it was murder 
 was named or confessed himself. The excitement grew, the 
 hubbub increased. Oaths were so plentiful, I could only ear- 
 nestly hope that if Miss Grant were not asleep she was out of 
 hearing. I feared it would come to a fight, and expected every 
 moment to witness the gleam of a knife flourished in the air. 
 The men, however, would not tell who it was that had spoken 
 the words. Some blows were exchanged, and presently the 
 sailors came staggering my way, driven and beaten along by 
 Broadwater and his mate. 
 
 * Forward with ye ! forward with ye ! ' roared the old fellow, 
 flourishing his arms like a windmill, whilst the mate shoved and 
 pushed as a drover would thrust a congregation of irresolute or 
 defiant calves. It would have struck a landsman as incredible 
 that the men should have suffered themselves to be thus driven. 
 They were six to two, yet they offered no resistance. But the 
 habit of discipline is strong in the sailor, and the quarter-deck 
 is sacred ground. In no man who has command of his fellow- 
 beings is there vested such despotic powers as in the master of 
 a ship. The spirit of mutiny will skulk long ere it dare show 
 its face. There is no doubt the men would have gone forward 
 quietly enough ; but Broadwater's and his mate's blood was up, 
 and the wild and wretched business did not end until the men 
 had been driven forward of the mainmast. Blowing and gasp- 
 ing, though still flourishing his hands, Broadwater came to a 
 stand, his face so crimsoned by his exertions that he looked like 
 a mulatto in the moonlight. 
 
 ' Now see here,' he said, sputtering out the words in wheezy 
 accents, for he was too exhausted to roar, ' ontil the name of the 
 man who spoke them words is given to me, you're on bread and 
 water ! Mind that 1 One of you it was, and I must know who ; 
 and if bread and water don't sarve, I'll stop 'em both, I'll stop 
 'em both I Hunger '11 make a mad beast rational. So now you 
 know what ye've got to expect.' 
 
 With this he walked aft, followed by his mate. By this time 
 I had had enough of the deck, and was sick, grieved, and deeply 
 worried too. Broad water's insulting expression stuck in my
 
 MAROONED 
 
 gorge, and I made up my mind to have a short conversation 
 with him next morning on the subject. It was depressing 
 beyond words, too, to think that the unhappy man, who beyond 
 question had dropped silently overboard whilst the boatswain 
 and I conversed forwards, may have perished for the want of a 
 boat nimbly sent to seek him. One of the crew had called it 
 murder, and that would be the universal feeling of the forecastle 
 I was sure. Broadwater was marching to and fro near the 
 wheel, with a lurch in his gait that satisfied me he must have 
 gone to bed pretty well primed. He was talking vehemently 
 to the boatswain, who still held the wheel. The mate overhung 
 the rail, gazing astern. I went below unnoticed by them, and 
 had opened the door of my cabin when I heard my name called. 
 I turned and saw Miss Grant standing in her doorway robed in 
 a pink dressing-gown. Her dark eyes flashed back the light of 
 the lamp in my berth, and with them and her pale face and 
 coronal of fair hair and commanding posture she would, attired 
 as she was, have nobly filled the canvas of a painter as the Muse 
 of Tragedy. 
 
 ' What was the cause of that great commotion on deck, just 
 now?' she inquired, without the least exhibition of alarm or 
 nervousness. 
 
 'I had hoped that you would have been peacefully sleeping, 
 Miss Grant. A fellow who was at the wheel fell crazy, and 
 quietly slipped himself overboard. He was missed, and the 
 alarm given. Hence the hurried tread overhead which dis- 
 turbed you.' 
 
 ' Was he saved ! ' 
 
 'No. Broadwater arrived rather the worse for liquor, lost 
 his temper, and prohibited the men from lowering the boat. It 
 is all very sad, and I would rather it had happened on the last 
 instead of the first night of our voyage. But I have told you the 
 worst. And do you know, Miss Grant, that it is past midnight ? ' 
 
 She saw that I did not want to prolong my talk just then. 
 Indeed I was secretly much excited, much perturbed, vexed 
 and pained, and feared that my speech would betray my anxiety 
 and worry her. She listened a little, and exclaimed, ' Every- 
 thing seems quiet now : is it still a fine night ? ' 
 
 'As lovely as when you left it,' I answered. 
 
 She inclined her head and closed her door, and without 
 further ado I tumbled into my bunk, though not to sleep for a 
 long while. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 BOTHWELL, CHIEF MATS 
 
 I WAS awakened early by the scrubbing-brushes of the men 
 overhead washing down the decks. The movement of the little 
 ship was tolerably lively, insomuch that on quitting my bunk I
 
 BOTHWELL, CHIEF MATE 89 
 
 had some difficulty for a few minutes in keeping my legs, nor 
 was it hard to tell, by the dini humming noise that seemed to 
 tremble through the fabric like the vibration in a harp-string 
 after it has been twanged, that it was blowing a fresh breeze of 
 Avind. I was soon dressed, and on gaining the deck found the 
 brig storming along with her royals furled and her trysail-boom 
 well on the quarter. A high sea chased us, and but for the 
 wind being abaft the beam we must have found no little spite 
 in the weight of the sudden guns and brisk squalls which dis- 
 tended our canvas until the sheets groaned again to the strain. 
 The heavens were covered with large white clouds, which rolled 
 .along very stately and solemnly, with a brownish scud speeding 
 under them like smoke, but there were everywhere great breaks 
 of clear blue sky of the true summer English Channel tint, into 
 which the sun would float and flash out in splendour, casting 
 down clearly lined shafts of golden light, resembling the spokes 
 of a wheel, which seemed to revolve to the movements of their 
 bodies of vapour. The sea was as grand as one could wish it 
 with flying shadow and leaping dazzle blue ridges with a mile 
 long head of foam, bits of rainbow in the showering of spray, 
 weltering spaces of violet gloom cast _ by the clouds and the 
 swift glory that chased them. The brig was buzzing through 
 it as if, to use the sailor's phrase, she had the scent at last. She 
 rose to the head of a sea in a boiling smother, then sank all 
 very solemnly with a leeward heel that seemed to bring the top- 
 gallant rail within arm's-reach of the hissing yeast that went 
 wildly swirling past, and out of which the rush of wind from 
 under the foot of the mainsail would tear up bucketfuls of 
 blobs and flakes, and send them scattering with a scream 
 through the air with something of the pearly glint of the flying- 
 fish in their flight. 
 
 My friend Mr. Zana Gordon had once again charge of the deck. 
 Bucket in hand, with trousers turned above the knee, he swirled 
 the sparkling green water that was handed to him along the 
 deck, whilst the men scrubbed with their brushes. Recollecting 
 that these were the fellows who were to be disciplined by a diet 
 of bread and water into telling the captain which of them it was 
 who had used the words that had enraged him, I ran my eye 
 from one to another of them with a little attention, but observed 
 nothing particular, unless it were a sort of sullenness in their 
 deliberate manner of handling their scrubbing-brushes, which 
 after all might have been a mere imagination on my part too. 
 
 It was a lively enough scene in its way, and brought back old 
 memories to me. The smoke of the newly-lighted galley-fire 
 blew swiftly and merrily from the chimney of the caboose into 
 the sea, ana you noticed the farm-yard noise about of the crow- 
 ing of cocks and the grunting of pigs. There was but one vessel 
 in sight, a large topsail schooner heading to cross under our 
 stern for a course to some French port. The sea took her fair 
 abeam, and she rolled so heavily that she looked like a great fan
 
 40 MAROONED 
 
 violently swayed by some Titanic hand hidden beneath the 
 surface of the water. Well, it was just the sort of weather I had 
 told Miss Grant yesterday that we needed. A short spell of it 
 would drive us clear of soundings, and I knew it would make 
 one feel as though the voyage was to have an end when one 
 should find the course set fair by the binnacle compass for South 
 America. 
 
 The boatswain saluted me with a flourish of a tarry thumb to 
 his forehead, but he was too full of business to talk. After I 
 had been on deck for about a quarter of an hour, by which time 
 the scrubbing was over, and the seamen were smacking the 
 planks with a swab or two, Broadwater came up through the 
 companion-hatch, where he stood awhile holding on, and blink- 
 ing around him as though not yet wide awake. Then going to 
 the wheel he brought his eyes in a squint upon the compass, and 
 after a survey of the fabric aloft, and a slow gaze round the sea, 
 he called out to me, ' Good-morning, sir. Tow rope's in hand at 
 last, I allow. No hint of kedging in this here movement.' 
 
 I inclined my head coldly and distantly to him, and then sus- 
 pecting that any kind of sub-acid or chilly posture would be 
 entirely lost upon such an intelligence as his, I resolved to deal 
 with him in a way that should at least be intelligible. 
 
 * I wish to speak a word with you, Captain Broadwater,' I 
 called out. 
 
 He looked at me a moment as though he feared his dignity 
 and importance would suffer by having to go to me, and then 
 after a half glance at the fellow at the wheel with a slow pulling 
 down of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, a trick that 
 seemed to help him to arrive at a conclusion, he came to where 
 I stood, but very leisurely, appearing the while to think of 
 nothing but the appearance of the deck, and the movements of 
 the men swabbing. 
 
 * Well, Mr. Musgrave.' he exclaimed, ' what is it, sir 1 Slept 
 pretty comfortable, I hope? Nothing the lady can find to 
 complain about, I trust ? ' 
 
 * Sir,' said I, ' you were ^extremely rude and offensive to me 
 last night. You are captain of this ship, and I am a passenger 
 who has paid for certain rights civility from you amongst the 
 rest which I intend to claim ; and if you do not concede me 
 every tittle of what I have parted with my money to obtain, 
 I will make it so hot for you on my return to England that you 
 shall wish yourself hanged ere you ever set eyes on me. And 
 now, sir,' I continued, with the sternest face I could contrive to 
 put on, though my gravity was not a little staggered by the 
 ludicrous expression of bewilderment that overspread his singu- 
 lar countenance, ' I insist upon your apologizing to me at once, 
 Captain Guy Broadwater, for the insolent manner in which you 
 addressed me last night.' 
 
 He cast his little eyes from the deck to the sky and back again, 
 frowned, scratched his head, and by other signs seemed to wish
 
 BOTHWELL, CHIEF MATE 41 
 
 me to suppose that he was in an agony of thought. Then, with 
 an inimitable air of being all abroad, he pointed with his fore- 
 finger to his waistcoat, and said, ' Me 1 me insult you ! You're 
 a-dreaming, Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 'No dream at all, sir,' said I ; 'you were confoundedly insolent 
 to me, and ruder even in your manner than in your speech, and 
 I demand an apology.' 
 
 Again he looked up at the sky and down at the deck, as though 
 the effort to recollect what had passed caused him acute suffering. 
 
 ' What did I say ? ' he suddenly asked. 
 
 I told him. 
 
 'Well. Mr. Musgrave,' said he, 'you're a gentleman, and I 
 "should be sorry for to swear that I never spoke them words, 
 seeing that you tell me I did. But I can assure you, sir, oa 
 my honour as master of this here Iron Grown, that I have no 
 recollection of using the term you mention. If I did, why then 
 I 'pologize, and no man can do more.' 
 
 On hearing this I bowed coldly and walked aft, congratulating 
 myself upon my resolution, for 1 believed I had made him under- 
 stand he would have to be very cautious henceforth in his 
 dealings with me, and I had also got to see that the man, like 
 all other bullies, was very white-livered at bottom. There was, 
 indeed, danger that a person of this nature would extend some- 
 thing of the treatment he exhibited to his crew to Miss Grant 
 and me ; and unless I asserted myself promptly it might end, 
 through a natural aversion on my part from any kind of worry 
 or annoyance, to my insensibly submitting to his rough usage, 
 which 01 course he would accentuate in proportion as I yielded, 
 until my life on board might become as uneasy as if I had been 
 one of the crew. This is a feature of a voyage absolutely 
 impossible in these days, but in my time it was a condition (in 
 small passenger vessels, of course) as familiar as the coarseness 
 of the food and the gloom and discomforts of the cabin. 
 
 I kept my back on the quarter-deck for a little, whilst I 
 stood watching the sparkling race of froth hurling from under 
 the shadow of our counter to the creamy summit of the green 
 surge chasing us, during which I could hear the old fellow 
 calling to the seamen in such a tone as few men would 
 think fit to adopt^ towards a dog. If it was convenient to 
 him to forget his insulting manner to me, it was plain that 
 whatever besides he chose to remember was very present to 
 his mind. For how long a period the men who formed the 
 starboard watch would consent to the discipline of bread and 
 water it was hard to conjecture ; though, indeed, the sailor of 
 that period could scarcely witness a very severe hardship in the 
 deprivation of lumps of meat out of which, whether raw or 
 cooked, the mariner beguiled the tedium of the voyage by 
 manufacturing snuff-boxes for his grandfather, work-boxes for 
 his sweetheart, and tobacco-boxes for himself. 
 
 Miss Grant did not leave her cabin till, breakfast .was upon
 
 42 MAROONED 
 
 the table. Broadwater, who was seated when she arrived, got 
 up and distorted his figure with a bow, whilst he asked her, \\ .th 
 much such a pleasant face as he wore when I first made his 
 acquaintance, what sort of a night she had passed, and if the 
 brig's tumblefication troubled her much. This stroke of polite- 
 ness was meant as much for me as for her. After the exchange 
 of a few commonplaces about the weather and so forth, Miss 
 Grant said to the captain, ' Were they not able to save the poor 
 fellow who fell overboard last night ? ' 
 
 ' No, mum,' he answered, with a half look from me to a lump 
 of sausage which he held aloft on a fork ; 'the long and short of 
 it's this. The man was in the water some minutes afore the 
 alarm was given. The surface lay clear under the moon, and 
 had he been showing there was enough of us looking for some 
 one to see him. He meant to drown hisself, and he did it.' 
 
 ' But apart from the chance,' said I, ' of rescuing him as a 
 mere matter of humanity, would not his loss, by weakening your 
 working strength, make you anxious to be sure that he was not 
 to be recovered 1 ' 
 
 ' There was no signs of him, sir,' he answered doggedly. ' I 
 don't want to lose no men if I can help it ; but if a chap chooses 
 to slip overboard so quietly that no one hears him touch the 
 water, what's to be done ? ' 
 
 ' But you didn't know when you first came on deck that he 
 had drowned himself,' said I. 
 
 ' No,' he answered, ' but didn't I act as if I did ? which means 
 that I'm one of those men who don't need to know a thing to 
 understand it.' 
 
 I turned to Miss Grant, and related the strange story of the 
 preceding night, whilst Broadwater worked away at his break- 
 fast with both hands, and masticated with such energy as to 
 apparently hold him deaf. 
 
 'Strange,' she exclaimed, ' that you should have thought you 
 heard the voice that called him. Of course it was fancy, but it 
 is dreadful to think how even a little imagination may over- 
 power the reason.' 
 
 ' There was everything to help the imagination,' said I : 'the 
 silence upon the vessel and upon the ocean the wild, straining 
 look in the man's eyes with the sparkle of moonlight in them 
 as he turned them upon me, full, as I can now see, with the 
 anguish of madness and then the misty silvery distance to- 
 wards which he bent his ear with his hand to it. I believe had 
 he told me there was a phantom out there, and pointed to it, I 
 should have seen somettiing. if not the apparition he himself 
 beheld.' 
 
 Presently, after a prodigious meal, Broadwater arose and left 
 the cabin. 
 
 ' Why did not he attempt to save the man f ' Miss Grant said. 
 
 ' I believe the fellow when he first came on deck was still 
 muddled with the fumes of the liquor he had swallowed, and
 
 BOTHWELL, CHIEF MATE 43 
 
 barely understood what had happened or knew what he was 
 about.' And then I told her how he had insulted me, and how a 
 li . Je while before I had obliged him to apologize. My mere 
 telling her this thing touched the spirit in her. The look of her 
 tvs she listened to me made you feel that here was a woman to 
 fill any man who should vex her with the feelings of a dog.- 
 Before we quitted the table, the mate arrived to get his break- 
 fast. He bowed to us quietly as before, seated himself without 
 speaking, and fell to his meal with great soberness and civility 
 ot demeanour. It seemed hard to reconcile his subdued bearing, 
 which seemed by its air to be habitual to him, with his fierce and 
 , passionate treatment of the men, and particularly his desperate 
 and raging behaviour of the previous night. ^Tow that the 
 captain was away I hoped to be able to draw him into conversa- 
 tion, and began by saying that if this breeze lasted we might look 
 for a run of two hundred and fifty knots in the twenty-four hours. 
 
 ' Quite that, sir,' he answered. 
 
 ' That was a sorry business last night, Mr. BothwelL If the 
 men forward are superstitious, they will not like it.' 
 
 ' They won't like their company being weakened you mean, 
 sir t ' lifting his gaze from his plate and eyeing me steadily for 
 a moment. 
 
 I thought to myself, as I glanced at his woolly head, his hand- 
 some features and dark eyes, which when they tell from my face 
 rolled in a hundred nimble glances, fastening upon nothing, 
 and yet seeing everything as you would say, 'Lord, what a 
 corsair this rogue would make in the hands of a Byron or a 
 Michael Scott ! ' 
 
 ' No,' said I ; ' I mean they won't like Captain Death boarding 
 their craft almost before the anchor they have broken out has 
 dried at the cathead.' 
 
 His swift glance darted from me to Miss Grant, and then with 
 a smile that exhibited a set of fine even white teeth, the whiter 
 for his dark moustache, he said, in an almost effeminate way, 
 ' Oh, sir, we must not trouble ourselves about what the sailors 
 forward think.' 
 
 ' Why not 1 ' asked Miss Grant quickly. ' Are they not men 
 like you and Captain Broad water? You would be unable to 
 sail this ship without them. A master on land dare not treat 
 his men-servants as captains at sea treat their crews.' 
 
 He answered softly, 'No, madam, because no doubt men- 
 servants would give notice and seek another situation.' 
 
 'Do you believe it, sir?' she exclaimed, flushing and gazing 
 at him iref ully ; ' indeed you would find they would not rest 
 there ' She checked herselfj and added laughingly, and look- 
 ing at me, ' I have not a very high opinion, Mr. Musgrave, of the 
 spirit and courage of lackeys and footmen, but I truly believe 
 that if they were treated by their masters as sailors are by 
 their commanders there would be a great many mysterious 
 disappearances happening amongst the nobility and gentry.'
 
 44 MAKOONED 
 
 'I am always glad, madam,' said the mate, showing his teeth 
 again, ' to hear the ladies championing poor Jack. He has very 
 tew friends, very few friends.' 
 
 He shook his head without any suggestion of sarcasm about 
 him, and the gesture seemed to me to make his eyes shine as if 
 they had been formed of some black liquid with a gleam upon 
 it that danced to the rippling of their movement. 
 
 ' How long have you been at sea 1 ' I asked bluntly. 
 
 ' Ten years, sir.' 
 
 ' Humph ! ' I exclaimed, ' a good deal of hard weather and 
 knocking about may be packed into ten years. Apparently 
 you are of Captain Broadwater's mind, that the sailor moves 
 forward the better for being kicked.' 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 'I have heard,' said I, addressing Miss Grant, 'of captains 
 whose hatred of the sailors serving under them was really phe- 
 nomenal I remember being told of the commander of a ship 
 that he could never bring himself to offer one of his seamen 
 anything with his hand, but that he would put it down upon 
 the deck and kick it at him. By the way,' I continued, turning 
 upon the mate again. ' what '11 be the upshot of this trouble with 
 the starboard watch ? The men are not likely to peach upon their 
 messmate, and if the man who used the words won't confess 
 himself, what's to follow ? The fellows will not surely put up for 
 a whole voyage with nothing to eat and drink but ship s bread 
 bad enough, I dare say and a draught from the scuttle-butt ? ' 
 
 Before he could reply, Miss Grant said quickly, ' To what do 
 you refer, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 'Why,' I answered, 'last night, on the captain refusing to 
 send a Doat on the chance of picking up the man who had gone 
 overboard, one of the group of fellows who were at the davits 
 exclaimed, "/' murder/" and the whole of the watch are not 
 to be allowed any other provisions but biscuit until the man 
 who used the words is discovered.' 
 
 ' He is discovered,' said the mate almost blandly. 
 
 ' Oh, indeed 1 ' I exclaimed ; ' how ? pray 1 ' 
 
 ' He came to me about twenty minutes ago, and said that as 
 he did not choose his messmates should suffer for what he had 
 done, he would own he was the man who cried out, "It's murder!'" 
 
 ' He should be pardoned for his honesty,' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 ' I hope the captain will let the matter rest. I *till ask him to 
 forgive the poor fellow.' 
 
 The mate softly wiped his moustache, rose, bowed, and went 
 on deck. 
 
 ' One should say,' said I, ' that there are the seeds of a startling 
 romance in that chap ; but I fear that it is nothing but the 
 vilest sea-going commonplace made a little odd by good looks 
 and Hottentot wool' 
 
 'I agree with you,' she answered : ' lie is even more colourless 
 than hia captain ; yet prossaic a* they both are, they art) equal
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD'S PUNISHMENT 45 
 
 to creating a very great deal of trouble ; and do you know, Mr. 
 Musgrave, she said, suddenly and even vehemently, 'I am ex- 
 tremely sorry that we ever took berths in this ship. 
 
 ' Oh, but it is a little early to be anxious/ said I, cheerfully. 
 ' I quite know what is in your mind : you fear that the behaviour 
 of Broadwater and his mate may lead to the crew giving trouble. 
 Well, the same misgiving is my reason for speaking out so 
 plainly to both men. If they are made to understand that I am 
 watching them and observing their conduct, they may have sense 
 enough to restrain themselves, for the reason that I should be at 
 hand as a witness to testify to their inhumanity, and to justify 
 .any act of insubordination that the sailors might be driven to. 
 
 bhe was silent for a little, and then said, * Whereabouts is the 
 ship now, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 'I suppose we are hardly abreast of the Isle of Wight, yet,' I 
 answered. 
 
 She reflected again, and then clasping her hands and bringing 
 them to her lips, and looking at me with a sort of wistfulness, 
 though she spoke with hesitation, she said, ' I almost I almost 
 wish that the captain would put us ashore.' 
 
 This was a desire to puzzle me considerably. I answered, 
 1 Of course, Miss Grant, if you are reluctant to proceed I will 
 unhesitatingly ask the captain to put us ashore ; but I should 
 not like him to refuse, and unhappily there is no doubt that he 
 will refuse, because of course he would conclude that we should 
 return to London and lodge a complaint against him, and so 
 lose him his berth. Now, if he should decline to put us ashore 
 my position would be an awkward one. He need do nothing 
 but keep the ship heading steadily on her course, and we are 
 helpless. 
 
 She interrupted me: 'And the passage money would be for- 
 feited. No, I am silly to wish such a thing. I was all eagerness 
 and impatience yesterday. It is just a little passing misgiving.' 
 I was about to speak. ' No,' she exclaimed with energy, ' we 
 are here and will remain here.' 
 
 'Be it so,' said I, not a little relieved, for I foresaw a very 
 great deal more of trouble than I had the least disposition to 
 undergo, even to oblige her, had she insisted on my asking old 
 Broadwater to haul his brig in to the land, and set us and our 
 baggage once more on terra firma. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 THE HALF-BLOOD'S PUNISHMENT 
 
 Miss GRANT went to her cabin and I on deck, where I 
 observed Broadwater and the mate marching the length of the 
 quarter-deck and busy in conversation. There was a middling 
 high sea running, whk-li, hnrt it been on the bow instead of on the
 
 46 MAROONED 
 
 quarter, would have rendered the motion of the brig extremely 
 uncomfortable. _ As it was, it swung the vessel with an almost 
 rhythmic steadiness as it underran her. It was first a long up- 
 ward heave to the foaming liquid brow, then a gradual lean 
 over to the full weight of the wind till tne lee-channels roared 
 in the smother of spume over the side, and then a steady slide 
 down into the speckled, froth-laced trough, with a recovery of 
 the hull that started us with a level keel for the next buoyant 
 climb. Not above a cannon-shot to windward was a large frigate, 
 close-hauled under double-reefed topsails and reefed foresail. 
 She showed no colours, but to a nautical eye a single glance 
 sufficed to prove her English. She was plunging heavily, and 
 would lift her head out of the boiling white about her bows until 
 eight or ten feet of the keel at her forefoot showed clear, with a 
 dull yellow glancing from the metal sheathing that looked like 
 a mirroring of pale light on the wet, black, gleaming sides of 
 the beautifully moulded hulL As she rolled she gave us a view 
 of a portion of her weather-deck, with a hint of black artillery 
 in certain covered, muzzled shapes, crouching under the defences 
 of her bulwarks crowned with the white line of hammocks. The 
 movement of a spot of red here and there marked the mechanical 
 pacing of a marine. I never remember a nobler sea-show than 
 was offered by this fine frigate, with her broad white line broken 
 by the closed gun-ports, the superb set of her reefed canvas, the 
 airy grace of her rigging ruling the piebald hurrying sky with 
 dark lines of shrouds, thinning as they soared, till they rose 
 delicate as the fibres of a spiders web to the glimmering button 
 of the truck at the royal-mast-head, whence streamed the long 
 pennon straight out upon the wind, like a streak of light up 
 there ; whilst over the weather-bow there was the sharp and 
 frequent flash of a green sheet of water that broke into smoke as 
 it flew, or a sudden lifting above the bulwark -rail of a column of 
 froth, which the blow of the bow would send arching back till 
 'twas a sheer huddle of dazzling yeast under the radiant figure- 
 head, that, with some hero's wreath in its hand, plunged to the 
 giddy whiteness only to soar triumphant a moment after. 
 
 It was old Broadwater's duty to hoist and dip the ensign to 
 her. This is a civility I should be very punctual in exacting 
 if I were commander of a British man-of-war. The skipper, 
 however, rolling along on his bow-legs by the side of the mate, 
 did not look as if he even knew there was anything in sight. 
 He never threw so much as a glance in her direction, though I 
 could see some men at work on the fore-rigging watching her 
 with an admiration that rendered them, for the time being, 
 insensible to the presence of the skipper and his companion. 
 
 There was one of a dozen coils of rope hanging over a belay- 
 ing-pin svyinging to the heave of the hull. I went and sat 
 myself in it, for the shelter of the bulwark there from the gusty 
 blasts which were splitting upon the rigging full of whistlings 
 and cryings ; and there swayed, cradle-like, by the hanging fakes,
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD'S PUNISHMENT t 
 
 I leisurely loaded my pipe, and fell to chipping, in the old-world 
 style of that age, at a flint for a light. Whilst thus occupied, my 
 eye was taken by the figure of a man standing at the foot of 
 the foremast. I was thinking of other matters at the moment, 
 and yet I can recollect wondering, as my gaze went from him 
 after a brief glance, that any man belonging to either watch 
 should have the courage to stand idle on deck whilst the rest 
 of the people were at work, when both the captain and the chief 
 mate were pacing within eyeshot of him, Presently glancing 
 his way again, I noticed that he still remained in the same 
 posture, that is to say, with his back against the mast and his 
 lace looking a little forward of the fore-rigging, his arms folded 
 upon his breast, and his legs together with the feet turned out, 
 like a soldier in a sentry-box. The mast was painted white, and 
 hence it was, I suppose, that I did not immediately observe that 
 the man was bound to it by turn upon turn of rope, starting from 
 his arm-pits and terminating a little below his knees. I know 
 not what there was in the sight to startle me, but I believe had 
 a seaman fallen from aloft at my feet, and there lay bleeding 
 and broken^ the thing would not have shocked me more than the 
 spectacle 01 yonder sailor secured to the mast as though he were 
 some dangerous maniac, and rendered motionless by the ligatures, 
 saving that he could use his head and had the freedom of his 
 arms. 
 
 I had not been long enough on board to be able to distinguish 
 the crew, but this man I seemed to remember. To make sure, 
 I got out of the coil of rope and went a few paces forward, and 
 recognized in the fellow bound to the mast the half-blood who 
 had been one of the boat's crew that rowed us aboard from Deal. 
 If his face had struck me then, you will suppose that it im- 
 pressed me very strongly now. Whether owing to the strangu- 
 lation of the rope about him, or to the thoughts in him, his 
 complexion, that I had observed to be of a clear olive, had 
 changed to an indescribably ugly colour, which I can only speak 
 of as an ashen green. It reminded me of the hue I once saw in 
 the face of a dead sailor whose cheeks had been burnt to an 
 almost chocolate tint by exposure in an open boat in the Indian 
 Ocean. He turned his dark eyes upon me with a savage glare 
 in them of mutiny malice, hatred, and so full of defiance withal, 
 that but for the evil passions his countenance expressed you might 
 have accepted his air as one of bitter and contemptuous pride. 
 It was intolerable that he should think I had inspected him out 
 of mere curiosity, which I saw from his manner he supposed ; 
 and since he would be too wild in his mind to interpret the 
 sympathy which I am sure must have been visible in me, for, 
 as 1 say, the sight of the poor bound fellow inexpressibly 
 shocked and grieved me, I turned my back on hirn and walked 
 right aft 
 
 iJroadwater left the mate and came up to me. 
 
 'That's true old North Country style, sir,' he exclaimed, 'to sit
 
 48 MAROONED 
 
 in the bight of the rigging over the pin under the lee of the 
 bulwarks. I've been hove to in the North Sea, and sat for 
 hours along "with the rest of my mates, just as you've been a 
 sitting, waiting for what was to happen next.' 
 
 ' It is hard to find a corner to smoke in,' said I, ' on board a 
 flush-decked vessel Where there's a poop or a round-house, a 
 man may discover a nook clear of the gale, and manage to keep 
 the cinders in his bowl till the fire's all gone. Did you ever 
 serve aboard a Dutchman, captain ? ' 
 
 * No, by thunder ! ' he answered ; ' what's put such a question 
 as that into your head, sir ? ' 
 
 'Why,' I said, 'I notice that you have got one of your 
 hands forward there seized to the foremast. The Dutch used to 
 serve their rogues so, sometimes, however, going a little further 
 than you, for to make sure of the fellow they'd pin him through 
 the hand with a knife.' 
 
 * You're keeping a bright look-out aboard this vessel, sir,' he 
 exclaimed, shooting an odd look at me out of his little eyes. 
 
 * My good fellow/ I cried, ' I should be blind not to see such a 
 sight as that. What has he done ? murdered a shipmate 1 ' 
 
 ' Almost wish he had,' he growled, ' for that 'ud bring about 
 the sort of treatment he wants. He's the man who spoke them 
 words last night/ 
 
 * Ha ! ' I exclaimed, ' and for that you are dosing him with a spell 
 of fresh air that he may go to his dinner with a good appetite ? ' 
 
 He left me under pretence of looking into the compass. I 
 will not say that he was afraid of me ; but I am quite sure that 
 if it had not been for my talk with him in the morning, for the 
 manner I then put on, and which I still wore, he would have 
 dealt with me scarce less roughly and insolently than had I 
 been one of his seamen. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, 
 looking away towards the horizon, below which and out 01 
 sight iy the line of the English coast, and felt myself urged 
 by a very strong impulse to request him to head for the nearest 
 port, and to put Miss Grant and myself ashore, as his behaviour 
 to his men, though we were not yet twenty-four hours from 
 Deal, had rendered us extremely uneasy: insomuch that we 
 ' were resolved not to pursue the voyage in nis ship. But I was 
 again checked by the considerations which had occurred to me 
 whilst talking on the subject with Miss Grant. He might 
 refuse to comply, lose all control over himself in the notion 
 that my intention was to ruin him, and so affront me that I 
 should be at a loss how to act. I quite perceived that unless I 
 could be sure he would put us ashore, 1 should be acting um- 
 wisely in asking him to do so, for, if he persisted in sailing away 
 with us, then whilst we remained on board his ship we should 
 have to submit to any sort of usage he chose to give us. I 
 stamped my foot on the deck with vexation and worry, and 
 could have cursed the hour in which I had ever set eyes on the 
 Iron Crown.
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD'S PUNISHMENT 49 
 
 I had hoped when Miss Grant came on deck that the figure 
 of the fellow bound to the mast would escape her attention, and 
 was scheming to place her chair close against the wheel on the 
 port side where the man would be hidden from her ; but the 
 instant she came out of the companion and looked forward she 
 started violently, and exclaimed, 
 
 * Why have they bound him 1 What has he done to deserve 
 such a punishment as that ? ' 
 
 ' He is the man,' I answered, ' who cried out last night, " It's 
 murder ! " when the captain ordered the boat to be kept fast/ 
 
 'And they have tied him to the mast merely for uttering 
 those words ? ' 
 
 ' Ay % It's a bitter burning shame ; the indignity of this sort 
 of punishment is the worst part of it.' 
 
 fl shall ask Captain Broadwater to release him,' she exclaimed, 
 with^ the indignation in her surging up hot to her face and 
 flashing in her eyes. ' I shall tell him that the sight pains and 
 disgusts me, and that he has no right to oblige his passengers to 
 witness such painful and miserable spectacles.' 
 
 Before I could check her she swept up to old Broadwater, and 
 towering over him with such an air as Siddons would have worn 
 in her tragedy parts, her face flushed, her eyes on fire, her head 
 thrown backwards, she levelled her white forefinger at the half- 
 blood, gazing meanwhile full into the crimson expanse of the 
 skipper's countenance, and exclaimed, 'What has that man 
 done to merit the sufferings of mind and body he must be 
 enduring there ? ' 
 
 The captain was a broad and muscular man, but short ; and 
 her erect, swelling, impassioned figure made him look like a boy 
 by her side as he stared up- at her. Her sudden dramatic accost 
 took him completely by surprise. His countenance wore a 
 ludicrous expression of bewilderment. He half turned towards 
 the mate, as if to invoke his assistance, and then exclaimed in a 
 hoarse stutter, 'Why, mum, that there man he's about the 
 impudentest son of a swab the long and short o't is, he as 
 good as called me a murderer last night. Had he been a man-o'- 
 war's man he'd have been spread-eagled to the toon of twelve 
 dozens for saying much less than that.' 
 
 I joined Miss Grant and offered her my arm ; for though no 
 woman ever stepped a heaving deck more easily and gracefully 
 than she, yet the slope now was sometimes so sharp as even to 
 make Broadwater lurch, and I was afraid of her carrying away, 
 to use the sea term, as she was quite forgetful as I could see, m 
 the temper and mood that then possessed her, of the tumbling 
 of the platform on which she stood. 
 
 ' The words,' she exclaimed, ' were no doubt forced from the 
 man by a sudden impulse. Why did you hear them? You 
 would not punish a man for thinking.' 
 
 'Yes I would, if I knew it,' answered Broadwater, plucking up 
 a bit, and yet looking uneasy too.
 
 60 MAROONED 
 
 'You must release him, sir ' slie exclaimed ; * it is a sight that 
 makes the whole ship painful and distressing to me.' 
 
 'You cannot refuse the lady's request, captain,' said L 
 
 'But I can, though,' he blustered ; 'why, smother my precious 
 eyes and bile every blooming limb that I own ! who's capt'n of 
 this here craft 1 llelease him ! Certainly not. If the sight's 
 too painful to view, the lady needn't look. An' what's there 
 painful about it? Why, some men would have chucked him 
 into the forepeak, smothered him up down there in the black- 
 ness, with notlien but rats to keep him company, 'stead of 
 benevolently sarving him as I do by suffering him to stop up in 
 the fresh air for his shipmates to look at and meditate on. Mr. 
 Musgrave,' he suddenly exclaimed, in a bullying, angry voice, 
 ' I'll thank you to tell the lady that I'm the commander of this 
 here vessel, and of everything that consarns her and her navi- 
 gation ; and I shall feel obliged, sir, by your recollecting of that 
 fact yourself, sir, for it '11 spare ye the trouble of cross-examin- 
 ing my chief mate here, sir, as if you was a hadmirality judge. 
 No, by thunder ! my name's Broadwater Guy Broadwater 
 and I m master of this vessel, and them there men forrad are 
 my crew, and I'll thank you and the lady not to meddle with 
 my consarns, but to be satisfied so long as I perform the part 
 expected of me 5> which is, to carry you and this here cargo to 
 Rio ! ' and feigning to be in a mighty temper he bowled away 
 to the taffrail, and then came back again breathing hard and 
 looking swiftly up and around him, with a fine air of injury, re- 
 sentment, and righteous indignation, not ill-managed on his part, 
 though like the ghost of a squall it was to be seen through. 
 
 There was no affectation in Miss Grant's pity and disgust. 
 She lingered a little while on deck, and then went below to her 
 cabin, declaring that she could not bear to see the man standing 
 helpless and motionless, as if he were dead, suffering grievously 
 as she feared from his posture, which rested the whole weight of 
 him upon his naked feet, and from the many coils of rope which 
 girt him so tautly and plentifully to the spar, that the mere 
 sight of them made one draw one's breath with difficulty out of 
 sheer sympathy with their suggestion of strangulation. The men 
 at work in the rigging and about the decks did not give him the 
 least heed that I could discover. I noticed one or two of them 
 glance aft when Miss Grant spoke to the captain and pointed 
 forward, but in a sulky, incurious way, as though what was 
 passing had no interest whatever for them. This behaviour 
 might have been due to the presence of the mate, whose rapid 
 
 Slances seemed to dart all over the brig in a breath, and who, as 
 had already observed, never suffered a man to halt for an instant 
 in any job ne was upon. No doubt Ids almost preternatural 
 quickness in detecting the least hint of laziness or languor 
 was already as well known to the men as if the vessel had been, 
 on the high seas a couple of months. Yet Miss Grant's speaking 
 to the captain about the pinioned half-blood was in its way an.
 
 THE IfALtf-BLOOD IS 11ELEASED 61 
 
 incident as far removed from all ordinary shipboard occurrences 
 that the sullen inattention of the men to it impressed me greatly. 
 If heavy troubles do not befall this ship ere long, thought I, 
 it will not be because the spirit of mischief is even already 
 wanting amongst her crew; and I sent a gloomy glance sea- 
 wards in the direction where old England lay, feeling that I 
 would not only gladly forfeit the passage money I had paid, 
 but ten times that amount over again, to find myself and Miss 
 Grant once more safe and snug in London, 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD IS RELEASED 
 
 HOWEVER, since we were to be locked up with old Broadwater 
 for a spell of weeks that might run into months, our policy wag 
 to put the best face we could upon our condition. But Miss 
 Grant was not to be induced to return on deck whilst the man 
 continued lashed to the foremast. I pointed out that he was 
 not suffering as she fancied, that at all events he had not yet 
 been pinioned long enough to be in pain, and I also begged her 
 to remember that a posture and exposure which might strike 
 her as a severe punishment would sit lightly upon a sailor, 
 whose vocation is supposed to harden him into the most extra- 
 ordinary capacity of endurance. But it would not do. She 
 refused to quit the cabin until the man had been released, and 
 so she remained below the whole day. Indeed I had some 
 trouble to persuade her to dine at the table with the captain, 
 though her good sense helped her in this at last ; but throughout 
 the meal she could scarcely bear to glance at him, scarcely 
 endure to listen to him. 
 
 On his side he behaved as if he were willing to let bygones 
 be bygones, as if indeed after careful consideration he was on 
 the whole willing to overlook the past. His dinner put him 
 into a good humour. It consisted amongst other things of a 
 large round of corned beef ; and when the cabin-boy came 
 staggering with it into the cabin, old Broadwater seemed so 
 much impressed by the beauty of the joint that he lay back 
 upon the looker, with a carving knife and fork sticking up out 
 of his great fists, which he rested upon the table, and in this 
 attitude remained motionless for some moments, as though his 
 transport would not suffer him to move or speak. However, he 
 probably judged by our faces that we were in no temper to 
 listen to his eulogies of the joint. He carved with a counten- 
 ance of rapture, and with an air of concern, too, as though the 
 cutting up of such a dish as that was a business not to be lightly 
 and irreverently approached. 
 
 It was necessary to talk to the man, so I said, ' If this breeze 
 bold* I suppose we shall soon be swept out of soundings ?' 
 
 K 2
 
 M MAROONED 
 
 -f' es,' he answered, pouring out a caulker of rum, and holding 
 uj the glass to the skylight to see how much it held. ' We 
 sh *11 be having the Lizard over our starn this time to-morrow, 
 si,-, if we keep all on as we are.' 
 
 Upon my word,' said I, speaking somewhat heedlessly, out 
 of the mere fulness of my thoughts just then, 'so much has 
 happened since the anchor was lifted off Deal that it seems as 
 it we had been a week on the road already.' 
 
 'What's happened?' he asked quickly. 'It's all been plain 
 sailing, hasn't it ? There's been nothen that you as a passenger 
 Lave had cause to grumble about ? ' 
 
 ' The time seems long, anyhow,' I responded curtly. 
 
 * It '11 have to be longer yet afore it's ended,' said he, turning 
 his little eyes upon Miss Grant. 
 
 She had hitherto kept silent, scarce glancing at him : now 
 she suddenly exclaimed, with a flash of her dark eyes full into 
 his ruddy face, ' When do you intend to release the unfortunate 
 man you have fastened to the mast ? ' 
 
 He took a long pull at his glass of rum-and-water before 
 answering her, and then said, ' Not until I think the weather's 
 had time to purge him.' 
 
 ' Is he to be kept there all day ? ' she continued. 
 
 'Ay, mum, and all night too. Billy,' addressing the cabin-boy, 
 'jump with this here beef, my lad ! away with it ! if ye drop so 
 much as a toothful of grease, stand by ! and mind that the 
 pudden's covered up as ye bring it along, and keep to leeward 
 with it, d'ye hear ? for there's a showering of spray to wind'ard 
 now and again, and if you salt the pudden I'll salt you! 
 The fact is, mum,' he continued, addressing Miss Grant afresh, 
 'there's no, use in half-measures with sailors. We've got a crew 
 aboard as wants riding down, and the man as needs inmost is 
 the yaller rogue you're a-pitying. Were the fellow an English- 
 man I don't know that I shouldn't consider a twelve hours' spell 
 at the foot of the foremast as much as he desarves ; but he's a 
 half and half, and my experience is, the blacker the blood that 
 runs in a man's veins the longer's the tarmof teaching he stands 
 in need of.' 
 
 ' Is he to be kept without food ? ' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' He is, mum,' he answered cheerfully. 
 
 On this she rose and left the table without another word. 
 
 ' What makes the lady so terrible sensitive to sailors' feelings t ' 
 exclaimed Broadwater, with as much puzzlement on him as his 
 countenance could express. ' I see she ain't married. Has she 
 
 a sweetheart at sea* Onless maybe you ?' He shut one 
 
 eye, and looked at me with the other. 
 
 'Never concern yourself about her or me either,' said I. 
 ' Keep your mind clear, my friend, for you'll be wanting plenty 
 of space presently for the thoughts your crew '11 fill you with.' 
 
 'What do you mean, sir? ' he exclaimed, coarsely and angrily. 
 
 'I mean this,' I replied quietly, though my feelings were hot
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD IS RELEASED 63 
 
 enough." 'If you do not shift your course and head on aother 
 tack with your forecastle, there '11 be a mutiny aboard before 
 we're a week older.' 
 
 At this his little mouth rounded into a complete cir cle, the 
 blood came into his face, down dropped the slab of pudding he 
 was in the act of raising to his lips. 'Mutiny!' be cried. 
 ' Mutiny aboard me! Mutiny afore another week's out ! Why 
 why why,' he stammered, ' what have ye been hearing c f to put 
 such fancies into your head ? ' 
 
 'I judge by my eyes, not by my ears,' I replied, still coldly and 
 very quietly, 'though I don't doubt that a few minutes of 
 listening at the fore-scuttle would convince me even more fully 
 than my sight.' 
 
 Just then the mate arrived, having been relieved by the boat- 
 swain that he might get his dinner. 
 
 4 Mr. Both well ! Mr. Both well ! ' cried Broad water, wfiose face 
 was of a dark crimson, ' what d'ye think Mr. Musgra T re here's 
 a-threatening ? Why why why, that there '11 be a mutiny 
 aboard me afore another week's out.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' answered the mate blandly, but ner ertheless 
 exhibiting his teeth in a smile that made his handsrme face 
 mighty malevolent while the grin lasted; 'I hope not. On 
 what does Mr. Musgrave found his fears, sir ? ' 
 
 'On the captain's and your usage of the men,' said I, resenting 
 the sarcastic air of the fellow. 
 
 'But what have Captain Broad water and I done, sir, fo justify 
 this terrible apprehension on your part ? ' 
 
 ' I want you to understand, Captain Broadwater,' s id I, not 
 choosing to heed the mate's question, 'that you and jou alone 
 are responsible for Miss Grant s and my safety. I now warn you 
 that that safety is being seriously imperilled by your treatment 
 of the crew of this brig. Indeed ' I continued, suffering my 
 temper to get the better of me, already the outlook of this 
 voyage fills me with so much uneasiness that since we ure still 
 in the English Channel, and with this wind withri a few 
 hours' run of a port, Miss Grant and I are willing and desirous 
 that you should set us ashore ; the conditions being, ot course, 
 that we forfeit our passage money.' 
 
 Now I had fully believed that on my saying this h * would 
 have fallen into a violent passion, raged at and insul^-^d me, 
 defied me to compel him to head the ship for the coast, and so 
 on. Instead, to my very great surprise, the blood faded out of 
 his face ; pale indeed he could not become, but the disoi ier of 
 his mind manifested itself in a complexion that would a-iswer 
 to pallor in another man's countenance. He pushed his plate 
 from him as though his appetite were gone for ever, and in a 
 wonderfully subdued, changed voice, exclaimed, ' Mr. Musg rave, 
 sir, I beg that you'll banish that wish from your mind, sir To 
 set ye ashore would be my ruination. There's nothing if tK 
 world, that I can see, that need make ye oncomfortable. lv
 
 54 MAROONED 
 
 cabins are roomy, the living up to the hammer, there's ne'er * 
 stouter vessel afloat than the Iron Crown ; and, though it's me as 
 says so, there's no man living that Capt'n Guy Broadwater '11 
 yield to in the knowledge of navigating and handling a ship 
 under all sarcumstances of wind and weather. There's nothen 
 either in the behaviour of the crew or in my treatment of 'em 
 to breed oneasiness. Indeed,' he continued, speaking most 
 abjectedly, ' if the lady's really so consarned by the sight of that 
 there Ernest Charles at the foremast, why, then, to please her 
 I'll lubberate him in the second dog-watch, 'stead of keeping 
 him there all night as was my intention.' 
 
 The mate ate his dinner with a wooden face. 
 
 ' You can do as you please, Captain Broadwater,' said I, rising. 
 "I have not the slightest intention to meddle with your notions 
 of discipline. I simply desire to point out to you that your 
 treatment of the crew is such as to render the prospects 01 the 
 voyage very gloomy indeed, and if you will head the ship for 
 some adjacent English port, Miss Grant and I will be very glad 
 to leave her.' 
 
 ' I hope not, sir ! I'd rather not, Mr. Musgrave ! ' he exclaimed, 
 speaking and looking so dejectedly that I suspected his manner 
 was to a large degree assumed. 'To shift the helm in this here 
 wind would be extremely awkward extremely awkward ; and 
 it 'ud ruin my reputation as the master of a passenger vessel 
 if you was to give out the reasons of your leaving, which are all 
 imagination, sir, the fancies of a gent as has long lost sight of 
 the sailor's character, and forgot that if life was all soup and 
 bully in the fo'k'sle there'd be no work done no work done 
 whatever I ' 
 
 I caught one of the mate's swift glances ; 'twas as full of malice 
 as could well be packed into such a nimble rolL There was 
 nothing more to be said, and in silence I quitted the cabin, 
 satisfied with my second victory that day over Captain Broad- 
 water, but at the same time also profoundly convinced that a 
 five minutes' conversation with his mate would influence the 
 old fellow into a resolution to keep me and Miss Grant on board 
 at all hazards, trusting maybe to time to soften and extinguish 
 the prejudice and dislike and misgivings we had not scrupled 
 to express in one shape or another. 
 
 As Gordon had charge of the deck until four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, I endeavoured to ascertain from him what the men 
 thought of the captain's treatment of the half-blood ; but he 
 was very shy and wary, and I believe would not have conversed 
 with me upon the subject at all had it not been for the sort 
 of kindness our chat on the previous night had established 
 between us. His reply was to the effect that the crew were 
 cautious in what they said before him, but that, as far as he 
 could gather, the securing of the man to the mast had raised 
 a very strong feeling against the captain and mate, and he said 
 he believed it was only because the culprit was a foreigner that
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD IS RELEASED C5 
 
 they suffered him to remain in that posture of indignitjr and 
 pain. ' Had he been an Englishman,' lie added, ' my opinion is 
 that they'd have >;one on cutting him adrift as fast as the 
 oapt'n could seize him up.' 
 
 The fellow still stood at the mast bound as I have already 
 described. Thus lie had been standing since some time before 
 nine o'clock in the morning. Whether the crew had at any 
 time of the day fed him or put a drink to his lips I could not 
 know ; but though it was not three o'clock in the afternoon 
 when I made these observations, the man already that is to 
 say, after seven hours or thereabouts exhibited such signs of 
 , weakness and distress that one would have said he was merely 
 kept upon his feet by the ropes round his body. I never longed 
 in all my life for anything so heartily as the power to cast the 
 unhappy creature adrift and send him below for a warm meal ; 
 but I nad spoken out freely and done my best, and more was 
 not to be thought of, though I vowed in niy heart, as I saw the 
 unhappy creature wearily pass his hand over his eyes, and drop 
 his chin on to his breast as if his neck could not support the 
 burthen of his head, that if redress was to be obtained for him 
 from such machinery of law as I might find nourishing at Rio, I 
 would not spare my purse to procure it. 
 
 The wind* blew strong throughout the day. Indeed before 
 six o'clock it had freshened into half a gale ; the topgallant- 
 sails had been furled, and the brig swept roaring through it 
 under reefed topsails and foresail. The height of the seas which 
 chased us might have made a man think himself in the middle 
 of the Atlantic. Each billow rolled under us with the weight 
 of the ocean surge, and it was hard to realize that we were still 
 in the narrow waters. The sky had settled into that high, hard 
 stratification of greenish-gray cloud, with a dark streak in 
 places, compact and apparently motionless, which nearly always 
 signifies wind, and as a rule plenty of it. The brig steered 
 Avildly, and the perspiration poured from the face of the man at 
 the helm as he swung to the wheel, putting it down and up, 
 whilst every floating rush of the fabric off the liquid brows 
 brought the seas boiling about her quarters, till the curl of the 
 yeast there would sometimes be flush with the rail. At sunset 
 the wildness of the glory was more like the rising of the lumin- 
 ary on a stormy December morning, when the heavens open 
 and shut with snow-squalls, than his descent on a summer's 
 night. The heavens flushed to a furnace-glow an angry, 
 smoking crimson, lightening into pink zenithwards, and thence 
 floating away in rose into the very heart of the east. But the 
 sea kept its dark green colour, and the run of its frothing peaks 
 from one shining line to another made the glow of the firmament 
 as startling as an unreality by the contrast. 
 
 Miss Grant remained in the cabin. At the meal called by 
 the captain 'supper' I had begged her to come on deck, tell- 
 ing: her that Broadwater (and I fixed my eyes on him as I
 
 M MAROONED 
 
 spoke) had promised to free the man during the second dog 
 watch. 
 
 ' When he is released I will go on deck, Mr. Musgrave,' she 
 said, 'but not before. Such a sight is more than I can bear, 
 and indeed it is miserable enough to be down here and feel that 
 the man is still suffering.' 
 
 4 He isn't suffering, mum,' said Broad water ; ' he'd laugh at 
 you for supposin' it. The calling of the sea turns sailors' skins 
 into hides, and their feelings into horns. If it didn't there'd be 
 no seamen left, for they'd all die off of consumption and other 
 delicate complaints. I've told Mr. Musgrave that to accommo- 
 date you the man shall be lubberated in the second dog-watch, 
 and that means eight bells ; and obliged he ought to be, for by 
 thuwder, mistress, if it hadn't been for the consarn you're under 
 about him I'd have kept him there till eight o'clock in the first 
 watch to-morrow morning ! ' 
 
 Well, by remaining below she missed not only a fine and 
 wondrous scene of sundown, but as gallant and stirring a sea- 
 
 Eiece as it was ever my fortune to view. For whilst the sun, 
 idden as he was, hung, as I might suppose, some four or five 
 degrees above the horizon, a cloud of canvas loomed up almost 
 dead astern. The brig was swarming through it at not less 
 khan eight or nine knots, and yet here was a ship growing out 
 jf the olive-coloured welter as though in very truth she was 
 the rising moon. She was a large black American clipper, fresh 
 from the Thames, with canvas white as cotton, and she had 
 every cloth abroad, with the exception of her mizen-royal and 
 her fore and main skysails. The press was prodigious ; one 
 looked to see the great swelling soft white fabric flashing into 
 a thousand fragments, and melting away upon the roar of the 
 eale like snow-flakes. Her speed was not less than fifteen knots 
 in the hour : I judged it so by comparing her approach with our 
 progress. All forward she was smothered to the spritsail-yard, 
 but at irregular intervals she shot her long black shape clear of 
 the dazzle and fury about her bows, but only to smite the 
 trough with a blow that hurled up a very storm of white waters, 
 until you would have taken her to be a ship sweeping through 
 the first gatherings of a waterspout. She passed us close, flying 
 along as though we were at anchor, and her passage was that 
 of a thunderstorm for the sound of the gale in her canvas, for 
 the rain-like hissing all about her sides, and for the multitu- 
 dinous shrieking of the wind in her rigging, resonant as fiddle- 
 strings to the enormous strain put upon every shroud, backstay, 
 and brace. 
 
 Broadwater gazed at her with an inimitable air of astonish- 
 ment. I saw him looking up at his own canvas, and then over 
 the stern of the brig at the wake there, as though he could not 
 persuade himself that the great clipper yonder carried the 
 name weight of wind under which the Iron Crown was stagger- 
 ing. In a few minutes her elliptical stern was upon us, with
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD IS RELEASED 67 
 
 swift upward hearings of the gleaming gilt-work upon it, till 
 the letters of her name showed glaring over her rudder, and 
 with flying plunges and slow majestic rollings, the majestic 
 fabric swept onwards with the gloom into the west, until 
 presently she was as visionary in the liquid obscurity ahead 
 as the creaming of the seas there. 
 
 On eight bells being struck, Broadwater, who was standing 
 near the wheel, bawled out, ' Mr. Gordon, cast that there Ernest 
 Charles adrift from the foremast, and tell him to lay aft.' 
 
 I wondered what the captain meant to say to the unfortunate 
 wretch, whose long punishment certainly did not need the top- 
 ping off of a round of abuse ; but finding he did not appear, I 
 crossed the deck and observed a group of seamen collected at 
 the foot of the mast. On approaching I saw the figure of the 
 half-blood prone upon his back. 
 
 'What ails the man, Mr. Gordon?' said I ; 'has he fainted ?' 
 
 'It's exhaustion, I allow,' he answered. 
 
 ' He's been belayed too taut enough to prize his heart out of 
 its moorings,' exclaimed one of the sailors in a gruff voice. 
 
 4 There's a flask of brandy in my cabin,' I exclaimed. ' Where's 
 the boy? He'll find it.' 
 
 At this moment the mate arrived. 'What's the trouble now t ' 
 he called out in his shrill, fierce voice. 
 
 ' Charles is in a swound,' responded the boatswain. 
 
 The mate bent his back, and looked into the face of the pro- 
 strate man. The twilight was still abroad, but the gloom of the 
 night, darkened yet by the shadow of vapour that overspread 
 the sky, was fast deepening, and it was already difficult to 
 distinguish objects. 
 
 ' Up you get ! ' shouted the mate, suddenly springing erect, 
 with a sharp kick at the recumbent form. ' There s no shamming 
 allowed aboard this brig. Up with you ! Up with you ! ' 
 
 He kicked him again and yet again, and then, as fiercely as a 
 madman would throw himself upon another, clutched the man 
 about the collar, and ran his back against the foremast sheer on 
 to his feet. 
 
 I expected to see him fall, but whether he was actually 
 shamming, as the mate declared, or had been brought to by Mr. 
 Bothwell's kicks and man-handling, he opened his eyes and kept 
 his feet, though he swayed against the mast, and I do not doubt 
 would have fallen but for the support of it. 
 
 ' Aft with you ! ' cried the mate ; ' the captain wants a word 
 with you before you go below.' 
 
 ' He'd better be helped aft,' said the boatswain ; ' small wonder 
 if he should have lost the use of his legs.' 
 
 ' Aft with you ! ' persisted the mate. 
 
 The inhumanity of the fellow was maddening. ' Murder him 
 at once ! ' I cried ; ' it would be kinder ! ' 
 
 The mate did not answer, did not even look round at me. 
 One of the sailors muttered something ; I did not catch the
 
 C8 MAROONED 
 
 words, but the growl had a very ugly note in it The half-blood 
 made a step, reeled, and fell heavily. I walked aft sick at heart, 
 but ere I had made a few paces I heard the mate exclaim, ' Take 
 Mm below, then, take him below,' and passing me he joined 
 the captain, and they fell to pacing the deck together. 
 
 The night was damp, and the force of the wind put an edge of 
 cold into it. There was nothing to court Miss Grant on deck nor 
 to detain me there ; so I spent the rest of the evening with her 
 in the cabin, though conversation after a time grew somewhat 
 laborious, owing to the dismal creakings and grpanings in the 
 heart of the hull as it strained from hollow to summit, and groaned 
 again to the stormy sweep of the blast into the iron-hard canvas 
 aloft. I told my companion that the half-blood had been freed 
 and taken below, but said nothing about the brutality of the 
 mate nor the condition the man appeared in, whether actual or 
 affectedj when released from the mast. 
 
 And indeed I do not know that I should have entered so 
 closely into these particulars, but for the obligation I am under to 
 exhibit the causes which lea to the extraordinary adventures I 
 shall have to relate before I bring this narrative to a conclusion. 
 At the same time, as pictures of the sea life are so seldom 
 attempted, and as the secret history of the merchant sailor is 
 so little understood, I cannot but think it proper that all forms 
 of the vocation, whether sunny or sombre, whether elevating or 
 debasing, should, in the interests of the mariner, be described 
 by those who have an acquaintance with the calling, and who 
 are able to plainly write down their recollections and experi- 
 ences. I am happy to know that many of the old forms of 
 inhumanity on shipboard are extinct, or fast decaying ; yet 
 enough survives to render, I am sorry to say, even such a sketch 
 as I have attempted true in many respects of much that happens 
 in the sailing-ship of to-day. The coarse, unprincipled skipper 
 still flourishes ; mates of the Bothwell pattern still are to be 
 found in plenty ; and though the condition of the sailor has been 
 improved and fortified by laws which had no existence in the 
 days of which I am writing, his grievances yet remain suffi- 
 ciently abundant to render even a recurrence to the usages and 
 practices of half a century ago useful to him at the present 
 moment as much that continues habitual to his hard, toilsome, 
 hazardous, and unrepresented vocation. But to proceed. 
 
 The wind blew fresh all that night, and did not fail us until 
 we had put twenty leagues between us and the Scilly Islands. 
 It then fell light and drew ahead, and forced us upon a bow-line, 
 and for twenty-four hours we were staggering most abomin- 
 ably upon a long swell, with a true Biscayan sweep in the run 
 of it ; wrinkled with the wind, but foamless ; swollen enough to 
 fetch a harsh voice of small ordnance from the canvas that it 
 swayed into violent slaps against the masts, and into short 
 blasts like explosions with the sudden rounding out of the 
 cloths. Affairs on board seemed to run during this while pretty
 
 THE HALF-BLOOD IS RELEASED 80 
 
 smoothly." I saw the half-blood named Charles at work on the 
 day following the night of his release, but I do not know that 
 old Broadwater made further trouble of the matter for which 
 the fellow had been punished. The notion, or perhaps the hope 
 rather, grew in me that he meant to soften somewhat his trucu- 
 lent treatment of the men. I had indeed spoken very plainly, 
 and I took it that he had turned my words over in his mind 
 when he was not too fuddled with liquor to think coherently, 
 and had determined not to put it in my power to create a diffi- 
 culty for him at Pdo or on his return home. The mate, too, 
 seemed disposed to quiet down, as if he had got his cue from the 
 captain. It is true that he could never hail a man aloft, or call 
 -him when on deck, without an exasperating note of quite un- 
 necessary temper in the fling of his voice. But it seemed to 
 me as if he #as no longer incessantly on the look-out for some- 
 thingto fly in a rage over. I suspected, however, that both he 
 and Broadwater moderated their behaviour only when Miss 
 Grant and I were on deck. At all events the sliip's work seemed 
 to be carried on without much fret and jar ; yet, whether it was 
 because the old sailorly instincts in me sharpened my sym- 
 pathies, or because I feared that the conduct of the captain and 
 his mate had already raised a devil forward, which even the 
 quieter bearing of such men as they was not likely to lay, I 
 confess I could never look at the crew without seeming sensible 
 of an indefinable air amongst them which I can best convey by 
 speaking of it as a sort of morose uneasiness. 
 
 Broadwater, I am bound to say. showed no sulkiness towards 
 us for our plain speaking and dealing. You would have thought 
 there had been no trouble whatever between us had you heard 
 him praising the meals at table, bragging of his old experiences, 
 boasting of his brig as though she was the loveliest frigate then 
 afloat, and so forth. As to the mate, we gave him so wide a berth 
 that often a whole day passed without our exchanging a sen- 
 tence with him. The only companionable creature aboard was 
 Gordon, in whose quarter-deck walk I was always glad to join 
 when the night came round that gave him the first watch as we 
 call it at sea that is, from eight to twelve. Naturally, Miss 
 Grant and I were very much together. This, to be sure, was un- 
 avoidable ; but I own that I would get a bit troubled in my 
 mind when, after turning in and extinguishing the lamp, I found 
 my imagination haunted by her fine eyes, her noble figure, and 
 above all by a certain sweetness in the tone of her voice that 
 would at all times, long after she was silent, linger upon my ear 
 like a memory of glad and gentle music. I sometimes said to 
 myself, Suppose I fall in love with her ? It would be impossible 
 to conceive of a more inconvenient passion. It was idle to argue 
 with myself and pretend that I need not fall in love with her 
 unless I chose. Eeason might talk very soberly about such a 
 thing, but my instincts knew better. In short, not being 
 able to make sure of myself in this direction, I arrived at the
 
 60 MAROONED 
 
 conclusion that I had acted as a fool in consenting to lock myself 
 up in a small brig with a handsome woman whose heart was 
 another's, and to the fascination of whose person and manners I 
 was expected to oppose as immovable a countenance as old 
 Broadwater's. Had there been other passengers we might have 
 made shift, for considerable intervals at all events, to manage 
 without one another's company : but we were alone a condition 
 of the voyage I cannot say I had seriously contemplated or even 
 lightly thought of before embarking on this adventure and the 
 result was we were incessantly together. I had purchased a 
 chess-board and a pack or two of cards, and when the deck 
 bored us, or the weather there was uncomfortable, we would sit 
 down and play a game in the cabin ; and I say it was difficult 
 for me to be hour after hour and day after day encountering her 
 spirited, sparkling glances, watching her smiles, listening to her 
 graceful fancies, observing the fifty fascinating elegancies of her 
 posture and movements, without thinking a very great deal 
 more about her when I was alone, and perhaps even when I was 
 in her company, than my honour could approve or my judgment 
 understand. 
 
 A MIDNIGHT ALARM 
 
 WE had been eight days out when I met with a very unpleasant 
 experience. The brig was still on the Spanish parallels. The 
 night had come down moonless and dark, and the vessel, close- 
 hauled under all plain sail, was quietly rippling over the breath- 
 ing surface of the sea, with lines of delicate green fire breaking 
 from her cut-water to abreast of the gangway, where they 
 trembled out into the deep blackness there. The air was damp 
 with dew, and as Miss Grant was below and there was nobody 
 on the quarter-deck but the mate, I flung my cheroot overboard, 
 and entered the cabin. There I found my companion with a 
 book in her hand, trying to read by the light of the lamp, whose 
 swaying to the movements of the brig bothered the eye with a 
 flitting of shadows. Broadwater was at his usual place at the 
 table, with a bottle of rum and a steaming glass before him. He 
 sat apparently lost in thought, with one eye shut and the other 
 fixed upon the lamp, his little mouth rounded into the familiar 
 whistling shape, his pear-shaped nose as ruddy as the liquor 
 in the bottle, and the expression on his face indescribably absurd 
 with its rubicund cast of tipsy sentiment. 
 
 ' Have a glass of rum-and-water, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 'he said to 
 me, with a stupid smile, pointing with a drooping finger to the 
 tumbler before him, yet speaking as if the silence had grown 
 oppressive and he was glaa to break it. 
 
 I declined, and asked Miss Grant what she was reading. Before
 
 A MIDNIGHT ALARM Al 
 
 she could answer, Broadwater said, ' Beg pardon, Mr. Musgrave, 
 but can ye tell me if you're a married man, sir ? 
 
 * I certainly can tell you,' I replied, bursting into a laugh j 
 *I am not married. Are you ?' 
 
 'Yes, sir,' he answered, 'and I wish I wasn't. She's a nice 
 young lady, but,' he added gloomily, ' I don't like her mother, 
 sir. That there mother of hers is always interfering ; ana 
 what's worse, she's got no respect for me.' His hand wandered 
 somewhat aimlessly towards his glass, which he presently 
 
 S'asped, half emptied, and replaced witn a heavy sigh. 'Mr. 
 usgrave,' he went on, 'you'll excuse me, sir, if you please. 
 You'll be marrying some of these days bound to it an' I'd 
 -strongly recommend ye to take Capt'n Broadwater's advice 
 the advice of old Guy Broadwater, who's as well known from 
 Freshwharf down to Blackwall as the Monument is, or the 
 tower of St. Paul's : don't you go and get married to a party 
 that's got a mother. If you do, you'll find you've gone and 
 married 'em both. There's nothing as weighs upon a man's 
 feelings like his wife's mother. You mind, sir. Remember what 
 I says ; and you'll recall this voyage as the one sarcumstance of 
 your life that was the making of ye.' 
 
 He drained his glass, and pulling out his great silver watch, 
 that seemed to pop from his trousers'-band like a cork from a 
 bottle, he cast an uncertain glance at it, and rose with a succes- 
 sion of nods at me, whilst he said, ' Recollect Capt'n Broadwater's 
 advice, sir : it'll be the making of ye,' fell about a little whilst 
 he replaced the bottle in the locker, and then, saluting Miss 
 Grant with a tipsy smile, lurched towards his cabin, talking to 
 himself as he went, the burthen of his words being, as far as I 
 could collect it, ' Take my advice, Mr. Musgrave ; it '11 be the 
 making of ye.' 
 
 As he was nightly in the habit of withdrawing to his cabin 
 more or less overtaken with liquor, we had by this time grown 
 used to the practice, had come indeed to view it as part of the 
 navigation of the Iron Crown, and had therefore nothing to 
 say about it now. We sat talking for half an hour or so ; Miss 
 Grant then went to bed ; and after smoking my pipe in the 
 companion-hatchway, from which sheltered point I took notice 
 of the heavy gloom amid which the ship was sailing a shadow 
 so thickened with the deep dusk of the night, through which 
 here and there a star glanced haggard and sparely, that the 
 fabric of spar and canvas was invisible from half the height of 
 the mainmast I descended to my berth, and, to use the proper 
 nautical expression, ' turned in.' 
 
 On extinguishing the light and pulling the blankets over me 
 I found my mind somewhat threateningly active. Maybe I 
 was a bit nervous ; why, I knew not, unless I harked back to 
 Broadwater's supper and dinner table, in whose dishes indeed 
 reasons might be found for an intellectual condition only a little 
 short of lunacy. I fell to thinking of the captain's being in
 
 82 MAROONED 
 
 liquor, of the blackness through which the bng was stemming, 
 of our safety being dependent upon the vigilance of the mate, 
 who, for all I knew, might be snoring on his back on the sky- 
 light or on a hencoop, whilst the man at the wheel lurched 
 there with eyelids of lead and his chin upon his breast. ' Now 
 and again came the long-drawn sobbing sounds of water washing 
 along the bends close against where my head lay, with a note 
 of yearning in the small roar of its passage that set me thinking 
 of the cold death in the liquid profound under our keel, and of 
 the slenderness of the structure of plank, tree-nail, and beam, 
 which was our only barricade against the intrusion of the 
 spectre. Then Miss Grant came into my head, and the thought 
 of her beauty put a sort of light into my mood, though my 
 fancies continued to hang in a nervous jumble upon my mind. 
 However, after awhile I fell asleep, and lay dreamless for some 
 time, as I believe ; and may have rested so for an hour or more, 
 when I had a hideous nightmare. I dreamt that the cabin door 
 was suddenly flung open, and that Captain Broadwater entered 
 with his eyes on fire and his face blood-red with drink. He 
 
 grasped the immense carving-knife he was in the habit of 
 ourishing at table, and approached me close. Whence came 
 the light by_ which I viewed him I know not ; but he was 
 horribly distinguishable. He seemed to say, and I quite under- 
 stood him, that it was his intention to murder me because I 
 wished to leave his ship ; but that, as his hatred of me was too 
 intense to suffer him to dispatch me quickly, it was his inten- 
 tion to destroy me by degrees. I lay paralyzed, tried to bawl out 
 but could utter no sound, endeavoured to stir but felt as dead 
 as a log of wood. Agony at last broke the spell ; I awoke, sprang 
 into a sitting posture, with the perspiration pouring from my 
 face, and stared, panting as if I had been wounded to death, 
 into the blackness of the cabin. 
 
 As I sat peering and endeavouring to collect my senses, I heard 
 the sound of what resembled a human groan. It seemed to come 
 from the floor of my cabin. I was still suffering from the agi- 
 tation caused by my nightmare ; and my nerves having been 
 unduly wrung, whilst I had scarcely yet had time to recollect 
 myself, I confess that this strange and alarming noise filled 
 me with so much consternation that I felt almost as helpless as 
 when Broadwater stood beside me in the vision. The extraordi- 
 nary noise was repeated ; I could not doubt my hearing. It 
 rose from the deck under my bunk, and was so exceedingly like 
 the groan of a drunken man in pain that I thought to myself, 
 Good God ! there may be more in my dream than I am as yet 
 conscious of ! 
 
 The sense of the presence of a real danger served to rally me. 
 My tinder-box I had no other means of procuring a lightr was 
 in the pocket of my coat that hung near the door, and it was 
 necessary to get out of bed to obtain it. I threw my legs over 
 the edge of the bunk intending to very warily slide round by
 
 A MIDNIGHT ALARM 63 
 
 the bulkhead to where the coat was, that I might not tread 
 upon whatever the object might be that groaned upon the deck, 
 when the noise sounded again a thick, snoring, choking moan. 
 I whipped my legs into my bunk, much more alarmed than it 
 pleases me to confess. Great mercy ! thought I, is it conceiv- 
 able that Broadwater in a drunken fit has really entered this 
 cabin with the design of murdering me, and that the liquor ho 
 has swallowed has proved too potent at the last moment to 
 enable him to execute his horrid project ? If he has a knife in 
 his hand, I reflected, starting as another groan arose, I may 
 stumble over him in groping and fall upon the blade ; or if I 
 should roll over him he might not be too drunk to imagine that 
 I was attacking him, when of course he would defend himself 
 and perhaps kill me. 
 
 Another groan determined me. This must end, thought I, 
 come what will ; and with that I slipped over the edge of my 
 bunk, but instead of touching the deck my feet pressed upon 
 a soft, naked, hairy body. Before I could cry out, the thing 
 started up with a savage squeal and threw me down. It ran 
 over me, but my fright was so great that I had not the least 
 idea whether it was man or beast, until, putting out my hands 
 to protect myself, I grasped a curly tail, to my drag upon which 
 the pig for a beast of a pig it was ! responded by making his 
 nature known in a series of ear-piercing squealings. I groped 
 for the door, found it open and swinging to the movement of the 
 vessel, and feeling for the hook secured it backwards against 
 the bulkhead. I then sought for and tumbled into my small- 
 clothes ; but whilst moving with my arms outstretched to where 
 I thought I should find my coat, I fell over the pig again. I was 
 now as angry as I had before been frightened ; in truth I was 
 not a little bruised with my falls, and my temper was still 
 further inflamed by the distracting cries of the pig whenever I 
 struck against it. Miss Grant opened her door. She had 
 lighted her lamp, and fearing that the beast _ would make for 
 her, I cried out, ' It's only a pig. I'll have him out this in a 
 minute. Shut your door quickly, or he'll run in upon you.' She 
 instantly did as I told her, but a moment after I could hear her 
 laughing as though she had fallen hysterical. 
 
 I stepped cautiously towards the passage, and found the door 
 that shut off the after accommodation from the state cabin 
 closed. But for this, I should have had light enough from the 
 reflection of the dimmed lantern that swung in the cabin to 
 have seen by. By sliding my hands about I succeeded in feeling 
 the handle of the door, which I opened ; but the moment the light 
 streamed in the pig ran for it, and striking me on the legs as it 
 swept past, threw me again to the deck. The cabin skylight 
 was opened, and the voice of some one above called to me. I 
 could iust distinguish the features of the boatswain, but before 
 I could tell him what was the matter, Broadwater, followed by 
 the mate, came running out from their berths in the fore end.'
 
 $4 MAROONED 
 
 'What is it, what is it ?' shouted the old skipper. 'Anybody 
 being murdered ? ' 
 
 But the mate's swiftly rolling eye instantly caught sight of 
 the pig, at which he made a spring. The creature with a pro- 
 digious squeal slipped, as though its back had been greased, out 
 of his grip, and with a wild kick up of its hind-quarters, and a 
 defiant flourish of its tail, made in a gallop in the direction of 
 the captain, through whose bow-legs it bolted, bringing him 
 down as if he had been shot. By this time the boatswain, peer- 
 ing through the skylight and seeing how it was, had ordered 
 some of the men of his watch to jump below and catch the pig, 
 and down they trundled, four of them, filled with anticipations 
 of a fine bout of skylarking for Jack dearly loves a pig-hunt. 
 The uproar was now prodigious. The pig raced round the cabin 
 and under the table, yelling like a steam horn to every clutch 
 that was made at it, and after it went the sailors, tumbling, 
 swearing, laughing, whilst the mate shouted to them in a 
 shrill voice to bear a hand and catch the brute. Old Broad- 
 water, who appeared somewhat dazed by his fall, sat upon a 
 locker rubbing the back of his head, now and again lifting his 
 clenched fist as the pig galloped past him, and heaping curses 
 upon the thing in a half -smothered tone. The men, however, 
 enjoyed the sport too keenly to be in a hurry to end it, and a 
 full five minutes of roaring, puffing, laughing, and squeaking 
 passed before the pig was captured. It was then carried away 
 by the fellows, one of whom it seemed to me must have tor- 
 mented it in some secret manner, for the squealing of the 
 beast as it was borne up the ladder and along the deck was 
 so violent and sharp-edged that it might have been heard a 
 league distant. 
 
 Scarce had these distracting notes been silenced, and just as 
 I was about to put a question to Captain Broadwater for talk 
 was not to be dreamt of whilst that noise lasted I heard the 
 boatswain on deck cry out in a loud And fearful tone, ' Hard up ! 
 Hard up ! Over with it, man, for our lives ! ' and then an 
 instant after, ' Ship ahoy ! ' he roared, with the same note of 
 violent hurry ana sense of danger in his voice. ' Port your 
 \ellum ! port your helium, or you 11 be into us ! ' 
 
 The mate gained the deck in a couple of leaps, Broadwater 
 followed him as though he had been whipped up by a tackle, 
 and forgetting that I was without shoes or stockings, clad in 
 nothing indeed but a shirt and trousers, I shot up the ladder to 
 see what was the matter. It took my eyes some moments to 
 get used to the gloom, for there was sheen enough in the cabin 
 to turn the night black as a wolf's throat when you rose out of 
 the companion-hatch into it ; then close upon our starboard- 
 bow, as it seemed to me, I spied a light oscillating, as though 
 passionately flourished, and I could just distinguish a huge 
 black shadow there like a deeper dye of blackness upon the 
 liquid dusk that overhung the ocean. A minute after, close by
 
 A MIDNIGHT ALARM 65 
 
 the first light up sprang a second a sea-torch of turpentine, 
 the long sickly flame of which streamed away into smoke, 
 though it had power enough to palely colour a small circum- 
 ference of atmosphere, out of which there stole glimmering to 
 the illumination the rigging and lower canvas of a big snip. 
 She loomed up so close aboard that the sight was something to 
 hold a man breathless. 
 
 In the brief interval of silence that followed the boatswain's 
 cry to her to port her helm, I could distinctly hear the hiss 
 and splash of the curl of water breaking at her stem ; the 
 voice of a man rapidly delivering orders as though for life or 
 death ; the rattle of tiller chains to the swift revolution of the 
 wheel: the flap of some light sail aloft 'buried in the black 
 void, hollowing inwards as the ship, answering her helm, 
 rounded to the wind. One moment she was off our bow, the 
 next abreast of us, so close that the face of the man holding the 
 streaming flare tin glimmered out yellow as the rind of a ripe 
 lime ; and as he leaned from the bulwark rail, torch in hand, 
 swinging at arm's-length from a backstay, the figure of him 
 upon the yellow atmosphere of light was for all the world like 
 a human shape wrought in black silk upon a ground of rusty 
 amber. I cowered involuntarily, believing the stranger's jib- 
 booms to be over us, and expecting every minute to hear the 
 rending and crashing of masts and strong fastenings to the 
 sheering sweep of those outstretched spars. She was soon on 
 our quarter, and then it was possible to fetch a breath ; though 
 even when there you felt her terrifying presence in the op- 
 pression of the vast shadow of her black heights upon the dusk. 
 Presently the flare over her side went out the blotch she made 
 melted into the general shadow and then she was as utterly 
 gone from the sight, though but a few cables' lengths distant, 
 as though she had foundered. 
 
 By this time Broadwater had recovered his faculties, and he 
 now let fly a whole hurricane of questions at the boatswain ; 
 demanding to know how it was that the vessel had not been 
 sighted sooner, whether there was a man forward on the look- 
 out, and the like. But neither rage nor rum could blind him tr 
 the almost preternatural gloom of the night. Indeed it wa* 
 like being in a^vault. One or two stars showed faint as tl,e 
 dimmest of their own reflections, and it staggered one to ?ee 
 them, so unreal was their wan gleam. What had become of the 
 moon I do not know. The outline of the brig met the black- 
 ness without a break, and though I stood within a couple of 
 yards of the boatswain and Broadwater, I should not have 
 known there were people near me but for their voices. Gordon 
 answered the skipper quietly, said that he had been keeping as 
 bright a look-out as was practicable to mortal sight on such a 
 night; but that, had he Jhad as many eyes in his head as a 
 peacock carries in its tail, and each eye a telescope at that, 
 it would have been all the same; to which old Broadwater. 
 
 r
 
 68 MAROONED 
 
 answered with a growling, 'Well, boil me, if it ain't so!' and 
 after that cooled down and spoke rationally. 
 
 But just before I went below I heard Gordon exclaim, 'It was 
 the crying of the pig, sir ? that made our presence and position 
 known. The ship heard it. and showed a light, guessing there 
 was some craft close aboard. If it hadn't been for that squeak- 
 ing, I allow that we should have been on the road to the bottom 
 before this.' 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 Toil will believe, after hearing the boatswain's remark to the 
 captain, that I was no longer disposed to make a trouble of the 
 invasion of my berth by the pig. A trifle light as air will at sea, 
 and often in an instant, become as solemn and as serious a thing 
 as doom. I returned to the cabin cold from the deck, with the 
 chill moreover in me that a sudden danger and swift release 
 will put into a man, and going to my berth I thrust my feet into 
 a pair of warm slippers, wrapped a dressing-gown about me, 
 and re-entered the cabin with a bottle of brandy in my hand 
 for the comfort of a dram. I was waiting for the arrival of 
 Broadwater, desiring to gather, though without temper, how 
 the pig had made its way aft, when I was surprised by Miss 
 Grant peeping through the door that led to our berths, and 
 then advancing. 
 
 ' I expected you would be up, Mr. Musgraye,' she exclaimed, 
 seating herself at my side ; ' what a noisy time this has been ! 
 Far more alarming, indeed, than the commotion the other night 
 when the poor man committed suicide. I have really felt 
 frightened. 
 
 Yet she did not look so. Her eyes were as steady, her lips 
 as composed, her manner as quiet as ever they had been in the 
 tranquillest hour we had passed together since our first meeting. 
 Her hair, roughened by the pillow, made her beauty the more 
 striking for the disorder of it upon her white forehead and 
 whiter neck. It was no moment to take notice pf such trifles, 
 but it seemed to me that this woman could never look more 
 fascinating than when newly and hastily arisen from her couch, 
 and hurriedly attired in a pink dressing-gown ! 
 
 I related my story of the adventure with the pig, at which she 
 laughed continuously, until I came to tell her of our narrow 
 escape, and how, under Heaven, an incident that would seem 
 merry enough to everybody but the person who took part in it, 
 was the cause of our escape from a catastrophe that might have 
 sent every soul of us to the bottom ; and then she grew very grave. 
 
 ' It needs an effort of mind/ said I, ' to conceive of the genius 
 of luck taking upon itself the aspect of a pig. Henceforward, I
 
 A TRAGEDY 87 
 
 shall think respectfully of Broadwater's affection for roast and 
 boiled pork.' 
 
 ' I wish this voyage -were over, Mr. Musgrave,' she exclaimed. 
 ' I feel as if we had already passed a couple of months at sea. 
 Do you think if the ship had run into us we should have been 
 drowned 1 ' 
 
 'Impossible to say, Miss Grant. She was a lump of a craft, to 
 judge by the huge loom of her shadow ; and I fear that, staunch 
 as the Iron Crown may be, one thrust from that big chap would 
 have made old staves of the little hooker.' 
 
 At this moment Broadwater's bow legs appeared in the com- 
 
 ,panion-way. Down he came, pulling off his hat as he arrived. 
 
 Sleep, and the turmoil of the pig-hunt, and the alarm he was 
 
 fresh from, had cleared his head, and he was as sober as one 
 
 could wish. 
 
 ' Rather late for you to be a-sitting up, Miss,' said he, approach- 
 ing the table, 'there's no longer call to be afraid. It it be all 
 plain sailing now for the rest of the night.' 
 
 ' What time is it, captain ? ' she inquired. 
 
 He pulled out his watch ' weighed it ' would be the correct 
 term, for it was like breaking out an anchor and said, ' Close 
 upon four bells two o'clock, mum. Is that there bottle yours, 
 Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 I replied that it was, and grasping the hint conveyed by the 
 question, begged him to help himself. He smacked his lips to 
 the draught, for the brandy was of my own buying, choice and 
 old, and said, ' A close shave that, just now, sir. I don't know 
 that I ever remember a darker night, considering it's fine 
 weather.' 
 
 'Ay,' said I, 'dark it is ; much too dark for human eyesight, 
 as your second mate truly said. "Tis fortunate that we are 
 endowed with other faculties than vision only. Had there not 
 been ears aboard the stranger, to catch the squeaking of my pig, 
 where should we be now ? ' 
 
 ' How could the pig have got into the cabin t ' exclaimed Miss 
 Grant. 
 
 'Why,' answered Captain Broad water, 'he must have broken 
 out of his sty under the long-boat, and grubbed along quietly 
 in the darkness until he comes to the companion-way, down 
 which he rolls, courted, maybe, by a smell of feedin'. All hands 
 of us aft being asleep, as I allow, there was nobody to hear him. 
 But if that there door was shut,' he added, pointing, ' I don't 
 see how the pig was to get into your passage ; and supposing 
 your door to have been shut, how was he to enter your cabin ?' 
 
 It seems, however, that the door that conducted to the passage 
 had been left open, and unhooked, so that it was likely the pig, 
 in grubbing about, had given it a shove with its snout, and 
 slammed it to. But how the creature contrived to enter my 
 cabin, the door of which I remember having shut, I was at a 
 loss to imagine, until, going presently to fetch a cheroot for I 
 
 7 2
 
 63 MAROONED 
 
 was absolutely sleepless, and was in the habit of smoking 
 whenever it pleased me in the cabin, with Miss Grant's good 
 leave, of course I examined the latch of the door of my berth, 
 and observed that the tongue caught so thinly that it yielded 
 to the slightest pressure. 
 
 I think Broad/water would have gone straightway to bed had 
 it not been for my brandy bottle. Miss Grant protested that 
 she felt too restless to return to her cabin, and said she wished 
 it were daylight. 
 
 ' The dawn '11 soon be coming along, Miss,' said the captain ; 
 ' meantime, what's there to be uneasy about now ? ' 
 
 'The lady is not uneasy, captain/ said I, 'her rest has been 
 broken, and she no longer feels sleepy,' and I wondered that 
 even his little eyes should not have observed her composed and 
 tranquil expression. Indeed, it seemed to me that what uneasi- 
 ness there was lay altogether in him. His manner was subdued, 
 he spoke with a note of respect ; there was that in his bearing 
 which suggested that the weight of his alarm had not yet lifted, 
 and I would see him sometimes shoot a look at the companion or 
 up at the skylight, and then thoughtfully stroke down his nose, 
 wnilst his little eyes met in a squint upon the glass around 
 which his carrot-shaped fingers were curled. He was too much 
 of a seaman not to know that we had all of us come off just now 
 very narrowly indeed with our lives ; and though, as I have said, 
 he would no doubt have gone to bed but for the brandy, he could 
 not sit there and reflect upon what had occurred without indica- 
 tions of discomposure, which contrasted strongly with Miss G rant's 
 reposeful expression, steadfast eyes, and calm, sweet utterance. 
 
 And yet from the few words she had let fall, I was sure that 
 she haa mastered the full significance of the danger we had 
 escaped as completely as if sue had witnessed the scene as 
 completely, indeed, as if she had been as practical a sailor as the 
 captain himself. Once she lifted her finger to the light moan 
 of a sea running stealthily along the side against which we 
 were leaning, and exclaimed, ' How cold the sound is there ! I 
 remember once telling Alexander that qualities sensible to the 
 toucli may also be so to the hearing. He did not understand 
 me ; but surely, Mr. Musgrave, isn't the icy breath of a winter's 
 blast, as it sweeps past the window, as perceptible to the ear as 
 it would be to the face if one should look out of doors ? ' 
 
 'I find nothing hard to understand in that fancy,' I replied ; 
 meanly willing, I fear, to exhibit my understanding as in some 
 senses superior to her Alexander's. ' I once saw a man lying 
 dead in a posture of terror he had died with a shriek, I learned ; 
 but I did not need to be told that, for I could see his cry in the 
 attitude, though Death's forefinger had been upon his lips for 
 twenty-four hours.' 
 
 'A queer sort of twisting of the faculties, ain't it, sir?' 
 exclaimed old Broad water ; ' to see a shriek, and hear cold 
 weather 1 Thai'' a kind of boiling above most men's intellectuals,
 
 A TRAGEDY 69 
 
 I should think. With your good leave, Mr. Musgrave, I'll take 
 another drop, sir. Good old Jamaiky, as a standing drink, is to 
 my taste unsurpassable by any sort o' liquor to be found in the 
 first nobleman's cellar in the country ; but a drop of brandy 
 after this here pattern is an agreeable change, ana I've heard,' 
 he continued, helping himself, ' that an occasional wariation is 
 recommended by the doctors as sarviceable to the liver. Your 
 health, sir ; Miss, to you.' 
 
 He nodded with more complacency than I had ever witnessed 
 in him when not in his cups, and sighed with satisfaction after 
 drinking. 
 
 I thought I would take advantage of his mood to put in a 
 good word for his crew, and said, 'Your fellows seem a lively 
 lot-^true Jacks when it comes to a bout of skylarking. Did you 
 notice how they relished the pig-hunt? I should say there's 
 nothing to be afraid of in men who possess their capacity of 
 enjoying little things.' 
 
 I had scarce uttered these words, when, through the silence 
 that followed, and through the whole length and breadth of the 
 brig, as it seemed to me, there rang out so wild and shrill a cry 
 of Imman anguish, that the like of it I could never imagine 
 deliverable by human lips. You would have sworn it was a 
 woman's voice, and had not Miss Grant been by my side I must 
 have thought it was she as the only one of her sex on board 
 who had uttered it. 
 
 ' Great Heavens ! ' I cried, 'what has happened ?' 
 
 Broadwater to the sound had started to his feet, but he then 
 appeared to be stricken helpless, for he stood staring with a 
 sort of gape in the set of his lips towards the companion-ladder. 
 Miss Grant's face was full of consternation, and she kept her 
 eyes fixed on me with a wild look of consternation in them. I 
 listened, expecting to hear a second cry. There was a sound of 
 swift running overhead ; a sharp, angry shout in the voice of the 
 boatswain ; a minute after the chief mate came staggering down 
 the ladder with his hand to his side, his dark face dreadful to 
 see with the ghastly colouring upon it. He stood whilst you 
 could have counted ten at the foot of the ladder, swaying, his 
 left hand upon his heart, his right hand extended, his ashen 
 lips inarticulately moving ; then dropped without a groan, and 
 lay motionless. 
 
 A voice hallooed on deck. I could not catch the words, but it 
 was easy to recognize Gordon's tone, and it seemed to me that 
 he was bawling for assistance from the wheel, or close to it. 
 The light burnt dully in the cabin lantern ; I turned the mesh 
 high that we might see what was the matter with the mate, 
 and then went up to him. He lay on his side, and when I 
 looked at his face I could not question that he was dead. He 
 had run from the cabin in his shirt and trousers on hearing 
 the squealing of the pig, and in that attire had bounded on 
 deck when the boatswain's sudden cry had raised the alarm of
 
 70 MAROONED 
 
 collision, and thus was he habited as he lay a clearly murdered 
 man at the foot of the cabin steps. His left side was dark in 
 the lamplight with the saturation of blood, and already there 
 was a large dusky patch slowly sifting out, like ink upon 
 blotting-paper, over the sand-coloured planks on which the man 
 rested. His head was uncovered, his eyes half closed, his lips 
 had not yet had time to soften down out of the rigours of their 
 grinning twist of agony and terror ; the gleam of his white 
 teeth was as though he snarled, spite of his lying still. God 
 knows, handsome as the lineaments were, it was now a face as 
 villainous for the wrinkled torment and fierce sneer about the 
 mouth, and the sly brutality of the half-closed eyes, and the 
 savageness of the woolly hair, that even in life when all was 
 well with him was enough to repel most sorts of sympathy, as 
 imagination could depicture. I know that the memory of it, 
 with its base accentuation of stained deck and dyed shirt, 
 haunted me for years, and the thing is before me at this 
 moment, though without the old horror. 
 
 This is a passage that takes some time to describe, though the 
 interval between the dropping of the killed man and my bend- 
 ing over him was to have been spanned by twenty or thirty 
 seconds. Broadwater appeared to have been bereft of reason. 
 A professional danger the thundering down of a squall catch- 
 ing him aback, a big ship under a press close aboard him, white 
 water under the bows might have found him equal to its 
 confrontment. The vocational instincts would have gone to 
 work, and preserved him from gaping like a fool. But here was 
 something wide of his experience, a sudden violent shock a 
 frightful menace in its way, too, for it was impossible to say 
 what greater and blacker tragedy yet lay secret, but sure, behind 
 this first and most bloody one. i 
 
 I found Miss Grant at my side looking at the body, with a 
 white face, indeed, but with a bearing perfectly collected and 
 self-possessed. 
 
 ' Mr. Musgrave,' she said, in a quick yet firm voice, ' what is 
 to be done ? Direct me : I am prepared to assist you in any 
 way.' 
 
 'So far as this man is concerned,' I answered, pointing to the 
 body,, 'there is nothing to be done. Look at his face. There is 
 no virtue for him now in any stanching or dressing. He has 
 been stabbed to the heart I ' 
 
 She shuddered, and returned to her seat at the table. 
 
 ' Captain 1 ' I cried suddenly, angered by the posture of help- 
 lessness into which this business had struck him, 'here is 
 murder murder, do you hear, sir? If your crew have not 
 mutinied, what else should this signify ? There is no leisure at 
 sea, sir, for goggling. For God's sake go on deck, man, and find 
 out what's the matter ! ' 
 
 Had I run at him with a pitchfork, the action could not have 
 started him more effectually than my speech.
 
 A TRAGEDY 71 
 
 /Goggling! who's a goggling?' he roared. * By this and by 
 that,' and here he bellowed out a whole volley of curses, 'the 
 man who's done this thing shall swing for it ! From my own 
 yard-arm he shall swing for it, though there's ne'er a pair of 
 hands on board but mine to run the villain aloft ! Murder ! 
 Murder aboard of me I Why, what do they hope to do ? what's 
 their intention ? ' 
 
 He made for the companion-ladder with fury in his looks and 
 gestures ; but at that instant down thundered the second mate, 
 with his face as white as its dark tincture of weather would 
 suffer it to be, as wild in his manner as a demented man ; so 
 distractedly agitated that his quick, distressful breathing broke 
 up his words as they rolled hoarsely from his lips, and it was 
 with an effort you caught his meaning. 
 
 ' Captain ! captain ! ' he cried, ' there's been a murder done ! 
 The mate ay, there he lies stabbed, sir, stabbed by the half- 
 blood Charles ! ' 
 
 'Where is he?' bellowed Broadwater, who had come to a 
 stand on seeing the boatswain, but who now gathered himself 
 together afresh for a spring on deck. 
 
 4 Hold, sir ! ' cried Gordon, ' hold ! hear me out. For God 
 Almighty's sake deal with them as though an ill word now 
 should tarn 'em all into wild beasts ! Mr. Musgrave, sir, 
 you've been to sea. You know that when sailor-men are ripe 
 for mischief the sight and smell of blood will change the most 
 peaceable of them into devils. Tell the captain this, sir ! beg 
 him to listen to me, sir, or there '11 be not a life of one of us now 
 here collected as '11 stand the chance of that flame there if you 
 was to try and blow it out.' 
 
 'Captain,' said I, half wild with the thoughts such talk as 
 this put into my head, as I looked for an instant at Miss Grant 
 to mark what effect the incoherent consternation of the boat- 
 swain produced upon her, 'you must listen to this man. He 
 has something to tell you. There are three of us ; I have 
 weapons of my own, and you will not be without arms. For 
 God s sake, don't let the worst happen without preparation ! 
 Sit be cool. There,' I cried, pointing to the body of the mate, 
 ' is something to warrant a cold debate 1 ' and with that I grasped 
 him by the arm, with a quick sense of satisfaction coming tome, 
 somehow or other, out of the feel of the mass of muscle my 
 fingers gripped, and shoved him towards a locker. He sat down, 
 with his face as dark as the stain on the cabin deck, without 
 speaking, with a fixed glare of his little eyes at Gordon, and a 
 kind of suffocated heaving of his breast. 
 
 ' Now, Gordon ! ' I exclaimed. 
 
 The man had already grown somewhat calmer. 
 
 ' Captain,' he said, ' this is how it happened. Charles, the 
 half-blood, was at the wheel. When you went below, the mate,' 
 here he turned his eyes with a sickly roll upon the body, and a 
 sharp catching of his breath, ' came up to me, and talked of, the.
 
 72 MAROONED 
 
 craffc that had nearly run us down. He spoke in a passion, 
 gave me hard words told me I had no eyes, wasn't fit to take 
 charge of the deck, and swore cruelly that he'd reckon his own 
 eyesight to have been blasted if he'd have missed the shadow 
 long afore they showed the binnacle light over the side. We 
 argued, and I fell as hot as he. After a long spell of jawing he 
 went forrads, and I heard him talking to some of the men there. 
 His words went with a snap in them bitter hard words they 
 was, sir ! a sight too fierce for flesh and blood ; and the men 
 took courage, I suppose, from the blackness, and gave it him 
 back, till forrads it grew into a whole growl of curses, and then,' 
 lie continued, with another sickened look at the figure, 'he 
 steps aft threatening them with a hundred work-up jobs for to- 
 morrow. He comes up to me, and lets fly again. He talked as 
 if he hadn't his right mind, and I tell ye that I peered for the 
 gleam of a knife in his hand, dark as it was, for he acted as if 
 he was going to run amuck. It was his watch below ; there 
 was nothing to keep him on deck ; whilst, if I couldn't boast of 
 his education, there was nothing on God's ocean in the seafaring 
 line as he was competent to teach me/ He cast another look of 
 dismay and disgust at the dead man, and stopped to take a breath. 
 
 Broadwater watched him with a fixed gaze. I was afraid he 
 would interrupt the fellow, but he had fallen into his earlier 
 posture of bewilderment ana astonishment. 
 
 ' I could follow him,' continued Gordon, ' by the white of his 
 shirt a-flitting about the deck, and after a bit he walks to the 
 wheel where Charles was, and spoke to him. There was some 
 muttering ; then I heard him' pointing with his finger at the 
 bodv without looking at it, ' talking shrill as a fishwife, whilst the 
 half-blood answered sulkily, as a rrian struggling with his temper ; 
 and this went on till of a sudden Mr. Bothwell made the cry ye 
 must have heard, and before I could run aft he had slipped to 
 the companion, where I lost sight of him. I found the wheel 
 deserted. The half-blood had gone forward in the mucky black- 
 ness along the line of the larboard bulwarks, and though I 
 noticed the slapping of shoes, yet, not seeing him, I supposed he 
 was still at the helm. I hallooed for some one to lay aft and take 
 the wheel. The moment he came, I says, "Where's Charles?" 
 "In the foTc'sle," he answers. "What's he done?" says I, for I 
 couldn't guess at the truth of the matter from the noise of Mr. 
 Bothwell s yell. " He's knifed the mate," says he. " How do you 
 know that ? " says I. " Why," he says, " afore dropping down 
 the scuttle he sings out. ' Nat Dan Terence is there e'er a 
 one of you on deck ? ' 7 am,' says I, who was standing close. 
 ' By God ! ' says he, ' the mate '11 trouble us no more ; my knife 
 has found his heart out ! It 11 be the skipper's turn next ! ' " 
 
 Broadwater started to his feet. 
 
 'For Heaven's sake, hear him out!' I cried; 'time may be 
 precious : how on earth shall we know what to do unless we get 
 the truth?'
 
 A TllAGEDY 
 
 The skipper had lifted his arm with a frenzied gesture, and 
 would have plunged, spite o my entreaty, into one of his now 
 familiar roaring bouts ; but happily he was half-suffocated by 
 rage and terror, and scarcely able to articulate. He continued 
 to watch the boatswain, whilst his extended arm fell to his 
 side. 
 
 ' When I heard this,' continued Gordon, throwing a look up 
 the companion-ladder as if he suspected listeners there, ' I went 
 forrards, put my head into the scuttle, and called to Charles. 
 He answered without showing himself. I says, " In God's name, 
 what have you gone and done ? " " I've sent a villain to hell," he 
 Answers, " let him come back if he can." Some of the chaps 
 laughed at this. They had trimmed the fo'k'sle lamp afresn, 
 and all hands seemed wide awake, as no doubt they would be 
 after the row of the pig and the danger we scraped clear of ; 
 but I tell ye, Captain Broadwater,' he continued, with another 
 look up the ladder, 'that there was a sound in them men's 
 laughter which gave me to know that a cask of gunpowder, with 
 the head knocked off lying clear for the first spark, wouldn't be 
 a bigger danger in the hold of this vessel than's her fo'k'sle to 
 her as it now stands, sir.' He paused, dried his face on a great 
 blue handkerchief, and then went on speaking hurriedly. ' I 
 says, " Charles, you must come out of that ! No use skulking 
 below. There's no stabbing men in this here craft and lying 
 snug after it. Up with ye now, don't give me the trouble to 
 fetch ye." He bawled out a curse, keeping hidden all the time. 
 I put my leg over, but ere I could lift the other, four or five 
 men sprang under the hatch, and one of them said, " See here, 
 Mr. Gordon. We don't owe you no grudge. These are your 
 quarters as they are ourn : but the man's not to be touched. 
 Understand that ! By the Etarnal ! if so be a finger's laid upon 
 him the capt'n '11 answer for it with his life ; so aft with ye, sir, 
 and give him this piece of news from his fo'k'sle." I got out of 
 the hatch, and after a look down at the men, came away to tell 
 ye what's happened.' 
 
 I had made up my mind to offer no suggestions, and so 
 contented myself with watching Broadwater, wondering what 
 measures such a head as his would be able to devise for the 
 remedying of the horrible mess into which he and his mate had 
 plunged us. He seemed to wake up when the boatswain ceased, 
 and fell to pacing the cabin in silence, measuring twenty or 
 thirty strides before he spoke. He then said, 'Better return 
 on deck, Mr. Gordon, and look after the brig, sir. Send Billy 
 here.' The boatswain ascended the ladder ; Broadwater resumed 
 his walk. 
 
 One wants a paint-brush instead of a quill for such a picture 
 as this. The dead body of the mate ; Miss Grant motionless 
 and composed, though, methought, there was the flash of an 
 almost preternatural vitality in the dark sweep of her eyes 
 whenever they met mine ; the short, square, muscular figure of
 
 74 MAROONED 
 
 Broadwater pacing the length of the cabin, staring ahead of 
 him with the blind, wooden look of a figure-head ; the play of 
 shadows set dancing by the lamp ; the midnight silence on 
 deck, the soft washing sound of water running in some sobbing 
 black fold along the bends, the creak and jar of the fabric as 
 she rolled on the light swell, with many a muffled note like the 
 short laughs or sullen grumblings of a company of giants below, 
 stealing to our ear from the freighted hold beneath our feet I 
 say there is nothing in ink to give you the colour, the horror, 
 the strangeness of this cabin picture, and the noises breaking 
 into the interval of silence, during which the captain stepped 
 from one end to the other, whilst Miss Grant and I waited for 
 the arrival of the boy, knowing what he was wanted for. 
 
 A few moments before he came, Broadwater halted at the 
 side of the dead man, stooped and listened, grasped his wi-ist 
 and held it, as though feeling for the life there, then shot erect, 
 and cried out, ' Never before did such a thing happen aboard of- 
 me ! never before ! And they talk of murdering me too, hey ? 
 How many lives must it cost 'em ? how many lives must it cost 
 'em ? ' He thrust his hand into the bosom of his shirt, and made 
 as if to run to his cabin, but checked himself, wheeled round, 
 and fell to pacing the deck afresh. 
 
 The boy arrived. ' Here,' shouted Broadwater, fiercely, ' help 
 me to carry that body to his berth.' 
 
 The unhappy youth stood with his knock -knees trembling one 
 against the other, whilst he stared at the corpse with eyes 
 which threatened to leap from their sockets. If ever human 
 hair stirred upon the head to the agitation of the spirit, his did. 
 But his fear of Broadwater was livelier than his dread of the 
 corpse. Between them they carried the body to its berth in the 
 fore-end, and I had not known how heavily the presence of the 
 thing had hung upon me until it was gone, when I fetched a 
 breath as easy as a sigh. 
 
 Broadwater returned, and the boy shambling in his wake 
 went stealthily to the ladder, and then fled up it as though the 
 mate were in pursuit of him. The captain looked through the 
 hatch as if he meant to mount on deck, but hung irresolute, 
 with a short glance round to me that was like a question. I 
 own that the difficulty with which he was confronted was 
 enough to stagger a brighter intellect than his pork-fed and 
 rum-tinctured brains. \et his hesitation at such a juncture 
 was mighty discomposing too. Observing that he continued to 
 stand in a posture of doubt at the foot of the ladder, I said 
 bluntly, believing that a plain question might help him, ' Captain, 
 what do you mean to do ? ' 
 
 He looked at me oddly for some moments, sent a glance into 
 the black arch of atmosphere formed by the cover of the com- 
 panion-way, and answered in a deep, sea-growling note, ' Cursed 
 if I know. What would you do ? ' 
 
 'Wait till daylight, anyhow/ 1 replied ; ' remain cool, and keep
 
 A TRAGEDY 75 
 
 my temper. That's what 7 should resolve upon first For the* 
 rest I should be guided by events.' 
 
 'And who says I ain't cool?' he cried, in a quarrelsome way, 
 
 'and as to losing my temper ' he stopped dead to the sudden 
 
 choke of rage in his throat, clenched both fists till I noticed the 
 veins stand out black to the tension like whipcord under the 
 flesh, lifted his arms to the deck overhead, and shook them con- 
 vulsively in a fit of speechless passion ; then looking for his cap 
 he pulled it fiercely down to his ears, and went with a heavy 
 tread up the steps. 
 
 'We ought to be grateful,' said I, 'that the fellow's rage is 
 -often too great to enable him to speak. His speechlessness was 
 the very petrifaction of his curses ! ' 
 
 ' He is not the man,' she exclaimed, ' for such an emergency 
 as this. Pray God there may be some good sense left amongst 
 the crew. If not, what will happen ? ' 
 
 ' I comfort myself with the thought,' I replied, ' that sailors 
 are slow to mutiny. They know the law. If they refuse their 
 duty, certain and severe punishment awaits them ashore ; if 
 they seize the vessel, it is piracy a criminal act that ends with 
 Jack Ketch. If they murder but enough of such talk, Miss 
 Grant. Here has been a wild disturbance that may presently 
 settle down into a sulky calm ; and let the tranquillity be as 
 sinister as it will, providing we can step ashore at Bio before it 
 ends, we shall have reason to be satisfied.' 
 
 She glanced at the dark stain on the deck, a slight shiver ran 
 through her, and she folded her arms across her breast as though 
 for the warmth of them. 
 
 ' What a night this has been ! ' she cried ; ' indeed, what a time 
 the whole voyage has been, so far as it has gone ! I have heard 
 stories of wild doings in vessels of this kind trading to the 
 West Indies and to South America, but nothing to equal our 
 experiences ! ' 
 
 She shivered again ; I caught a tremble in her under-lip, and a 
 swift expression of mingled worry and horror in her eyes, and 
 fearing that she would break down, and surely what she had 
 seen and suffered since she had quitted her berth might well 
 have broken a hardier spirit than ever woman was yet informed 
 with, I poured a little brandy into a glass, and begged her to 
 drink it ; but she waved it aside with a sudden proud smile, 
 sweet with kindness too. 
 
 'Do not misjudge me, Mr. Musgrave,' she said ; 'if I seem to 
 falter in a time of trouble, it is not, I think, from want of courage. 
 It is the sense of uncertainty that always weakens me most 
 the not knowing what to do. She suddenly ceased, lifting her 
 hand to motion silence ; but the noise was no more than the 
 growling of old Broadwater's voice talking to the boatswain 
 close against the cabin skylight, one frame of which stood open. 
 We strained our ears, but could not catch words enough to 
 .enable us to gather the import of their talk. I advised her to
 
 7t MAROONED 
 
 return to her berth, and sleep out the rest of the night if she 
 could. She smiled at my speaking of sleep, and said she would 
 go to her berth and dress herself. 
 
 'But you will not come on deck, Miss Grant?' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 ' Be advised by me, I beg you. It is bleak and black ; what 
 can you do on deck ? Next, in the present temper of the men, I 
 could wish you to keep out of sight of them. The dawn will 
 soon be at hand, and sunrise may give a new complexion to our 
 afiairs.' 
 
 'I will do whatever you please,' she said ; ' I merely need advice. 
 What follows I hope I shall have courage enough to meet,' and 
 with another smile so full of spirit that it was almost enough 
 to make one doubt that she fully grasped the significance of our 
 dangerous situation, in a small brig with murder newly done, 
 and the crew sheltering and making a hero of the assassin she 
 entered her berth. Ten minutes after, I quitted my own cabin, 
 fully dressed, and went on deck. 
 
 CHAPTER XH 
 
 MUTINY 
 
 As I stepped over the coaming of the hatch, I caught sight of 
 the dawn sifting out into dim ash along the seaboard on the 
 port, or, as we then termed it, the larboard side. It was a cold, 
 unearthly light, and against it the sea-line ran in a short clear 
 ruling, black as liquid pitch. The wind was a quiet breeze, as 
 it had been throughout the night ; but the swell had veered 
 from abeam to the starboard quarter, and swung the brig 
 onwards in gliding, floating movements, though that her sails 
 were doing their work you knew by the sound of the singing of 
 running waters rising from the obscurity, mingled with a dull 
 noise of moaning, and the flat echoless plashing of ripple 
 colliding with ripple into short spouts of sea, which leaped 
 without life round about the vessel's quarters. 
 
 Even as the dawn broke it was yet so dark that there was 
 nothing to be seen but the filtering light ; but this brightened 
 fast into a ragged sort of staring of the radiance over streaks 
 and through tail-ends of clouds, until the whole circumference 
 of the horizon sloped dark to the vague gray of the sky, with 
 a slow writhing, wonderful to behold, of the shadowy substance 
 of the brig's sails, masts, and hull, into determinable forms, out 
 of what was just now mere impalpable blocks of dusk one on 
 top of another. 
 
 1 can conceive of no spectacle more melancholy and cheerless 
 than the first breaking of day over the wide and troubled 
 ocean. There is a bleakness in the aspect of pallid heaven 
 mad yet darkling water, and in the gray complexion of the
 
 MUTINY 77 
 
 canvas and rigging of the ship, that enters the atmosphere 
 as a sensible quality of cold ; and I have known men who, 
 though they had been on deck for several hours without feeling 
 the edge of the wind, have slapped their breasts with a shudder 
 to the first opening of the desolate faintness in the east. But 
 it was soon broad daylight. The broken, blind sort of stare 
 among the clouds to larboard melted out into the flooding of 
 effulgent pink the sun lifted a segment of rose-red glory a 
 sinuous stream of radiance flashed from one blue brow to 
 another down to within a musket-shot of us then you saw a 
 piebald sky, mottled into rich marble with dashes of white 
 vapour a broad-bosomed swell rolling in folds of dark blue 
 and brimming to our channels, freckled with foaming wrinkles. 
 
 There were some men talking near the fore-hatch ; occasion- 
 ally they directed their glances aft to the quarter-deck, where 
 the captain and boatswain stood in silent waiting, as it seemed 
 to me, until the spring of the sun from the ocean should fairly 
 settle the dawn into day. I took a long survey of the blue 
 circle, but there was nothing to be seen. Not that there was 
 anything to be hoped from the sight of a ship, unless, indeed, 
 she should prove a man-of-war ; for our trouble was not of a 
 kind that a merchantman could meddle with. How could her 
 people serve us ? Advice was hardly likely to prove profitable 
 to Broadwater, and more than that he was not going to obtain 
 by backing his topsail to speak a stranger and asking him to 
 send a boat. And yet even the remotest gleam of a ship would 
 have yielded me a sort of feeling of relief, by qualifying, however 
 worthlessly, the profound sense of loneliness that possessed me 
 on first seeing the vast stretch of liquid waste bathed in the 
 delicate light of the sunrise. 
 
 There was an air of surly and defiant stubbornness in the 
 postures and glances of the group forward that was instantly 
 noticeable. I counted seven of them, and supposed, therefore, 
 that amongst them was one or more of that division of the crew 
 which had the watch below. They appeared to be holding a 
 council ; and it was startling, I can tell you, to mark their forms, 
 so to speak, come out from the blackness into the dawn, and to 
 think of them as having been there talking one to. another as 
 they now were when the darkness hid them. 
 
 I looked for the man Charles, but he was not on deck. No 
 doubt it was the fancies put into my head by the thought of the 
 dead creature below, which helped my imagination to colour and 
 accentuate the attitudes and expressions of the fellows ; but even 
 though the night had passed as tranquilly as the preceding one. 
 I must still, though bending the most incurious eve in the worla 
 upon them, have found something in their varied demeanour to 
 render me uneasy. There was doggedness and obstinacy in the 
 plant of the figures swaying upon their legs to the heave of the 
 deck ; in the arms squared firmly upon the breast, the rugged 
 wrist of one hand showing out past the dark half-concealed
 
 W MAROONED 
 
 knuckles of the other ; in the challenging glances aft ; in the 
 well-conveyed indifference to the presence 01 the master. 
 
 The second mate had a very worn and haggard look. He 
 showed like a man worried to the heart; but I think it must 
 have been the shock of Bothwell's murder that paled and length- 
 lined his face, for he had used the sea for too many years, and 
 had lived too closely with sailors, to be scared to the degree 
 that his visage and manner now indicated by mere mutinous 
 mutterings and loafing insolent attitudes. As to old Broad water, 
 it was quite impossible for him to look gaunt ; his purple 
 countenance was as much a part of him as his ears or his feet, 
 and he would die with it on him as a negro dies with a black skin. 
 But the incidents of the night had done their work with him, 
 nevertheless. The arch over each eye was sharper : in quiet 
 times this would have made him appear as though labouring 
 under astonishment, but there were other features and other 
 expressions to lift tliis aspect of surprise into a look of savage 
 consternation. Had I viewed him without knowing what was 
 the matter, I should have imagined that he had been on deck 
 day and night for a week, exposed to violent and dangerous 
 weather, during which his mind had been heavily strained by 
 anxiety. 
 
 There was a man named Daniel Ladova, another half-blood, 
 as I supposed, standing at the wheel, and I could have laughed 
 outright at the pat fit of the fellow's face to the circumstances 
 of the time ; for though I dare say he may have been at bottom 
 as steady, respectable, and sober a creature as one could wish to 
 see in a ship's forecastle, yet he was so confoundedly ugly, with 
 his flat nose, the nostrils whereof were stretched past the line 
 of his eyes, his wide mouth and negro fulness of lips, his coal- 
 black, long, streaky Indian hair, low forehead and complexion 
 of saffron, the whole topped off by the sieve-like pitting of small- 
 pox, that one might have searched every shipping-yard in Great 
 Britain without meeting with a fellow better qualified by his 
 looks to stand at the brig's helm in this particular juncture. 
 
 Suddenly Broadwater made some observation to Gordon, and 
 walked aft. The boatswain called out, ' Forward there ! Send 
 Charles aft, one of you ! ' but there was a half-heartedness in 
 his way of singing out that made one feel he regarded the 
 captain's command as purposeless and ridiculous. 
 
 The fellows lounging about the foremast looked round to the 
 hail, but only quitted their posture to that extent. No one 
 called to Charles, no one even approached the scuttle to do so. 
 
 'D'ye hear what I say, men? repeated Gordon, but in the 
 same half -spirited tone, as though the bother of this time had 
 taken most of the manhood out of him ; ' one of you tell Charles 
 that the captain wants him aft.' 
 
 * Charles has got nothen to do with us,' cried back one of the 
 fellows, huskily j ' if the capt'n wants h\m t he knows where to 
 
 fini\ hjm/
 
 MXJTINY 7* 
 
 Bread-water bawled from the station he occupied near the 
 wheel, ' What are they a-saying, Mr. Gordon ? What are they 
 a-saying, sir ? ' 
 
 The boatswain replied, ' If we want the half-blood, we must 
 call him ourselves.' 
 
 4 Send all hands aft ! send all hands aft ! ' shouted Broadwater 
 furiously, stepping forward by half-a-dozen angry; strides, and 
 then halting, with his chest rising and falling to his passionate 
 breathing, that was not all pure wrath either, for I could fee I 
 the irresolution that lay under all this show of temper, and 
 guessed that but very little likely to prove useful to us could 
 follow on any intentions he might have in his mind. 
 - The boatswain instantly roared out, ' Lay aft all hands ! ' in 
 much such a hurricane note as he would have delivered in a 
 gale of wind, in summoning all hands to reef topsails. 
 
 My heart beat fast now, I confess, for the men's refusal to 
 obey this order would signify mutiny ; and though from the 
 first hour of my climbing aboard the Iron Crown I had been 
 apprehensive of grievous trouble in this way, now that it had 
 come to look as if the thing was about to happen, I was as 
 much agitated as though I had never given it a thought, and it 
 had broken upon us on a sudden. Judge, then, of my relief, when 
 I saw the knot of men gathered about the foremast leisurely 
 make their way aft with a shambling, devil-may-care gait for 
 the most part ; one or two with a half grin, which was less 
 suited to my taste than the mulish, sullen countenances the 
 others carried. The captain, leaning forwards and backwards 
 on his curved legs to tne swing of the ship, his arms up and 
 down, his hands clenched to the appearance of small rounds of 
 beef, his cap jammed so tightly down upon his head that the 
 upper rounds of his ears forked out with the pressure, stood 
 fixedly regarding the sailors as they approached. Meanwhile 
 the boatswain had gone forward, and picking up a handspike, 
 thumped the deck heavily with it, whilst with his head over- 
 hanging the scuttle by which I would have you understand the 
 little forecastle-hatch through which the men emerged from, or 
 dropped into their quarters he delivered a second leather- 
 lunged roar of ' All hands lay aft ! ' emphasizing his cry with a 
 further smiting of the deck with his bar, which he then threw 
 down. This done, he came away, and stood a little abaft the 
 main-rigging, the captain having posted himself abreast of the 
 companion-hatch. In a few moments the rest of the men who 
 were in the forecastle tumbled up, hoisting themselves out with 
 their elbows, and vaulting lightly on to the deck, with a sailor's 
 enjoyment of an incident that at least gave them something 
 else to think of than the cheerless, laborious routine of the 
 ship's work. 
 
 The sun was now risen, and some degrees above the horizon. 
 It was half -past four in the morning, maybe later ; one takes 
 no particular account of time in such passages as these. Th
 
 CO MAROONED 
 
 breeze blew steadily, and the brig buzzed softly over the 
 blue hills of swell, which, as they ran into the south-east quarter. 
 lifted the molten silver of the sun's reflection upon their broaa 
 shoulders in regular procession, till the white dazzle there was 
 as blinding as a glance at the luminary himself. I had often 
 read of difficulties of this kind happening at sea, but never 
 been brought face to face with the reality; and I remember 
 thinking, as I stood on the larboard side of the vessel, close 
 against the quarter-boat, and ran my eye over the group that 
 had come to a stand a little abaft the mainmast, that though 
 the perils of the deep be many, some frightful, and all of them 
 formidable, the worst of them, ay, even tire itself, must yield in 
 horror to mutiny, where men arm themselves against their 
 fellows, where the passions of undisciplined minds are let loose, 
 where tyrannic authority and bitter grievance come in conflict, 
 and where the struggle is inflamed and rendered wilder than 
 anything of a like sort could ever become ashore through the 
 forecastle perception that, the bad business once entered upon, 
 there is no mercy to be expected in the event of failure, no 
 hope to be cherished should rebellion prove successful. In 
 disaster men work together for their lives ; in mutiny they 
 work together for their own destruction. The swdlSp of the 
 sparkling sea-line round about us was like the con/pression of 
 the very spirit of loneliness into our little brig. There was 
 nothing to help the eye, to ease, by a solitary detail of discipline, 
 the perturbation excited by the scene. On board an Indiaman, 
 for instance, there would have been mates and midshipmen in 
 plenty, loyal to the commander : with an array of passengers, 
 maybe, in whose fidelity one could count in the name of self- 
 concern. It would be strange, too, if the whole of a big ship's 
 company should prove disaffected so that the quarter-deck 
 might reckon at least on the negative services of a portion of 
 the crew. But if yonder crowd, gathered about the mainmast, 
 and staring with mingled derision and hate at the square, 
 round-legged, red-faced man, whose lifted brows and whistling 
 mouth put the expression of a gape into his countenance, broke 
 into revolt, what should our case prove ? I counted ten of them, 
 and the man who steered would make eleven, and Charles, who 
 skulked below, twelva Twelve reckless fellows, with the scent 
 of the assassin s knife fresh in their nostrils, with instincts and 
 yearnings perhaps made devilish by the memory of a usage of 
 which I as a passenger must needs have seen but a very little 
 part, though 1^ had witnessed enough to convince me that had 
 I been of their company, and suffered as they had, my resent- 
 ment would surely not have left me among the hindmost of 
 them in the posture they now exhibited ! 
 
 The picture was as nautical as the most ardent lover of ocean- 
 pieces could desire. The men were variously attired : in blue 
 dungaree in patched canvas breeches in half-boots, and 
 coloured shirts which revealed their brawny breasts bare to the
 
 MUTINY 81 
 
 dark moss upon them here a round hat, there a sou'-wester, 
 and around every sailor's waist was the narrow sea-belt, with a 
 sheath of leather upon the hip, holding, convenient to the grasp, 
 the black haft of a dagger-shaped knife. The shadows of the 
 rigging crawled upon them, as the vessel, with a little humming 
 or water at her bow, floated, with cradling swings, from one 
 sapphire knoll to another ; not a feature but had the true 
 oceanic colour : the coils of rigging swinging at the belaying- 
 pins, the big scuttle-butt securely seized under the high bul- 
 wark, the little white caboose with its head of black chimney 
 whence blew a vein of blue smoke, the yellow long-boat amid- 
 . ships snugged under the spare booms, with a black snout pro- 
 jecting from the sty under it, and a darting and withdrawal 
 beyond of the heads of cocks and hens glancing like red rags as 
 they showed and vanished through the bars of the coops. 
 Aloft, swelling gently, rose courses and topsails to the little 
 royals, with a breezy stir of shadows in the hollows, and a 
 pearly curve sunwards where the bosom, arching beyond the 
 bolt-rope, caught the full splendour shining out of the east. 
 
 Broadwater pulled off his hat, dried his forehead, covered 
 himself afresh, and approached the men by half-a-dozen paces. 
 
 ' Is the man Charles among ye ? ' said he j 'if so, let him step 
 out, for it's him, I want, not you! 
 
 Of course he knew perfectly well that the half-blood did not 
 form one of that little crowd. Perhaps he meant to convey 
 that he had not deigned to glance at the fellows ; but this was 
 absurd, for every man as he stepped aft must have observed 
 that the captain watched him as a terrier does an approaching 
 rat. One or two of them glanced over their shoulders, as though 
 believing that the half-blood had come from the forecastle. No 
 answer was returned to Broadwater's inquiry. 
 
 'Now. look here, men,' he continued, with an air of bluster 
 which I hoped would not increase upon him, 'you know, of 
 course, that Charles committed murder this morning by stabbing 
 the mate, who lies a dead body in his bunk below ; and you 
 likewise know that for an act of this kind, when he gets ashore, 
 he'll be hung up by the neck, and left to dangle there till his 
 bones blow away. Now, as he's a murderer, it's my duty to put 
 him in irons, and keep him under hatches till I'm able to hand 
 him over to the people employed by the law to sentence and 
 strangle him, and all such folks as he. D'ye see, men ? ' with a 
 powerful flourish of his arm, and a slight increase of bluster, as 
 though he was gaining in spirit from the air of attention with 
 which the sailors seemed to listen to him. ' We don't want no 
 difficulties. Aboard me everything has always been plain sail- 
 ing, and up to the knocker. My mate lies a dead man, and I 
 want the chap as killed him.' 
 
 He paused, running his eye over them. Two or three of the 
 crew gave their heads a quick shake, but none of them spoke. 
 
 *The man,' proceeded Broadwater, 'is lying snugged away in 
 
 a
 
 82 MAROONED 
 
 the foVsle. Now, look ye here, my lads. There need be no 
 trouble about it at all. All that you've got to do is just to 
 remain where you are, whilst me and the second mate fetches 
 him seeing that he won't come under milder persuasions.' 
 
 I thought by the manner of the men that they hung in the 
 wind, and would let the captain have his way. He must have 
 fancied this also, for he started to walk to the forecastle with a 
 gesture of his hand to the boatswain ; but, ere he could get one 
 leg fair before the other, a tall, powerfully -built seaman flung 
 liimself with a stride or two upon the line of deck which the 
 captain was about to measure, and cried out, 'Stop, sirl no 
 f urder ! We don't mean to let you have the man.' 
 
 If Broadwater had been shot through the heart, the arrest of 
 his movements could not have been more spasmodic and utter. 
 Rage once again rendered him speechless, and the rush of blood 
 to his head darkened his purple countenance into an almost 
 livid complexion. Half-a-dozen sailors thrust up and formed 
 about the man who had spoken. Their looks were so threatening, 
 that I dreaded in Broadwater the least gesture^fctikt might be 
 mistaken as combative by the fellows. The boatswain came to 
 the side of the old man, who, gasping for breath, and as voiceless 
 as a person in a fit, fell back step by step till he had put some 
 half-dozen yards between him and the crew, by which time he 
 had recovered his voice ; but I protest, had I not looked at him 
 and observed his lips to move, that I should not have known 
 him by his tones. He raised his arm, and shook his clenched 
 fist at the tall sailor. 
 
 ' Your name's Terence Mole,' he said. ' If it should cost me 
 every shilling I'm worth so to punish ye for this here job as to 
 keep ye cursing your mother's memory day and night for ever 
 having bore you, I'll spend it ! If, to have ye punished for this, 
 it should oblige me to tear the shirt off my back and pawn it 
 for more law yet to crush you with, I'd do it, and go naked for 
 the rest of my time, and die easy ! You scoundrel ! ' 
 
 He fell speechless again, with another mad brandishing of his 
 arms towards the tall sailor. The man watched him with a cold, 
 insolent grin. One of the crew exclaimed, ' Soft words, master, 
 soft words. Ye want that there man Charles, and we don't 
 mean to let ye have him.' 
 
 The boatswain, with a glance at the captain, turned upon the 
 crew. ' Lads,' he exclaimed, ' consider what you're a-doing of ! In 
 protecting this here murderer you're making yourselves parties 
 to his crime } and though I don't know mucli about shore-going 
 law, I can't question that your abetting of the villain mav end 
 in stringing most of ye up alongside of him ; whilst it should 
 sinnify transportation for life to the rest of ye.' 
 
 ' Mr. Gordon,' answered the tall seaman Mole, ' we've tamed the 
 matter over, and we've made up our minds not to let the man 
 Charles suffer.'leastways aboara this brig, for his act. He's rid 
 u of a devil, he pronounced the word with a sudden snap of
 
 MUTINY 83 
 
 the teeth, 'and if he hadn't done it some one else would ; though 
 it was for him, by rights, to make a beginning, seeing how he 
 was sarved,' he pointed with a dark thumb in the direction of 
 the foremast, ' merely for commiserating the fate of a dro wnded 
 shipmate. If the capt'n's flesh an' blood, so are we. "We're 
 willing enough to listen to reason, but so long as we continue 
 to be the crew of this here brig, Charles don't go into irons ; nor 
 shall we allow him to be punished in any other way.' 
 
 With that he folded his arms, rearing his figure erect, and 
 angrily staring at the captain. The boatswain turned to Broad- 
 water as much as to say, 'Speak, sir, speak. You hear what 
 . the man says.' The old fellow swung on liis heel and walked 
 aft, and stood with his hands behind him gazing seawards. 
 The men fell to talking among themselves, and there was a 
 laugh or two, but the hilarity had a very false ring, and was 
 instantly checked by a growling, ' Dowse it, you fool, dowse it ! ' 
 I observed some of the seamen regarding me, but I pretty well 
 understood that by this 'time they knew that whatever might 
 be my sympathies they assuredly did not incline towards the 
 cabin end of the ship. Besides, I had a right to listen and look 
 on at all events, and leaning against the rail, with my hands 
 in my pockets, I kept my eyes fixed on them, unmoved by their 
 gaze. 
 
 Although Broadwater scarcely remained a minute abaft the 
 wheel, the time seemed so long that I believed that he intended 
 the men should break up and go forward of their own accord, 
 without giving himself the trouble of dismissing them. But I 
 was mistaken. He suddenly wheeled round and came along at 
 a rapid pace, abruptly stopping, however, at some distance from 
 the crew. 
 
 'It's your intention, then/ he shouted, 'not to allow me to 
 clap this murderer in irons and lock him up 1 ' 
 
 'You heard what was said,' one of them exclaimed. 
 
 ' Mr. Gordon ! ' he suddenly roared, ' f orrards with us both I 
 By the thunder of heaven, we'll have a try for the bloody villain, 
 let follow what will ! ' 
 
 I saw him tweak at the band of his trousers with the motion 
 of a man who girds himself for an affray, then make a spring. 
 The men closed in a wall before him. He struck at them, but I 
 could not see that his blows were returned ; they did no more 
 than to press upon him and drive him backwards. Gordon 
 threw his arms around the old fellow's waist to drag him away. 
 Sickened and horrified by the scene, I ran to assist the boat- 
 swain, dreading lest one of the many blows which the old fellow 
 was raining might lead to a general onslaught on him, and 
 grasped his right arm, and in a few moments we had hauled 
 him clear of the crew, at whom the boatswain continued shout- 
 ing, as together we pulled the skipper aft, ' For God's sake, go 
 forward, men 1 for God's sake, go forward 1 ' 
 
 2
 
 64 MAROONED 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 BROADWATER PROVES OBSTINATE 
 
 WE got Broadwater, wheezing, panting, and gasping, to tbw 
 cabin skylight, upon which we forced him to sit, not a little 
 blown ourselves by our uncommon exertions ; by which time 
 the crew had broken up as advised by the boatswain, and were 
 going forward in twos and threes quietly enough. Broadwater 
 sat for some minutes without offering to speak ; when he had got 
 his breath again, he flung off the skylight and ran below with 
 the swiftness and gestures of a madman. 
 
 'This is a bad business a bad business, sir,' said Gordon, 
 speaking in a voice full of concern. 
 
 'The deuce of it is,' I exclaimedf*the captain has not the 
 least idea how to act. The men are wildly to blame no doubt 
 of that ; it is monstrous that British seamen should sympathize 
 with a murderer and a foreigner ; but I am certain, from signs 
 of a disposition I took notice of in them as they stood together 
 yonder, that were the master of this vessel any other man than 
 liroadwaterj the sailors might easily be brought over.' 
 
 4 1 know it, sir I know it,' he cried bitterly. ' They began 
 welL Had they been properly used thev would have gone on 
 and ended well. But though the man s dead I don't mind 
 saying, Mr. Musgrave, that a crueller mate never walked a 
 ship's deck than Mr. Both well. 'T wasn't only the words he'd 
 use, 'twas the insulting tone of them like coating with poison 
 the knife you stab with. The brutal tarms cut to the men's 
 hearts, and lay festering there, sir, with the recollection of the 
 fellows voice and looks. Ye onderstand me? It rose above 
 the half-blood's restraint. A horrid murder, Mr. Musgrave, but 
 it don't surprise me.' 
 
 * What will Broadwater do t ' 
 
 He threw a glance down the skylight and exclaimed, 'I'm 
 afraid whatever he does '11 be wrong.' 
 
 ' But what would you advise, Mr. Gordon ? There is a lady 
 below, remember : I am responsible for her safety ; if for her 
 sake only, this trouble should be speedily ended by some decisive 
 course or action.' 
 
 ' Why, sir, seeing how matters stand,' he answered, ' the mate 
 dead -has murderer screened by the men the crew in a state of 
 mutiny, the captain ought to head fair for Madeira 'tis the 
 nearest point, where no doubt he'd get help from the shore, if so 
 be there was no English or foreign man-of-war riding there.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' I cried ; ' that should be his plan ! There is no 
 man forward, I suppose, capable of guessing the captain's 
 intentions by a change of course ? ' 
 
 *The change would be too small to take their notice,' he 
 responded. 'But suppose they did guess what he was at, they'd
 
 BROADWATER PROVES OBSTINATE 85 
 
 make no difficulty about it at least whilst their feelings remain 
 as they are now. They hate the vessel, and 'ud be glad of a 
 chance to get away from her, though the road to their liberty lay 
 through a jail.' 
 
 ' Have you suggested this notion to the captain ? ' 
 
 1 1 told him,' ne answered, ' when him and me were talking 
 before sunrise about the mate's murder, that if the men con- 
 tinued to give trouble, or broke out into regular mutiny, there'd 
 be certainly nothing for it but to head for Madeira.' 
 
 'What did he say?' 
 
 ' Cursed and swore, sir. " Sooner than be driven to Madeira 
 by my crew," he says, " I'd cut away the brig's masts and let her 
 lie where she is," he says, " till she s growed unrecognizable for 
 barnacles ! " But,' he added, ' now that he's seen the sort of 
 attitude the men have put themselves into he may change his 
 ideas and agree with me.' 
 
 * Was there ever such a bigoted old fool 1 ' I cried. ' Did ever 
 one hear of so rum-soddened a dolt placed in such a confoundedly 
 responsible position as that of master of a ship before ? I only 
 wish he were as ignorant of navigation as he is of human nature 
 and the art of treating sailors ; I'd run him then, myself, to 
 Madeira, and he shouldn't know where he was bound to until 
 the island was hove up green over the bow. What is the stupid 
 idiot to do if the hands, barring yourself, are against him ? ' I 
 continued talking hotly, out of the fit of nervous irritability that 
 had seized me. 'Arid what does he mean by saying that he 
 would sooner cut away his masts than haul in for the island 
 and the protection it would afford him ? Confound the fellow ! 
 Does he suppose that the lady and I parted with our money for 
 the privilege of shipping in a sheer hulk ? ' 
 
 4 Well, sir,' said Gordon, ' I dessay if ye put it to him warmly 
 he'll listen to ye. If not to you, to nobody else for sartin, sir. 
 There's too much feeding mixed up with the brains in his head ; 
 and the machinery's got clogged and don't travel properly, spite 
 of his being incessantly greasing of it with liquor. And what's 
 he going to do about the watches, I wonder ? Why, it must be 
 drawing on for six o'clock, and here have I been on deck since 
 midnight.' He dodged about the skylight in his efforts to 
 command a view of the cabin, to see if the captain were there. 
 'There's ne'er a man more willing to do his bit than me,' he said, 
 'but it ain't in flesh and blood to keep all on watching and 
 nothen else.' 
 
 ' If he likes to make you his chief mate, and me his second,' 
 said I, 'I shall be quite willing to fill the berth, and take watcli 
 and watch with you. I shouldn't set myself up as your match, 
 Gordon, of course ; but if I couldn't trim sail with old Broad- 
 water, or take sights, or note a change of wind, or mark th 
 head of a growing squall, with him, he shall tell me I can't 
 distinguish the difference between the sheet of his trysail and 
 the. banks of bis standing jib,'
 
 86 MAEOONED 
 
 'Put it to him, sir ; put it to him,' cried the boatswain, rubbing 
 his hands with a small emotion of glee in his worried face. 'I 
 tell you what, sir, if the capt'n 'ud make you hacting second 
 mate unbecoming as such a post would be for a gentleman 
 like you to occupy I allow that the appointment 'ud go further 
 to reconcile the men to the brig, and to the voyage, than all the 
 excuses the capt'n could make for himself, and all the wisest sort 
 of kindness he'd be capable of showing 'em. Of course they 
 know that you have been a sailor, sir.' 
 
 'How?' I asked. 
 
 ' Why/ he replied, ' I told them. Next, they're aware that the 
 man Charles was saved from spending the night lashed to the 
 foremast by yours and the lady's entreaties and threats to leave 
 the ship. That bit of news was brought forrards by Billy the 
 cabin-boy ; likewise by the chapj^hose trick it was at the wheel 
 when the lady spoke to the capt'n about the half-blood. Depend 
 upon it, sir,' he added emphatically, 'that if you should be made 
 second mate, or, better still, chief mate, the men 'ud feel so 
 satisfied to know they'd got a gentleman to officer them^ that 
 I'm confident they'd give no further trouble this side or Rio. 
 Will you put it to the capt'n. sir ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly I will,' I replied, struck by the poor fellow's eager- 
 ness, though my fancy hung much less in this direction than in 
 a desire to urge Broadwater to make promptly for Madeira. 
 
 I left the honest creature and went below, pretty shrewdly 
 guessing that Miss Grant lay all this while sleepless in her cabin, 
 and was in bad need of the encouragement of a chat. I also 
 wished to meet Broadwater, that I might tackle him whilst I 
 was in the mood to pitch my key to any sort of note that he 
 might choose to strike. Billy the cabin-boy, with his lank, yellow 
 hair dangling over his eyes, was on his knees working with a 
 deck-scraper at the dark and ugly stain at the foot of the 
 companion-steps ; but blood lies upon wood as upon the human 
 conscience ; its sacred magic, its preternatural quality of staining, 
 is no more to be neutralized in timber by the scraper, than in 
 the murderer's mind by the parson. 'Twas a mallet and chisel 
 that the lad needed, and even at that the cleansing of the plank 
 might have ended in a hole in the deck, gaping to the uttermost 
 outline of the horrid blot. I felt a little creeping in my skin 
 as I passed the boy, but then I was desperately bothered, and 
 the eyes of my imagination were out of gear, so that little things 
 put on ugly forms, and through distortion of aspect were cruelly 
 suggestive and abominably significant. 
 
 I listened a moment at Miss Grant's cabin door, and very 
 softly knocked, by no means desiring to disturb her should she 
 be asleep. She instantly asked who it was that knocked; I 
 answered, and she came out. She was fully dressed, robed in 
 jacket and hat for the deck. 
 
 ' I am glad you have come to me,' she exclaimed ; ' but you see 
 I have dutifully obeyed your orders. \ woujd not even enter the
 
 BROADWATER PROVES OBSTINATE 87 
 
 cabin, though you will imagine how dull, expectant, miserable, I 
 felt alone listening, waiting, dreading I cannot tell you what 
 in this gloomy little box.' 
 
 I took her hand and conducted her to the cabin, and she 
 seemed to lift her head like a drooping lily to the refreshment 
 of water as she entered an atmosphere bright with the sparkling 
 of the sun flowing full upon the skylight, and crawling in sheets 
 of gold upon the bulkheads and deck. She looked with atten- 
 tion at the lad at work under the hatch, as though she wondered 
 what he was doing ; then, understanding, she partly turned her 
 back upon him, with a manner that was like dismissing the 
 perception of the meaning of the fellow's labour from her 
 memory. 
 
 ' What have you got to tell me ? ' she asked, seating herself, 
 and resting her chin in the palms of her hands, whilst she gazea 
 at me from under the shadow of her broad straw hat with such 
 a spirit of resolution in her eyes, that I saw she had prepared 
 herself for the darkest disclosures. 
 
 I related exactly all that had happened during the time I 
 had been on deck, and was in the midst of repeating my recent 
 conversation with the boatswain when she slightly coughed, 
 with a significant glance past me. I looked, and saw Broad water 
 coming from his cabin. He stood near the boy a moment or 
 two watching him, then gave the lad a kick that threw him on 
 to his face. 
 
 ' Away with ye ! ' he cried. ' Scraping, indeed ! It's bottle- 
 washing that's in your line, you young scaramouch ! Off with 
 ye for a broom, and collect these here shavings, and tell the cook 
 to get the cabin breakfast ready by six bells.' 
 
 The boy picked himself up, and mounted the ladder. Broad- 
 water turning to me said, An all-night job regularly sets me 
 pining for food, long afore I should reel the need of it after a 
 proper allowance of sleep.' I thought to myself, Shall I begin 
 with the fellow at once, or wait till he has broken his fast ? A 
 meal might make him more sensible, render him more tractable ; 
 but my present mood was an opportunity I ought not to miss ; 
 and then time was exceedingly precious. So I began. 
 
 ' Captain Broad water, unless you are going on deck to relieve 
 the boatswain, who has had charge since midnight 
 
 discipline of the vessel is your affair, this lady's safety is mine ! 
 So now, sir, give me your attention, for you will find that I am 
 more in earnest than even the most rebellious of your men 
 forward.' He did not offer to sit, but contented himself with 
 watching me. * First,' I went on, ' what do you mean to do ? ' 
 
 ' Wait sir, and you'll see.' 
 
 'N<>i' I cried, bringing my hand down with a sounding whack
 
 88 MAIIOONED 
 
 upon my thigh ; * that answer will not satisfy me, Captain 
 Broadwater. The crew are in a state of mutiny ; your mate lies 
 murdered ; the only living creature aboard that you can depend 
 on is your bo'sun, and even he may fail you honest to the 
 bottom of his soul as I know him to be for ne is no more than a 
 foremast hand, though he holds a responsible position under you. 
 Now listen, sir. As matters stand, this lady and I are in peril 
 of our lives. Your duty is not only to give us every encourage- 
 ment, but to make haste to obtain such assistance as shall 
 deliver us, as well as yourself and vessel, from the heavy dangers 
 which threaten us. Therefore, I demand to know what you 
 mean to do 1 ' 
 
 He eyed me with the same kind of dog^edness I had noticed 
 in some of his men when Ji^vas addressing them ; was silent 
 for a space after I had ceased, and then said, ' What was your 
 object in hiring cabins in this brig ? ' 
 
 ' The passage to Rio.' 
 
 ' Right ! And I'm carrying you to Rio. That's the part you 
 paid my owner for me to perform, and I'll do it.' 
 
 ' But,' I cried, ' how is it possible that you can carry your 
 vessel to Rio with a crew who have already distinctly mutinied 
 by refusing to surrender your mate's murderer to you ? ' 
 
 ' The Lord spare me ! ' he roared out. ' If I ain't bound to Rio 
 where else am I a-going ? ' 
 
 'See here,' said I, determined to make him understand by 
 my manner that I was in earnest, ' you must be perfectly well 
 aware that as matters are you will never succeed in carrying 
 your ship to Rio. A moment, if you please ! The crew have 
 rebelled to a man, and have defied you. You know it ! The 
 respect you might have obtained you have forfeited, and they 
 laugh at your commands. You know that too ! Bv protecting 
 the half -blood they share in his crime, and every fellow in your 
 forecastle is therefore an assassin at heart. And you mean to 
 tell me that, all this being as I say, you will be able to complete 
 a voyage which may run us into two or three months, but which 
 is as yet but a week old only 1 ' 
 
 ' Certainly ! ' he cried ; * we're bound to Rio, and I mean to keep 
 all on till we get there.' 
 
 'If that be so,' said I, vehemently, 'this lady and I decline to 
 proceed with you.' 
 
 ' Decline to proceed 1 ' he shouted, evidently misunderstanding 
 me. 
 
 'Yes, sir!' I answered, shouting too. 'We insist upon your 
 steering the brig for the island of Madeira. The place is within 
 a few days' sail. I don't doubt that the crew would cheerfully 
 help you to navigate the vessel there. They loathe the brig as 
 much as they dislike you, and would exult in their release, even 
 if it came to their going ashore in irons. Therefore, Captain 
 Uroadwater, as you are in no condition to continue the voyage 
 to Rio, I must insist, by virtue of my rights as a passenger,
 
 BEOADWATEE PEOVES OBSTINATE 89 
 
 and of the claim that this lady has upon my protection, that you 
 shape your course without any further loss of time for Madeira.' 
 
 He breathed hard, then raised his fist and brought it dowu 
 with a mighty whack upon the table. His face was dark with 
 passion, his little eyes reeled as they took me in from head to foot. 
 ' Sooner than do what you say,' he muttered rather than spoke, 
 'I'd scuttle the ship with these hands,' lifting them both, 'and 
 send every man-jack of us aboard to the devil.' He backed 
 away, as though he meant to walk crab-fashion to the com- 
 panion-ladder, and on a sudden shouted out, 'You've been 
 a-talking with the bo'sun, Mr. Musgrave ! ' 
 
 - 'And what of that? ' I responded, in a voice that gave him to 
 know I had lungs enough to outshout him even, if occasion 
 should render such a contest needful. ' Am I to understand that 
 you refuse to head the ship for Madeira, that Miss Grant and I 
 may go ashore there, and escape the barbarous perils which 
 your treatment of the crew is certain to plunge us into if you 
 persist in continuing this voyage ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he roared, ' you are to understand it ! you are to under- 
 stand it a hundred times over ! My instructions are to carry 
 this ship to Piio, and sooner than deviate I'll scuttle her ! ' and 
 flinging his fist at me, so to speak, with a loud snap of his 
 fingers, he went with a heavy lurching tramp up the ladder, 
 growling out fifty curses in an undertone that reminded me of 
 a dog gnawing a bone, watched by another. 
 
 I looked at Miss Grant. ' Of all pig-headed varlets ! Where,' 
 cried I, ' could have been my eyes, that I was unable to decipher 
 the old lobster's true nature under his complicated purple skin 
 when I first met him ?' 
 
 ' We are confronted with a difficulty, Mr. Musgrave,' she said 
 quietly, mechanically twisting a ring upon her finger, with 
 thouorhtful eyes fixed upon it, ' and we must look at it calmly, 
 and be patient, and consider what is best to be done. First of 
 all,' she continued, ' I am quite certain, from the man's manner, 
 that you will never induce him to alter his course for Madeira. 
 And then what follows? Perhaps now that the mate is dead 
 the crew will cease to prove troublesome. Mr. Gordon is a quiet 
 man, and the sailors appear to like him. Mr. Musgrave, I 
 believe if this horrid old captain could only be induced by 
 threats or persuasions to use his men kindly, the voyage might 
 be safely continued.' 
 
 But, unhappily, peace of mind was not to be obtained by con- 
 templation of merely theoretic conditions, though I heartily 
 admired her cool inspection of a difficulty that surely could not 
 have held less terrors for her than for any other woman without 
 her heart to oppose it. If Broadwater was to be terrified into 
 changing his nature, then no doubt we might reckon upon a 
 comfortable and pleasant passage. But the old swaggerer's 
 qualities clung like limpets to his soul. He was not to be 
 cleansed by any process I was master of, at all events. The
 
 90 MAKOONED 
 
 only hope that I wuld find lay in Miss Grant's suggestion that, 
 the mate being dead, the sailors' grievances would be diminished 
 to the extent of the bitter usage he had given them. But the 
 scene on deck that morning had been too significant not to fill 
 me with dark and melancholy misgivings, which were accentu- 
 ated yet by the feeling that, let me talk as hotly as I would and 
 threaten as clamorously as I chose, I was practically powerless. 
 I had felt this in the Channel, and I felt it more violently now 
 that we were far out upon the surface of the broad Atlantic, at 
 the disposal of a man whose resolutions there were no means of 
 thwarting, so far as I was concerned, unless indeed I sided with 
 the men, encouraged them to deprive him of the command of 
 the brig, and sailed her myself back to England or to the 
 nearest port, leaving the vindication of my behaviour to the 
 story of cruelty and peril it would be in my power to relate a 
 romantic project indeed, and to be instantly dismissed ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE SAILOR'S LAST TOSS 
 
 I REMAINED with Miss Grant in the cabin until breakfast was 
 served. Our talk referred to nothing but our situation, as you 
 will suppose. Before long I found my worry and anxiety yield- 
 ing to the influence of her calm yet animated gaze and clear 
 good sense. Indeed there is no kind of human encouragement 
 that equals the feeling a woman can inspire. The moral help a 
 man will get from the posture and language of a brave girl is so 
 invigorating that it will give his heart a new spirit, though 
 there be the pulse of a lion in its beat. 
 
 Whilst we conversed I heard Broadwater talking on deck, 
 end it seemed to me as if he were delivering a harangue ; but I 
 gave it little heed, being heartily sick of him and the mutinous 
 disturbances raised by his base old tongue. There was a sound 
 of scrubbing-brushes gritting along upon the deck overhead, 
 with a noise of pumping and of water washing about in the 
 scuppers assurance, at all events, that the crew were doing 
 the ship's work. This I bade Miss Grant take notice of, being 
 now rendered almost hopeful by the fine cordial influence of her 
 intelligent thoughts and by the inspiriting power of her smiles, 
 her sparkling regard, the music of her voice, the resolution of 
 soul that held her beauty as composed as if she slumbered. 
 
 Punctually at six bells seven o'clock the cabin-boy arrived 
 with the breakfast, and almost immediately afterwards Broad- 
 water made his appearance. I had got my cue from Miss Grant, 
 who had urged me not to question the man, and above all in 
 conversing with him never to lose my temper : so that we had 
 nearly finished the repast before a single wora was uttered by
 
 THE SAILOR'S LAST TOSS 91 
 
 any of the three of us. The captain gobbled as heartily as if all 
 had been well with the ship. In truth, his jaws were so inces- 
 santly occupied that they gave him no chance to utter a syllable. 
 Then, having somewhat appeased his appetite, he called for 
 another great cup of black tea, which he fell to stirring medita- 
 tively, with an occasional lift of his little eyes to mine. 
 
 ' I hope, Mr. Musgrave,' said he, forcing an odd note of rough 
 jocosity into his deep sea-tones, ' that you've sent that there 
 Madeiry scheme of yours adrift. Why, rn'am,' he continued, 
 turning to Miss Grant, ' if so be as I'm given to onderstand that 
 Bio's your home and Mr. Grant was a gentleman whose name 
 "is very well beknown to me, very well beknown to me indeed 
 if so be, I says, that Eio's your home, surely, m'am, you must be 
 in a hurry to get there, and wouldn't thank me for carrying out 
 Mr. Musgrave's proposal to delay the voyage by calling at 
 Madeiry. 
 
 4 Certainly I am impatient to get to Rio, Captain Broadwater,' 
 she answered, with a half glance at me, following on the faintest 
 possible blush rising to her cheeks, and quickly vanishing, as 
 though it were the shadow of a rose lifted to her face and 
 dropped again. ' But then it is my impatience that wants me to 
 make sure of getting there.' 
 
 He drained his cup and cried, ' Never doubt it, mum. Give 
 me wind enough to blow us along, the rest '11 be as easy as 
 swallowing whilks.' 
 
 This new manner of confidence in him made me say, 'The 
 behaviour of the crew, I hope, has improved since sunrise?' 
 
 ' Mr. Musgrave,' he exclaimed, rising, ' I have to beg and pray 
 of you, sir, that you'll allow the behaviour of the crew to be my 
 business. Judging from the observations you let fall this 
 morning, it's middling plain to me that all that you want is to 
 feel sure that you and the lady '11 arrive at Rio. Ontil, then, 
 you've got good cause to be alarmed, you've got no right to tell 
 me what my duty is, how I'm to treat my crew, and what port 
 it's my business to head for ! ' saying which, he picked up his 
 cap, and buttoning his coat around him, with a ludicrous expres- 
 sion of mingled dignity and self-complacency, he went on deck. 
 
 A couple of minutes later, not a little to my surprise, Gordon 
 came down the companion-steps, and stood a moment at the 
 bottom of them, looking shyly at the table, cap in hand. He 
 tweaked an imaginary lock of hair on his forehead at Miss 
 Grant, and exclaimed, with a nervous laugh, ' Rather a novelty 
 for me, Mr. Musgrave, sir, to breakfast long with ladies and 
 gents in the land p' knives and forks ; but it's the capt'n's orders. 
 He's made rne chief mate, and I'm to live down here and take 
 Mr. Bothwell's cabin when he's out of it,' with a look at the 
 stain at his feet. 
 
 ' We are glad to welcome you aft, Gordon, believe me I ' I 
 cried. 'Take that seat. Here's the teapot. I don't think 
 Broadwater has emptied it.'
 
 02 MAROONED 
 
 He sat down and fell to his breakfast, and I cannot expreai 
 to you what a new element of cheerfulness came into the atmo- 
 sphere of that rude old interior out of this sailor^ plain, hearty, 
 honest face and bearing. I was extremely anxious to get the 
 news, for the captain had told me nothing, and asked Him if 
 anything fresh had happened on deck since I came below. He 
 replied, subduing his voice, with a heave up of his eyes at the 
 skylight, till nothing but the whites of them showed, that the 
 captain had called the men aft and made them a speech, in 
 which he told them that, if they agreed to go on with their work 
 quietly and give him no more trouble, he would not insist upon 
 their surrendering the half-blood, though the fellow would have 
 to come on deck and share in the general work as heretofore. 
 Of course, on his arrival at Rio, he would report the matter, and 
 leave the rest to the law. That was his duty. He further told the 
 men that Gordon would take the place of Mr. Bothwell, and that 
 he that is to say, the captain would stand watch and watch 
 with him for the rest of the voyage, unless, amongst the crew, 
 he should later on discover a man fit to take the duties of second 
 mate, when, if the hands consented, he should be willing to bring 
 him aft. Indeed, Gordon told me that Broadwater talked so 
 soberly to the sailors, that they stared at him and at one another 
 as though they suspected some ugly scheme behind this sudden, 
 queer shift of face. However, it ended in their expressing 
 themselves satisfied ; and Gordon particularly noticed that when 
 the watch were turned to to wash down, they sprang to the work 
 with the liveliness of people from whom a shadow and a burthen 
 have been lifted, whilst the watch below, who went forward to 
 get their breakfast, exhibited every symptom of surprise and 
 gratification. 
 
 ' But it's all along of your doing, sir,' continued the boatswain, 
 still speaking in a voice scarcely raised above a whisper ; 'it was 
 that there demand of yours that he should carry the ship to 
 Madeiry that worked on the captain. He came up to me in a 
 passion, and asked me what I meant by speaking ot Madeiry to 
 you ; but cooled down astonishingly rapid, and, after taking a 
 few turns by himself, sung out to me to send the men aft, with 
 the consequence as I've related. A leary old gentleman, sir. 
 but what's happened is bound to be well, providing it ends well. 
 
 This sudden change in the captain though, like a shift of 
 wind, it might mean only a short blow from a new quarter and 
 then a sweep back into a long howling gale out of the same old 
 wild point was a thing to feel grateful for, when the afternoon 
 came and brought with it an hour's dead calm, a long wash of 
 muddy swell heaving from the south-east, and running a 
 sluggish jumble of folds, round-browed as domes, with never a 
 ridge in twenty miles or them to break the monotony of the 
 hump-backed procession with the sparkling of a glass-clear head, 
 and then a swift rush of breeze that swept the foam out of the 
 water as it broke with a long cry out of the south-east dinginess.
 
 THE SAILOR'S LAST TOSS 83 
 
 and bowed the brig down to her covering-board. Broadwater 
 was ready for it. The topgallant-sails had been furled, the main- 
 sail snugged to its yard, some fore-and-aft canvas (no need to 
 be too particular') hauled down, and the topsails were blowing 
 out from the yams on the caps with the reef -tackles hauled out, 
 and hands dancing aloft to knot the points, when the first of the 
 weather rang between our masts. It was not a moment when 
 one wanted to think there was a mutiny aboard. Broadwater 
 helped the man at the wheel to put the helm hard-a-weather, 
 and to the long wash of the Atlantic swell foaming to the 
 sudden scourging of the wind, with the sail swelling from the 
 foretopsail-yard, the foresail yearning high as though it would 
 fly into the rush of shadows overhead, hands chorusing upon the 
 main, with Gordon's figure at the weather yard-arm coming out 
 clean as a pencil-drawing against the soft dark race past him, 
 the half-blood Charles swinging upon the fiemish-horse at his 
 feet, the other fellows ranged along with many a kick-up abaft 
 of the foot-ropes as they plunged to the reef -points curving out 
 of reach as the line of the band arched to the slings and 
 quarters ; the brig, responding to her helm, and to the heavy 
 leeward drag of her big thunderous jib, gave her quarter to the 
 tempestuous outfly, and went with long seething rolls through 
 it like a sleigh over falls and risings of snow. 
 
 It was blowing so hard presently that they found the reefed 
 fore-course and topsails with a stay -foresail and a fragment of 
 trysail as much as the vessel could carry ; and before long there 
 was a plentiful washing of water forward, for she lay now as 
 close to her course as she would come, and the ridged seas foam- 
 ing on top of the backs of the swell brimmed with a roar to the 
 bow under the larboard cathead, where they rose in a dazzle of 
 white water, then tumbling inboard with the clatter of twenty 
 tons of shingle, and floating coils of the running rigging up 
 amongst the legs of the men, and converting locomotion in the 
 waist into sheer floundering. The men worked briskly, and with 
 a will ; indeed, I accepted this burst of weather as a stroke of 
 Providence, designed to rally the minds of the crew to their strict 
 business of seafaring, and to bring old Broadwater to recognition 
 of the value of willing sailors in the navigation of a ship con- 
 siderations which appeared to have fallen asleep in the tender 
 breezes that had fanned us out of the Bay, under clear skies by 
 day and sparkling constellations by night, down to the latitude 
 and longitude our keel was now traversing. Certain it was this 
 half-gale for it came to that was dead in the road of Madeira ; 
 indeed the brig could not have looked up for the island to within 
 six points, and methought as I stood near Broadwater, whilst 
 the crew were on the foretopsail-yard, that he turned his eyes 
 from the foaming windward sea-board to me, as if he would say, 
 * You see what chance your Madeiry scheme would have now' 
 
 This was really the first bit or hard weather we had yet 
 encountered. The brig proved a wetter craft than I should
 
 94 MAROONED 
 
 have imagined, though she rose buoyant to each long frothing 
 hill of brine, with a slant of her spars and a shear of her cut- 
 water that made you think she had more of the clipper instincts 
 in her than the mind of her builder had included in his model. 
 But it was dreary, weary work the air on deck wet with spray 
 and surging down upon you in volumes that often forced you 
 to turn your back upon it to fetch a breath, a melancholy 
 clattering of spare booms forward, the scream and smoke of 
 water hissing inboards through the scupper-holes and then 
 draining away through the same apertures in long lamentable 
 sobbings, the shrill whistling of the gale splitting upon the 
 curve of the gray ropes, the quick roar of it as it flung as with 
 a sound of cannon from under the foot of the arched canvas to 
 the weather roll of the masts ; whilst below it was dismaller 
 yet, bulkheads creaking, cabin-aoors ticking like gigantic clocks 
 upon their hooks and hinges to the regular swaying, groanings 
 of strained cargo in the hold, and such a tumblefication of 
 deck, that haying once fairly brought up on a locker you 
 loathed the obligation of leaving it. 
 
 The storm-shrouded day howled itself steadfastly onwards into 
 the blackness of night, when the scene of commotion took a new 
 character of wildness from the swarmings of sea-fire in the curl 
 of each dark summit, and in the soft sheet-lightning-like flashes 
 of the phosphor flying with the water through our rigging. But 
 though it was a time of discomfort, it was a time of compara- 
 tive ease too, for it blew all thoughts of mutiny out of one's 
 head : recollections of tragedy, anxiety, and distress seemed to 
 have been washed overboard by the first sea the brig shipped, 
 and Miss Grant said to me that she would be glad never to see 
 a sunlit day nor a placid night of moonshine again during the 
 rest of the voyage, providing the Iron Crown continued to stem 
 fairly onwards for Kio, and the men remained quiet, and Broad- 
 water too occupied by the weather to bluster and bully as of old. 
 
 I confess I had forgotten all about the dead mate, when on 
 returning from a short look round on deck at about half-past ten 
 Miss Grant having withdrawn to her berth an hour before I 
 saw Gordon and the cabin-boy staggering out of one of the fore- 
 most cabins, bearing between them a long white bundle. I asked 
 the boatswain what it was, and he answered, ' The body of the 
 mate, sir.' The thing, bolster shape, was stitched up in sail-cloth, 
 and more ghastly, maybe, to the imagination for lacking sugges- 
 tion of human outline. 
 
 ' What are you going to do with it ? ' I asked. 
 
 'Heave it overboard, sir,' answered Gordon. 
 
 I might have suspected as much ; yet I could not make sure 
 that Broadwater would have dismissed the remains of his 
 factotum without a benediction. 
 
 ' The capt'n wouldn't trust the handling of him to any of the 
 people forward,' said Gordon, ' nor bury him by daylight under 
 their noses. I reckon he's right. This here, said he, with a
 
 THE SAILOR'S LAST TOSS to 
 
 look, at the burthen, at one end of which he swayed whilst the 
 cabin-boy staggered at the other, but without the pale constern- 
 ation in h'is race that would have shown in it had the captain 
 been his assistant, 'is still as a red rag to more than one pair of 
 horns which have sprouted aboard us of late days. Steady, my 
 lad ! Slew round now ! I'll go back'ards up the steps, and 
 don't you pull ! ' 
 
 The brig rolled so heavily, that I expected every moment to 
 see the boatswain plump down with his ghastly burthen and 
 overset the boy. They managed to get it on deck, however, 
 without mishap, and following, I watched them from over the 
 edge of the companion-hatch swing the white thing with a low 
 growling one, two, THEEE ! from Gordon, and send it with a flash 
 like any one of the sheets of milk-white foam bursting over the 
 weather-rail into the dark waters beyond. The sailor's last 
 toss ! I thought, as I re-entered the cabin ; and whose child had 
 been that negro-headed, handsome-featured fellow ? The wolfish 
 yell of the wind high aloft swept to the black orifice of the 
 hatchway as an answer to the question, and no icy blast could 
 have struck such a shudder through me as the chili that trembled 
 from my hair to my feet to the sudden lighting of my eyes 
 upon the mahogany-like stain upon the cabin deck. One thing 
 on top of another, twas almost enough to make a man feel sorry 
 for the murdered wretch. If ever a creature was charged to 
 the gorge with all qualities which go to the making of a romantic 
 scoundrel, this same Neil Bothwell had been. Maybe he was 
 born a little too late ; for the paddle-wheel, if not the propeller, 
 was even now scooping up all idealism out of the sea. If the 
 black flag were not actually hauled down, it was on its way to 
 the locker, there to moulder ; the Corsair had buried his Medora, 
 and gone to the Isles of Greece to slink out, oily and filthy, 
 upon the sleepy Turk, or the humming Sicilian. The slaver 
 alone was active. Yet I never can recall Mr. Bothwell's woolly 
 head, his chiselled features, white teeth, and nimble, sparkling 
 eyes, along with the dark brutality of his nature, his piratical 
 voice and venomous language, without feeling persuaded that 
 the knife of the half-blood had cut short a career which, in its 
 continuance, despite the crimson cross and the grin-ning teeth 
 of the British frigate, must have supplied the naval writer with 
 many fruitful and astonishing themes. 
 
 That miserable stain made the atmosphere of the cabin feel 
 as bleak as a vault on a December night, and though we were 
 supposed to be in warm parallels, I could not have snugged me 
 in my blankets with heartier relish of the clinging comfort of 
 them had the gale been splitting upon frozen rigging, and the 
 blackness upon the sea dashed with the iceberg's spectral tinge 
 of faintness. 
 
 This dirty weather troubled us for four days. It seemed to 
 have blown the ocean clear of ships and birds, for we sighted 
 nothing, whether winged with canvas or feathers. All day long
 
 MAROONED 
 
 'twas the same steadfast rush of the surge, green as bottle-glass, 
 freckled with the foam flying from the champing courser in 
 advance, lifting a head of melting white to the sullen slate of 
 the shadow overlaying the sky ; with once it was on the 
 second evening a nerce sunset of smoking crimson, red spokes 
 of a dingy brightness cleaving the black scud and the boiling, 
 angry haze of the west, and touching the unmirroring welter 
 into spaces of a rusty blood-like colour, as though and the 
 fancy was Miss Grant s each beam of coarse effulgence were a 
 material weapon darted by some mighty hand on high, and 
 making the ocean bleed to the thrust ; followed by a sort of 
 melting out of the sun into a brief, shapeless, running as of 
 molten ore low upon the sea-line, where the billows leapt black 
 against it ; till the gale, like some baffled, sentient thing, stormed 
 up afresh with a long victorious yelling in its western flight, 
 crowding cloud upon cloud there with such rapid smothering 
 of the tarnished hectic, that in a few moments you knew not 
 where to look for the place behind which the luminary had 
 foundered. 
 
 Then followed several days of fair weather, and if it had not 
 been for a lurking feeling of uneasiness, a sense of trouble 
 impending, I believe I should have found enjoyment enough in 
 this time to fully compensate me for the worries and anxieties 
 I had suffered. For three successive days a pleasant wind from 
 the north and east blew almost directly over our stern ; and the 
 brig, with studding-sails overhanging the water far out on 
 either side of her, and soothingly cradled by a subdued heave 
 of liquid fold, as regular as a pulse, and soft as the rise and fall 
 of, a sleeper's breast, floated steadily on her course, irradiating 
 the blue of the surge with silver reflection from her extended 
 canvas, whilst the short wake streamed off white as a looking- 
 glass, as though indeed the lines of dark ripples breaking from 
 the bow shivered spaces of the translucent sheen under the 
 swinging booms into fragments, which veering aft occasioned the 
 lovely metallic shining which you noticed in the furrow under 
 the counter. Already from the slope of the^ rolling brows of 
 dark blue brine the flying-fish were whisking in short uncertain 
 flights ; the swinish outline of the porpoise rose black and wet 
 to the flash of the sun ; afar the snow-white spire of a ship's 
 canvas would break the melancholy continuity of the sea-line. 
 Our shadows shortened at noon, and so fair was the course we 
 headed that the eye had almost the accuracy of the sextant iu 
 determining the period of the meridian, by observing the wake 
 of the luminary rising and falling in a fan-shaped stream of 
 gold transversely from the horizon to our larboard cathead. 
 
 One scarcely needed the comforts of the pleasure-vessel to 
 have found it all as full of such delights as go to a yachting 
 cruise, if the rest had been as well as sea ana sky and atmo- 
 sphere. But, first of all, there was Captain Broadwater again. 
 Now that the dirty sky had been blown away, and the shrill
 
 THE SAILOR'S LAST TOSS 97 
 
 dark gale transformed into a steady gushing of fair blue sunlit 
 breeze, warm as a woman's breath and filled with the aroma of 
 a thousand leagues of ocean, the reckless old man had warped 
 his mind back to its old moorings, and was once more falnng 
 foul of the men, often as I would think without reason, or, when 
 justified, then always with coarse and needless temper. But 
 that was not all. The half-blood Charles was about the decks, 
 for I must tell you, now that we were regularly at sea it was 
 * all hands,' as the term goes, from eight bells in the morning 
 down to four o'clock in the afternoon, with an interval of an 
 hour from half-past eleven for dinner ; and consequently it was 
 impossible to put your head through the companion-hatch 
 "without, after a bit, seeing the half-blood at work, sometimes on 
 the rigging, sometimes with a marline-spike on deck, but most 
 often stitching at sail-cloth stretched along the waist. It was 
 not only the knowing that he was a murderer that regularly 
 affected me with a violent stirring of emotion every time my 
 eye lighted on him, though I should see him twenty times in a 
 day } it was the shock also, at least to my notion of shipboard 
 discipline, to the marine habits of thought I had carriea away 
 with me from my early voyagings, coming from perception of 
 his being at large, when without doubt he should be in irons 
 below, and of the liberty he was now enjoying being the will 
 of the crew. My abhorrence of Broad water's early usage of 
 him could in nowise temper my loathing of the olive-coloured 
 dastard's act. Of course, the crime of which the fellow had 
 been guilty might well make one suspect a deeper significance 
 in every action, gesture, and speecli of his than they in reality 
 possessed ; but sometimes, in watching him furtively over the 
 top of a book, or whilst conversing with Miss Grant, when he 
 was not too far off for his features to be inexpressive, I would 
 get it into my head that if ever the swift, askant glance of a 
 human eye indicated treachery and black resolution, matured 
 and waiting only, his did whenever Broad water's approach 
 courted a glance from under his dusky, drooping lids at the old 
 fellow. I reasoned thus : I said to myself, this man being guilty 
 of murder, albeit he has his freedom in the brig the liberty of 
 a bird in a cage ! is fully aware that the gallows awaits him on 
 his arrival in port, and that the person who will make it his 
 especial business to procure his prompt dispatch is that same 
 red-faced, hectoring, noisy, and tyrannous skipper, at whom, 
 when he imagines himself unperceived, he darts as malignant 
 & glance as ever I witnessed in mortal eyes. What then 1 Is it 
 reasonable to suppose that yonder half-blood intends to resign- 
 edly suffer himself to be carried to Pdo, and on the testimony of 
 the depositions of that ship-master there, whom he abhors, to 
 suffer with his life for his deed ? Then I would say to myself, 
 But what is he to do ? Certainly he cannot prevent the master 
 from navigating the brig to her South American destination. 
 Does he contemplate suicide, as his only chance of escaping th'j 
 
 a
 
 98 MAROONED 
 
 executioner? He is under the protection of the crew. Has he 
 any influence -with them ? Assuming that he has, what use can 
 he make of it ? Thus would I sometimes speculate, idly indeed ; 
 yet the thoughts that occurred to me were of a kind to rob the 
 smooth ocean of its placidity, and the gay picture of the brig, 
 brilliant with the serene splendour of the heavens, of something 
 of its beauty. 
 
 However, I kept my thoughts to myself ; I took care that 
 Miss Grant should have no suspicion of what was passing in my 
 mind, nor did I utter a word on the subject to Gordon, mainly 
 because I felt the whole thing was mere foreboding, and that 
 discussion of it could therefore serve no end. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 WE SAIL THBOTJGH A STRANGE LIGHT 
 
 I REMEMBER it was on the third night of this gentle weather 
 that I was quietly walking up and down the deck with Miss 
 Grant's hand lying light on my arm. Four bells had not been, 
 long stvuck. The night was dark, but exceedingly beautiful, 
 with a tropical richness of starlight that yet, though to the eye 
 it showed like a wide fine rain of silver light, suffered the sea to 
 heave black to the confines of the hovering firmament not a 
 break or glance of foam anywhere, not the tiniest sparkle of the 
 sea-glow, albeit with my companion I had overhung the quarter 
 for many minutes to watch for any greenish cloudy rising, 
 any yellow fibrous shooting ; for of all oceanic midnight sights 
 nothing delights me so keenly as the movement of phosphoric 
 swarmings in the quiet ebon brine, when the vessel has just way 
 enough to stir the liquid blackness into shining configurations 
 of all sorts along her sides, and to mark her passage by a jewel- 
 like trailing of luminous bells of foam, and the emerald glare of 
 misty puffs of fire. The brig, with studding-sails out on either 
 side, was floating through the shadow of the night at some four 
 or five miles in the hour. Her wide stretch of canvas rose pallid 
 to the gloom, and died upon the eye in mere films and spaces of 
 faintness ere the sight could penetrate to the forms of the little 
 sails which crowned the stone-coloured pyramid. All was silent 
 every cloth aloft was asleep. Under the black arches of the 
 distenaed canvas, the stars would come and go to the movement 
 of the fabric, like eyes of invisible shapes, peering an instant over 
 the edge of the yards down upon the dim glimmer of the brig^s 
 decks. Gordon was in charge. I had killed half-an-hour some 
 time before with him in talk, but when Miss Grant arrived I 
 paired off with her, and left my hearty friend to fill the interval 
 betwixt the wheel and the main-rigging with lonely meditations.
 
 WE SAIL THROUGH A STRANGE LIGHT 9d 
 
 I do not mind owning here, that on such a night as this it was 
 not very easy to check in myself something of those sentimental 
 thoughts concerning my fascinating companion which had 
 bothered me, as I have elsewhere said, at an earlier date, and 
 which no doubt would have continued to worry and vex me 
 down to this hour, but for the murder of the mate and the 
 posture of the crew. The quiet weather, and the apparent peace 
 in the brig during the last three days, had enabled _ us to be 
 much together on deck again, and to converse on subjects of a 
 kind very different from assassination on shipboard, and the 
 perils of passengers in vessels worked by mutinous sailors. 
 Indeed, the long and short of it is, as we stepped the deck 
 together this night, I felt that if our voyage to Rio should be 
 long delayed, it must infallibly end in my falling in love with 
 Miss Aurelia. It would not do to call the emotion a disloyalty 
 to my cousin. What must happen cannot be helped, and there 
 is nothing in philosophy to balk the issue, though it may teach 
 one how to support it. The utmost I could hope to do was to 
 disguise my feelings ; quit Kio as promptly as the shipping there 
 would suffer, and leave the rest to old Time, with his brush and 
 whitewash. Still the position was an exceedingly uncom- 
 fortable one, and it was likely to endure long enough to render 
 me very unhappy for in those days I was a young man with 
 the heart and sensibilities of youth ; and to fall in love with a 
 woman who was betrothed to another ; to find my happiness 
 subtly sneaking away, and making its existence dependent upon 
 conditions which never could be fulfilled ; to feel, moreover, that 
 the emotions, which it was not in my power to suppress, were in 
 a sense unfair to the girl though I must always maintain that 
 the highest compliment a man can pay a woman is to fall in 
 love with her whilst they were dishonouring to myself, in my 
 existing relations with my cousin, was to place myself, without 
 being able to help it, in a position so immediately distressful as 
 to threaten by and by to become distracting. The worst of it 
 was, that whilst I would wish the voyage over, my conscience 
 was sensible that the desire was nonsense, and that I was in no 
 hurry. To be sure, it would be with no common delight that I 
 should part with Captain Broadwater and his odious dinner- 
 table, and take an eternal farewell of a ship's company of whose 
 behaviour it was impossible to make sure from one hour's end 
 to another ; but already already ! though Miss Grant and I 
 had been together for a fortnight only the prospect of turning 
 my back upon her, of saying good-bye to her at Rio, of sailing 
 away and feeling that all I had done was to undergo the 
 miseries of a long voyage merely to hand over the handsomest 
 woman that I had ever met in my life the only girl, moreover, 
 I had ever encountered to whom I could have given every bit of 
 my heart, I say the prospect of this was all so very distaste- 
 ful to me, that when I came to look into myself I was not at 
 all astonished to find I was secretly willing that this voyage 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MAKOONEb 
 
 to Bio should continue, at all risks, to a period that might be in* 
 determinable, sooner than sunder my association with the lovely 
 and engaging girl whom my abominably thoughtless cousin had 
 asked me to take charge of. 
 
 But these were my thoughts only. _ It was not to be supposed 
 that she would have the least suspicion of what was passing 
 in my mind. There was nothing of the coquette in her ; no 
 capacity of courting admiration for the mere selfish pleasure of 
 enjoying it. As she walked by my side, the warm fragrance of 
 her on the atmosphere, her face white to the star-shine with the 
 sparkles of it in her eyes, I had very little doubt, believe me, 
 that, had she guessed at the thoughts which had my heart in 
 tow, she would have rapidly made shift to conquer the floating 
 movements of the deck without the support of my arm, upon 
 which her left hand now rested. Upon my word, the cruellest 
 of all women not the more forgivable because she is uncon- 
 sciously cruel is the girl who, knowing that she is beautiful, 
 acts without perception of the magic and influence of her graces. 
 Fortunately for the peace of men, such women are rare. But 
 Miss Aureua Grant was one of them, and though the more 
 intimate our association was, the more, in one sense, and in a 
 mean sense, I am afraid, I enjoyed it, yet she could never touch 
 my hand, bend her fire-impassioned eyes upon mine, incline her 
 stately figure to me with the gracious, maidenly familiarity of 
 a girl in the society of a man whom she values as a friend, 
 without a sort of wild, odd regret in me that Nature, in making 
 her beautiful, had not also dowered her with the capacity of 
 appreciating the significance of beauty's most artless provoca- 
 tion. But then the Spanish blood would account for much in 
 her that was as teasing as it was delightful. 
 
 Now, as we quietly moved from one end of the deck to the 
 other, there happened so strange a thing, that the like of it in 
 these parallels, at all events, has, to my knowledge, been wit- 
 nessed once only. We had been chatting as soberly as though 
 we were uncle and niece : not the lightest of the inspirations of 
 this most glorious night coming out of it to tincture our words 
 or thoughts into any complexion of romance, though never might 
 a scene of starlit gloom furnish a young fellow, already rendered 
 sentimental enough, with a better excuse for frequent poetical 
 flight than this, in whose shadow I paced with Miss Aurelia, 
 her ungloved hand (with the gleam, by the way, of an engaged 
 ring meeting my eye each time I looked down) lying white as 
 a flake of sea-foam in the bight of my arm. I was talking about 
 old Broadwater, and expressed my wonder that he should be 
 able to accommodate his love of rum and his taste for ' all night 
 in,' as they say at sea, with the obligation he had imposed upon 
 himself of taking Bothwell's place. 
 
 'Spite of his many shortcomings,' she exclaimed, 'I should 
 think he is too experienced a sailor, too much a seaman by 
 habit, not to be vigilant during his watch,'
 
 WE SAIL THROUGH A STRANGE LIGHT 101 
 
 *Oh/ said L, 'I don't doubt that he keeps a bright look-out 
 when his turn to take charge comes round. What I mean is, it 
 is odd that he should not have chosen some one from amongst 
 the men forward to act as second mate, Gordon now being first, 
 for then he world be able to go to bed drunk as usual, with 
 plenty of time to sleep off the fumes ; but the long and short 
 of it is,' I added, c there's no living creature in his forecastle to 
 whom he durst confide his ship.' 
 
 As I said this, I heard my name called, apparently from the 
 forecastle. We were at that moment close to the wheel, and in 
 the act of returning to measure the length of deck afresh. I 
 was not a little surprised to hear myself hailed from so remote 
 a part of the brig, and as I had not recognized the voice, I sang 
 out. ' Who wants me there ? ' 
 
 'Me, sir the mate,' came the answer from the bows; 'will you 
 and the lady please step this way?' 
 
 I asked Miss Grant if she would accompany me, thinking that 
 she might be a little shy, and very reasonably shy too, under 
 the circumstances, of that part of the vessel, 
 
 'Certainly,' she answered promptly. 
 
 We had to move with caution. The pile of canvas that 
 clothed the brig from truck to waterway deepened the midnight 
 obscurity of the deck, and though it was plain sailing where we 
 had been walking, yet, once abreast of the mainmast, one had to 
 keep a sharp look-out, by groping, for the harness-cask, scuttle- 
 butts, coils of rigging, pump-handles, and other matters which 
 lay between the point where the quarter-deck began and where 
 the brig's forecastle ended. I called out, ' On which side are 
 you, Mr. Gordon ?' wondering why he wanted us, and what had 
 carried him away from his post aft. 
 
 'On the starboard bow, sir,' he rejoined ; 'mind the fluke of 
 the stowed anchor as ye come along ! I'm just forrard of it.' 
 
 I held Miss Grant's hand, walking in front of her. The 
 galley was locked up for the night j there was not the faintest 
 gleam of light anywhere visible, if it were not a sort of ghostly 
 sheen lurking like a churchyard exhalation over the fore-scuttle, 
 from the slush-lamp, as I presumed, swinging in the sailor's sea- 
 parlour below. Indeed I was so engrossed by the occupation of 
 picking my way, that I saw nothing until I was fairly alongside 
 of Gordon, who pointed, with a long shadowy arm, the fingers 
 at the end of which showed like a giant's against the stars, over 
 the horizon, and exclaimed, 'Mr. Musgrave, sir, saw any man 
 ever the like o' that ? What can it be 1 ' 
 
 ^ He held his arm levelled, and following its indication I saw, 
 right ahead of the ship, standing apparently upon the ocean at 
 the distance of the horizon, an arch of light, or rather, let me 
 say, a shape of dim white radiance, that arched in perfect out- 
 line from one leg to another that appeared to rest upon the 
 black surface of the deep to within three or four degrees of the 
 sea-line, as though its foot had broken away. There is nothing
 
 102 MAKOONED 
 
 so deceptive as distance at sea. The light, when I first saw itf 
 might have been within gunshot, or it might have been a couple 
 of leagues away from us. The radiance had the tint of moon- 
 shine, and was as visibly defined upon the velvet dusk as though 
 painted there by the sweep of a brush dipped in white fire. 
 You saw the stars shining close against the rim of it, all round 
 and under the arch of it, where they sparkled like the riding- 
 lights of ships. 
 
 ' What is it, Mr. Musgrave ? ' exclaimed Gordon, in the voice 
 of a man not only awed, but even alarmed. 
 
 1 1 wish I could tell you,' said I. ' It looks like the fiery trail of 
 a comet that has swept in an arc from behind the sea, and gone 
 to pieces in the blackness before it had perfected the semicircle.' 
 
 'We are steering directly for it ! ' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 
 The watch on deck, disturbed in the naps they were taking in 
 secret corners by Gordon's call to me, had collected near us, 
 and you heard the growling of their voices as they pointed 
 ahead, marvelling, as we did, one to another at the startling, 
 beautiful, radiant appearance. I heard one say, 'Jim, it's a 
 sort of vast compreesant. There's no luck for the vessel as 
 sights them shows.' 
 
 Another said, ' If we are to sail through it, stand by ! The 
 likes of them lights, I've heered, strikes men green if they smites 
 'em full.' f 
 
 ' What in thunder can it be ? ' repeated Gordon ; ' 'tain't any- 
 thing burning out there, is it? BLOW ^ fur do it stretch? Can 
 any man tell ? Looks to me to be a- widening.' 
 
 One of the shadowy group beside me exclaimed, ' Job is to 
 know how fur off it lies. I allow there's all ten mile between 
 them legs.' 
 
 ' 'Vast there 1 ' cried another, ' ten mile ! I'll swap my chest 
 agin your Scotch cap afore eight bells this blooming night if 
 them legs is a mile wide.' 
 
 ' I'll go aft and report it to the captain,' said Gordon, in a 
 voice that betrayed the agitation he was labouring under. 
 ' Never seed the like of such a thing in all my time. Beats all 
 my going a-fishing, sir. Why, it's a object that ain't in nature ; 
 and if we don't give it a wide berth it '11 be a bad look-out for 
 some of us, or I wasn't christened Zana,' and apparently as 
 much subdued as if he had seen a ghost, or heard some spectral 
 voice up in the air bidding him prepare for his end, he slunk 
 away from our side, and vanished in the darkness, as he made 
 his way to the cabin. 
 
 When he was gone a deep silence fell The men ceased to 
 speak. Miss Grant and I gazed without exchanging a syllable. 
 Nothing was to be heard but the soft shearing of the cutwater 
 beneath us, rending the liquid indigo with the noise as of the 
 tearing of satin ; the blackness under the bows was profound 
 not a sparkle of phosphor to catch the eye, not the sickliest 
 flake of star-shine to express the invisible heave of the deep by
 
 WE SAIL THROUGH A STRANGE LIGHT 103 
 
 the wire -like widening of it to the movement. I looked behind 
 me at the towering canvas on the foremast, and found a strange 
 solemnity in the visionary beauty of the silent, swelling, airy 
 concavities mounting in pale vague surfaces into the stooping 
 dusk ; but whether near or distant, the mystic arch of light 
 ahead threw not the feeblest gleam upon that soaring surface 
 that spectrally dilated on either hand to the pinions of the stud- 
 <i ing-sails which faded into a hovering faintness far beyond the 
 sides. The mysterious sheen to our approach seemed to gather 
 a quicker tincture of lustre, as of the diamond, or some clear 
 glittering star. It is impossible to express the startling loveli- 
 ness of this apparition of luminous arch against the midnight 
 sky, with the stars shining down to its rim, and spangling the 
 hollow to the sea-line within. 'Twas as though God's hand 
 had set up a sign in the sky for us to behold, and the men now 
 were so dumb in the face of it, that you easily guessed how 
 impressed and awed they were. Most of the watch below 
 had come up to have a look, but each new-corner's first mur- 
 mur of wonder speedily died in the hush that was upon the 
 others. 
 
 ' What is it, do you think, Mr. Musgrave V said Miss Grant, in 
 a voice a little above a whisper. 
 
 ' Were we far north or south,' I replied, ' one would make it 
 intelligible by reference to the Northern Lights, or to tho 
 magnificent display of the Aurora Australis, with its sudden 
 pale flashings and spiral coruscations. No doubt yonder beauti- 
 ful object is something of the kind, electric phosphoric call it 
 what you will. But is it not worth seeing ? Why, one would 
 sail round the world even with old Broadwater for such 
 possession of memory as that glorious span will yield ! ' 
 
 4 It will fill these poor fellows with superstitious fancies,' she 
 said, speaking very softly. ' Did you hear one of them say that 
 people who sail through such things are struck green?' 
 
 I could not help laughing, and said, ' Yes ; but it is possible to 
 be green without passing through such an arch as that. If these 
 sailors, now, were lioman Catholics after the type of the mariners 
 of Columbus's day, they would be on their knees chanting litanies, 
 and making the air melodious with their Salve Beginas. But 
 is not superstition excusable amongst seamen? Look at that 
 wonderful sight, Miss Grant. Imagine yourself run backwards 
 by the stream of time three hundred years before the scientific 
 man had broken loose, when the world was bare of problem- 
 solvers, when all interpretation was deliciqusly romantic and 
 tenderly poetical. What then would you think of such a sight 
 as that ? It would be no mere phosphoric or electric arch. No, 
 no ; but some paradisaical bridge of ethereal crystal, such as St. 
 John may have gazed upon without having recorded it ; and be 
 sure that your young-eyed imagination, iired by sheer ecstasy 
 of superstition, would readily discern the forms of angelic 
 beings with wings of pearly light, and raiment as lustrous as a
 
 104 MAROONED 
 
 moonbeam, flitting aiong it to the stars upon which its unfinished 
 end to the left there seems to rest.' 
 
 I merely talked thus to provoke her, delighting in the high 
 moods which even such idle stuff as this would induce in her. 
 But unfortunately it was not only that we were not alone ; I had 
 scarcely made an end, when old Broad water, followed by Gordon, 
 rolled floundering and tumbling on to the forecastle. He came 
 and stood close against me, puffing and blowing in such a 
 manner that my nose was a long way ahead of my ears in detect- 
 ing that if he was not actually drunk he must have turned in 
 very well primed. He stared for some moments in silence, 
 breathing hard, and then burst out, ' Well, boil me alive if ever 
 I seed the likes of that ! 'Tain't fire, neither. What do you call 
 it, Mr. Gordon?' 
 
 ' Got no idea, sir,' answered the mate, speaking as before with 
 a note of awe and depression in his voice. ' Shall we shift the 
 helm while there's time ? It looks close aboard now, and we 
 shall be into it if we don't mind.' 
 
 'Shift the helium!' cried Broadwater. 'What for? D'ye 
 think it's land, man ? Why, what else is it but what they calls 
 a luminous fog ? And who's going to diwerge for a thickness 
 you can see through ? ' 
 
 Some man said ? ' That there's no luminous fog, master. It's a 
 big, strike-me-blmd compreesant. Look out ! It may foul 
 our mastheads as we pass under it, and who's to know that we 
 shall ever be heard of arterwards?' 
 
 Broadwater, who had been peering hard into my face, seemed 
 on a sudden to distinguish me, and without apparently heeding 
 the man who had spoken, exclaimed, ' Hope you're enjoying of 
 it, Mr. Musgrave. Tain't often a sight like that's chucked in 
 for naught in a voyage to Rio.' 
 
 'Am I to shift the helm, sir?' said Gordon. 
 
 4 Certainly not ! ' roared the old fellow, ' didn't ye hear me 
 say so just now? Cook me alive, Mr. Musgrave, if sailors be 
 men fit even to make soldiers of ! Diwerge because there's a 
 lunar rainbow in the road ! ' He seemed to be struck by his 
 own fancy. ' It's a lunar rainbow,' he shouted ; ' one of the 
 finest I ever see.' 
 
 ' Where's the moon to make him ? ' said a voice. 
 
 'Keep all on as ye are, Mr. Gordon ; all on as ye are ! ' said 
 Broadwater, with an ominous growl in his tones, that was like 
 an intimation to the little company of shadows standing near 
 him to hold their peace. ' Steady as she goes, sir ! ' and so 
 saying he staggered away from the rail, and went swinging 
 towards the quarter-deck, singing out to the helmsman as he 
 went, ' Steady as she goes, my man ! steady as she goes ! ' 
 
 We had neared the shining appearance so rapidly, that I sus- 
 pected it must have been very much closer to us when first 
 sighted than we had imagined. It cast no reflection upon the 
 dark waters under it, nor sheen upon the air beyond the line of
 
 WE SAIL THROUGH A STRANGE LIGHT 105 
 
 its own irradiation, as you saw by the shine of the stars close 
 down upon it. As we were under a steady helm, it soon became 
 plain that the sparkling arch was slowly trending to larboard. 
 When it first showed out, our jibbooms seemed to point fair 
 for the centre of it, whereas now the right leg had drawn on 
 to our starboard bow. The obscurity seemed the blacker for 
 that light. I'd look aloft and around, wondering that no illumi- 
 nation came from the mystical burning to touch the sails, or to 
 put a sparkle into the eyes of the staring men. They were 
 grumbling freely, swearing that nothing but ill-luck could 
 attend our passage through the luminous thing, and heaping 
 curses upon the captain for his drunken obstinacy. Gordon 
 had followed Broadwater on to the quarter-deck, but Miss 
 Grant and I held our place against the forecastle-rail. Within 
 half-an-hour of the object heaving into view, we were close 
 upon it. Even when our fiying-jibboom end was silvered by 
 contact with the luminosity, the jibs themselves hung black as 
 thunder-clouds against the shining. I had just time to note 
 the wondrous sweep of this mighty arch, extending like a vast 
 hueless rainbow into the clear obscure, when the light was all 
 about us. I begged my companion to look aft ; the spectacle 
 was incomparable for splendour and shadow, heightened by the 
 elements of mystery and fear. The swelling sails at the fore 
 studding-sail upon studding-sail to the topgallant yard-arm, and 
 white cloths rounding and rising from forecourse to crowning 
 royal leapt into spaces of bland, almost milk-white light to 
 the touch of this atmospheric radiance, and floated gleaming, 
 whilst the rest of the brig from the fore-rigging lay black and 
 buried ; but very swiftly the whole vessel leapt into this mid- 
 night effulgent vision, and no searching moonlight could have 
 offered a clearer view of her. Every man's shadow swung at 
 his feet, the atmosphere was a wide white gushing, the very 
 trucks at the lofty mastheads shone out with the dull light of 
 frosty silver buttons. Aft, upon the quarter-deck, you saw the 
 motionless dark figures of Broadwater and the mate, standing 
 as though this mystical illumination possessed some hellish 
 quality that had blasted them into stirlessness. The fellow at 
 the wheel gripped the spokes without a move in his posture 
 that seemed to me full of terror and awe. Many of the crew, 
 whilst our iibboom was yet penetrating this burning mist, and 
 whilst the forecastle still lay in blackness, had jumped below 
 with sharp cries of alarm, warning one another to beware of 
 the light, that it turned the flesh green, that it was fatal to 
 those it shone on, and the like. But a few men lingered, though 
 when the brig was fair in the radiance I marked them in cower- 
 ing attitudes, one stooping low at the windlass end, another 
 crouching with his arms against his forehead, a third in a 
 posture of recoil at the heel of the bowsprit, as I have seen 
 people terror-stricken by a sudden dazzling flash of lightning 
 The heave of the sea was like the swelling of a sheet of silveu
 
 106 ilAltOOXED 
 
 But in less than three minutes, as nearly as I could calculate, I 
 marked the jibboom and jibs turn black, then the forecastle 
 stole into the midnight again, and preternatural beyond ex- 
 
 Eression was the spectacle of the swelling canvas, bright for a 
 reath to us who stood in blackness, then vanishing upon the 
 sight as though the whole fabric had been formed of star-lighted 
 mist that had melted on a sudden. In a few minutes the brig 
 was once more sailing along in darkness, and the glorious arch 
 was over her stern, with what was now its left limb, viewing it 
 from the forecastle, veering away upon our larboard quarter. 
 
 CHAPTEK XVI 
 BROAD-WATER'S PROPOSAL 
 
 HAD we been a large ship full of passengers, such an astonish- 
 ing sight as a silver arch, self-luminous, yet without power to 
 pale the close-lying stars with overflow of its sheen, spanning a 
 space of the midnight waters and resembling nothing, as I then 
 supposed, ever seen south of the polar verge of the temperate 
 parallels north of the equator, would have given us enough to 
 talk about to serve to the end of the voyage. But wonderment 
 is brief when its sphere of diffusion is slender. Miss Grant and 
 I talked the subject out promptly, and then there was nobody 
 left to say more about it. Broadwater, it is true, at breakfast 
 next morning persisted in declaring that it was a lunar rain- 
 bow ; though, had he stuck to his first notion that it was a 
 luminous mist, I am not sure that his guess would have been 
 far out. 
 
 'How are you going to get a lunar rainbow without the 
 moon ? ' I said. 
 
 'Who says that it is to be got?' he answered. 'The moon's 
 always somewheres about, I suppose ; and why shouldn't she be 
 able to chuck one of them appearances upon the sky when she's 
 out of sight, just as she do when she's within view of the eye ? 
 There's no call for her to be overhead for shows of that kina to 
 happen. I once see a beautiful rainbow, right over our mast- 
 heads, a full half-hour after the sun had gone down. You may 
 depend upon it that there arch last night was a lunar rainbow.' 
 
 I liked him too little to argue with nim, lover as I am of the 
 absurd ideas of stupid, prejudiced, ignorant old sailors. Besides, 
 the thing was a phenomenon not to be explained by anybody 
 aboard that brig at all events, and to be accepted therefore as 
 one of the many thrilling and beautiful mysteries of old ocean's 
 sombre or sunlit solitudes. 
 
 I was not, however, a little surprised to find that what I had 
 deemed the mere passing depressing influence of the apparition 
 upon the spirits of Gordon continued to weigh upon him. This
 
 BROADWATER'S PROPOSAL 107 
 
 was made apparent when Broadwater, after favouring us with 
 his views on the subject of lunar rainbows and other atmo- 
 spheric effects, most of which were no doubt coloured by the 
 bottle of rum through which he had inspected them, went on 
 deck that the mate might get his breakfast. 
 
 'Have any of the hands turned green since last night, Mr. 
 Gordon ? ' said L 
 
 ' No, sir,' he answered ; ' most of 'em jumped below, I hear, 
 t'others dodged the sheen. They reckoned upon some of them 
 showing blighted though, when daylight came along ; and if 
 the watch had turned out blue, let alone green, hang me, Mr. 
 -Musgrave ! ' he exclaimed, hitting the table with the nandle of 
 his knife to emphasize his language, ' if I for one should have 
 been surprised, for never did a more scaring sight arise before 
 the eyes of a sailor.' 
 
 His subdued and dejected manner was more striking than his 
 words. I glanced at Miss Grant, whose fine eyes full of thought 
 were fastened upon his face. 
 
 ' The fancy amongst the men,' she exclaimed, 'must have 
 arisen from the old belief that the shining of the moon full on 
 the face of a sleeper distorts the features, and puts an ugly 
 colour into the complexion. The arch looked like moonshine, 
 and I suppose the sight made the men so nervous that it was 
 enough for one of them to hint at anything alarming to terrify 
 the whole.' 
 
 'I wish I'd never seen it,' he exclaimed ; 'it's done me no good, 
 Miss.' 
 
 ' But surely,' cried I, wondering at him, for his had always 
 seemed to me as prosaic a mind as ever I met with in a sailor 
 nor could I forget his ridicule of the superstitious craze of the 
 man who had drowned himself in the English Channel, ' you do 
 not want yourself to believe that there is anything in a mere 
 body of luminous vapour, to call it so, to hurt or influence you, 
 either in body or mind ? ' 
 
 He shook his head very despondently : I observed that he ate 
 little, though he drank a quantity of tea, thirstily and feverishly. 
 * I'm a poor man, sir,' he exclaimed, ' but, so help me Heaven, 
 Mr. Musgrave, I'd gladly have parted with every shilling of my 
 savings sooner than that the capt'n should have headed the brig 
 slick into that sliining. Beg your pardon, Miss,' he continued, 
 addressing Miss Grant with a sudden eagerness, ' but when ye 
 entered that light did it feel cold to ye ? ' 
 
 ' No,' she answered, without exhibiting surprise at the question. 
 
 'You, Mj. Musgrave did it feel chilly like ? not so much upon 
 your skin as here ? ' and he put his hand to his heart. 
 
 'The only sensation I can recollect,' I answered, 'is one of 
 delight at the glorious picture the brig made, as she slowly 
 floated into the radiance out of the blackness, coating herself 
 with the quicksilver of it from the truck to the end of the 
 swinging boom.'
 
 108 MAROONED 
 
 He was silent, then shook his head, and exclaimed, 'Well, 
 mere fancy, no doubt. It's all fancy in this here world. With- 
 out imagination there'd be nothing to hope for, nothing to b 
 afraid or.' 
 
 * There might have been a chill in the light, though we enjoyed 
 the picture too much to be conscious of it,' said Miss Grant, 
 talking to me though speaking at Gordon. 
 
 ' The strangest part of it was this. Miss/ he said, looking at 
 her earnestly. ' I felt it was cold afore we entered it. 'Twas 
 that which made me so earnest the capt'n should shift the 
 helium. I knew so soon as ever I came in contact with that 
 light the bleakness of it would catch me here,' again putting 
 his hand to his heart, * and I'd have given all I'm worth all I'm 
 worth,' the poor fellow ci'ied, with a vehemence unusual in him, 
 ' to have escaped it. Up to the moment when the light had slidea 
 within a foot of me I'd no sensation but the fear of what was 
 a-coming ; but the moment it touched me I felt the chilL There 
 was death in it, sir, there was death in it 1 No man 11 ever 
 persuade me contrary-wise.' 
 
 He checked what I was about to say by rising with an apolo- 
 getic glance at the skylight, to let us know he could linger no 
 longer, and immediately went on deck. 
 
 I had so much faith in the steadiness of Gordon's intellect 
 that I could only accept this odd posture in him as due to some 
 trifling functional derangement, which a dose of physic or a few 
 hours' rest would correct. Yet it gave Miss Grant and me some- 
 thing to talk about. I had some knowledge of sailors and their 
 superstitions, and kept her amused for an hour or two with 
 stories of wizards of Finnish origin, who sold favourable gales 
 of wind to credulous mariners ; of bald human heads, with little 
 laughing black eyes and capacious grinning mouths, rising to the 
 surface, and terrifying Jack by asking questions in a tongue 
 unknown to any nation under the stars, and then disappearing 
 with a shriek of derisive laughter ; of ghostly shapes alighting 
 on the yard-arms, and kindling corpse-lights there, by whose 
 dismal illumination the mariner could see phantom faces glim- 
 mering out into expressions of sorrow and remorse, as though 
 grieving over the fateful missions on which they had been 
 dispatched. 
 
 However, though I had no sympathy with the queer notions 
 which had come into Gordon's head, my own misgivings were of 
 a kind which might very well have passed for a sort of super- 
 stition too ; for they kept me incessantly foreboding disaster, 
 though what form it was to take I never could have imagined ; 
 and so, as you will see, the mate's despondency in its way was 
 no more deserving of ridicule than mine. First of all, I was 
 more troubled than I was perhaps conscious of, by the recol- 
 lection of the murder that had been committed. It worried uie 
 mostly of nights ; again and again in the darkness of my cabin. 
 and in the silence of the long watches, when the brig was sailing
 
 BROADWATER'S PROPOSAL 109 
 
 smoothly forwards, and all was still upon the sea, when nothing 
 broke upon the ear but the muffled washing of water outside, 
 and the faint jar and creak of the fabric within, the vision or 
 the mate as I saw him when he stood at the foot of the com- 
 panion-steps with the grin of death in his moving and speech- 
 less lips, his right hand extended, his left hand dabbling in his 
 shirt, that was soaked where his fingers pressed, with the life- 
 blood draining from his heart, would rise before me horribly 
 distinct, and keep me rolling and tumbling in my bunk, till 
 more than once it ended in my jumping up, lighting the lamp, 
 and clothing myself, and killing a couple of sleepless hours with 
 -pipes of tobacco, and a drain or two from the private stock in 
 the next cabin. Then again, as I have before said, it was a 
 cause of no small consternation to me, secret as the emotion 
 was, to feel that the man who had committed this murder 
 moved freely about the ship, enjoying his liberty and the pro- 
 tection of the crew, and had all necessary leisure besides to 
 converse with the men, and to influence them to ny purpose he 
 might have in his mind. Indeed I formed a darker opinion of 
 the sailors from their willing association with the ruifian, and 
 the jokes I would hear them exchanging with him, than from 
 any other sort of conduct I had as yet witnessed in them. It 
 was un-English a harsh, bad, jarring note in the rough and 
 rude harmony of British forecastle life j and this feature of our 
 shipboard existence was the uglier to my mind for the man 
 being a foreigner. Such half-bloods as this Charles, at best, are a 
 people alongside whom our Jacks do not much care to sling their 
 hammocks nor eat out of the same kid with ; but in addition 
 to this man's deformity of breed was his proved quality as a 
 ' knifer ' a characteristic unpleasantly common to those skins, 
 and half the secret at least of the aversion they inspire in 
 English crews. Detestable as Bothwell had been as a man, the 
 crime of his murder was more to be abhorred even than he ; and 
 I say it worked in me like a superstition to see his assassin 
 coming and going about the decks, fetching his meals from the 
 caboose along with the others, singing out at the ropes, or hail- 
 ing from aloft in the voice of a lively hearty but always with 
 the same sharp, stabbing gleam in his eyes whenever he turned 
 them upon Broadwater and making a part of the brig's honest 
 routine, when his proper lodging was the forepeak, his fit equip- 
 ment the bilboes, and his rightful condition the completest 
 practicable isolation from his shipmates. 
 
 These and twenty more such thoughts were in my mind after 
 Miss Grant had withdrawn to her berth, and whilst I remained 
 alone watching the shambling figure of the cabin-boy stripping 
 the cabin-table, with a hungry goggling of his eyes at the 
 remains of the meal, as he staggered up the hatchway with the 
 dishes. I was mechanically rolling a cigar between my fingers. 
 with the intention of lighting it and going on deck, when Broad- 
 water came below. I supposed he would pass to his cabin, for,
 
 110 MAROONEC 
 
 now that he divided the look-out with Gordon, he was very 
 
 Sunctual in going to bed when it came to his turn to quit the 
 eck. Instead, he halted, took a survey of the cabin as if to 
 make sure that we were alone, and then came and sat down 
 near me. 
 
 'Mr. Musgrave,' said he, speaking with hesitation and 
 awkwardly, ' I knew that you was at sea as a youth, sir ; but 
 I wasn't aware, till Mr. Gordon just now told me, that you 
 considered yourself equal to taking charge of the deck and 
 navigating a craft.' 
 
 I looked at him, wondering what was in his mind. 
 
 ' I hope,' he continued, ' you'll find nothing offensive in what 
 I'm about to observe. The fact's this. Now that my mate's 
 overboard, there's no man but me in this here brig, barring 
 yourself, with knowledge enough of the quadrant to know what 
 
 Fart to put his eye at, if so be he should need to use it. Now, if 
 should fall sick, who is there, onless it be you, sir, who'd be 
 able to carry on the navigation of this here brig? Gordon 
 tells me that you yourself said to him a short while ago you'd 
 be willing, if asked, to take a mate's berth aboard of me. Now, 
 Mr. Musgrave, what d'ye say ? Gordon's agreeable to fall back 
 into his old spear, and if you'll take his place as mate, sir, I 
 should be glad, very glad indeed ; though of course I won't say 
 nothing about remooneration, that being a matter you might 
 afterwards settle with the owner.' 
 
 ' I am obliged to you for your offer,' said L 'I certainly did 
 say something to Gordon about being willing to lend a hand in 
 the navigation of the brig, should my services in that way ever 
 be required ; but as to taking a post of command over your 
 
 crew ' I shook my head. ' I don't like their attitude. I don't 
 
 like the idea of your mate's murderer being an large ; I don't 
 like to think that there's any body of English sailors who can 
 not only protect but remain friends with a naif -blood, a foreign 
 miscreant, whose knife, in my humble opinion, is as ready for 
 another man's heart as it was for Mr. Bothwell's.' 
 
 * Ay,' said he hoarsely, leaning towards me with a look at the 
 skylight, and then at the hatch, ' that's just it. Ye've hit it true 
 as a hair. It's more because I want to feel that we're stronger 
 than we are aft than because I may fall sick that I'd be glad to 
 see you mate, first or second, as you may elect. I don't mind 
 telling you,' he continued, in the same hoarse, subdued voice, and 
 with another look up and around, ' that the aspect of the present 
 biling don't sit pleasingly upon my eyes, sir. Ye heard what 
 Gordon said that night of the murder, when he came down how 
 the half-blood 'ud do for me too if I didn't keep a bright look-out. 
 Well, I tell you, I've learnt to fear that man. I don't like his 
 looks. I met his eye just now, and it was like the snap of a 
 musket at me. I haven't said much about it, in fact I haven't 
 said anything; and maybe it's weighed the more upon me 'cause 
 I kept myself shut up on the subject. But it's a long way to Bio
 
 BROAD WATER'S PROPOSAL 111 
 
 yet, sir, and my fenr of what that man's capable of is a weight 
 that I must chuck over the side somehow or other. My notion 
 is, then, that if you took the mate's berth ^the men 'ud like it, 
 you being a gentleman. They'd feel your influence after a bit, 
 and by expressing of your feelings to them in the sort of language 
 that my neglected education as a boy keeps me as a man 
 a-falling short of, they might grow ashamed of their protection 
 of the half-blood, and be willing to let us clap him in irons, 
 when of course I should be able to sleep sound again, and enjoy 
 my meals with the old satisfaction.' 
 
 He looked at me with a mixture of eagerness and cunning in 
 his little eves. I did not need to reflect, for whilst he had been 
 speaking I had made up my mind. 
 
 ' I thank you for your good opinion of me,' said I ; ' I cannot 
 accept any such post as you propose. 'Twas a mere fancy 
 tossed to the bo'sun in the course of a talk, with no wish or 
 resolution in it at all ; but, though I decline your offer, you will 
 of course understand that I am quite prepared to support you 
 in any time of trouble ; always presuming,' I added significantly, 
 'that the authority you exercise, but which may be resisted, 
 is fair, legitimate, and consistent with regular sea-duties.' 
 
 ' Have ye got any weapons of your own ? ' he asked, with 
 another look up and around. 
 
 ' Yes,' I answered. 
 
 ' What are they, sir ? ' 
 
 4 A brace of pistols,' said L 
 
 4 Any hammunition ? ' 
 
 4 Ay,' I replied, smiling, 'enough to send ten times the number 
 of your crew to their account.' 
 
 * That's all right,' said he : ' I'm armed too, armed enough to 
 be able to sarve out whats needful to Gordon, and to have 
 enough left for myself and more, if we can get others to help 
 us. Would you mind doing this, sir ? get in with the men in 
 a proper sort of condescending way, so as there could be nothing 
 bemeaning in the thing to a gent of your spirit, and find out 
 if there's e er a man forward who is to be trusted to stand by and 
 look on, should you and me and Gordon arrange to rush the job.' 
 
 ' I don't fully understand,' said L 
 
 'Well, I'll tell ye,' he exclaimed, with his eyes very full of 
 cunning and eagerness, 'the notion that's come into my head's 
 this : if we could count on so many of the men standing aloof, 
 should it come to a melhee, then for the safety of all consarned 
 I should propose that you and nie and Gordon should arm 
 ourselves, have the handcuffs ready, fall upon and secure the 
 half-blood when no man could suspect our intentions, drag him 
 aft and lock him up down here, and with our pistols keep any 
 of the crew off who should attempt a rescue.' 
 
 'The scheme is practicable,' said I, after a little, 'but it 
 requires consideration. At the first sight I don't half like it. J 
 see your difficulty I clearly perceive that unless this half-blood
 
 112 MAROONED 
 
 be secured and removed from all intercourse with the crew, 
 diabolical mischief may follow. I realize this : that at one end 
 of the ship is a murderer, at the other end a man who is only 
 waiting to get him to Kio to hang him.' He nodded vehemently. 
 * He knows that, and the question is, is he going to give you the 
 chance to hang him ? ' 
 
 ' That's the question ! ' he cried, bringing his fist down heavily 
 upon the table. 
 
 ' Yes,' I exclaimed, ' and it has haunted me pretty smartly of 
 late, I can assure you. But, on the other hand, a melhee, as you 
 call it, this project of seizing the half-blood and threatening 
 the sailors with our small-arms, might, indeed it would, end in 
 rank, staring, hellish mutiny. What then would you do t There 
 are but three of us against the whole ship's company. The 
 safety of the lady who is on board this vessel under my pro- 
 tection is my first consideration. It would be a poor look-out 
 to set fire to a ship in order to get rid of a rat. It would be an 
 equally poor look-out to excite the men into wild revolt against 
 the three of us, to the imperilling of the life and honour of Miss 
 Grant, for all we dare predict, simply that your mind may be 
 eased by having the half-blood under lock and key.' 
 
 'Then what's to be done?' he exclaimed coarsely, and in a 
 defiant, quarrelsome way. ' The safety of the brig depends upon 
 me, and if harm befalls me, what's to become of her, and you, 
 and the lady you're so consarned about and unwisely con- 
 sarned about in my opinion, for, by not helping me, you'll be 
 chancing to let her go adrift.' 
 
 'I have told you, Captain Broad water,' said I, greatly disliking 
 this sudden change of manner in him, for I had met his sugges- 
 tion in a very earnest spirit, 'that in a time of extremity, 
 which shall not understand me have been brought about by 
 any act of cruelty and brutality on your part, I will support 
 you and Mr. Gordon heart and soul. But I cannot accept the 
 duties you ask me to undertake, nor do I see my way to offering 
 to help you in any wild scheme of seizing the half-blood, under 
 cover of the muzzles of our pistols, with perhaps the obligation 
 of having to shoot down one or more of your crew, to the 
 assured end of raising a murderous spirit amongst the men. and 
 exciting them into God knows what act of terrible mutiny. 
 
 As I said this, Miss Grant came from her berth. I made a 
 gesture to him to signify that no more must be said now ; on 
 which he rose and went to his cabin. She looked at me 
 earnestly, but was silent. I handed her up the companion- 
 ladder, lighted a cigar, and followed. The morning was deli- 
 ciously fine. There was a pleasant breeze a little abaft the beam, 
 which enabled the brig to show her lower studding-sail to it, and 
 under broad wings packed to the trucks, the little vessel glided 
 crisply over a sea of blue, the beautiful dark dye of which at 
 the horizon seemed to tincture the line of the sky, bending 
 down past it into an opalescent shimmer through contrast of
 
 BROADWATER'S PROPOSAL 113 
 
 the sapphire sweep with the azure faintness behind it. The 
 decks were dryana white, with a crystalline sparkling of salt 
 about them. There was a short awning just abaft the skylight, 
 and our deck-chairs were under it ; but the sun was not yet 
 high, the wind blew sweet and cool over the rail ; life was 
 stirred to her innermost sources by the freshness of the morn- 
 ing, and to sit would have been to forfeit half the delights of 
 this radiant day. On our quarter, steering north, was a 
 brigantine, toy -like in the distance ; the sunlight flashed an 
 ivory whiteness on her windward canvas, whilst the violet 
 shadowing on the leeward cloths made them look to be melting 
 OP the airy blue beyond. There was a spot of colour in her 
 rigging, and Gordon, from the other side, called out to me that 
 she was a Dane. There was nothing else in sight, and the 
 mighty stretch of water, under the dazzle of the soaring sun, 
 lookea the vaster for that fairy-like fabric upon it. 
 
 I threw a swift glance along our decks, and noticed that the 
 men worked quietly upon their various jobs. A couple of them 
 were busy on some chafing-gear in the fore-rigging ; a spun-yarn 
 winch was rattling on the forecastle ; and the half-blood, Charles, 
 with his back upon us, dressed in blue dungaree, a red cap on 
 his head, and chocolate-coloured shanks bare to the knees, was 
 balling up the stuff as it was manufactured. The cook was 
 standing in the door of his little galley, smoking a sooty pipe, 
 his naked arms folded upon his breast, watching the cabin-boy 
 close by washing some plates and dishes in a tub. High aloft 
 on the fore-royal-yard stood the figure of a man, who had paused 
 in some work he was upon up there to stand erect with his hand 
 on the truck, and the sharp of his other hand over his eyes, 
 whilst he gazed into the immeasurable distance visible to him 
 from that altitude. The tall, muscular seaman, Terence Mole, 
 was at the helm, his hands carelessly gripping the spokes of the 
 wheel, his attitude full of that indefinable, floating ease that 
 enters as a sort of grace into the posture and movements of the 
 true deep-water sailor. All these were details to fill my eye in 
 a breath ; and on the surface the picture was so homely, there 
 seemed so much salt, plain honesty in the complexion, quality, 
 aspect of the full scene, that my instant recurrence to what but 
 a little while before had passed between the captain and myself, 
 affected me as an unreality, as something that I had imagined, 
 as an affront to the truth of this quiet, inboard picture, and to 
 the high, wide, refreshing splendour through which our little 
 craft was softly pushing. 
 
 When we emerged from the cabin, Miss Grant made some 
 commonplace remark about the beauty of the morning ; but we 
 had scarcely measured half the length of the deck when, looking 
 at me wistfully and searchingly also, she exclaimed, ' What has 
 happened to worry you, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 4 1 must look worried, I suppose ' I answered, smiling, * or you 
 would not ask the question.'
 
 114 MAROONED 
 
 * You do, indeed. It is some anxiety that concerns this royage, 
 of course. Thei*e can be nothing else, for there are no postmen 
 here to bring you disagreeable news ; at least I hope the cause 
 lies in the voyage,' she added. * If it do, mil you tell me what 
 it 1st' 
 
 Now my immediate impulse was to answer her evasively ; 
 but on meeting her gaze, I observed so much fearlessness in it, 
 so much clear and keen intelligence, along with so direct a 
 challenge to me to be plain with her or not speak at all, and 
 so unmistakable an assurance besides of a guess that had al- 
 ready carried her half-way into the truth, that I said to myself 
 with the swiftness of one who thinks, ' Why not be perfectly 
 candid with this woman f The wit and instincts of her sex 
 may help me.' 
 
 She kept her gaze fastened upon me, and seemed to read my 
 thoughts. She said, with a little smile very full of pride, 
 ' Do you know, Mr. Musgrave, if Alexander ever had a doubt, 
 lie would come to me to settle it for him. I am fond of pro- 
 blems. If I were a man, I should wish to be a politician above 
 all things. I should love to be in a position where my judgment 
 would be constantly tested, and where I should have to act 
 quickly. What is best in the sailor's character springs from 
 this habit. He is incessantly confronted by surprises, many of 
 them tragical, all of them requiring instant resolution.' She 
 preserved her smile, still continuing to look at ma I suspected 
 she talked to give me time to think. 
 
 'My anxiety,' said I, 'concerns our position on board this 
 vessel your position chiefly. What could offer a more peaceful 
 picture than these decks ? How softly the shadows sway ! The 
 men are working as quietly as if the whole gladness of the 
 morning were in them ; and yet, since you wish to know the 
 truth, Miss Grant, I should say that if these planks were grow- 
 ing insufferably hot from fire below raging, but as yet con- 
 cealed our outlook would be more distinctly satisfactory to 
 my mind than it is now, staunch as the brig is, quiet as these 
 fellows seem, calm and glowing as the whole picture all about 
 us shows.' 
 
 She threw a glance around her, and said quietly, 'What has 
 occurred to put these thoughts into you ? ' 
 
 I came to a halt, our faces fronting the forecastle, and indi- 
 cating the half-blood by a movement of my head, I said, 'That 
 fellow there knows that on the arrival of this brig be must lie 
 hanged, or in some other manner dispatched for the murder of 
 Mr. Bothwell. He also knows that the man who is resting in 
 the cabin under our feet means to get him killed for his crime.' 
 The half-blood turned his head at this moment, and we resumed 
 our walk. ' Yoti say you are fond of problems. Here is one for 
 vou. That fellow forward has the sympathies of the whole crew, 
 lie has more : he hits their protection, and they will not allow a 
 linger to be laid upon Wn. Aft is a captain who stands alone.'
 
 BROADWATER'S PROPOSAL 11* 
 
 *The problem, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 1 How is Captain Broad water to sail the ship to Rio, and set 
 you and me sately ashore there, with yonder olive-coloured villain 
 closely and intimately associated with the crew popular amongst 
 them as the hero who freed them from the tyranny of the mate 
 conscious, maybe, of their willingness to help him save his life, 
 which he knows must be forfeited on the arrival of the brig 1 ' 
 
 'What do you fear?' 
 
 'That Master Ernest Charles yonder will contrive that this 
 brig shall never reach her port.' 
 
 'By what means?' 
 ' 'Ha !' said I, 'there it is,^Miss Grant.' 
 
 She threw another swift glance ai'ound her, and slightly 
 knitted her brows. 'Can we not contrive to find out what 
 Captain Broad water thinks ? ' she said. 
 
 I exactly repeated my conversation with him in the cabin. 
 She listened until I had made an end, and then said quickly, 
 ' Mr. Musgrave, if you will be advised by me, you will take no 
 part in any scheme the captain may decide upon as regards 
 the discipline of the vessel. The men know that they have 
 your sympathies, and should trouble come, they will at least 
 they may remember that you were their friend. But what 
 would be the result of your siding with the captain, helping him 
 to put that wretched creature yonder in irons, perhaps being 
 obliged in self-defence to shoot one of the crew ? We have a 
 right to think of our safety. Captain Broad water has imperilled 
 it by his treatment of the men, and I say we have a right. Mr. 
 Musgrave, to think of ourselves. My advice is, be neutral. 
 
 I dare say I was the more impressed by what she said, because 
 of her having given prompt and clear expression to my own 
 secret opinions. The judgment that concurs with our own 
 must be, of course, very shrewd and sagacious. But I could also 
 find a good deal to admire in the quickness with which she had 
 seen into the thing, and the accuracy of her insight. For, after 
 all, it only needed a little thought to enable me to conclude, that 
 as Gordon hardly seemed a man to prove serviceable in a crisis 
 being j ust a plain, sober, slow-minded sailor, whose tastes were 
 altogether forward, and who in his heart loved the captain as 
 little as the others the main burden of Broadwater's project 
 must be borne by him and me ; that a conflict between us and 
 the crew must inevitably end in our defeat, and perhaps in our 
 destruction, for the sight of a levelled pistol would serve, as 
 a wand in the hand of a wizard, to raise the foulest of evil 
 spirits among the people of the brig ; and that if I were not 
 slaughtered outright in the struggle with the men, they would 
 extend their hatred of the captain to me in an equal measure, 
 so that, in a word, I should be practically helpless as a protector 
 in any form or fashion for Miss Grant. Indeed, this was the 
 essential meaning of her ad vice tome her en treaty almost ; yet 
 I thought I would sound her womanly judgment a little farther. 
 
 I 2
 
 Ufl MAROONED 
 
 'You are perfectly right, and I shall be guided by you. But 
 suppose the captain should be set upon by the men I mean 
 treacherously without furnishing them with an inch of honest 
 justification, would not it be my duty as well as my policy 
 to stand by him ? ' 
 
 ' But is he likely to be set upon unless he provokes them ? And 
 judging from what we have seen, if he provokes them, will he 
 not deserve the treatment he may receive at their hands ? ' she 
 answered, with a flash of indignation in her look which gave mo 
 to know that old Broadwater must expect no commiseration 
 from her, happen what might. 
 
 'I am heartily sorry,' said I, with a smile which instantly 
 brought the light of one into her face, though my own grin was 
 pure admiration without the faintest flavour of mirth ; for her 
 beauty showed rich just then to the mood excited in her by our 
 conversation, and admiration will often make a man smile as 
 though he had a joke in his head when, God knows, his heart may 
 be full of mirthless emotion, ' I am heartily sorry that I was ever 
 at sea as a sailor. Were I a landsman making my first voyage, I 
 should find little or nothing to worry me in what has happened : 
 particularly now that the roll of the commotion is smoothed 
 out. and everything,' I added, with a look along the peaceful 
 decks, ' is as placid on the surface as the waters of a canal.' 
 
 'A little patience, Mr. Musgrave!' she exclaimed. 'Rio is 
 closer than it was a fortnight ago.' I was not so sure of that, 
 but I said nothing. 'At all events,' she continued, 'we must 
 take care that you return home in a good ship, with a pleasant 
 captain.' 
 
 * Yes,' said I, ' we must see to that.' 
 
 'Alexander will be able to advise you,' she said, with a 
 softening of her voice to the utterance of his name. 'He is 
 sure to know of a good ship, one that might be quite worth 
 waiting for if she is not at Rio.' 
 
 ' Confound Alexander ! ' I thought to myself, and her way of 
 speaking of him so teased me, that it would have soothed the 
 momentary irritation to have told her that I heartily wished he 
 stood in my boots on board this brig. But a glance at her 
 made me feel that the expression of such a wish would have 
 been preposterously insincere. No ; our situation was uncom- 
 monly dark and uncomfortable : no man knowing the truth 
 would have dared venture to predict that to-morrow would find 
 us as we were to-day ; and still my enjoyment of her society 
 topped every risk I could contemplate ; and how detestable the 
 
 E reject of our association coming to an end was to me, I knew 
 y my inward perturbation that followed on her speaking of 
 Alexander, and his choosing me a good ship to return in. 
 
 An hour passed. Our conversation was chiefly about the 
 crew, and the outlook they threatened, and again and again she 
 advised me not to entertain any scheme old Broadwater might 
 submit* but to view myself wholly aa a passenger, without
 
 BROADWATER'S PROPOSAL 117 
 
 further concern in the voyage than its conclusion. She then, 
 feeling tired, took a chair under the awning and put a book 
 upon ner knee, but seemed to have no eyes for anything but 
 the crew, whom she watched curiously, as might an artist who 
 gazes for effects of colour, posture, and expression. All this 
 while Gordon trudged the weather-deck alone. I now crossed 
 over to him. 
 
 ' Feel more cheerful by this time, I hope, Mr. Gordon ? ' said I ; 
 'a man's spirits must be gloomy indeed that don't brighten out 
 to such a day as this.' 
 
 He forced a grin, and said, ' Worrit, sir, worrit ; there's no 
 accounting for a man's feelings. I wish it 'ud come on to blow. 
 This here smiling kind of weather is all very well when ye ain't 
 in a hurry ; but when ye've got bows forrard like the head of a 
 puncheon, and beam enough for a score of fandangoes 'twixt the 
 rails, without call to stop even a coil of halliards to the standing 
 rigging to get more room, then what one wants is the relieving- 
 tackles hauled taut, and two chaps sweating at the wheel, and 
 the spritsail-yard out of sight in the smother over the bows.' 
 
 ' You're in as great a hurry as Miss Grant,' I exclaimed. 
 
 ' Greater, I dessay,' he exclaimed. ' To tell ye the truth, Mr. 
 Musgrave, I'm sick of the voyage. None of these here small 
 brigs for me again, sir. Never no more ! Nothen less than a 
 thousand ton. A man's nature seems able to stand upright 
 when he's aboard a big ship ; in these here small craft it's all 
 stooping for fear of knocking your brains out.' 
 
 There was a sour expression on his face which strictly corre- 
 sponded with the sentiment and note of his grumbling. I said 
 to him, 'Gordon, an odd thought came into my head just now. 
 Notice the half-blood yonder. He's a clearer menace to our 
 safety than an auger working through the ship's bottom. Now 
 what think you of the scheme of the captain of you and me 
 arming ourselves with loaded pistols, springing upon him un- 
 awares, handcuffing him, and dragging him aft under cover of 
 the muzzles of our small arms ? ' 
 
 ' What do I think of it, sir T he exclaimed, without a moment's 
 hesitation. 
 
 ' Yes,' I rejoined. 
 
 c This,' said he. ' If there's any gunpowder aboard, better knock 
 the head off a barrel and snap one of your pistols into it, and 
 blow the whole blooming mess of us to heaven. But you're not 
 serious ? ' 
 
 'No, no,' said I; 'certainly not. Mere fancy, and nothing 
 more. But not to your liking, evidently.' 
 
 ' Good God ! ' he exclaimed, ' at the first offer to touch Charles, 
 pistol or no pistol, the whole crew 'ud be on ye like one man. 
 They'd like the scheme. It's the sort of chance they're waiting 
 for. For Heaven's sake, don't go and suggest your notion to the 
 capt'n, sir. He's just the sort of man to euierUiu it, and to 
 come and ask me to help him.'
 
 118 MAROONED 
 
 'Would you help him f ' said I. 
 
 'Let him ask me first, Mr. Musgrave,' he replied, with an odd 
 look at me out of the corner of his eyes. If this was not news, 
 'twas what I needed to get from his lips. Even had Miss 
 Grant's advice not already settled my mind, Gordon's askant 
 glance, that was more eloquent than words, would have decided 
 me out of hand, there and then. In truth it could but prove as 
 I had foreseen, should I consent to help the captain ; and 1 
 remember that I let out my breath in a half -wild sigh of relief 
 over the determination I had formed as I turned from Gordon 
 to take a chair at Miss Grant's side. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 WE LOSE THE CABIX-BOY 
 
 Two mornings after this, on going on deck shortly before the 
 breakfast-hour, I found the weather changed. The high sun, the 
 blue skies which had shone over us now for many days together, 
 were gone. The atmosphere was gloomy, with a pale thickness 
 that brought the sea-line to within cannon-shot. Under the 
 lead-coloured gloom over the mastheads one could dimly catch 
 sight here and there of a black curl of scud-like cloud blowing 
 leisurely athwart our track ; otherwise there was no break, no 
 shadowed curve or line to tell of a denser or darker vapour yet 
 above the warm and sallow haze through which the wind was 
 sweeping without dispersing it. The sea ran in a slopping sort 
 of way that made a great noise about the brig's sides with notes 
 of hollow plashing, the slap of a leap of water seething to its 
 own recoil, the short small roar of billows overspringing some 
 backward scend ahead of them, like the groaning of surf tumb- 
 ling in snow to the hidden drag of the undertow. You would 
 have thought there was a strong windward tide running ; yet 
 with all this briskness of surface play, I never saw the ocean 
 wear a sulkier look. The glorious sparkling blue of its brine 
 was gone ; 'twas now of a cold, sallowish green, thick and 
 muddy with every heave; as though under its heads of foam, 
 and the short, conflicting runs of its small seas, it had been 
 thickened into sluggishness by upheaval of ooze into its volume. 
 
 The atmosphere was like a tepid bath, and the brig was damp 
 with it from her loftiest cloths to the deck from which I sur- 
 veyed the scene. She was under all plain sail, the yards braced 
 forward, but the studding-sail-booms were still rigged out, 
 which was perhaps as good as saying that old Broadwater 
 found notlung more in the weather that had come down 
 upon us than was visible to the bare eye. She was pushing 
 through it dully, and tumbling uncomfortably, in a most 
 sickening way indeed ; insomuch, that for the first tiuie during
 
 WE LOSE THE CABIN-BOY 110 
 
 thia voyage I felt absolutely uneasy, though the fresh air 
 speedily relieved me of the disagreeable oppression. There 
 was no weight of surge, and yet she could not have flopped 
 about more drunkenly had a strong sea been running. First 
 she would give a sharp dip forward ; but before she could put 
 her round nose well into it, a trough would suddenly yawn under 
 her counter, and oblige her to drop her stern sharply, and with 
 a souse that would send a large dark-green, glass-clear curl of 
 water thundering into foam away from her quarter an instant 
 after she would tumble to windward, as though collecting her 
 energies for a good heel over to t'other side ; but whilst you 
 - postured yourself for the slope of the deck, she would recover 
 herself with a jerk that made you stagger again. I had never 
 heard so much groaning aloft before. The mandrake is said to 
 shriek when dragged out by the roots ; so did every shroud, 
 backstay, and halliard aboard the Iron Crown, to the fierce 
 jerking strains put upon them by the giddy, capricious rolling 
 of the spars. Every parrel delivered a groan of its own, every 
 sheave squeaked like a rat in its^block ; nor though the wind 
 was of some little briskness had it power to keep the courses 
 and even the topsails distended during the leeward plunges, 
 when the heavy cloths would come in to the masts with a blow 
 that sent blasts of noise through the air like boiler explosions 
 or smart claps of thunder. 
 
 Broadwater was in charge. I stepped mechanically over to 
 the compass to have a look at the card, though of course it was 
 to be known by the lay of her yards that the brig was steering 
 her true course. The captain was clothed in a long pea-coat 
 and sou'-wester, and his red face, framed in the sea-helmet, 
 showed methought this morning very sourly, with a harsh twist 
 about his mouth that put the look of a sulky sneer into its 
 ordinary, familiar, whistling expression. A large drop of 
 moisture sparkled at the end of his nose. He stood holding on 
 to the weather-vang of the trysail-gaff, apparently as little able 
 as I was to move about the decks. The watch had finished their 
 business of washing down, the rcpcs were coiled away, and 
 everything was ship-shape foro and aft but the drizzled, weep- 
 ing aspect of the brig, with shadows ot moisture lying in dark 
 curves upon her canvas, and blobs of wet distilling from gray 
 ropes and black shrouds, made her look singularly dejected and 
 forlorn, and I could scarcely forbear a smile, as I glanced from 
 the picture of her to the skipper's face, and witnessed the 
 absurd correspondence between his damp sourness and her 
 appearance. 
 
 He eyed me as if he would like to speak, but I took care that 
 he should find no encouragement in the short ' good-morning ' 
 that I called to him. The truth is, I had given him as wide a 
 berth as I could possibly contrive since the hour when he had 
 unfolded his scheme to me of capturing the half-blood. I hud 
 made. up my mind on the matter, and therefore had no desire t$
 
 120 MAROONED 
 
 hear him again on it. Indeed, Miss Grant's advice had so 
 worked in me that my attitude was perhaps more resolved and 
 more sharply accentuated than the occasion demanded. In 
 short, it entered my head that, for all I could tell, the captain's 
 scheme might find its way to the forecastle ; by what agency of 
 course I could not have indicated, for I was sure that Gordon 
 was not a man to talk. But ? nevertheless, I knew that on ship- 
 board there is a species of wizardry at work in the atmosphere, 
 by whose operations the crew do somehow or other manage to 
 obtain a dim intelligence of what passes even in whispers in 
 the cabin ; and I was resolved that if the captain's proposal to 
 me should come to be guessed at by the sailors, or reach their 
 knowledge in the indefinable manner in which news creeps 
 through a ship at sea., they should perceive that I had no 
 sympathy with it ; which was only to be managed by letting 
 them infer my opinion of Broad water by my behaviour to him 
 on deck. 
 
 It was a gloomy breakfast-table. The morning lay so foggily 
 upon the skylight that I could scarcely distinguish Miss Grant s 
 features without leaning towards her. There were fiddles on 
 the table, but the quick rolls of the brig rendered them useless. 
 A plate of bacon was capsized on to Broad water's knees, and I 
 narrowly escaped being badly scalded by the sudden fetching 
 away 01 the skipper's huge teapot, which to one sharp heave 
 jumped like a live thing over the divisions, and poured its 
 contents in a boiling stream within a couple of inches of my 
 right leg. 
 
 If we were not clear of the Gulf Stream,' said I, ' this should 
 make a man believe lu'mself in the heart of it.' 
 
 4 What's the matter with the Gulf Stream, sir,' said Broad water, 
 4 supposing this was it ? ' 
 
 4 You have heard, I suppose,' said I, almost amused by the 
 excessive sourness in his face, 4 of vessels sailing with royals and 
 studding-sails into the belt, and meeting ships coming out of it 
 under close-reefed topsails i ' 
 
 4 Well, I may have heard of it, as you remark,' he exclaimed 
 ' but I haven't been going to sea all these years to believe all I 
 hear at tliis time o' day.' 
 
 There was a note of insolence in the old chap|s voice that 
 instantly started me on addressing Miss Grant with the com- 
 pletest air of unconsciousness of his presence that I could com- 
 mand. Once I caught his eye, and the gleam of it was not a 
 little malevolent, minute as the puncture was through which he 
 stared. How unusually quarrelsome and bad-tempered he was 
 this morning was to be noticed in his way of speaking to the 
 cabin-boy. It was inconceivable that the poor lad should be 
 able to cut anything but an intolerable figure on that staggering 
 deck, and it was quite wonderful that he managed to scrape 
 through his business of bringing the dishes along and waiting 
 go us without breaking his neck, not to speak of what he
 
 WE LOSE THE CABIN-BOY 151 
 
 carried. But Broadwater found him unendurable, heaped abuse 
 on him whenever he had sufficiently emptied his mouth to 
 furnish scope to his tongue, and finally exploded in a whole 
 volley of coarse and brutal terms, which caused Miss Grant to 
 half rise from her chair with a look at me to hand her to her 
 cabin. But the old fellow left his seat at that moment and 
 staggered on deck, with a farewell shake of his fist under the 
 hapless boy's nose, whereupon my companion resumed her 
 place. 
 
 Gordon arrived, looking gray in the twilight of the cabin, and 
 wretched with the dogged melancholy that hung upon him. 
 'He knuckled his forehead with a dismal gesture to Miss Grant, 
 sat down and helped himself to a bit of beef, with the air of a 
 man walking in his sleep. This indeed, to a certain extent, had 
 been his mood ever since the night of the apparition of the 
 luminous bow, but it was so accentuated this morning that the 
 dolefulness of it was absolutely grotesque. 
 
 'It seems to me, Gordon,' said I, 'that a glass of three-finger 
 rum and one-finger water would do you more good than that 
 black fluid you're about to drink. The weather, I admit, is 
 enough for the moment to make life appear as if it were formed 
 of nothing but yellow fog and bilious dots. But, my good 
 fellow, there is really no need for such a mute-like face as yours, 
 as though you had taken a fancy to a hearse's plume to embellish 
 your sou'- wester with, and were rehearsing the proper cast of 
 countenance for it.' 
 
 He rolled up his eyes to the skylight, and then gazed at me 
 with the languishing expression of a sick man, but did not 
 speak. 
 
 ' Of all the most miserable voyages,' I continued, ' recorded or 
 unwritten, I'll venture to declare this tops the list.' 
 
 'Pray don't say so, Mr. Musgrave,' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 'Think of fire, famine, shipwreck, the uninhabited coast, or 
 worse still, the coast inhabited by savages.' 
 
 ' This voyage ain't over yet,' said Gordon, in the voice of a 
 raven. 
 
 'I don't say it's calamitous' I went on. 'Indeed, but for the 
 consideration that your safety and comfort are involved, I should 
 be much too happy to wish the voyage over.' She smiled, and 
 inclined her head to this as a mere commonplace of courtesy, 
 and indeed I easily saw that she made nothing of it, and 
 suspected nothing in it, from the serenity and steadfastness of 
 her gaze. ' Yet,' I continued, * we must call it miserable. As 
 if a fit of superstition ending in the suicide of a seaman shouldn't 
 suffice, there comes the barbarous punishment of lashing a man 
 to the mast. As though that were not enough, mutiny must 
 follow, along with a horrid murder. And now here is Broadwater 
 this morning with every instinct of bad temper and brutality 
 in him forking out like the claws of a cat at sight of a dog ; 
 whilst on top of all sits my good friend there, bowed down by
 
 122 MAROONED 
 
 some sort of speechless woe, for which I am sure that there i* 
 
 no remedy but a good pull at one of my choice old brandy 
 
 bottles.' 
 
 i I started up, meaning to fetch the liquor, but he arrested me 
 
 with a solemn wave of the hand. 
 
 1 * No, sir,' he exclaimed, ' there's nothing in brandy to do me 
 
 food. It isn't woe that's a worriting me. "What it be I'm sure 
 can't tell. I believe the capt'n's clean off his head this morn- 
 ing. He came up a cursing of you to me just now as if he'd 
 imagined you and the half-blood was gone into partnership to 
 take his life.' 
 i ' Do you suppose he thinks this t ' I cried, startled. 
 
 ' No, no, sir, he replied ; ' I said <w if he did. There's no telling 
 what passes in such a mind as his.' 
 
 ; 'I do not see that his fancies, whatever they may be, need 
 trouble us,' said Miss Grant, quietly. 
 
 * No,' I exclaimed ; ' it's not the captain's mind ; it's your face, 
 Gordon. Turn to and give yourself a good hearty shaking, my 
 lad, and so get rid of the longshore humour that s come to you 
 with a view of the finest sight that ever mortal eye rested on. 
 Why, man, we look to you for the only gleam of sailorly jollity 
 that's to be witnessed aboard this olcf hooker. It was but the 
 other day that you were laughing at the notions that dispatched 
 the poor fellow Jesse Cooper over the side. Shake this temper 
 out of you, Gordon.' 
 
 He passed the back of his hairy hand over his forehead. ' Well, 
 sir,' he exclaimed, ' I will if I can. I hope there's nothing in 
 the queer sensations that have come into me to agitate the lady, 
 I'm sure. I'm but a plain sailor man, and never had no college 
 to go to but the fok's le, and don't feel that I've got any right to 
 be sitting in the cabin of even such a brig as this, a-talking to a 
 lady ana gent like you and Miss there. I'm sure I ask both of 
 your pardons if I've at all agitated either of ye by my manner. 
 Sailors are but mortal like other folks ; ye know that, Mr. 
 Musgrave. The sperrits of the heartiest of them will fail at 
 times. It'll all come right, I dare say,' and with that he left us. 
 
 Now all this, along with the darkness of the weather, the 
 drizzle on the skylight, the vile tumbling of the brig, ana the 
 harsh groaning of the labouring fabric, was surely enough to 
 render both Miss Grant and myself as gloomy and depressed as 
 poor Gordon himself. I protest it made me feel exceedingly 
 uncomfortable to know that the captain had gone on deck and 
 abused me to the boatswain in terms which it was easy for my 
 imagination to fit to his lips. One felt that everything was 
 wrong aboard the brig, from the eyes of her to the transom, that 
 she was no better than a complicated trap, of which if one piece 
 of mechanism went wrong tnere was half-a-score more whose 
 action was bound to be sure. 
 
 There was nothing to tempt one on deck. It was Broadwater'g 
 watch below, but he remained above throughout ; why, I could
 
 WE LOSE THE CABIN BOY 128 
 
 not imagine, unless lie was too irritable to rest in his cabin. 
 Thick as the weather was, it was daylight, and one could see a 
 mile at all events, and the risks therefore were as nothing com- 
 pared with those of that black night on which the pig had broken 
 into my berth, and through which Broad water would have slept 
 soundly, no doubt, but for the uproar, as he had turned in very 
 nearly drunk. The atmosphere was close below, and the lee sky- 
 light-lid lay open, and through it, as I sat conversing with Miss 
 Grant, I could hear the captain occasionally bawling in a voice 
 whose harsh, hoarse note struck upon the ear with something of 
 the smart of a blow from a missile on the flesh. Once I heard the 
 men singing out, and gathered from the orders delivered by 
 "Gordon that they were trimming saiL The motion of the brig, 
 however, continued abominable, spasms and throes of motion 
 quite bewildering to the brain at times, accompanied by all sorts 
 of ugly slopping sounds of water, hysteric sobbings and gurg- 
 lings swelling into a semi-muffled, yearning roar as some wind- 
 ward roll would send a billow howling from the side. Reading 
 was impossible; there was nothing to be made of chess or cards, 
 and we could find no better diversion than sitting and talking. 
 
 I think it must have been about noon when I heard the 
 captain's voice suddenly exerted in a number of shouts in 
 which he seemed to be repeating the same orders over and over 
 again, but in the most angry, savage, threatening tones that 
 could be imagined. 
 
 4 What on earth can the wretched old man be at now f ' said 
 L ' 111 take a peep.' 
 
 I threw a cloak over my shoulders, put on my cap, and went 
 on deck. Broadwater was standing on the weather-side of the 
 quarter-deck, gripping the main-royal backstay, and shouting 
 to somebody on the tore, though I did not immediately look 
 that way. Gordon was near the skylight, his hands buried in 
 his coat-pockets, and his dejected face sulkily staring seawards 
 with an air of petulant, gloomy unconcern upon him, as of a 
 man who had passed through the stages of loathing and disgust 
 into contemptuous indifference. I walked right aft so as to 
 get out of the sphere of the skipper's little eyes ; since, whilst I 
 was anxious to see what was going on, I was also disposed to 
 fear that if the old fellow caught me watching, he might fall 
 foul of me in his present humour before the sailors. I now 
 noticed that the wind had come a point or two more free since 
 early morning, and that the yards were braced in to that 
 extent. The foretop-mast studding-sail had been set, but some- 
 thing -was wrong with the block at the extremity of the boom, 
 and the halliards had been slacked away and the sail hauled in 
 great part down upon the forecastle, where it hung with the 
 watch standing by ready to hoist away afresh when the diffi- 
 culty aloft, whatever it was, had been remedied. 
 
 It is proper I should state here, for the information of those 
 to whom sea terms are unintelligible, that * studding -sail -boom
 
 124 MAROONED 
 
 is a long, smooth spar that reeves through irons fixed upon the 
 yard to which it belongs, and that, when the studding-sail is to 
 be set, is run out far beyond the ship's side for the extension of 
 the foot of the cloths. There is no gear attached to it except 
 the tack at the extremity, so that 'tis for all the world like 
 one of those greasy poles which they project over the head of 
 a moored craft on a regatta day, for marine Jack Puddings to 
 walk out on. 
 
 Now as I stood near the wheel, the first object I saw was the 
 figure of the cabin-boy Billy, as he was called, jockeying the 
 studding-sail-boom at the distance of some three or four feet 
 from the yard-arm. He was supposed to be sliding out to the 
 end of it astride it as though on horseback but you saw at 
 the first glance that the poor creature was in a mortal fright ; 
 that having been urged by the captain's threats to the point at 
 which he had arrived, he was too terrified to advance, whilst the 
 purple face of the old tyrant on the quarter-deck prohibited 
 Him from returning. At any time such a job as this would 
 have been full of danger. Even at anchor on the motionless 
 surface of a river, the task of sliding out to the extremity of a 
 long, naked, and slippery boom would not have been without 
 its peril The undertaking was now rendered so prodigiously 
 dangerous by the peculiarly sharp, rapid, jerking, and dislocating 
 heaves, staggers, and rolls of the brig, that the mere sight of the 
 lad up there shocked me as though he were hanging by the 
 neck ; or being in any other way done to death by the man who 
 continued to bawl out menaces to him. 
 
 ' By Heaven ! ' I cried, with the quick, shuddering sensation of a 
 recoil within myself, so to speak, ' he'll be overboard in a minute.' 
 
 ' Yes, by the Everlasting ! but if he goes for good, the one 
 that '11 follow him ain't fur off,' said a low voice close to mv 
 side. I turned ; it was Charles, the half-blood, who was stand- 
 ing at the wheel. I had not until this moment noticed him. 
 One laughs often at descriptions in novels of the villain of the 
 plot hissing out his threats and imprecations through his 
 clenched teeth ; but I protest that though it was impossible 
 this man could have spoken with his teeth clenched, his utter- 
 ance had the sharp, seething sound which is in the romancer's 
 mind when he endeavours to express it. I started with a 
 sudden uncontrollable shudder of aversion, and went some 
 yards forward. 
 
 ' Shove along out 1 shove along out ! ' roared Broadwater, with 
 an angry sweep of his arm towards the extremity of the boom. 
 
 The hue of the sky against which the boy swung was a dull 
 and dingy slate, here and there in it a deepening of shadow 
 where some dark cloud sailed above the haze : and out of the 
 horizon, that seemed to welter within reacn of an arrow, 
 the sea came running in short, snappish, colliding leaps, with 
 a quarrelsome, hound-like shouldering of one another, and 
 fretful tossjngs of their heads of froth into the air, the foam
 
 WE LOSE THE CABIN-BOY 125 
 
 falling back like showers of snow against the dingy back- 
 ground. The sailors stared up at the lad, but though now 
 one and then another of them would make a movement as if 
 he were about to spring into the rigging, no man offered to 
 take the boy's place. 
 
 I don't believe, however, it was so much the peril of the work 
 that held the fellows in a body looking on, as the feeling that 
 the captain had started the wretched boy on this business as a 
 'work-up job,' and that he would not permit any other man to 
 take his place. It was the most barbarous piece of cruelty you 
 could conceive out and away worse than the fastening of the 
 half-blood to the mast. It was not only that the lad had not 
 "signed as a sailor, so that the captain had no right to turn him 
 to work of that kind : of all the people aboard the brig the 
 poor creature was the least qualified for so perilous an under- 
 taking as sliding out to the extremity of a long boom that was 
 buckling and jumping like a coach-whip to the tumbling vessel's 
 thrash of spar and shear of yard-arm. 
 
 ' Out with you ! Shove along ! Bv thunder, I'll make a 
 traveller of you with the end of the tack ! I'll have ye hauled 
 out and made two blocks of and belayed if you don't bear a 
 hand ! There's no ile in that timber no use your a-squeezing 
 of it ! so out ye go now ! out ye go ! ' 
 
 The white face of the lad turned towards the captain, full of 
 entreaty and terror. On a sudden his cap blew off. Trifling 
 as the thing was, the mere sight of the headgear dropping with 
 a whirl into the sea and showing black an instant ere smothered 
 by a breaking wave, sent a shock through me. 
 
 ' I can't get out, sir ; I can't indeed, sir,' cried the boy, in a 
 most miserable, whining voice. I noticed several of the men 
 forward staring my way, as though Avondering whether I meant 
 to interfere, perhaps hoping to provoke me to do so with their 
 looks. But remonstrance was too late, even if I had not satisfied 
 myself, by observing the temper old Broadwater was in, that it 
 would be idle. It was quite plain that the lad was incapable of 
 working himself another foot along the booni ; and it seemed to 
 me, from the despairful, clinging posture with which he hugged 
 the spar, his trousers ridden up to his knees, and his thin legs 
 and long naked feet swinging in sharp relief against the haze 
 past them, that terror had rendered him incapable of returning. 
 On a sudden the brig pitched sharply, all aslant ; then with a 
 stagger recovered herself, instantly following it by another sharp 
 plunge and a heavy seething of water beaten off her weather-bow. 
 
 ' Mind ! ' I cried at this moment, ' the boy will be overboard.' 
 ^As I spoke he swung under the boom, still clinging to it with 
 his legs and arms. 
 
 ' Come in I come in ! ' roared Gordon, rushing forward ; 'yon 
 can manage it, my lad ; take your time. Up aloft some ot ye 
 and help him.' 
 
 Three men sprang into the shrouds, but before they were fiv
 
 126 MABOONED 
 
 ratlines high the lad's legs dropped, and he swayed at the boom 
 with his hands meeting upon it. his figure swinging like thn 
 end of a rope. Half-a-dozen throats shouted out as many 
 suggestions. ' Hold on, Billy ! We'll have a bowline for ye in 
 a moment ! ' 'Work your way in, Billy, hand over hand, lad ! ' 
 ' Don't let go, for Heaven's sake. There are men now running 
 aloft to help ye ! ' 
 
 ' In God's name,' I cried, making a spring in my excitement 
 towards Broadwater, 'put your helm down before he lets go, 
 that the brig's way may be checked when he's in the water ! 
 
 He did not answer me, but if ever human eyes flashed a 
 curse at a man his did. There was a life-buoy aft, seized to the 
 rail in the good old English style. Without a knife I could not 
 free it. A steel blade was flourished close to my nose. ' Here, 
 sir, cut away with this ; it's sharp enough for tougher stuff than 
 laniards.' I seized the knife that the half-blood extended to me 
 from the wheel, severed the seizings, and retu rned the weapon to 
 the fellow, with a horror springing into me even in that wild 
 moment of excitement, to the thought that it was the same 
 knife with which he haa murdered the mate ! I looked forward ; 
 the boy was gone, and the boom reeled naked against the sky. 
 At the same moment, 'Man overboard! Down liellum ! down 
 helium ! ' came sweeping aft in a perfect hurricane roar from 
 the lips of the seamen gathered forward, and the deck re-echoed 
 the clattering of their feet as they came racing in a body to the 
 quarter-boat. I looked over the side, and there on the quarter 
 lay the boy on his back floating with his arms out. I sprang on 
 to the rail to fairly heave the life-buoy, and whilst I stood in that 
 posture for the space of a breath, / saw the poor creature smile 
 at me. I vow to God it was a thing abnost heart-breaking in its 
 way. It may have unnerved my arm ; I know not, I am sure. 
 I did my best, flung the buoy with my full strength and as a 
 sailor would, but it fell far short of him, and though the half- 
 blood ground the wheel down till you would have thought that 
 the passion of the creature had given him strength to twist the 
 heaa sheer off the rudder it belonged to, yet the lubberly bows 
 of the brig came round so leisurely against the conflicting beat 
 of the snarling and worrying seas, that the floating figure seemed 
 a mile off in less time than it would have taken a man to put 
 up a prayer to God for him. 
 
 CHAPTER XVDI 
 
 WE LOSB FOUR MEN 
 
 THEN happened a scene of bitter confusion. Though the men. 
 whilst they stood watching the lad forward, must have guessed 
 as clearly as I what would happen, they had said nothing ; but 
 now that the boy was overboard and drowning, they broke into
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 127 
 
 a hut-ired execrations against the captain whilst they cast the 
 gripes of the lee quarter-boat adrift and cleared away the falls 
 ready for lowering. The uproar was increased by Broadwater's 
 vociferations to them to bear a hand ; but each cry of his served 
 but as a challenge to the rage of the men, who roared back every 
 choicest flower of the forecastle dialect which they could summon 
 to their lips. However, they worked nimbly for all that, and 
 in a few minutes the boat, with a couple of men in her and 
 Gordon in the stern-sheets overhanging the stern as he fitted 
 the rudder to the pintles, was swinging at the davits. 'Lower 
 away handsomely ! ' The little craft sank out of sight down the 
 side, and in a few minutes was leaping like an indiarubber ball 
 upon the seas, to the desperate drag of the two fellows at the oars. 
 
 The shouts from the captain now brought the sailors to the 
 maintop-sail brace, and whilst the men were pulling at the ropes 
 to get the yards aback, hauling in a delirious sort of way, with 
 temper ringing menacingly in the songs with which they accom- 
 panied their work, Miss Grant arrived on deck, and spying me 
 before I saw her. instantly approached with a hurried, anxious, 
 ' What is it now, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 'Why, another murder, bad as Both well's, if there be justice 
 in heaven to decide ! ' I cried, for I was thinking of the drowning 
 lad's smile at the moment, and the mere having to tell her what 
 had happened made me feel as mutinously savage as, I warrant 
 me, the darkest-minded of the men who were running about. 
 
 She brought her hands together in a gesture of terror ; there 
 was real fear in the eyes with which she swept the sea. She 
 seized me by the arm, and exclaimed with a shuddering glance 
 towards Broad water, 'Another murder do you say, Mr. Musgrave? 
 Oh, if so if so ' and then she stopped with a bewildered stare 
 at the jumbled roll of green seas that came with staggers which 
 shook them into snow out of the windward thickness. 
 
 I had shocked and startled her from the brave hold she had 
 hitherto kept upon her feelings, and could have cursed myself 
 for my brutal, uncouth candour. ' I have put it too strongly,' I 
 cried, eager to subdue in her eyes something of that light of 
 horror and fear which gave a kind of madness to their beauty. 
 ' It is not murder in the sense you think it. It is but another 
 act of miserable cruelty which I fear must end in the death of 
 our cabin-boy.' 
 
 ' Tell me about it ! ' she exclaimed, in a breathless way, 
 securing her hold of my arm by clasping the fingers of both 
 hands upon it. 
 
 I related the incident as swiftly as I could speak it, and I do 
 not think I shall ever forget the look of tragic loathing and 
 indignation in her face when she turned to glance at Broadwater 
 over her shoulder as he stood on the other side of the deck, 
 huskily bawling instructions to the crew. 
 
 ' Where is the boat ? ' she cried impetuously. 
 
 I pointed in the direction in which I had last seen it, and
 
 128 MAROONED 
 
 walked right aft with her and peered into the windy thicknest 
 but could see no signs of the little fabric ; nothing like it saving 
 a darker ridge of green here and there which would melt into 
 foam even as I watched. I abhorred the obligation of having 
 to address the half-blood, but excitement was working in m?B 
 like a fever, and I could think of little more than that the boat 
 which I had in full view a minute or two before Miss Grant 
 came on deck was now out of sight. 
 
 * Do you see anything of her ? ' I said to him. 
 
 * She went out of sight on a sudden,' he answered. ' She's afloat 
 right enough, I reckon ; the mist will have swallowed her up.' 
 He leaned from the wheel, pointing with a small, beautifully- 
 shaped, but discoloured hand out to sea upon the weather quarter. 
 
 The brig's way was stopped, so far at least as forging ahead 
 went ; but of her leeward trdnd dead along the path of the 
 wind the nimbleness might be gathered by looking over the 
 side, where you saw the oil-like smoothness left by her to the 
 distance of a pistol-shot, beyond whose verge the so-as were 
 breaking as though they were kept at bay to that point by a 
 coating of oil upon the waters. I thought Broadwater must be 
 stark mad to keep his brig hove-to under a press which every 
 moment was driving her deeper into the obscurity that hid us 
 from the boat as she was hidden from us by it. The vessel was 
 under royals and flying-jib, and to such a surface, helped as the 
 fabric also was by the seas, our drift would be rapid beyond 
 endurance ; yet not a sheet was started or a halliard let go. 
 The old man stood on the weather-side, leaning upon the rail, 
 and fixedly gazing seaward under the thatch of his sou'-wester ; 
 forward, both watches the whole of the crew in short, as many 
 of them as were left overhung the bulwarks pointing and 
 talking, with one man half-way up the fore-shrouds, swinging 
 out from a ratline, and his left hand shading his eyes as he 
 bent his gaze at the brownish drizzle upon the near horizon. 
 Five minutes passed ; nothing was done, and nothing said that 
 reached our ears. The captain held his motionless posture, 
 staring as though fascinated. One heard nothing but the 
 wearisome sobbing and plashing of waters, the yeasty seething 
 of brine to the chop of the cutwater forward, the simmering 
 of foam hissing in recoil from the smart shock or the descending 
 counter, with the cheerless clank of wheel-chains and jar of 
 rudder, the melancholy clatter of wet spare booms, the rushing 
 noise of wind aloft to the drunken weather lurches of the brig. 
 Suddenly old Broadwater sprang erect from his squared arms, 
 and came rolling along to where we stood. 
 
 ' See anything of the boat, sir ? ' he cried. 
 
 'Nothing,' I answered, scarcely able to tell him so, for my 
 aversion almost overpowered my faculty of speaking. 
 
 'Forward there,' he bawled, turning his face towards the 
 forecastle, 'any one amongst ye see anything of the boat?' 
 
 ' Nothing,' came back the response, in so sulky a swing through
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 129 
 
 the wind, that it made one think of the sudden dead flap of & 
 sail in the midnight obscurity of an electric storm that has not 
 yet burst. The old man struck his hip violently with the flat 
 of his hand, drove both fists deep into his pockets, then started 
 as if to walk, but changed his mind, and came to the rail again, 
 and stood looking with a creeping consternation in his face, 
 before which one saw the temper in it fading away. 
 
 My feelings made me reckless. I said to him roughly and 
 defiantly, 'You'll lose your boat if you don't strip your ship. 
 Do you know, man, that you're driving dead to leeward at the 
 rate of three or four miles an hour 1 ' 
 
 He sent a glance at the half-blood before answering me, and 
 then in a half-choked voice gasped out with an oath, 'If there's 
 a mutiny, you'll be the ringleader ! I knows ye ; I've been 
 following of ye. You teach me my business ! ' He pulled his 
 fist out of his pocket to shake it in my face. I at first imagined 
 by this gesture that he meant to attack me, and quickly released 
 Miss Grant's hold that I might be ready for him. Muscular as 
 he was, with no lack of weight 'of beef in him, as sailors say, I 
 believe he would have found his match in me at that moment ; 
 for his charging me with being the ringleader of a mutiny was 
 an insult to make fire of blood running by luck of disposition in 
 a much gentler stream than mine, I am sorry to say, ever did. 
 But very quietly Miss Grant stepped in front of me, and the 
 old fellow, with a second look at the half-blood, rolled over to 
 the companion, where he stood a few moments staring seawards, 
 and then with an air of sudden hurry vanished below. 
 
 He reappeared after a brief absence, grasping an old blunder- 
 buss, the bell-shaped muzzle of which was almost big enough 
 to have received his head. He ran to the bulwarks with it 
 close to where we stood. I confess I was not a little alarmed 
 by the sight of so formidable a weapon in the hands of this 
 enraged old man, and I watched his movements with no small 
 anxiety, as I could not imagine what he intended to do with the 
 piece. On a sudden he lifted the stock to his shoulder, drooped 
 his pear-shaped nose over the trigger, and screwing up one eye 
 as though he were talcing aim at a bird in the air, let fly. The 
 explosion could not have been more noisy had he discharged a 
 swivel cannon, and the recoil of the piece was so violent that 
 it came very near to flinging him on to his back. However, I 
 perceived that his object was to signal the brig's whereabouts 
 to the boat, and I should have been glad to help him by dis- 
 charging another musket, or blunderbuss, if the brig owned 
 a second, but was kept quiet by the memory of his insult, and 
 by the expression of ugly temper upon his face. When he had 
 discharged the gun, he whipped out a great powder-flask and 
 proceeded to reload, but poured in so much powder, whilst he 
 rammed in so large and stubborn a lump of newspaper, that all 
 in silence I took Miss Grant by the hand and led her some 
 distance forward, where on the other side of the deck, should 
 
 X
 
 130 MAROONED 
 
 the crazy old weapon explode, we would be out of reach of 
 the flying fragments. Having charged his blunderbuss, he 
 approached the rail again, and taking aim at some imaginary 
 object with as much solicitude of posture, indeed, as if he was 
 shooting grouse or snipe, and screwing up his left eye so 
 tightly, that I burst into a laugh at the sight of that side of 
 his face, showing in a sort of purple blurr of wrinkles against 
 the rusty barrel and the dull leaden shadow beyond, he pulled 
 the trigger a second time. The piece exploded with a great 
 blaze of Tight, and the blast of a little thunder-shock, and down 
 he tumbled to it, quite as I had expected ; only instead of 
 measuring his length, he smote the deck heavily with his hams, 
 and preserved a sitting posture, with the blunderbuss across 
 his knees, and his face full of astonishment and anger. 
 
 Presently he rose and put the firearm on the skylight, and 
 went to the rail. He stared long and earnestly, then shouted 
 to the men forward to know if they saw anything ; afterwards 
 gaped aloft at his canvas, with a slow bringing of his eyes down 
 to where we stood. But for the temper and brutality of the 
 man I should have felt sorry for him. 
 
 'Do you think he will be able to recover the boat?' Miss 
 Grant asked. 
 
 ' I fear not,' I answered, ' unless the weather should miracu- 
 lously clear within the next half -hour ; and even then the 
 chances should be all against recovery, unless the old fool 
 promptly shortened sail down to his topsails nay, down to 
 bare poles.' 
 
 'But surely, Mr. Musgrave, we are not likely to lose the 
 boat?' 
 
 'At sea things grow horribly serious in a minute,' said L 
 
 I crossed with her again to the weather-rail, and telescoping 
 my hands, sent a long, long searching look into the length of 
 the dingy shadow of mist, a little way past the line of which 
 one saw the phantasmal welter of the seas and the scarce deter- 
 minable flash of foam, vague as an outline in still dark waters, 
 to where they melted into the blindness of the haze. The first 
 clamorous wrath of the men forward had been changed, by 
 waiting and peering, into a sort of angry uneasiness. There 
 were nine of them ; they hung in a row along the bulwarks, one 
 repeatedly leaning inboards to look past another aft at the 
 skipper, as though full of sullen, irritable wonder at this waiting 
 and drifting scheme of his. But he made no sign. He went to 
 the binnacle, and lifting the hood laid the sharp of his hand 
 across the card, as though seeking to arrive by memory at the 
 bearings of the boat. I suspected in him some trick of seaman- 
 ship above my knowledge in his keeping the vessel under all 
 plain sail hove-to ; but I could not bring myself to address him. 
 Ten minutes passed ten minutes of silence along our decks all 
 of us meanwhile staring our hardest to windward, not a syllable 
 coming from forwards to break the dreary washing noises of
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 131 
 
 water, and the sounds of the restless straining of the yeiking. 
 rolling, and plunging brig. On a sudden, Broad water roared 
 out, ' Swing the maintopsail-yard ! Sweat everything fore and 
 aft ! Get them jib-sheets flattened in ! ' 
 
 The sailors, eager to be doing, sprang to his commands ; I 
 quitted Miss Grant to help them, and dragged with the gangs 
 till the yards were pointed to the wind as far as they would go ; 
 but there were no songs. Here and there a fellow would raise 
 a low monotonous yowling that the others might take time from 
 his notes ; but there was no cheeriness in the sailors' voices, and 
 such few cries as were raised were more like the melancholy 
 groaning of sufferers than the hearty piping out of seamen at 
 work. The main tack was boarded in silence, and the jigger 
 clapped on to such sheets and running gear as demanded the 
 extra purchase, as though the brig's company consisted of 
 undertakers' mutes. The wind seemed to come fresher now that 
 the vessel was looking up to it close-hauled, and under the great 
 pressure of her cloths she lay over until her lee-channels were 
 awash amid the smother of spume there, though it was the mere 
 spluttering of her round bows throwing the heads of the seas 
 into cataracts from her that made the tumbling whiteness 
 alongside ; for I question if her progress, jammed as she was 
 till the weather-leeches of her royals and topgallant-sails were 
 hollowed aback, was as great as her drift had been when her 
 topsail was to the mast. 
 
 It was clear now that the captain's intention was to ' ratch ' 
 for the boat, as he himself would have termed it by which I 
 mean that it was his design to beat to windward in short tacks 
 in the direction in which the boat had last been seen ; and 
 maybe he had kept full sail on the brig for the convenience of 
 handling her promptly, although I held to my opinion that he 
 had blundered grievously in. holding her under cloths that must 
 have given her a drift of hard upon a league since he had first 
 hove her to. It was past two o'clock, and as I saw there was no 
 chance of getting any dinner that day, I procured some refresh- 
 ments from our private stock, and Miss Grant and I made a 
 hurried, uncomfortable meal in the cabin. Even whilst we sat 
 there Broad water put the brig about again, and as I felt that it 
 was my duty to help him in such an extremity as this, I hastened 
 on deck and assisted the men in pulling and dragging. The breeze 
 had freshened yet, the seas were running more steadily, but the 
 blank around the horizon had thickened, and there was a deeper 
 shade in the dinginess on high that made it look as if it floated 
 with a stoop towards our masts ; but there was no break in it, 
 no faintest flaw for the light behind to steal through, whilst the 
 first weak drizzle of it had thickened into a small, fine rain so 
 warm that you did not feel the moisture until the wind had 
 chilled it which blew transversely in horizontal lines over the 
 bow, sometimes clouding up into a gush of white smoking mist 
 like a burst of steam from a boiler, that made a blind stare of 
 
 2
 
 132 MAKOONED 
 
 the look of the sea till the plunge of the wind with a long cry 
 drove it clear of us. 
 
 It was no weather for Miss Grant to show herself on deck in. 
 but she declined to remain below so I made her as snug as I 
 could with wraps and a waterproof -cloak, and she remained by 
 my side, searching the cold, green, frothing tumble for any black 
 speck that should denote the boat, as all hands of the rest of 
 us did. Whenever Broadwater had his tacks aboard, he sent a 
 couple of hands aloft to the fore and main-topmast cross-trees, 
 with two more in the fore and main rigging just under the tops, 
 and many an earnest glance would I direct at the men in the 
 hope of detecting in the posture of any one of them that his 
 attention had been taken, and that he would be singing out in 
 a minute and pointing. The misery of that time comes back 
 to me strongly. It is not in my pen to express the quality of 
 depressing melancholy that was put into that thick, sombre, 
 damp day, with its cheerless whistling and howling of wind 
 aloft, and the gray sails darkening yet to the beating of the 
 rain, and the chill and stormy washing of water from the bows 
 of the ^vessel, by thoughts of the lost boat away out in the 
 darkening gloom yonder, and of the anguish of expectation and 
 fear that would fill the minds of the men in her, as, riding to 
 their oars for they would have long since abandoned the labour 
 of rowing they leaned over the low gunwale, peering past each 
 green, glimmering curl of sea for any smudge upon the wall of 
 vapour that had closed around them which should indicate the 
 presence of our brig. 
 
 They would, of course, be without food or water. Small 
 chance of any such discipline as Broadwater was equal to pro- 
 viding in this way for the hurried dispatch of a vessel's boats ! 
 
 ' Do you think, Miss Grant said to me, ' that the poor fellows 
 will be able to live in such a sea as this ? ' 
 
 'Impossible to say,' I replied, with a look at the remaining 
 1x>at that was of the size and shape of the other ; ' every wave 
 lias had a snappish run throughout. Yet the men are sailors, 
 and will know how to manage if management be practicable. 
 I wonder if they picked up the boy.' 
 
 ' I fear the worst,' she exclaimed, with a tremble in the part- 
 ing of her lips to the sweep of the breeze, whilst from the 
 whiteness of her face amid the twilight of her hood that covered 
 her head, her dark eyes shone out bright with a light that was 
 feverish with brilliance. 
 
 'Why?' I asked. 
 
 4 1 believe this to be the fulfilment,' she answered, ' of Gordon's 
 prophetic melancholy. It was the shadow of this event that 
 lay upon him.' 
 
 I shook my head. * There was no prophetic depression in the 
 other two; at least one may reasonably suppose so. Of the 
 three, probably Gordon was the most prosaic. Why, since 
 there were four men to perish to-day supposing that they do
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 133 
 
 perish I include the cabin-boy why, I ask, to one of them 
 only should the future whisper ? No, no; Gordon would have 
 been gloomy whether this wretched business had happened or 
 not.' 
 
 'I fear the worst for them,' she persisted. 'Is not the air 
 darkening rapidly, too? Should the night fall without our 
 sighting them oh, Mr. Musgrave, what a dreadful fate ! what 
 a dreadful fate !' 
 
 She swept her hands to her eyes, but dropped them quickly, 
 and running to the rail gazed seawards ; and I think had the 
 Jiour been one of gravest peril to ourselves, instead of to the 
 "poor fellows tossing about somewhere out in the windward 
 bleakness, I must have found a moment to admire and with a 
 stirring of wonder in my admiration too the character of tragic 
 beauty her face took with the grief, and pity, and eagerness in 
 it, as the flash of the wind swept her hood clear of the soft 
 brown of her disordered hair, and left her lineaments plain 
 against the green hills, and blowing froth, and shadowy steep 
 of the scene of heaven and ocean beyond. 
 
 The gathering darkness which she had noticed before I did 
 was to prove a squall. You heard the long moan of it ere it 
 had leapt clear of the near haze, and revealed its approach by 
 the glaring rush of waters at its base. Already Broadwater was 
 carrying on till the covering-board was flush, with the water 
 over the side. 'Let go royal and t'gallant halliards!' he 
 bawled. ' Down flying jib, up mainsail ! ' and as these last 
 words left his mouth the squall struck the vessel. I had 
 foreseen one consequence, and had provided against it by 
 whipping a rope's-end round Miss Grant's waist ; otherwise, 
 to the sudden, fierce inclination of the deck, she must have 
 fallen to leeward as one might slip down the roof of a 
 house. The angle was so extreme that it was almost im- 
 possible to stir. The halliards had been let go, but the slope 
 of the masts prevented the yards from travelling. ' Over with 
 the helm ! over with the helm ! ' shrieked Broadwater. ^ I sprang 
 to the lee-spokes to assist the fellow who had relieved the 
 half-blood, and who, though he was straining with set teeth, 
 seemed unable to stir the wheel by so much as a spoke. It 
 was now a picture of giddy commotion and bewildering uproar 
 for a long five minutes. The brig was so pressed down, that 
 though we had got the helm jammed hard up, I feared for 
 some moments that she would not pay off. You saw the yeast 
 blowing like cream over the lee-rail, and it was like soapsuds, 
 as high as a man's waist, the whole length of the lee-scuppers. 
 Sheets had been slackened away, or let go, and the rattle of 
 canvas shook the vessel to her heart. The squall was a heavy 
 one, and it blew with a voice of thunder out of the thickness ; 
 and what with the roaring sound of the blast on high an 
 independent noise that dominated all other sounds with the 
 violent ring of gusts or guns echoing through the rushing wind
 
 134 MAKOONED 
 
 and what with the slapping of liberated folds of canvas, the 
 hollow blows of seas upon the exposed weather-side of the hull, 
 Broadwater's shouts, the cries of the men, it was a scene that 
 might have made even an old sailor think it about time to go 
 to prayers. Fortunately, however, the captain's wits were equal 
 to an emergency of this kind. He bellowed lustily indeed, but 
 his orders were right. On the mainsail being hauled up, and 
 the trysail smothered, the brig paid off, and as she recovered 
 something of an even keel, whilst she gradually presented her 
 stern to the wind, the yards descended the masts, instantly 
 relieving the heavy strain up there : and before it we bowled 
 though towards what quarter of the sea I never thought of 
 looking with topsail-yards on the caps, the topgallant-sails 
 and royals blowing out like flags from the grip of their clew- 
 lines and leech-lines, with the hauled-down jibs making the 
 booms buckle again to the heavy dance of the folds, which the 
 pitch of the vessel would souse and bring up streaming till the 
 air beyond the head was white from the foam ripped away 
 from them by the wind. 
 
 However, though full of weight and spite, it was but a squall, 
 and the scream of it had presently finea down into the familiar 
 moaning of the early blast. The brig's company was now a 
 short-handed crew for the work that was to be done, and as every 
 pair of hands was of the utmost consequence, 1 sang out to 
 Broadwater from the wheel that I should be happy, if he had no 
 objection, to stick to the post, that the man whose trick it was 
 might assist the others. He assented with a wave of his hand. 
 Miss Grant came and stood beside me. The crew worked with 
 a will, thinking perhaps that the lives of the men in the boat 
 away out upon the dirty, shrouded jumble though God knows 
 where they would be now might depend upon their smartness. 
 But it was three-quarters of an hour before the sailor whom I had 
 relieved came to take the wheel from me again, by which time 
 the brig was once more close-hauled under topsails, main-top- 
 gallant-sail, foresail, and trysail, eating her way into the thickness, 
 that was denser than ever it had been at anv other time of the 
 day, and that was already deepening in shade to the gathering 
 shadows of an early night above it. Yet till the close of the 
 second dog-watch Broadwater went on ratching in short Ttoards, 
 the men working without a murmur, without any hint of mutin- 
 ous reluctance in their movements, for the hope they yet had of 
 surging within sight of the boat. But at eight o'clock it was 
 blade night theblackerforrainandhaze the seas were shoulder- 
 ing blocks of gloom, with wan glares of foam here and there, and 
 a smart rattling of wet flinging to the ear like discharges of 
 musketry from the obscurity along the waist to the forecastle. 
 
 I was then below with Miss Grant, botli of us as wearied as 
 if we had shared in the toils of the seamen, and as anxious 
 about the look-out as we were depressed by the incidents of the 
 day. But for our private stock of provisions, no food would
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 135 
 
 have crossed our lips, for the cook had been called from his 
 galley to help work the ship ; no man had been told off to 
 wait upon us aft, and we must have gone to bed after a fast 
 lasting from breakfast, but for the tins of cooked delicacies, 
 the tongues, biscuits, and wines I had been wise enough to 
 liberally provide ourselves with. 
 
 It was two bells in the first watch when Broad water came 
 below. I had long before trimmed and lighted the cabin-lantern, 
 and was sitting at the table near Miss Grant smoking a cheroot, 
 and endeavouring to extract a little cheerfulness or mind out 
 of a glass of brandy-and-water. This was the first time the 
 captain had left the deck since he had fetched his old blunder- 
 buss, lie threw down his sou'- wester that was streaming with 
 wet, pulled off his shaggy pea-coat, which sparkled to the 
 lantern-light with the moisture upon it as though it were 
 crystallized, and all in silence opened a locker, took out a knife 
 and fork, a large cube of corned beef upon a tin plate, a couple 
 of sea-biscuits, a bottle of rum, and a tin pannikin ; and then 
 sitting clown, squared his elbows and fell to with the avidity of 
 a famished hound, never offering to speak. However, it was 
 ridiculous to suppose that I was to be kept in ignorance of 
 such arrangements as he had made, and such schemes as he had 
 decided upon : and as it was no moment to recall his insult, I 
 waited until he had finished his supper, particularly keeping 
 silent until he had drained his pannikin, and then said bluntly, 
 'I suppose you've given up all hope of finding the boat?' 
 
 ' All hope,' he answered huskily, taking a surly squint at me 
 with his little heartless eyes. 
 
 ' You are now without a mate/ said I, feeling Miss Grant's 
 hand coming to my arm with a sudden pressure of her fingers 
 to the uncontrollable dismay which followed Broadwater's hope- 
 less answer. ' You are now in a quandary, and can command 
 me if you like.' 
 
 ' Command ye in what way ? ' he answered, filling his panni- 
 kin afresh. 
 
 ' I'll take the mate's berth if you choose, but of course only to 
 the extent of helping you in the navigation of the vessel.' 
 
 ' Thank'ee,' he answered, in his roughest manner. ' I hope to 
 be able to do without you.' 
 
 ' I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said I, and indeed I spoke 
 the truth. ' But you surely do not intend to keep a look-out 
 day and night alone ? ' I added, for it seemed to me unimaginablo 
 that he should find a man forward fit to intrust the charge of 
 the brig to whilst he was taking rest. 
 
 He appeared to struggle with his temper, as though he could 
 not force his inclination to answer me through his bad and 
 sullen humour. 
 
 Miss Grant suddenly said, ' Captain Broad water, we have a 
 right to know what measures you have taken for our safety.' 
 Her imperious look appeared to affect him as a command,
 
 136 MAROONED 
 
 * You'll not suppose, mum ' said he, 'that I should be down 
 here a taking of it easy, with the idea,' he continued, dragging 
 his great watch out and looking at it, ' of turning in in a few 
 minutes for a snatch of rest, if I hadn't left matters ship-shape 
 up above,' with a jerk of his thumb at the deck. 
 
 ' I am glad you have found somebody you can trust,' said L 
 
 'I dessay ye are,' said he, 'and so am I, I'm sure ;' and then 
 rising and returning the remains of his supper and his bottle of 
 rum to the locker whence he had extracted them, he picked up 
 his coat and sou'-wester and went to his berth. 
 
 It might have made ^ the _ stoutest-hearted man feel a bit 
 nervous to learn that this brig was virtually abandoned by her 
 captain to her crew, who were full of mutiny and hatred of him, 
 whilst he lay snoring below. Of course, seeing how matters had 
 come about, Broad water could not help himself; by which I 
 mean that it was impossible for him to remain in sole charge of 
 the deck night and day until Rio was reached ; therefore, since 
 he would not let me act as mate and it was quite conceivable 
 that the old fool may have imagined me as mutinously disposed 
 towards his discipline as he had that afternoon insolently 
 affirmed me to be it was necessary for him to appoint some 
 forecastle hand to the post ; but it was a sort of surrender that 
 filled me with uneasiness. I did not attempt to conceal my 
 fears from Miss Grant ; indeed she understood the danger of 
 our situation as well as L 
 
 'Any man,' I exclaimed, 'would scarcely conceive it possible 
 that an old sea-captain such as Broadwater should coolly go 
 to bed and, supposing he sleeps till midnight, leave his brig 
 absolutely at the mercy of her crew till then at the mercy of a 
 set of men whose hatred of him all through must have been 
 immeasurably heightened to-day by his barbarous treatment 
 of the poor cabin-boy, and the loss of men that followed. But 
 then, what is the wretched old creature to do? He must get 
 some rest during the twenty-four hours, or else entirely lose the 
 very little sense that he was born with. I'll step on deck and 
 see if I can make out who it is that has charge.' 
 
 It was a black night. The brig had been brought to her 
 course again, though no doubt some men in Broad water's situ- 
 ation would have kept their vessel hove-to till dawn, in the 
 hope of picking up the missing boat. The dusk was too thick 
 to enable me to make out what canvas we were under. There 
 was not much weight of wind, however, but it was charged with 
 damp, and one found a heaviness in it for that reason perhaps 
 when the weather-roll of the vessel brought it in a gust to the 
 face. I walked right aft to the helm, unable to distinguish 
 anybody on deck, then caught sight of the face of a man named 
 Andrew Wilkins, who stooped his head at the moment into the 
 yellow sheen flowing out of the binnacle to get a better view 
 of the card. 
 
 { said to liim, ' Who has charge t '
 
 sir 
 
 WE LOSE FOUR MEN 18? 
 
 'Why, the blooming cook,' he answered, -with a low laugh, 
 
 'The cook?' I cried, thinking he joked. 
 
 He laughed again, but without merriment, and said, 'Yes, 
 ir jit's old Drainings as is boss just now.' 
 
 'Where is he?' said I, drawing away from the glare of the 
 binnacle-lamp to look into the darkness forward; but it was 
 not to be penetrated. 
 
 ' Somewheres to wind'ard, sir, if he ain't gone and turned in,' 
 he answered. 
 
 I was in the act of groping my way to the weather-side, when 
 it flashed upon me that I might be acting rashly in showing 
 uneasiness or exhibiting inquisitiveness ; so I just said in a 
 careless voice to the fellow at the wheel, "Tis strange for a 
 captain to go to the galley for a chief mate. Perhaps the cook 
 may have been a shipmaster, forced by adversity into boiling 
 beef for sailors. I suppose he would know what to do should 
 heavy weather come along ? ' 
 
 ' 1 heard the capt'n tell him what to do,' answered the man. 
 'Should anything happen, he's to hammer the deck with a 
 handspike over the capt'n's head. That's about as much as can 
 be expected of a cook. 
 
 ' Well,' said I, ' this is a queer sort of voyage anyhow, as the 
 Yankees would say. Good-night.' And with that I made my 
 way to the hatch, looking into the blackness on the weather- 
 deck for the cook s figure, but without seeing him, though I 
 don't say he was not there, for the sky was of a raven hue ; 
 the very substance of the quarter-boat melted into it, and 
 the eye sought in vain for a line of shroud, or for any faintest 
 configuration of canvas on high. 
 
 ' The cook in command ! ' cried Miss Grant, when I gave her 
 the news : ' it is ridiculous ! ... it is dreadful, Mr. Musgrave ! ' 
 
 I thought so too, though I could not forbear a laugh at the 
 very fancy of it, spite even of the rebuke my momentary 
 merriment found in the startled expression of her eyes. 
 
 'I suppose,' said I, 'that he is tha one man on board who 
 enjoys the captain's confidence. He may be the only creature 
 honestly disposed, for all we know, and let us believe that 
 Broadwater has guessed it. After all, I dare say he is as well 
 able to keep a look-out as any other man in the vessel ; and 
 absurd as the notion is, yet on reflection I believe old Broad- 
 water to be right for once, and that our slumbers are more 
 likely to be secure with Master Cookee stumping the quarter- 
 deck with a handspike ready to thunder the skipper into 
 vigilance, than were one of the sailors in charge.' 
 
 However, though after sitting together another hour I induced 
 her to withdraw to her cabin, it took me a long while to 
 persuade myself to follow her example, and by that time it was 
 hard upon midnight. Once or twice I looked through the hatch, 
 but the blackness as before hung extraordinarily thick ; there 
 was nothing to be seen, and the wet in the wind made me glad
 
 133 MAROONED 
 
 to return to the shelter of the cabin. The brig rolled uneasily, 
 but the motion was comparatively steady, no longer the half- 
 paralyzing jumps and souses of the morning and afternoon. 
 There was a heavy gloom upon my spirits. It was not only the 
 memory of the sight of the cabin-boy clinging in terror to the 
 boom, Broadwater's red face full of threats and menacing 
 gestures, and the smile the poor lad gave me as he swept astern ; 
 there was the thought of Gordon and the two fellows in the 
 boat ; the feelings that would be in them, supposing them still 
 alive, as they tossed in their tiny cockle-shell upon the dark hills 
 of sea, without the leanest phantom of star for them to rest their 
 eyes upon, without a fragment of biscuit to appease their 
 hunger, or a drop of fresh water to moisten their lips. These were 
 fancies to put such a hill into the atmosphere of the cabin even, 
 that one shuddered as to an icy blast to the mere muffled hum 
 of the wind moaning in the rigging. I rose, for sitting below 
 was like keeping a watch without any purpose in it ; and besides, 
 if any one of the sailors should peer through the closed sky- 
 lights, and spy me leaning with folded arms against the bulk- 
 head wide awake, it might enter the minds of the whole of them 
 to believe that I was in league with the captain, practically 
 keeping a look-out for him, though covertly ; and I tell you the 
 mere idea of this sent me to my cabin right off. 
 
 About ten minutes after I had tumbled into my bunk I heard 
 a dull pounding noise, and instantly sat up in bed, not a little 
 alarmed by the strange unusual sound, until it occurred to me 
 that it might probably be the cook beating with his handspike 
 over the captain's head to arouse him. The lamp in my cabin 
 was alight, though I had dimmed it. To make sure of that strange 
 battering noise, I went softly to my door and looked out. The 
 door that shut off the after-berths stood open, hooked to the 
 bulkhead, and I had a clear view of a great part of the state 
 cabin, including the companion-steps past the table. After an 
 interval of a minute or two the pounding noise was repeated, and 
 now I was certain that it was the cook beating with a handspike. 
 I continued to peer, showing however only as much of my head 
 past the door as enabled me to use my eyes, for I had no mind 
 to be caught keeping such a look-out as this, either by Broad- 
 water or anybody else in the brig. At the same time I was 
 anxious to make sure that the captain responded to the cook's 
 summons, for I felt that it would be possible for me to obtain 
 some rest with the knowledge that the captain had charge of 
 the vessel. A third time the cook pounded, on this occasion 
 very noisily, and with so many hard thumps that one would 
 have thought the hands were caulking the decks, or, worse still, 
 endeavouring to beat some planks out. The fellow was evi- 
 dently growing impatient, and he used his handspike as though 
 he meant to let the captain know that he wanted to turn in. 
 Shortly after this third thunderous call, Broadwater came out 
 growling like an old dog, and giving the cook a number of hard
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 130 
 
 words, as though indeed the man stood before him. But first 
 he rolled to his locker, muttering his abuse of the cook without 
 intermission, until he silenced himself with a full pannikin of 
 rum. He then, after a slow look round, went on deck, and I 
 returned to my bunk ; but four bells had struck before I fell 
 asleep, so incessantly was I haunted by the vision of the drown- 
 ing lad, by thoughts of the missing boat, by recollection of the 
 strange melancholy that had fallen upon the spirits of Gordon, 
 by contact as one might say with the mysterious sheen of the 
 cold bow of light we had sailed through, and above all by con- 
 siderations of Miss Grant's and my safety aboard this brig, with 
 .a drunken old tyrant for captain, and a cook for chief mate, and 
 as ship's company a short-handed crew charged to the throat 
 with mutiny, with one malignant and active principle of evil 
 amongst them in the shape of the half-blood, to whom the Iron 
 Crowns arrival at Bio or any other port meant death ' 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 
 
 S awakened by a sharp, persistent knocking on my cabin- 
 door. ' Who is there ? ' I callea out, scarcely yet awake. 
 
 'The crew wants a word with ye, sir,' exclaimed a deep- 
 throated voice outside. 
 
 ' Eh, what's that ? ' I cried, instantly startled into broad wake- 
 fulness. 
 
 ' The crew 'ud be glad to have a talk with ye, sir,' repeated 
 the leather-lunged voice, the tones of which, though I might 
 have had some memory of them had I heard them on deck, 
 sounded most harshly unfamiliar, even malevolent, in the privacy 
 and retirement of these after-cabins. 
 
 1 All right,' I exclaimed ; ' give me a minute or two to dress. 
 Who are you ? ' 
 
 ' Terence Mole, sir.' 
 
 * Ha ! ' said I, ' and where are the others 1 ' 
 
 'All of 'em in the cabin, saving the chap at the wheel, and 
 Charles, who's keeping a look-out. 
 
 There was broad daylight on the ocean, as a glance through 
 the scuttle assured me ; the flash of sunlight came to the glass 
 of the screwed-up port in a fine- weather tremble off the waters, 
 with a commingling of atmospheric blueness that made one 
 know there was plenty of clear azure overhead. It was natural 
 that I should wonder with all my might what the crew could 
 want with me as I dressed myself, but not hastily ; for let 
 what might have happened, I was resolved to oppose an aspect 
 at least of composure to whatever might befall, and the first
 
 140 MAROONED 
 
 condition of dignity was a leisurely observance of the wish of 
 the crew to see me. I looked at my watch, punctually timed by 
 every day's meridian, and found the hour ten minutes to five. 
 I dressed myself fully, lingering to wash my face and hands and 
 brush my hairj trifling things to talk about indeed, but useful 
 to recall as an instance at all events of self-control, which to this 
 day I am proud to remember ; for let me tell you, knowing the 
 posture of the men as I did, it was enough to throw a heartier 
 mind than mine off its balance, to be suddenly aroused from a 
 deep sleep by the wooden knuckles of a sailor, and to collect 
 with a half -conscious ear from his harsh gruff accents that the 
 seamen of the brig wanted a word with me. 
 
 I stepped into the little passage with a glance at Miss Grant's 
 door, which was closed, though I had no doubt she was wide 
 awake within, and had overheard the sailors' message to me. 
 There were eight men in the cabin, four of them seated at the 
 table ; the tall seaman, Terence Mole, leaned against a stancheon 
 with his arms, naked to the elbows, folded upon his breast ; the 
 sixth the cook squatted at the foot of the companion-steps j 
 two others marched to and fro with their hands buried in their 
 breeches-pockets ; but they came to a halt when they saw me. 
 The novelty of the sight of these rough fellows seated or loung- 
 ing about an interior which I, with a sailor's experiences in me, 
 knew that at ordinary times they would think of, in their own 
 sea-parlour, as a sort of holy ground in which no foremast Jack 
 was ever to be heard of, unless he came to catch a pig or to 
 holystone the deck of it, was, I protest, as much a shock in its 
 way as if one of the men to my approach had saluted me with a 
 levelled pistoL The eastern sunshine streamed upon the sky- 
 light, and the place was full of the brilliance of the morning. I 
 noticed a sort of shagged, haggard, worried look in two or three 
 of the hairy, weather-lined faces. Used as I was to their attire 
 of duck-breeches, loose shirts, Scotch and other caps, and half- 
 boots though some of them were unshod yet the mere presence 
 of them in the cabin rendered their garb as strange in my sight 
 as if I had never beheld it before, and I seemed to find in the 
 first presentment of them the most genuine imaginable aspect 
 of outlawry, abominably in conformity with every fancy, 
 recollection, or imagination of mutiny that could occur to an 
 observer. The fellows who were seated at the table rose when 
 I entered ; Mole quitted his lounging attitude ; and the cook, a 
 stout, pale, sandy-haired man, writhed himself on to his feet off 
 the ladder. I came to a stand a foot or two in advance of the 
 doorway which conducted to the after-berths, that Miss Grant 
 might hear what I said, and gather from my language the 
 import of the speech of the others if their syllables should not 
 be always audible to her. 
 
 "What is it, men t ' I said. 
 
 Mole dropped his folded arms, and passed the back of one 
 great Laud in a so it of smearing gesture, awkward yet defiant
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 141 
 
 too, across his forehead, over which his hair lay thick as a mat 
 to his eyebrows. 
 
 * We've thought it proper to tell you, sir,' he exclaimed, * that 
 the capt'n's a missing.' 
 
 * Missing ! ' I cried ; ' since when, do you know 1 ' 
 
 _The cook came forward, and said in a wheezy voice, striking 
 his chest as though he had taken a chill there, ' I was on dooty, 
 'cording to papting Broadwater's orders, till midnight ; then I 
 thumped him up with a handspike, his instructions being I 
 wasnt to leave the deck on any account till he came. Well, he 
 arrived, and I went forrads and tarned in. At four, Mole here 
 came to say that the capt'n must have gone below, as nothen 
 was to be seen of him. I says, " That's odd, ain't it 1" I says, 
 "an' he so pertikler ! " Jim here had had the wheel since four 
 bells, and 1 asked him if he'd seen aught of the capt'n, and he 
 says that at six bells the skipper looked into the binnacle, and 
 then went forrads again out of sight, for it had been as black 
 all night as if a man had gone dark hisself, and arter that I saw 
 no more of him.' 
 
 'All that's right enough,' said the sailor, to whom the cook 
 referred. 
 
 ' Have you looked for him ?' said I, quietly, fora sense of deep 
 insincerity in all this business was creeping into me, spite of the 
 cook talking like an honest man on his oath. 
 
 ' Everywhere saving them there cabins,' answered Mole, point- 
 ing with his muscular arm, blue with devices, to the after-berths. 
 There are but two cabins vacant,' said I ; ' come with me and 
 look for yourself.' 
 
 I threw open the door of the berth in which were our private 
 stock of provisions, then the door confronting it, and motioning 
 Mole to precede me, returned to where I had before been standing. 
 
 ' Of course you have searched his own berth and those near 
 it V said L 
 
 ' First and foremost of all, naturally ' responded Mole. 
 
 ' What is your notion of the matter J ' I asked. 
 
 Three of them answered together, 'He's overboard.' Mole 
 added, ' Ne'er a doubt of it. Its all hands' opinion. He wasn't 
 a man to hide himself; why should her The half-caste 
 Ladova laughed in his throat. ' If he's aboard,' continued Mole, 
 'we should have found him. We've so overhauled the old 
 hooker that had he been a rat we must have come across him. 
 Ain't that right, lads ? ' 
 
 'Ay, ay ; ' came the reply in a short growl from them all, and 
 the cook in his wheezy voice added, ' If he ben't gone to keep 
 poor Billy company my eyes ain't mates.' 
 
 The suspicion of the insincerity of all this had now grown 
 into a strong conviction that some black deed had been done 
 since I took my last view of Broadwater as he clambered up the 
 companion-steps. But along with this conviction there came 
 also clear perception that I must not by word or look betray
 
 142 MAROONED 
 
 the merest phantom of my thoughts, otherwise I should be held 
 as incriminating as a witness, and dealt with as one, I had no 
 doubt. My secret agitation was already sufficiently great to 
 render the assumption of an air of consternation easy. I looked 
 from one to another and cried, "Though I never liked the 
 captain, men ; though I don't mind saying now that he was one 
 of the most tyrannical and ill-mannered shipmasters I ever met 
 or heard of in my life, yet his disappearance is a blow to the 
 lady and myself. The brig is now without a commander, 
 without a mate, without even a bo'sun. ^ How, think you, did 
 Captain Broad water meet his end ? Was it an accident, do you 
 suppose ? He could not have walked overboard.' I shook my 
 head. ' My lads,' I said solemnly, ' I don't doubt but that he com- 
 mitted suicide. He was as a madman all day yesterday charged 
 me, men, me,' I cried, striking my breast with a passion- 
 ate gesture, ' with a desire to work up a mutiny aboard ! A 
 madman, my lads ! a drunken lunatic ! Not a shadow of doubt 
 but he destroyed himself in liis watch on deck, urged overboard, 
 maybe, by the recollection of Gordon and the poor lad and 
 your two shipmates of all four of whom he has gone before his 
 God as surely the murderer as if he had slit the throat of every 
 man of them with his own hand.' 
 
 ' Mates,' cried Mole, tossing his head to clear the hair out of 
 his eyes, and sending a fiery glance from one to another of the 
 seamen, ' Mr. Musgrave's put it as there's ne'er a man of us 
 could have said it. I've been a seafaring man eighteen year 
 man and boy, in all sorts of craft, from the likes of this snorter 
 he spat upon the deck ' away up to the Atlantic clippers ; but 
 of all capt ns ' he raised his arm, with a face that darkened to 
 the sudden fierce restraint he put upon himself j | but he's gone,' 
 he added, letting his hand fall ; 'committed suicide, as you say, 
 sir ; a thing most sartin past all doubting, in fact ; and here 
 we are, Mr. Musgrave, to find out what's to do.' 
 
 I could see with half an eye that the impression I had sought 
 to produce was made. I thrust my hands in a careless sort of 
 way into my breeches-pockets, and fell to pacing the deck. 
 1 One thing,' 1 exclaimed, ' has followed so fast on top of another, 
 that though there ought to be something staggering in Captain 
 Broadwater's suicide, I find,' I said, with a half-laugh and a 
 shrug of the shoulders, 'that it scarcely so much as surprises 
 me. But,' I continued, addressing Mole, ' you ask what's to be 
 done ? Have you and your mates a scheme 1 ' 
 
 ' Well,' he answered, speaking with return to his first awkward, 
 defiant manner, ' when these men and me, after giving the brig 
 a thorough overhaul, was agreed that the skipper was gone, we 
 tamed to and asked one another what was to be done. It 
 didn't need much debating. It's been onderstood all along 
 forrads that you were a sailor yourself equal to navigating a 
 ship, and so of course we at once settled upon asking you to 
 take charge.'
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 143 
 
 I nodded, taking care to preserve a careless manner to guard 
 against exposure of the worry in me that grew more and more 
 consuming as I listened. 
 
 ' You will take charge, sir ? ' said Mole, interrogatively. 
 
 ' Certainly, if you wish it,' said I. 
 
 He looked round at the others with a faint inclination of his 
 head, and continued, revolving his cap in his hand with his eyes 
 upon it, ' Next consideration was, where to go.' He looked up 
 at me without seeming to lift his eyelids. 
 
 ' Where to go ! ' I cried, startled out of my feigned posture of 
 indifference by the fellows words. ' We're bound to Rio. Shall 
 we not proceed there ? ' 
 
 "" Every man of them wagged his head with a sort of groaning 
 'No ! no ! no ! ' full of an unmistakable note of emphasis. 
 
 ' We're all resolved not to sail the brig to Rio,' said Mole, in 
 an aggressive way that was like a surly hint to me not to argue 
 the point ; ' we've been turning the matter over, and as we larnt 
 from Mr. Gordon yesterday that our latitude was a few degrees 
 to the norrads of twenty, we've settled to ask you to navigate 
 the Iron Crown to the West Indies.' 
 
 ' The West Indies ! You are naming a number of islands 
 which cover a wide area of ocean,' I answered coldly ; for it had 
 come to me like an inspiration that, if I valued my own and 
 Miss Grant's safety, I must consent to do these men's bidding 
 without so much as even a falter in the speech in which I 
 assented ; that practically the brig was theirs, and I and my 
 companion absolutely in their power ; and that my sole policy 
 was to appear as though I was willing to be of them, though my 
 approach must exhibit a little natural hesitation. ' What part 
 of what island in the West Indies have you in your mind 1 
 
 ' Neighbourhood of Cuba,' answered one of the men. 
 
 'Bill, leave it to me if you please,' exclaimed Mole, turning 
 upon the speaker with a frown. 'Our notion is, sir,' he con- 
 tinued, addressing me with a touch of respect in his manner that 
 was not a little welcome, 'that you should navigate the brig 
 towards the island of Cuba, and give us notice when we're 
 within a day's sail of it. Mr. Musgrave,' he continued, flinging 
 down his cap, extending his left hand and resting the fist of 
 the right one in it, ' you've been a sailor yourself you've seen 
 what we've suffered you onderstand the situation we're in let 
 it, sir, as between seafaring men, be all plain sailing between 
 you and us. There's been murder done aboard this here craft 
 as you know, sir ; and,' he proceeded deliberately, almost grind- 
 ing out the words as he delivered them, ' we don't intend that 
 the man as made away with Mr. Bothwell shall be took. We 
 don't want no interference. We don't intend that the Iron 
 Croum shall be boarded. We don't mean to be laid hold of, and 
 charged with mutineering, and punished for it. D'ye see that, 
 Mr. Musgrave? We've got no idea of coming to any sort of 
 harm that we can provide against. What's done's done ' Notlieu's,
 
 144 MAROONED 
 
 happened but what's been desaryed, sir by _ God, desarved, 
 mates 1 ' he almost roared out, striking his fist violently into the 
 palm of his hand^ then suddenly folding his arms upon his 
 breast, he added, in a changed voice charged with menace, 
 ' That's the situation, sir, and we want to know if you'll help 
 us.' 
 
 ' On certain conditions,' said L 
 
 ' What '11 they be ? ' he exclaimed, quickly and suspiciously. 
 
 I surveyed him a moment whilst I thought, thec^held up one 
 finger and said, 'The lady must have the sarfe privileges of 
 privacy which she has enjoyed down to the present moment.' 
 
 He took a view of the others, and bringing his eyes slowly to 
 mine said, ' The lady '11 have no call to be afraid of us, sir. She'll 
 lind us sailors and men' A grunt of assent from the others 
 followed this. 
 
 ' Thank you for saying so,' said I ; ' if ever a woman deserved 
 the kindness of a crew she does. Her heart has been with you 
 from the beginning in your troubles.' 
 
 ' Yes, by the Virgin, that's true ! ' cried the half-caste Ladova, 
 fetching the table a blow with his fist. 
 
 'As consarns the lady, sir,' said Mole, 'set your mind at ease. 
 What's your other conditions 1 ' 
 
 4 1 must, with her, have the exclusive use of this cabin.' 
 
 One of them cried, ' You're welcome enough to it. The fok'sle's 
 good enough for poor sailor men.' 
 
 ' It's as Thomas there says,' exclaimed Mole, ' the fok'sle's good 
 enough for us. We don't want no cabin. What's your other 
 conditions ? ' 
 
 'I have named them all,' I answered. 'You'll provide, I 
 suppose, for our comfort here tell some one of you off to bring 
 our meals along 1 ' 
 
 ' You'll see to that, cook,' said Mole, turning upon him. 
 
 ' Ay ' exclaimed the other, ' that '11 be all right, sir. The food '11 
 be cooked as afore, and sarved as afore, if it comes to my having 
 to wait on ye myself.' 
 
 ' Men,' said I, ' I can expect no more, and I am satisfied. You 
 have met me fairly and spoken to me honestly ; and whilst you 
 continue faithful to the understanding that now exists between 
 us, you'll find me as staunch as if I nad been one of you from 
 the beginning, and the most ill-used of you too. There are two 
 men on deck you answer for it that they will be satisfied with 
 our arrangement 1 ' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Mole, ' specially may Charles be answered for. 
 A man whose soul has turned black inside him, as his has, by 
 the shadder o' the gallows, ain't going to be very exacting in his 
 arrangements to get rid of the cuss. Charles will agree, sir ; so 
 will t'other. 1 
 
 ' Be it so,' said I ; ' and now I'll step into the captain's cabin 
 for a sight of his charts and the log-book there, that I may shape 
 course to Cuba. That's it, I think ? '
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 145 
 
 * Right, sir,' exclaimed Mole. Then looking at the others he 
 said, \Lads, there's nothing I've forgot to say, is there ] ' 
 
 There was some scratching of heads and shuffling of feet, and 
 then one said, 'No, everything's been said', Terry, I think :' and 
 another, 'Mr. Musgrave consents to flake command, ana steer 
 the vessel for Cuba, giving us a day's notice of its heaving into 
 view, and I don't know that there's anything more that we 
 wanted to see him about;' but a third cried, 'Ay, but Mr. 
 Musgrave 11 want some one to stand watch and watch with 
 him. Who's to do it ? ' 
 
 'You're capt'n now, sir.' said Mole, rounding upon me, but 
 speaking very civilly ; 'its for you to choose one of us to act 
 as your mate. The crew '11 be satisfied with your choice, no 
 matter who you fix upon.' 
 
 ' Then,' said I, ' Mr. Mole, I choose you.' 
 
 The calling him ' mister ' set the whole of the fellows on the 
 broad grin. 
 
 ' Very well, sir,' said Mole. ' Lads, ye can get f orrads now. I'll 
 keep a look-out, capt'n, ontil ye come up.' Secretly confounded 
 and dismayed as I was by all this business, yet his calling me 
 ' captain ' made me smile spite of myself, as the others had on 
 my terming him 'mister. A general laugh followed, but 
 nothing more was said as the whole body of them went quietly 
 up the ladder and disappeared through the companion-hatch. 
 
 I stood a moment or two grasping a stancheon, with a hand 
 to my forehead, oppressed by such a sense of bewilderment that 
 it was as sickening in its way as a bad fit of giddiness. But 
 I rallied swiftly, and observing Miss Grant's door to remain 
 closed, stepped at once to the cabin that had been occupied by 
 Broadwater. I entered it with no small feeling of awe. That 
 he had been foully made away with I did not for an instant 
 doubt, and the shadow of the crime seemed to lie like a material 
 gloom upon the atmosphere of the plain interior. 
 
 I was in the mood, indeed, just then to be shocked and startled 
 by little things, and I am not ashamed to own that I recoiled 
 as though the ghost of the skipper stood before me to the sight 
 that first met my eye on opening the door, of a pea-jacket and a 
 sou'-wester on top of it hanging together by the same hook, and 
 under the jacket a pair of breeches arched, empty as they were, 
 to the exact posture Broadwater's shanks exhibited in life. I 
 protest, the suit of clothes, with the thatch of the sou'-wester 
 coming down abaft the coat, looked so astonishingly like the old 
 skipper, that for the instant I thought he had hung himself with 
 liis face to the bulkhead. There was a bunk in the corner with 
 the bed-clothes tumbled ; over it a short hanging shelf holding 
 a few nautical books ; in a corner another table on ^ which 
 were a quadrant-case, a chronometer, a few mathematical instru- 
 ments, and, very conspicuous, Broadwater's huge silver turnip 
 watch. The soles of a pair of sea-boots, one foot lying upon 
 another, glimmered out from the gloom under the bunk, as 
 
 L
 
 146 MAROONED 
 
 though the captain lay drunk and silent in the darkness there. 
 I took notice, though now I wonder that I should have had eyes 
 for such trifling details, of a likeness of Broadwater and, as I 
 supposed, of his wife facing each other ; two heads cut out in 
 black paper, with streaks of bronze to define the lineaments, 
 mounted on a white ground. There was a canvas bag of charts 
 leaning dropsically against the head of the bunk, and in a roll 
 alongside it was a chart of the North Atlantic, which on open- 
 ing it I found ' pricked ' down to noon on the preceding day. 
 The mate's log-book was upon the table. The writing in it was 
 BothwelTs down to the time of his murder ; a very neat, clean, 
 almost ladylike hand, that threw into grotesque contrast old 
 Broadwater's sprawling, absurdly ill-spelt entries. Gordon, I 
 suppose, poor tellow, had been without literature enough to 
 qualify him to ' keep ' the book. Having made the necessary 
 calculations to enable me to shape the course the men desired, I 
 quitted the berth, grateful to escape an atmosphere in which I 
 breathed with difficulty, and was passing through my cabin on 
 my way to the deck when J caught sight of Miss Grant looking 
 out through her door. I immediately went to her. There was 
 a resolved, quiet expression in her face, and her voice was 
 without tremor as she said, 'I overheara all that passed in 
 the cabin. You do not doubt that the captain has been 
 murdered ? ' 
 
 'I do not,' I replied; 'but the men must not imagine that 
 we suspect them.' 
 
 * How will they treat us ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, they are well disposed, respectful in their manner to me, 
 and they consented at once to my request that the after part 
 of the vessel should be used only by us. This was more than 
 I had dared hope. You will have heard their demand that I 
 should navigate the vessel to Cuba ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' she exclaimed, catching her breath quickly ; ' it will be 
 a roundabout way to Bio, if ever we get there.' She smiled 
 faintly and sighed. 
 
 ' Never fear, we shall get there,' said I, cheerfully. ' Broadwater 
 has to be thanked for this abominable muddle. I foresaw it 
 all. I was certain that the men would never suffer this vessel 
 to proceed to her destination, call it Bio or any other place, 
 under a captain whose evidence would hang the man who had 
 freed them from the mate's tyranny. But let us most anxiously 
 bear in mind, Miss Grant, that our policy is not to know that 
 Broadwater has been made away with.' 
 
 'Oh, I see that clearly,' she answered. 
 
 ' He has committed suicide. Dwell upon this view, and the 
 thought of it will become a habit, and we shall be the safer to 
 that extent. There is plenty of time before us in which to talk 
 over our position and make plans. I will now go on deck and 
 alter the vessel's course. The men must believe me honestly 
 disposed indeed I most prove myself so; for let them bio
 
 I TAKE COMMAND H7 
 
 called murderers mutineers the blood that has been shed is 
 assuredly on the heads of Broadwater and Bothwell.' 
 
 I raised her hand to my lips and went on deck. The morning 
 was as brilliant as any that nad ever shone over us. There was 
 a light wind from the north-east, which I might have accepted 
 as the first breathings of the regular trades but for the absence 
 of the familiar clouds which float like signals set in the blue 
 heavens to mark the confines of these gracious and serviceable 
 
 Sales. The whole of the eastern sea stretched in a rippling 
 azzle as of wrinkled quicksilver, of so fiery an effulgence that 
 the weeping eye went instantly from it to the west for the 
 relief it got from the dark blue water there, and the soothing 
 azure of the sky that sloped down to the soft liquid boundary. 
 I ran a swift glance around the horizon, but there was nothing 
 to be seen. The brig was under the shortened canvas of the 
 preceding night ; main-topgallant-sail set, mainsail furled, tack 
 of the trysail hauled up, a jib and the lighter staysails stowed. 
 I found Mole pacing the deck with the conscious looks of a 
 person in authority. Though it was yet early the cook had 
 lighted the fire, and most of the men were gathered about the 
 little caboose, holding pots of hot coffee, some munching at 
 biscuits, others smoking. There was a suggestion of orderliness 
 amongst them that satisfied my eye. It was natural perhaps 
 that, recollecting the ugly stain on the cabin-floor, I should have 
 thrown a hurried glance over the quarter-deck planking for a 
 like hint that th'is time should concern Broadwater; but all 
 glistened sand- white to the sun, with no further dyes than the 
 violet pendulous shadows of spar, sail, and rigging. I stepped 
 aft to the binnacle, where Mole at once joined me. 
 
 ' The course to Cuba,' said I, ' running a line to the midship 
 bearings of the island, is west by south. Better get your yards 
 braced in and make sail upon the vessel.' 
 
 He instantly sung out, ' Hands to the braces ! Square the yards 
 for Cuba, bullies ! ' 
 
 The men drained their pots and sprang to the ropes. Never 
 from the hour of getting the anchor off Deal had they exhibited 
 such hearty nimbleness. Their songs had the true ring, and 
 their notes swept aloft to the hollows of the canvas, and 
 away into the airy blue over the side with the joyous echo of 
 the homeward-bounder's chorus. I motioned the man at the 
 helm to put the wheel over, and the brig slowly floated round 
 with her stern to the sun, and the wide soft heave of the sea coming 
 along under the light wind to the blue shadow of her starboard 
 quarter on the water. ' Steady I ' said I ; ' now hold her at that, 
 my man.' 
 
 ' Cuba 11 be under the bow then at this t ' said he, with such a 
 puckering of his face to the grin which overspread it, that it 
 inade one think of an old walnut-shell. 
 
 ' Yes,' said I, ' in heading as you go well be running the island 
 down in good time.' 
 
 L 2
 
 149 MAROONED 
 
 He leaned from the wheel to discharge a quantity of tobacco- 
 juice over the stern. ' Well,' said he, ' better a light pocket than 
 a heavy heart. Therell be no paying off this voyage, I suppose. 
 But, thank the Lard, there's been plenty o' paying out' He 
 uttered Broad-water's name, calling curses upon it in accents by 
 no means whispered, and out of the fulness of his soul fell a- 
 talkingto the brig with his eyes on the compass-card that swung 
 sluggishly to the lubber's point. 
 
 I stood alone watching the men making sail upon the brig. 
 Mole worked with the others, pulling hard, raising encouraging 
 shouts, and springing here ana there with the zeal of a man who 
 considers it his duty to set an example. Events had come in 
 such a hustling throng that in sober truth I had scarcely yet 
 had time to realize our position. Now as my eye went to the 
 men aloft loosening the sails, and the fellows below bawling out 
 at the sheets and halliards, I could find a moment for reflection. 
 If Broadwater had been murdered, it was hard to imagine, by the 
 hearty, careless behaviour and half -jocose airs of the crew, that 
 they knew of it. Yet if murder had been done it would be sheer 
 idleness to feign that the men could be ignorant of it. There 
 was always the fellow at the wheel to stand looking on as a 
 witness. If Broadwater had made away with himself, the splash 
 of him as he went overboard must have been a distinct sound fit 
 to catch any ear, even above all such surly, weltering noises as 
 were rising out of the blackness last night, from the forecastle 
 head to the binnacle ; unless indeed the old man, with the sleek, 
 secret, wary cunning of the sailor who had gone to his account 
 in the English Channel, had slipped in the darkness into the lee 
 
 main-chains, and then softly dropped into the sea. 
 
 But this was to suppose that he had destroyed himself, an 
 idea not to be entertained for the space of a breath in the face 
 of the memory of a nature which proved him to have been so 
 grossly of the earth, that one would as soon think of a hog ter- 
 minating its existence. No ! if he were out of the ship, then he 
 was a murdered man ; which being past all doubt, I entered into 
 some swift speculations as to the manner of his death : and there 
 being no hint upon the gleaming platform of the deck of the use 
 of the knife, I concluded that he had been stunned and dropped 
 overboard whilst still insensible. One man could have done this. 
 Heavy as the square form of old Broadwater was, one pair of 
 hands might have sufficed to drag the breathless body to the 
 rail, and with vigorous upheaval swing it into a somersault 
 over the bulwarks. Guilt, like terror, will often put a grip of 
 steel into nerveless fingers. But it was not to be supposed 
 there were no witnesses to this crime. Broadwater was not the 
 man to let the watch on deck skulk even in the blackest hour ; 
 therefore there would have been most of the sailors on the 
 move as observers of all that could happen, from the forecastle 
 to where the quarter-deck began ; whilst aft was the helmsman 
 with eyes for the rest of the ship there. Broadwater had been
 
 I TAKE COMMAND 149 
 
 murdered, and all hands knew it ! My heart turned sick and 
 cold in me to the bare recollection of what had occurred during 
 our execrable voyage, from the hour of Cooper's suicide to this 
 moment, and I turned with a sense of faintness to the rail, and 
 lay over it a minute or two to recover myself, half-distraught 
 by the conflict of emotions which surged up into my head. 
 
 I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I started vehemently to the 
 touch from my bitter mood of apprehension, and confronted 
 Miss Grant. 
 
 'There can be no objection to my coming on deck, Mr. 
 Musgrave?' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' None,' I answered ; ' the men have promised not to trouble 
 either of us. We must trust them we cannot do otherwise.' 
 
 She looked at me earnestly. I don't doubt I was worn and 
 haggard enough to account for her concerned, inquiring gaze. 
 She was very pale, but I instantly noticed an expression of 
 decision in her face as of a mind that has formed a resolution 
 from which nothing is to divert it. Her black eyes looked at 
 me with a full, steadfast shining. It was manifest that the true 
 spirit of this girl, which had been bowed a little as I had last 
 night remarked, had recovered its old natural, erect, heroic posture. 
 
 'Let us walk,' she said. 'It cannot matter that the men 
 should see us together conversing. They must know we do so 
 below when out of sight of them.' 
 
 'A moment,' I exclaimed. ' Mr. Mole 1 ' I sung out, 'get top- 
 mast and topgallant-stunsails aloft. Crowd on all canvas. You 
 want heels, as we do.' 
 
 ' Ay, ay, sir ! ' He re-echoed my orders promptly. Had he 
 been mate throughout he could not have fitted the post more 
 intelligently, nor exhibited shrewder perception of the dignity 
 of the berth he filled in his manner or calling to the men, that 
 was as good as saying to them, ' I'm still your shipmate, lads ; 
 but dont forget that I'm mister also ! ' 
 
 Miss Grant and I fell to pacing the weather-deck, speaking 
 low, and taking care to slew round for our forward pace whilst 
 the fellow at the helm was still a little way off. We spoke of 
 the disappearance of Broadwater. She did not doubt with me 
 that he had been murdered, and that the whole of the crew were 
 acquainted with the deed. I said to her, ' But glance at them, 
 Miss Grant j see how nimbly they run about : hear the cheeri- 
 ness in their voices, and the occasional laugh ! It is hard to 
 believe they can be conscious that a second dreadful Berime was 
 committed in this ship in the dark hours of the morning.' 
 
 'You will find it was the deed of one man,' she answered ; 'the 
 others feel themselves guiltless, and are happy because they are 
 free. But who is the criminal i Is it Charles, do you think ? ' 
 
 ' I dare not think,' I exclaimed. ' As it is, he must regard 
 us as witnesses to his murder of the mate. His dread of Broad- 
 water may be extended to us for the same reason. I am 
 infinitely bothered infinitely bothered,' I exclaimed, with W*
 
 ISO MAROONED 
 
 involuntary clenching of my fist to a fit of exasperation that 
 came to me with the thought of the horrible muddle we were 
 in, and my helplessness and my inability to perceive the least 
 gleam of light upon the heavy surrounding gloom. 
 
 She looked at me with a light smile, and said with a sort of 
 peremptoriness, fascinating for its spirit and kindness, 'If / 
 can be cool, you must be so. Mr. Musgrave, I really do not feel 
 the least bit afraid ; certainly I have no fear for our lives. 
 The hearts in those men are not black ; they are not pirates ; 
 at least they are not pirates yet ! They are wretched human 
 creatures, who have been driven to this by ill-treatment, and 
 now that the captain is gone they will stay their hands. 
 Indeed, I have no fear. The future, to be sure, is a gloomy 
 problem, but have not we courage enough between us to wait 
 until it is solved t' She continued to look at me, preserving 
 her light smile. 
 
 ' We should change places,' said I, feeling a trifle of colour in 
 my cheeks ; ' you have twenty-fold my heart. Yet I should feel 
 less worried. I believe, if I were alone here. It is my duty to 
 see you safely to Rio I embarked for no other purpose.' 
 ' But supposing / were alone ! ' said she. 
 
 * Ha ! ' I exclaimed ; ' and yet I don't know. I believe your 
 nature would top the whole difficulty as a sea-bird a surge big 
 enough to founder a line-of -battle ship. Indeed the mere cir- 
 cumstance of your being alone might win you more consider- 
 ation from the sailors than they would show you with a male 
 companion to look after you.' 
 
 ' Well, Mr. Musgrave,' said she, and her voice still maintained 
 its character of peremptoriness that rendered it, to my ear at 
 all events, not a little engaging by the quality of half-conscious 
 coquetry that I found in it, ' bemoaning our position will not 
 help it. I am certain you will yet discharge the obligation you 
 generously, most generously, undertook ; and how Alexander 
 will thank you when he hears of our adventures, and of your 
 heavy anxieties, my heart tells me.' 
 
 She laid her hand upon her breast as she spoke ; the Spanish 
 blood in her indeed was confessed in many of her gestures. 
 And though her accent was entirely English, yet perhaps in her 
 choice of words you missed the ease and simplicity you would 
 expect in a girl whose blood and lifelong surroundings were 
 purely British. 'A plague on Alexander r thought L It had 
 come, somehow or other, to my never being able to hear her 
 mention his name without a feeling in me that she was a bit 
 maladroit in referring to it. 'A plague on him ! ' I repeated 
 to myself, spite of the glowing glance she shot at me through 
 the fringes of her white lids, as if to an instant's curiosity as 
 to what was passing in my mind. 
 
 'Under Heaven, Miss Grant,' I answered, 'I hope indeed to 
 be able to discharge my obligation, though tis a word that I 
 don't like indeed, it is quite the other way. But,' said I,
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 151 
 
 a touch of impatience, ' this is no time for ceremonies of speech. 
 We are talking of Rio and Alexander ; and here, confound it ! 
 are we heading away on a crow's course for Cuba. 
 
 'Why do the men want to go to Cuba ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' I may find out,' I answered ; ' at present I have not the least 
 idea. The West Indies, to be sure, suggest piracy ; but that 
 dream is gone. If the cross-bones and skull be not hauled 
 down and stowed away, they are scarce now flying half-mast 
 high. No ! yonder livelies will not put this ship to any 
 felonious use ! I am to give them notice when we are within a 
 day's sail of the island. That sounds queer they don't >vame a 
 port.' 
 
 'It will all come right, Mr. Musgrave,' she exclaimed. 
 
 I viewed her with an admiration I could not disguise. It 
 was not only the challenge of her pale, flashful, resolved beauty 
 just then ; it was the high courage, giving her faith in the 
 future, that won my eyes to her with an expression in them 
 that must have conveyed more than the message I intended ; 
 for her own gaze drooped to it on a sudden, and went away 
 seawards with the merest flutter of a smile upon her lip? 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 WE ARE 8POKEK 
 
 PRESENTLY the men had packed studding-sails to the royal 
 yards upon the brig. The increased pressure raised a little yeasty 
 hum at the forefoot. The warm blue gushing of the wind had 
 weight enough in it to steady the canvas. The lower studding-sail 
 overhanging the side by many feet rounded yearningly forwards 
 cloud-like to the pressure ; the foot of the mainsail, the weather- 
 clew of which was hauled up, lifted, with scarce a swing-in, to 
 the light heave of the fabric ; aloft 'twas all luminous stirlessness, 
 one sail looking to float upwards to another, till on high the little 
 royals blended with the dainty tropical blue till the azure seemed 
 to flow through the whiteness of them, as the pearly chip of new 
 moon in the midday heavens will seem to be tinctured with the 
 sapphire along which it slides. But I took notice that the crew 
 did not intend to wash the decks down ; and that I might satisfy 
 myself on a head or two concerning the ship's discipline, and 
 what was expected of me, I called to Mole, having Miss Grant 
 still at my side. There was little of the cut-throat in the appear- 
 ance of the seaman as he approached and stood before us, civil, 
 but with a determined manner running through his respectful- 
 ness. He was indeed as fine a specimen of an English sailor as 
 one could wish to see ; tall, muscular, well-shaped, and with the 
 grace begotten by years of rolling decks in every posture and 
 mpvement j eyes full of sensibility, a check burnt by many
 
 162 MAROONED 
 
 months of high suns, and handsome features which seemed the 
 manlier for the shaggy cast his thick, plentiful hair gave them. 
 ' Mr. Mole,' said I, ' I am captain by the wish and consent of 
 the crew, but have no ambition to venture a step further than 
 they require me to walk. I therefore propose to give no orders 
 until I have ascertained their views. They will work the ship, of 
 course, brace the yards about to the wind, and make and shorten 
 sail, and the like. And what more 1 ' 
 
 * Nothing more, sir,' he answered, promptly. So I might have 
 guessed 1 ' There '11 be no money to take up, Mr. Musgrave,' 
 he continued, ' and he's a good dog that 11 work for a bare bone.' 
 
 * There'd be money enough to earn though,' said I, ' should you 
 feel disposed to turn to and make a salvage job of this business. 
 Here's a brig without a commander, with her hold full of mixed 
 commodities ' 
 
 He raised his hand with a glance forward. 'No, sir. All hands 
 is agreed. If we could stick the blooming hooker up forLunnon 
 town in a twenty-four hours' ratch, we'd sooner see her chiveying 
 her hell-born skipper and mate that way,' pointing down with a 
 wild romantic gesture, ' than handle a brace for her salvation.' 
 He took a steadier grip of the deck with his feet, so to speak, 
 and looked at me as much as to say, ' Hold to your first kind 
 of questions.' 
 
 * Then,' said I, * I am expected to do nothing but navigate the 
 brig?' 
 
 'To Cuba ! Yes, sir, that, if you please, along with looking 
 after her in dirty weather, for we know from Mr. Gordon that 
 you're sailor enough for most things that can happen at sea.' 
 
 It would have been idle to dispute this high opinion ; the result 
 no doubt of poor Gordon's hope that I might take the mate's 
 place, and of his wish to confirm, by his ardent representations 
 of me as a seaman, such satisfaction as the men might feel had 
 I consented to Broadwater's appointment of me. ' The crew 
 will find me as dutiful to their desires, Mr. Mole,' said I, ' as 
 they are faithful to the promises they made me.' 
 
 'Mr. Musgrave,' he exclaimed, 'I'll be plain with ye. There 11 
 be no call for you to take any notice of what goes on. The ship's 
 stores aren't over good, ana there's no reason why the cook 
 should not tarn to and sarve up a forecastle mess from time to 
 time out of the cabin provisions. That there live stock,' he 
 continued, pointing to a hencoop. ' belongs to you and the lady, 
 I l>elieve, sir ? ' I said ' yes.' ' Well, it won't be touched ; but all 
 the rest we shall take the liberty of claiming for ourselves.' 
 
 'Of course,' I said, 'you wiil do as you please. But what 
 about the liquor ? ' 
 
 * Ye needn t feel consarned about that,' he exclaimed, under- 
 standing me ; ' every man's allowance ^1 be increased, and why 
 not t But there '11 be no drinking. If ever you should observe 
 one of the men half so slewed as Broadwater used to be day 
 artor day and night arter night, the crew 11 give ye full consent
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 1S3 
 
 to have him seized up, and their own hands 11 do the rest. No, 
 no, there Tl be no drinking. The look-out ain't cheerful enough 
 for the likes tf that sort of jollification. There's one thing, 
 perhaps,' he continued, changing his tone from the high, almost 
 angry, energy in which he had been addressing me, that is 
 proper I should tell 'ee, sir. The crew don't want to have nothen 
 to say to any ships that may chance to pass. They desire to 
 keep themselves to themselves/ 
 
 A thought coming into my head on his saying this, I looked 
 from Miss Grant to him ana said, 'If a chance offered for this 
 lady and me to transship ourselves, you would not object 1 ' 
 . He answered quickly and sternly, * Mr. Musgrave, there must 
 be no meddling with other vessels. Please to understand that, 
 sir.' 
 
 I gave a little involuntary stamp of impatience, but said 
 nothing. Miss Grant's hand stole to my arm with a geiril 
 rebuking pressure of the fingers. The man added, softening 
 his manner, ' If you left us, who's to navigate the brig ? ' 
 
 ' The ship that received us would lend you a mate. 
 
 'Oh, but you dorUt understand,' he exclaimed, with a sour 
 lowering of his face. ' Well, sir, 'tis settled, of course ^there is 
 to be no conversing with anything that may heave in sight.' 
 
 ' I have told you I will do what you ask.' 
 
 Just then the cook came up to us, to ask if we were ready for 
 breakfast ; and simple as the thing was, yet on the top of the 
 shining morning and the quietude of the men, the touch of 
 homeliness in the question put a sort of ease into my mind that 
 was as useful to me just then as a small stroke of good fortune. 
 It half rose to my lips to gratify Mole by inviting him to use the 
 cabin for his meals, and had I been alone in the brig I should 
 have done so ; but the thought of him as society for Miss Grant 
 checked my intention, though I protest he would have furnished 
 her with out and away better company than ever Broadwater 
 was, whilst it was not to be questioned that he had much more 
 to talk about, having served in many different kinds of ships 
 and visited many lands ; whereas I believe Broadwater had 
 passed most of his early life in the coasting trade, and never 
 weathered either Cape in all the years he had used the sea. 
 
 The cook arrived with our breakfast in due course, and made 
 some show of setting the dishes upon the table, as if he had 
 taken more trouble than usual in the cooking of the meal, and 
 was desirous we should value him for it. We were in the cabin 
 waiting for him when he made his appearance, and after prepar- 
 ing the table he asked me if he should attend upon us. I thanked 
 him for his civility, and added that we should be able to do 
 without him, and told him very plainly that any attention he 
 showed us now would not be forgotten by me hereafter. I shall 
 always remember this man for the peculiar dingy pallor of his 
 face, so much like the complexion or the 'duff 'he cooked for the 
 sailors that no painter could have copied it more inimitably ;
 
 164 MAHOONED 
 
 also for his lame, moist eyeballs, whose protrusion gave him a 
 stupid, staring look, whilst at the same time the sky-blue pupils 
 were so bleared with damp and the cloudiness of congestion as 
 to make his wide-open gaze a sort of blind hunt in the direction 
 of what he looked at. Though I had told him we could do 
 without him, he still lingered, as though the novelty of being in 
 the cabin pleased him. I thought I would ask him a question 
 or two. 
 
 'Didn't it strike you as odd, cook, that Captain Broad water 
 should have chosen you to stand watch and watch with him ? ' 
 
 ' Why, yes,' said he, in his slow, wheezy voice. ' I don't know 
 what there was to make him partial to me in that way. He was 
 no more beloved by me than he was by the others. He had such 
 a choice of foul words as never I heard in a man's mouth afore. 
 'Sides a trick of hazing just proper to break the heart of a cart- 
 horse. Perhaps his feelings made his way towards me through 
 his stomach. He was much in love with that end of him, sir, 
 and yet coarse as a Fin in his eatin' too. He was born in the 
 latitood o' roast pork. Had he been given birth to higher north 
 he'd ha' asked in his prayers for nothen better than slush.' 
 
 'He must have destroyed himself very cunningly last night, 
 or rather this morning,' said L ' No doubt he sneaked over- 
 board into the blackness of the lee-channels, and thence 
 dropped.' I glanced at him carelessly as I said this. 
 
 ' Can't tell ye how it happened, I'm sure,' he answered. * I was 
 tarned in at the time, as you know. Hope that there bacon's 
 broiled to your liking. Miss 1 ' 
 
 Miss Grant thanked him with a smile and a bow. 
 
 ' Were you ever at Cuba, cook ? ' said I, in an offhand way. 
 
 ' No, sir,' he answered, making a step towards the companion- 
 ladder, as though he considered it time to be gone, and then 
 stopping to answer me. 
 
 ' Savanna's the chief port,' I continued. _ ' There should be no 
 difficulty, I suppose, in meeting with a ship bound straight on 
 for Rio. Were both,' said I, smiling and preserving my 
 careless manner, ' in a bit of a hurry, and I heartily wish that 
 the crew had selected waters nearer the South American sea- 
 board than the Caribbean Sea.' 
 
 'We're bound to Cuba anyhow,' said he, with another stride 
 towards the steps. 
 
 ' Do you know what part of Cuba the men design to touch 
 at ?' I asked, but as I said this I felt Miss Grant's hand upon 
 my knee. I looked at her, and marked a lightning-like lifting 
 of her long lashes to the skylight, where, partly through the 
 glass and partly through the raised sash, I caught a sight of 
 the figure of Mole standing in an unmistakably listening pos- 
 ture, though you would have said his attention was fixea by 
 something that was happening forward. ' No further need to 
 detain you, cook,' I exclaimed, loudly and cheerfully ; ' if you caa 
 persuade the crew for your influence, you know, as "doctor"
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN IBrf 
 
 ought to be considerable to let me navigate the brig to any 
 point nearer to Rio than Cuba, you will be doing not me but 
 this lady a prodigious service.' 
 
 The figure at the skylight moved away. He probably guessed 
 by the change of my voice that I knew he was listening. The 
 cook exclaimed, ' The destination of this here wessel is a matter 
 as consarns all hands. It's not for any one man more 'n another 
 to interfere. Cuba's been settled upon, and I allow that the 
 arrangement had best be left alone.' With that he went on deck. 
 
 * I think you are a little indiscreet,' said Miss Grant, softly. 
 'Perhaps so,' I replied, 'but the fellow with his pale face and 
 
 projecting eyes had, I thought, an honest look, and I seemed 
 to find a suggestion of garrulity lying behind his loitering here. 
 But I am mistaken. I must be cautious, as you say ; still it is 
 distracting not to be able to make even a guess at the intentions 
 of the fellows.' 
 
 ' You must expect to be watched,' she continued. * We shall 
 have to be exceedingly cautious in conversing, and, Mr. Mus- 
 grave, it will not do for you to question any of the men. You 
 must be as reserved as they are, attend to the navigation of the 
 ship according to their requirements, satisfy them with your, 
 honesty as a navigator by such proofs as their ignorance will 
 suffer them to understand, and leave the rest to time and to 
 chance. It must be so ! ' she cried, still softly, yet with impetu- 
 osity in the drawing of her breath. | It is for time and chance 
 to decide all things. Let one's condition be that of a princess, 
 or as dark and as full of care as ours now, it is the same.' 
 
 ' You shall control me as you desire,' said I gently ; ' you have 
 more wit than I, more patience, more courage, and will preserve 
 me from doing anything that I may repent for your sake. I 
 feel myself to a certain extent responsible for the dreadful 
 position in which we are placed.' She motioned dissent with 
 her hand. 
 
 * Well,' I continued, ' first of all, I ought to have known human 
 nature too well to have been duped by a man like Broad water.' 
 
 ' Oh, Mr. Musgrave, we do not know human nature even when 
 we are white-haired/ she cried, ' and you are so young yet 1 ' 
 
 'That is so,' said I, stealing a look at her to see if there was 
 any correspondence between her eyes and her words. ' But I am 
 not so young as not to have known better than to suffer our- 
 selves to proceed on this voyage, when perhaps, by insisting 
 upon it, I could have got Broad water to set us ashore in the 
 English Channel. One hope I have, however,' with a further 
 lowering of my voice ; ' it may not have occurred to the men. We 
 have ships of war in the West Indian waters, and it is impossible 
 to conjecture what might come of some smart sloop heaving us 
 into view, and desiring a closer acquaintance from symptoms 
 which the astute naval eye can often discern in what to another 
 is mere timber, canvas, and an ugly head or two peeping over, 
 the rail'
 
 158 MAROONED 
 
 But the idea of a cruiser overhauling us was a vague hope at 
 best. I might think to lighten Miss Grant's anxiety, and steal 
 a little ease for myself too, out of the fancies that came into my 
 head by talking of such things. But as the nations were then 
 at peace, as piracy was pretty nearly extinct, and as there was 
 nothing to suggest the slaver in the aspect of the Iron Croivn, 
 what excuse should a naval officer find in the mere cut of canvas, 
 and trim of yards, and run of rail, whether ornamented or not 
 with an ugly head or two, to send a boat aboard for a look at 
 the brig's papers ? The island of Cuba bore above two thousand 
 miles distant from us. How many days' sailing that might 
 signify no man would have cared to conjecture. We might 
 indeed look for the trades anon, and blow along briskly to the 
 quartering gale, without need for days at a stretch perhaps to 
 check a brace or stand by a halliard. But the sun eats out the 
 heart of the steady blowing as the Antilles are approached, and 
 the sweeping wind that has been whitening the curl of the dark 
 blue chasing billows, and putting a windy sparkle into the 
 glitter of the foaming huddle of gem-crested waters flashing 
 from under the counter in a long race towards the leaping 
 sea-line, dies out into parched catspaws, brief bursts of fiery 
 squall, and long intervals of glassy, rotting calm, with nothing 
 to tarnish the surface of the blinding mirror but the jump of 
 the skipjack, or the thin blue line that denotes the wake of 
 the wet black fin of the shark. 
 
 But at sea what happens for the day must suffice for it, and 
 the breeze had now settled into so fixed and pleasant a hum- 
 ming, that I was scarce surprised when returning on deck after 
 breakfast to find a hint in the blue shadowiness in the north- 
 east, with here and there a head of cloud lifting out of it, of the 
 presence or the approach of the regular trade- wind. All hands 
 were on deck forward saving Mole, who was aft, and Charles at 
 the wheeL They were lying sprawling, sitting about, smoking 
 to a man, yarning, with often a loud laugh breaking from one 
 or another of them. Indeed, it was more like a dog-watch scene 
 on a fine summer's night than such a picture as one would look 
 for in the work-up, hard-going hours of the forenoon watch. 
 Over the side the seas ran short, and broke friskily. Again 
 and again, from either bow, a score of flying-fish would dart 
 from the arch of wave there as though some young sea-god 
 leaning against the shearing forefoot was showering barbs of 
 mother-of-pearl up through the blue translucency into the 
 sunny air. 
 
 It was my watch on dock, and Mole on my arrival was going 
 forward, when I stopped him. 
 
 'Is there a man aboard this vessel,' said I, 'who has any 
 knowledge of navigation ? ' 
 
 'Not going to such lengths,' he answered, 'as taking the 
 height of tlio sun and discovering our situation by celestial 
 observations. But I don't doubt, if I was put to it} that I should
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 157 
 
 be able to find my way about with the log-line, supposing my, 
 departure's correct.' 
 
 Then,' said I, 'I may judge, even from what you say, that you 
 are able to follow my navigation, and to form an opinion of its 
 correctness by looking at the course I mark down on the chart.' 
 
 'Yes, sir, I should be able to do that.' 
 
 * I am glad to hear it. I desire that my goodwill should be 
 appreciated. The men would not doubt my sincerity or my 
 capacity with you at hand to tell them that you have checked 
 my reckonings, and that I am heading true to their wishes.' 
 
 ' We're all quite satisfied, sir,' he responded, with a falcon 
 glance at me under the careless droop of his lids. 'We have 
 -no fear of your deceiving of us ; ' and with a half-flourish of his 
 hand to his head he went towards the forecastle, leaving me 
 under the impression that I had said too much, and that it would 
 be as well for me in future to rehearse whatever I might wish 
 to say to the men with Miss Grant before expressing myself. 
 
 As I walked the deck alone, I would catch now and again an 
 odd, inquiring sort of look from Charles, who grasped the wheel. 
 It was almost wistful in its way, and with the idea of giving 
 him a chance to interpret it, I came presently to a stand at the 
 quarter, sending a light glance astern, and then made a stride 
 to the binnacle, from which I peered to the canvas aloft, as 
 though to remark with what steadiness the craft swung through 
 it under the dead weather drag of the great studding-sail My 
 aversion from the fellow was not without a weak element of pity 
 too for him. I seemed to remember now, oddly enough, as I 
 held him within the sphere of my sight without regarding him, 
 the kind of light that had come into his face like a smile when, 
 as he tugged at his oar in the boat that carried us aboard in 
 the Downs, he had let his eyes rest on Miss Grant, before send- 
 ing them on to old Broadwater who sat abaft her. 
 
 Sir,' he suddenly exclaimed. I turned with an air of surprise 
 at being accosted by him. ' It's known to you and the lady, sir. 
 that I killed the mate. He drove me wild in the dark, as I stood 
 here, with more outrageous language than the captain himself 
 could use. He rose the devil in me, and I drew my knife 
 though the moment after I could have stabbed myself for doing 
 of it. He dragged over a spoke with a mechanical twist ; his 
 olive-coloured complexion had perished into a sickly, sallow 
 green which his dark eyes, gleaming with the contending passions 
 in him, so accentuated that the memory of his visage was for 
 long one of the ugliest phantoms that troubled my slumbers. I 
 drew a pace away when he spoke of killing the mate : he con- 
 tinued talking hurriedly, as though he feared I should leave him 
 before he had had his say. ' You and the lady, sir, thinks of me 
 as a bloody murderer, and so I am so I am 1 But it begun and 
 ended in what you know and saw. So help me all the good 
 angels I was taught to pray to when I was a child, and so nelp 
 me the blessed "Virgin herself Ihe let go the wheel with one of
 
 158 MAROONED 
 
 Ms little hands to make the sign of the cross upon his breast 
 ' whatsoever may have been the cause of the capt'n's disap- 
 pearance, I am innocent of it. Do you believe me, sir ?' 
 
 I looked at him a moment and said, ' I do. But do you mean 
 to suggest that he met his end by foul play ? ' 
 
 He made a passionate gesture and cried, ' I know nothing 
 about it, sir. I want you to believe that, and I want the lady 
 to believe it more 'n you. She had pity for me when I when 
 I ' He paused with a gasp and a swift pointing towards the 
 foremast with a trembling hand. 
 i She came on deck at that moment. 
 
 4 1 am glad to learn what you have told me,' said I, and I 
 added coldly, for aversion was strong in me again, and besides, 
 his very words were as good as owning that the captain had 
 been murdered, though not by him, ' No doubt the unhappy man 
 fell crazy with drink and temper, and through the loss of the 
 boat, along with his conscience over the drowning of the cabin- 
 boy, and quietly sneaked overboard ; ' and so saying I walked 
 over to Miss Grant. 
 
 I called to some men to spread the little scrap of awning the 
 brig carried, and three or four of them came instantly tumbling 
 aft as willingly as one could wish. I then placed a chair for 
 Miss Grant to windward, where I could sometimes halt in my 
 walk to have a chat with her, for now that I had charge of the 
 deck, her accompanying me in my pacings would scarcely look 
 ship-shape in the eyes of the seamen. But I made no reference 
 to my conversation with the half-blood, beyond merely telling 
 her in & half -whisper that the fellow had, in an odd way, pro- 
 tested himself as innocent of whatever the cause might have 
 been of Broadwater's disappearance ; whence I thought it was 
 certainly to be gathered that the old man had been made away 
 with. However, it was not a little comforting, I can tell you, 
 to feel that this Charles, whom I held in secret dread, was equal 
 to feeling grateful to 'Miss Grant for the concern and indigna- 
 tion his punishment at the foremast had excited in her. It was 
 gratifying to me, moreover, to know that he had conscience 
 enough left in him to shrink from suspicion of another dark 
 deed. Indeed my talk with the fellow, followed on by the 
 lively willingness of the men who responded to my order to lay 
 aft and spread the awning, would have put, I believe, some- 
 thing of lightness into my tread of the quarter-deck, specially 
 with the radiant scene of heaven and ocean to turn from to 
 Miss Aurelia's dark eyes, which often followed me as I walked, 
 but for the dull oppressive wonder as to what project the crew 
 had in mind in making me head for Cuba, a thing that gnawed 
 in the secret recesses of my mind like some sulky throbbing 
 ache of a nerve. 
 
 Before my watch was out, however, there happened an inci- 
 dent which gave me to know very plainly that the sailors' 
 resolution was fixed in one direction, at all events. The breeze
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 159 
 
 had freshened it was a little before ten o'clock in the morning 
 clouds rounded and of silken texture, like growing puffs of 
 powder-smoke from great ordnance fired below the horizon, 
 were sailing up into the blue hollow which the sunshine so 
 filled that it was all azure dazzle over our mastheads ; the brig 
 was sliding along at some five knots, cradling her form from one 
 dark blue brow to another, with the whipped waters merrily 
 sparkling into billows and melting into cream all along her as 
 she ran. Suddenly a man, who was standing on the forecastle- 
 head, bawled out, ' Sail ho ! ' to which cry I noticed that the others, 
 who lounged or lay sprawling about the deck near the galley, 
 immediately started to their feet and ran to the rail to look. 
 "" ' Where away 1 ' I sang out. 
 
 ' Broad on the weather-bow,' came back the answer. 
 
 I looked, and at once descried a sail leaning like a white shaft 
 in the quarter the man had indicated, and, as I might judge by 
 the heel of her, by which one saw that she must be hugging the 
 wind, heading directly for us. I went to the companion for the 
 glass, and bringing the tubes to bear, made the stranger out to 
 be a small brigantine. The hands forward over the rail watched 
 her steadfastly. I waited and had another look at her, and 
 found her growing rapidly. Indeed, that was to be expected, 
 for our united pace would probably be closing us at the rate of 
 some ten or twelve knots in the hour. I hailed the forecastle, 
 and desired that Mr. Mole should be roused up and sent aft 
 to me. He sprang through the hatch within a minute after he 
 had been called, blinking with sleep and the darkness in his 
 eyes against the splendour on deck, but laying aft nevertheless 
 as briskly as if he had the scent of danger in his nostrils. 
 
 ' What s the matter now, sir ? ' he cried out, as he approached. 
 
 'I simply want to be advised,' said I, and pointing to the 
 little brigantine that was coming along with her wash-streak 
 down in the smother, and the weather-leeches of her topsail and 
 topgallant-sail and royal shivering like the fly of a flag in a 
 breeze to the grip of the helmsman's luff, I said, ' You see that 
 fellow out there ? ' 
 
 He shaded his eyes and answered, ' Plain enough, sir.' 
 
 ' Take that glass,' I exclaimed, ' and look at her, and tell me 
 what you observe.' 
 
 He worked away with the telescope, and then suddenly 
 exclaimed, "Taint English colours, is it? No, it's Norwegian, 
 Jack down flying half-masted.' 
 
 1 Exactly,' said I : 'it is a distress-signal, and she wants to 
 speak us. Now, I don't mean to accept any responsibility in a 
 business of this kind. There may be people yonder perishing 
 from some want which it is in our power to supply ' 
 
 'Can't help it if there are, sir,' he cried, vehemently. 'We're 
 bound to shove on ; there's nothen that must stop us 1 ' and a 
 dark look came into his face, as though he supposed I was going 
 to argue, and was angry by anticipation.
 
 ICO MAROONED 
 
 * Be it so,' I exclaimed. ' We'll keep straight on, as you say. 1 
 He sent a look full of significance at the man who had relieved 
 Charles at the wheel, and then went forward and leant upon 
 the rail alongside the others, staring his hardest, as they were, 
 at the approaching vessel. 
 
 What they had suspected in her appearance I don't know, but 
 I gathered ne had told them of the distress-signal and or the 
 nationality of it scarce yet visible to the naked eye by the 
 lapsing of most of them from their intent, strained, eager posture 
 into a half-lounging, careless attitude. I waited a little, and 
 then viewing her again through the glass, I was not a little 
 surprised to remark that she appeared to be full of people. I 
 examined her carefully, and was sure I could not be mistaken. 
 If the swarm of glimmering dots along the whole length of 
 her rail were not human faces, it would puzzle a man to guess 
 what else they could be. Presently the men noticed this too, 
 for I saw some of them give their breeches an uneasy hitch as 
 they brought their eyes away from her to our own canvas with 
 sharp starings aft, as though they feared I might play them 
 some ugly tnck if I were not closely watched. The size of the 
 brigantine scarcely exceeded a hundred and fifty tons, and I 
 never remember seeing a prettier model. She had a tnie 
 piratical sheer forwards, a run of bow into a knife-like cut- 
 water, sheathing green with usage, that flickered with a sort of 
 emerald sheen to the light of the snow that boiled about her 
 forefoot as she rose to the fine-weather surge. The swells of her 
 well-cut canvas leaned to us sunwards with milk-white softness 
 in the shine of them; nothing afloat could look more saucy, 
 taut, and seaworthy, and one almost suspected some sinister 
 device in the dumb appeal of the speck of crimson bunting 
 with its blue cross, white margined, and inverted Jack, only 
 that the crowd of heads, now distinctly visible, made such a 
 puzzlement of the sight as effectually checked speculation. I 
 watched her intently through the glass, and noticed much 
 motioning of arms and brandishing of caps and other headgear 
 amongst her people. It needed no specially clear eye for human 
 distress to interpret those gesticulations into an earnest entreaty 
 to us to boom-end our studding-sails and bring the brig to the 
 wind. I stood at the rail watching her, and Miss Grant came 
 to my side. 
 
 ' There are women aboard, and children too,' I cried ; 'at least 
 a hundred people, I should say. They will think us demons for 
 not attending to their signal.' 
 
 ' What do you imagine they need ? ' she inquired. 
 
 1 They may have run short of provisions, or worse still, of 
 water,' I answered, steadfastly examining the length of ner 
 black sides for any bright spout from the scuppers that might 
 tell me her pumps were going. 
 
 The men along the line of bulwarks watched her with faces aa 
 hard as figure-heads, with here and there a jaw moving upon
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 161 
 
 the quid that stood high in the cheek-bone, whilst at intervals a 
 fellow would drop from his akimbo arms upon the rail to light 
 his pipe at the galley fire, returning promptly, however, and 
 resuming his place, where he would stand quietly with a wooden- 
 headed look, but nevertheless with sooty pipe in mouth, blowing 
 out clouds that told of some inward perturbation. On a sudden 
 the brigantine put her helm up, slackened away her sheets fore 
 and aft along with the lee-braces, and headed direct for us. 
 Her manoeuvre startled me. for I thought she meant to run us 
 aboard. The clipper hull of her, now that she was making a free 
 wind of it, swept like the shadow of a cloud over the water. 
 JShe piled the foam to her hawse-pipes, and a yeasty hillock 
 went along with her on either quarter, with the flash past it of 
 her wake, whose giddy dazzle would have made a near eye reel 
 again. Mole sprang aft to the quarter-deck in a few bounds. 
 
 ' What's she up to, Mr. Musgrave ? ' he shouted. ' Does she 
 mean to board us, think ye ? ' 
 
 1 No, no ; to speak us, man to speak us,' I answered, for already 
 her intention was made manifest to me by a subtle shifting of 
 her helm, that would enable her presently to range within 
 speaking distance of us, heading as we were. In another ten 
 minutes she was within a biscuit-toss, almost directly abreast to 
 windward, but they had to let go tneir royal and topgallant- 
 halliards and scandalize their mainsail, as it is termed, to keep 
 their position ; for though the brig was under every stitch of 
 canvas that would draw, with studding-sails swelling cloud-like 
 one on top of another far beyond her weather-side, the clipper 
 to windward with all her canvas abroad would have forged ahead 
 like a steamer, and been out of hail in five minutes. There were 
 twenty or thirty women amongst the crowd, some of them with 
 babies in their arms, and forty or fifty men, and at least a score 
 of children. The vessel, being small and somewhat deep in the 
 water, showed her decks to us with every floating slide to lee- 
 ward. The picture, for strangeness, wildness, and I may add for 
 beauty, was in its way incomparable. The flash of the low 
 black hull through the milk-white boiling along her bends, the 
 ivory gleam of her canvas melting into soft shadowing beyond 
 the Central curves of the cloths, the crowd upon her decks so 
 variously and oddly apparelled that nothing short of the paint- 
 brush would put the scene before you red and green handker-' 
 chiefs round the head, caps like inverted flower-pots falling with 
 a tassel to the shoulders, coats of frieze with great metal buttons, 
 yellow half -boots, red petticoats, the gleam of gold or silver ear- 
 rings such a huddle of bright colours defies the pen ; one 
 thought of an opera troupe, with its choruses and orchestra to 
 boot, as having taken ship lor a pleasure cruise, and fallen into 
 some dreadful condition of incommunicable distress. The Nor- 
 wegian flag, as I have said, flew Jack down half-masted from 
 the main-topmast-head ; but though she might have been a Nor- 
 wegian ship, with a Norwegian crew in her, I cannot persuado 
 
 M
 
 162 MAROONED 
 
 myself that the women, the children, and most of the men were of 
 that nation. Yet it was impossible to understand a word of what 
 they said. Perhaps they would have been as unintelligible had 
 they yelled in English, for every throat in the craft was strained 
 at the same moment, and the wind brought the hubbub along to 
 fall in a blind dead way upon the ear like a fog upon the eye. 
 
 A man, presumably the skipper, an old patriarchal-looking 
 fellow, with a long white goat-like beard, and a white fur cap as 
 it seemed coming close down to his shaggy eyebrows, got into the 
 main-rigging, with a speaking-trumpet in one hand, through 
 which he roared a sentence that was as Hebrew, afterwards 
 pointing with his trumpet to his flag. I said to Mole, ' Shall we 
 hail them?' 
 
 He answered with a stamp of his foot, ' No, by ? not if 
 
 they was on fire. What do the dogs mean by sticking their craft 
 alongside of us ? ' 
 
 Besides continuously shouting, the queer kaleidoscopic crowd 
 convulsed themselves with every imaginable kind of gesture. 
 Some pointed into their wide-open mouths ; others clasped their 
 hands upon their stomachs, with grimaces inimitably expressive 
 of suffering : many motioned as if in the act of drinking ; one 
 man held a bottle aloft upside down, tapping it with his finger, 
 and shaking his head most dolefully. There was indeed no need 
 for them to tell in words what was the matter with them. 
 
 I cried, * Mr. Mole, you see how it is ; those people want 
 water water I ' I repeated, emphasizing the words, for if there's 
 a human need that thrills to the heart of the sailor on the high 
 seas, it is that. * It is in our power to relieve them to a small 
 extent at least. Look at those children ! No possible harm can 
 come, man, from our allowing them to send a boat to us.' 
 
 He turned upon me savagely. ' Mr. Musgrave,' he exclaimed, 
 in a voice like a snarl, so hard did his passion make it for him 
 to speak, ' if ye have an atom of consarn in your safety in the 
 lady s safety -you'll hold your jaw.' 
 
 I took Miss Grant's hand, and walked with her right aft, and 
 seated myself by her side on the grating. 
 
 ' You must let them have their way,' she exclaimed ; ' they are 
 devils, not men.' 
 
 I was too sick at heart, too enraged by the man's insolence, 
 too shocked by the picture of the gaping crowd to windward, to 
 be able to answer her. 
 
 Presently there fell a silence upon the little brigantine, and 
 you heard nothing but the seething of the water past her as her 
 sharp stem sheared through it with a hissing as of red-hot iron. 
 The hush was broken by the old white-bearded man bellowing 
 again to us through his speaking-trumpet. Mole, with folded 
 arms, stood looking on without a stir in the scowl of his face. 
 Not a voice disturbed the stillness forward, where the men hang- 
 ing over the rail were gazing with an air of mere idle curiosity. 
 Twice the old man hailed us ; he then got out of the rigging,
 
 WE ARE SPOKEN 163 
 
 and on reaching the deck flung his trumpet down with a furious 
 gesture, sank upon his knees, and lifting up his hands to God, 
 seemed to invoke a curse upon us ; varying his dreadful tragic 
 posture of denunciation by pointing at our brig with his eyes 
 upturned. At the sight ^ of this the rest of the people fell to 
 menacing us with brandished fists, shouting and yelling at us 
 till their voices blended into one long howl of execration. Yet 
 had our crew been statues they could not have surveyed the 
 dreadful scene more impassively. Presently the old man rose 
 from his knees, and motioned to the fellow at the wheel to put 
 it over ; the topgallant and royal yards were hoisted afresh, the 
 **>eak-halliards manned, and in a few moments the swift and 
 beautiful little vessel was hauling away from us, buzzing round 
 to the brilliant breeze with a wake following her white as the 
 shining of the sun on the polished surface of a scythe. 
 
 I thought by her ranging to starboard that she meant to round 
 into the wind, and so get her port tacks aboard for the ratch that 
 she was upon when first sighted. Instead, when she had stood 
 away far enough to come round to the wind under her starboard 
 helm without chance of striking us, over went her wheel ; she 
 spun on her heel like some saucy, frisky woman in a waltz, and 
 flattening in and bracing up fore and aft, sweep ! she came for us 
 again, passing close under our quarter, from no other motive that 
 I could see than to furnish her people with another opportunity 
 of uniting their voices in a long, raging and shrieking curse upon 
 us. Then like an arrow she was away astern crossing our wake ; 
 but whilst it was possible for the naked eye to hold her, one saw, 
 as it were, the throbbing of the crowd along her as they shook 
 their maledictions at us with flourished arms and fists. 
 
 When she had fairly settled away into toy-like dimensions, 
 Mole, who had been watching her from his position near the 
 main-rigging, came up to me, and said with the civil air of his 
 former behaviour, ' Sorry to have lost my temper, sir ; but you 
 know that all hands is resolved not to speak anything, from a 
 scow to a line-of -battle ship. That's our resolution, and it 'ud 
 make things easier if you was to be so good as to keep as clear 
 an eye upon it as you're fixing upon the course to Cuba.' 
 
 Miss Grant said quickly, as though, fearing an indiscretion 
 of temper in me, she wished to interfere between myself and 
 the man, 'Hunger and thirst are dreadful things, Mr. Mole. 
 Those people made their necessities very plain to us. It was 
 the sight of the women and children that moved Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 'That's right enough, Miss,' he answered ; 'but who's to know 
 what ailed them ? Supposing it to have been thirst, what 
 amount of fresh water calculated to be of any use to such a 
 army of folks have we got to spare out of our stock 1 There's 
 all the way to Cuba before us, with the sun pretty nigh over- 
 head every day, and we've got a right to think of ourselves first, 
 I allow. Sides,' he continued, putting the sharp of his hand to 
 his forehead to gaze at the now distant sail, and frowning to 
 
 M 2
 
 164 MAROONED 
 
 the brassy glare that came in folds froin the running waters 
 off each head of sea, * who's going to 'leviate people there's no 
 onderstanding ? Human they was, I dessay ; but the likes of 
 such a lump on a little vessel's deck, swearing, motioning, 
 patting their guts, making pretend to drink, and then appa- 
 riently falling down and cussing of us, ain't altogether the sort 
 of stroke you d look for in natural things, 'specially when the 
 whole biling is rigged up as if a body of organ-grinders had 
 turned pirates stole some blooming Dutchman's vessel, and 
 then missed their road.' 
 
 He talked as if he wished me to find something^ humorous in 
 his fancies. Bitterly indignant and resentful as I secretly felt, 
 I was not such a fool as to despise an attitude of conciliation 
 in the one man in whom I had now had time to observe the 
 others had confidence, who indeed headed, and no doubt in- 
 fluenced, the crew ; so^ I returned him a few civil, common- 
 place words, after which he went forward, where he stood 
 talking awhile. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A FESTIVE DOGKWATCH 
 
 AT sea so much which is strange happens, that no man who 
 has knowledge of the life will trouble himself to hunt about for 
 solutions. I remember a sailor once telling me, that his ship 
 being blown to the westwards off the Chilian coast, deep in the 
 heart of the Pacific waters, they fell in with a Chinese junk, 
 with three men and a couple of women on board. The wonder 
 of this junk lay not in her sides gray with barnacles and green 
 with weeds, nor in the queer, weather-befouled aspect of her faded 
 Asiatic sails, nor in the ragged look of the blue-gowned, betailed, 
 mustard-coloured creatures that were on deck ; but in her being 
 where she was. How came she in the South Pacific t It was 
 like the fly in the amber. The Chinamen made passionate 
 efforts to represent their condition, but to no purpose. Not a 
 motion of a hand of theirs was interpretable, and the captain of 
 the ship growing wearied, tilled on his vessel and proceeded on 
 his course. 
 
 There are confrontments, I say, in the sea life, which, being 
 unintelligible on the face of them, no man who has his reason 
 will attempt to explain. It was as likely as not that the 
 brigantine was a Norwegian that had fallen in with an emigrant 
 vessel in distress, had taken off all or most of the people, and 
 then run short of provisions and water. But there was so much 
 to keep me thougjitful in other ways, that, though tragically 
 strange as it was, it was not an incident to constrain my atten- 
 tion to it as though all had been well with us, and the thing no 
 more than a brief break in the monotony of a sunny voyage.
 
 A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH 165 
 
 The reflection that grew out of it was what sort of treat- 
 ment were Miss Grant and I to expect from men in whom selfish 
 fear could so work as to render them insensible to the most 
 piteous of all the demands which the stern usage of the sea can 
 force from human distress t It was the same selfish fear that 
 kept them quiet. One might guess there would be no mad 
 broaching of rum-puncheons with them. They were too much 
 alarmed with their situation to risk anything for the want of 
 unclouded brains. Indeed, their sobriety was as good as a hint 
 of their distrust of me. They very well knew that my one con- 
 suming desire must be to escape with Miss Grant from the 
 T>rig ; also that I was sailor enough to perceive there was no 
 chance for me in that way outside the speaking of a ship that 
 would be willing to take us ofE e They treated me with a sort 
 of negative civility indeed ; that is to say, they kept away from 
 our end of the brig, and jumped to my orders ; but then my 
 knowledge of navigation rendered me so important to them that 
 they could not do without me ; though what haunted my mind 
 as I stood with Miss Grant, watching the dim flicker of the 
 brigantine's canvas on the edge of the wide blue sweep of sea, 
 was, that a day must presently come when the high land of 
 Cuba would be heaving into view, and what then would hap- 
 pen ? There was something, too, inexpressibly malignant to my 
 fancy in the request of the men that I should let them know 
 when we were within a day's sail of the island ; and the mere 
 inability to gauge the meaning of this desire was enough to keep 
 every instinct in me writhing in a torment of uncertainty. 
 
 It was noon, however, and I went below for Broadwater's 
 quadrant. It was a primitive appliance, and likely as not to be 
 inaccurate. However, I made eight bells with it, watched closely 
 by the men as I screwed away at the sun, and then returned to 
 the cabin to work out the sights. I used Broadwater's room, as 
 the conveniences I required were in it, and whilst I sat at the 
 little table Miss Grant arrived and stood behind me, looking 
 over my shoulder as I jotted down the figures. She was anxious 
 to know where we were. I unrolled the chart, and pointed to 
 our position. 
 
 'It is still a long way to Cuba,' she exclaimed, bending her 
 stately figure over the chart. Her mouth was as firm, her face 
 as composed, her gaze as steadfast, soft, and serene as though 
 she were viewing some picture in a book. 
 
 'Yes,' I groaned, 'a weary long way.' 
 
 She seated herself on a little locker at the foot of old Broad- 
 water's bunk. Her beauty was like a light upon the atmosphere 
 of the quaint, somewhat darksome interior. You would have 
 needed to peep in at the door to appreciate the curiosity of 
 contrast wrought by her warm and glowing presence, the 
 glimmer of ameer light in threads of her hair, as though the 
 brown of it were self-luminous, the unconscious graceful dignity 
 of her attitude, and by the odd, rough furniture of the cabin ;
 
 168 MAROONED 
 
 the suit of clothes with the tarpaulin hat on top, swinging like 
 the figure of Broadwater himself at the bulkhead ; the soles of 
 the }ack-boots sprawling in the shadow under the bunk, with 
 her little feet a yard away from them ; the rough, time-bronzed 
 pilot-coat, hanging behind her as a canvas, so to speak, for the 
 perfections of her clear skin and the flash of her dark eyes to 
 show on. 
 
 She leaned towards me, folding her hands over her knee, and 
 said, ' Will it be possible to escape from this brig ? ' 
 
 I started and exclaimed, ' I have been full of that fancy since 
 the brigantine hauled on. No ; I do not think it is possible. 
 We must take such luck as we may find here.' 
 
 ' I want you to understand, Mr. Musgrave,' said she, ' that if 
 any scheme of escape should occur to you, you will find me 
 equal to it. I shall not mind what I do, indeed. I will dress up 
 as a man I will row an oar yes ! I can row. I am not afraid 
 of firing pistols. Alexander will tell you I am a good shot.' 
 
 She looked down into her lap with a faint smile, then her eyes 
 met mine again a full gaze, brilliant with inquiry. 
 
 ' WelL' said L ' I had not been in your company ten minutes 
 before I guessed that you would be the proper sort of girl for a 
 pinch. I was right, and so you see, spite of my being so young, 
 I am capable of taking a correct view sometimes of human 
 nature.' 
 
 She laughed softly, and with a foreign gesture of her hand 
 said, 'You are too impetuous, too emotional. One would hardly 
 think you an Englishman, you abandon yourself so readily to 
 impressions.' 
 
 'It may be as you say,' said L feeling somehow almost as 
 much confused by her manner and by her beauty as on the day 
 when she had first stood before me in the parlour of the London 
 lodging-house ; ' but this anxiety is new in you. What makes 
 you talk of escaping from the brig ? ' 
 
 'Simply as I have said, Mr. Musgrave that if you have 
 any scheme I am willing to bear as good a part in it as if I were 
 a man.' She drew herself erect, as though she would suggest 
 physical as well as intellectual strength. 
 
 'I have no scheme,' said I ; ' would to God I could see my way 
 to one ! ' 
 
 'Might we not lower the boat that hangs at the vessel's side?' 
 
 I shook my head quickly. ' No,' said I, ' there is always the 
 fellow at the wheel. How should we be able to lower a boat, 
 even on the blackest night, unperceived by him ? ' 
 
 ' But could you not gag him 1 ' said she. ' I could help you to 
 pinion him, and then stand over him pistol in hand,' smiling, 
 yet with a world of resolution in her gaze, ' whilst you let the 
 boat sink to the water.' 
 
 I went to the door and peeped out to make sure that nobody 
 was listening. 
 
 'Supposing,' said I, approaching her close that she might
 
 A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH 167 
 
 hear my voice, which was scarce more than a whisper, 'we 
 should succeed in getting away in the boat, what would be our 
 fate in a little open ark in the middle of the great Atlantic, 
 exposed all day to the broiling sun, and all night to the heavy 
 dews, to say nothing of squalls, thunderstorms, gales, putrefying 
 calms, and the rest of the conditions of the glorious ocean life ? 
 No, no ! dismiss that from your mind for your own sake, Miss 
 Grant my cousin would shoot me for subjecting^ you to such 
 risks and privations. But,' I continued, anxiously, for I 
 thought I might find a hint in her woman's cleverness, 'this 
 thought is new in you. Why do you wish to escape from the 
 brig 7 A bitter strong wish it must be when, to gratify it, you 
 are willing to face the hazard of a,n open boat.' 
 
 ' Oh, Mr. Musgrave, I am shocked by the inhumanity of the 
 crew. I had believed them plain sailors forced into evil by bad 
 treatment, but whose better natures would appear again when 
 the tyranny they suffered from had ceased. I think so no 
 longer. I fear their intentions towards us may be may be 
 I am frightened by the vagueness of their directions to you. 
 They speak of Cuba, but they name no part of it.' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' I cried, hearing a footstep. Mole put his head in 
 the door, knocking with his great knuckles on the bulkhead 
 as he did so. 
 
 ' Beg pardon,' said he ; 'I thought I'd just come along and see 
 how the land lies with us to-day.' 
 
 There was insolence in this intrusion, but then I had to con- 
 sider it was my own bringing about. He stood in the doorway, 
 peering in, in a posture civil enough, cap in hand, filling the 
 frame of the door with his great figure. 
 
 ' Here,' said I, putting my finger upon the chart, ' is the brig's 
 position to-day at noon.' 
 
 He came to the table and peered close. 
 
 1 The vessel's heading west by south,' said he, after a pause ; 
 'this here map don't show the West Indies.' 
 
 ' No,' said I, ' it is the North Atlantic only ; but there should 
 be a track-chart in that bag to give you all the bearings 
 you want.' 
 
 There were nearly a dozen charts rolled up in the bag. I 
 pulled out four, and on opening the fifth found it to be what I 
 needed a track-chart of the world. This I spread before Mole, 
 and left him to find out for himself whither a west by south 
 course would carry us from the point of latitude and longitude 
 I pencilled upon the chart. It is an old saying, and a terribly 
 trite one too, that a man must go afloat to see the wonders of 
 the Lord ; and 'tis equally true, that a man who is a lover of 
 strange, odd, surprising pictures, will find them nowhere in 
 greater perfection than at sea. When I recall that little cabin, 
 with the dim blue light sifting through the glass of the closed 
 scuttle, the muscular, swaying figure of the sun-darkened sea- 
 man stooping over the chart, his great hairy paws flat upon the
 
 158 MASONED 
 
 table, his hair hanging from his brow like a fall of rain from 
 the edge of a cloud, Miss Grant sitting silent and watchful, 
 her white fingers clasped upon her knee, with the flash of a gem 
 there that seemed to be reflected in every slight movement of 
 her dark eyes, myself subduing the worry and anger within 
 me to the best careless demeanour that I could contrive by 
 leaning my cheek upon my hand, softly whistling some light 
 sea-tune, to which I Kept time by an easy striking of the table 
 with the pencil I held, Broadwater's clothes swinging with the 
 swaying of the ship from pegs in the bulkhead, with other 
 rude, homely details of ocean furniture, already described, to fill, 
 as it were, the spaces between the human interests of that 
 interior with novel colour and touches remote from all shore- 
 going experience ; I say, when I recall this picture, I ask myself, 
 Where's the like of such a scene to be encountered save on that 
 liquid surface^ whose cradling respirations deepened yet the 
 strangeness of the whole by communicating those vitalizing 
 elements of sound and motion incommunicable by the pen ? 
 
 Mole stood erect presently, and looked for his cap. 
 
 * Well, I hope the course I am shaping satisfies you f ' said L 
 
 'It'll work out as true as a hair, it seems to me,' he answered. 
 
 | To what ^art of Cuba are we sailing, Mr. Mole ? ' inquired 
 Miss Grant, in her most natural manner, without any attempt 
 at an artless voice or a face of innocent wonderment. 
 
 'We ain't decided yet,' he answered promptly, picking up his 
 cap and going to the door. ' We mean to keep Charles clear of 
 the gallows if we can. Cuba's a good bit off yet, and when Mr. 
 Musgrave lets us know that it's within a day's sail, we may 
 have to tarn to and discuss what's to be done, onless we've come 
 to an agreement beforehand.' 
 
 He gave a nod towards the state-cabin, and turning upon us 
 again, said, 'The cook's asked me to say your dinner's ready, 
 sir.' He then went on deck. 
 
 We found a very tolerable meal prepared for us. The cook. 
 having put the dishes upon the table, left us to ourselves ; and 
 as we sat close together we were able to talk freely without 
 fear of our subdued voices penetrating to any attentive ear 
 that might be lurking at the skylight. I told Miss Grant it 
 would need very little consideration to assure us both that, if 
 we valued our lives, we must make no effort to escape by the 
 hazard of such a deed of violence as that of gagging and 
 pinioning the man at the wheel. Failure, I said, must lead to 
 iny being murdered out of hand, and then she was to think of 
 herself as alone with a lawless body of people, who, on the 
 strength of our attempt, would hold themselves discharged from 
 the obligation they now recognized to keep their distance and 
 treat us civilly. 
 
 She shuddered at this. 'It is the dread,' she exclaimed, 
 pressing her hand to her forehead, 'of anything happening that 
 might separate us, that might end in leaving me alone witjt
 
 A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH 169 
 
 these men, it is this dread, Mr. Musgrave, which makes me 
 talk of attempting to escape whilst we are together, and whilst 
 I feel my spirit equal to any call that you can make upon it. 
 The prospect of an open boat is dreadful, I admit, but it would 
 be paradise in comparison to my finding myself alone in tliia 
 brig.' f 
 
 'It is because we must remain together, come what may,' said 
 I, speaking with a degree of emphasis and passion, as I can now 
 recall, to which I have little doubt in another mood her eyes 
 would have sank with such a little trembling play of smile on 
 her lips as I had once before noticed, ' that I dare not risk our 
 -fceing separated by so much as the movement of a finger, without 
 feeling sure of the result. Besides,' I continued, sinking my 
 voice again, 'even if we should agree to attempt to escape by 
 the boat, it would be better to wait until we had closed the 
 Cuba coast than commit ourselves to the heart of the great 
 solitude we are now in.' I said, gently and soothingly, 'You 
 have been shocked by the cruelty of the men in refusing help 
 to the people of the brigantine. Their behaviour has excited a 
 new dread of them in you. You have sufiered a little shadow 
 to darken your glorious courage. But again and again you 
 have told me to believe that all will be well. All will be well ! ' 
 I exclaimed, taking her hand in both mine : 'you have too much 
 of the heroine in you to render the issue of this horrible voyage 
 uncertain. Your courage will shine out afresh. A little patience 
 and the gloom will have passed. I need every bit of encourage- 
 ment you can give me, and shall be the pluckier and the 
 stronger for your own strength and bravery.' 
 
 She kept her face averted, and a tear fell from her cheek. I 
 believe I never acted more wisely in my life than by leaving 
 her without another word and withdrawing to my cabin, and 
 remaining there until I felt calm enough to be able to talk to 
 her with clear perception of the meaning of niy presence on 
 board, and of the object of our journey. 
 
 When the dog-watch between six and eight came round, the 
 evening was so gentle and lovely that I cannot remember the 
 like of it. All day long we had kept the brig under the same 
 canvas which had been set in the morning, and she still floated 
 forwards to the tender propulsion of the white cloths, rising in 
 soft spaces to the sun-gilt trucks, whilst the sheen flowing oil the 
 studding-sails, which overhung the sides, trembled in the blue 
 surface under the swinging-boom as though the water were 
 touched with a beam of moonshine there. But the breeze had 
 weakened into a quiet wind that scarcely gave us a speed of 
 three miles in the hour. _ The sea was tremulous under the 
 warm breathing of the wind, but every ripple ran foamlessly, 
 and the swell was so faint you had to watch the mastheads to 
 make sure that the airy life you felt in the deck was not fanciful 
 I had charge of the brig, and often stopped in my walk to 
 exchange a few sentences with Miss Grunt, who waa seated
 
 170 MAROONED 
 
 near the skylight. The ugly half-caste Ladova was at the 
 wheel. A few seamen were sitting on the forecastle-head smok- 
 ing, but presently I noticed the cook come out of his little 
 caboose with a small kid or tub in his hand, the steam of which 
 seemed grateful to him, for as he walked on to the forecastle he 
 kept his head overhanging it as though inhaling it. He set the 
 kid down very carefully near the scuttle. The loungers in the 
 head gathered round, and seemed to sniff up the incense with 
 great satisfaction, as might be gathered from their several 
 postures and the expressions on their faces, though I was at too 
 great a distance to hear what they said. The cook returned to 
 the caboose, and shortly afterwards emerged with an armful of 
 pannikins, which he placed close alongside the steaming kid. I 
 eyed these proceedings uneasily. It was not hard to guess that 
 the steam yonder rose from something stronger than water. 
 One of the fellows put his head into the scuttle and called out, 
 and in a few moments the rest of the crew came on deck. 
 Amongst them was Mole, who sprang through the hatch with a 
 fiddle in his hand. His first act was to step up to the kid, dip 
 a pannikin into it, and take a sip. The brew was evidently to 
 his taste, for he gave the cook a nod, drained the pannikin, and 
 screwing the fiddle to his shoulder, fell to tuning it. 
 
 * They mean to be merry,' said I to Miss Grant. 
 
 'Will there not be enough drink in that wooden tub,' she said, 
 * to make them intoxicated ? ' 
 
 * Depends on the strength of the mixture/ said I. ' Mole gave 
 me his word that there should be no drunkenness aboard us. I 
 fancy the fellows are too distrustful of me to swallow more than 
 will hearten them to a couple of hours of jollity. Strange there 
 should have been a fiddle aboard all this time, and it should 
 never have been played until now. 'Tis to be Jack's requiem 
 over Broadwater. God help us ! what a muddle that creature 
 has brought us into.' 
 
 Just then Mole held up his hand to attract my attention. 
 'Jest a bit of sailors' pleasuring, Mr. Musgrave,' he sang put; 
 ' no more'n '11 help us to tune up our pipes, and put a bit of 
 spring into our flat feet.' 
 
 I responded quickly, with an answering flourish of my hand. 
 'You're quite right, my lads. Never was there a crew more 
 fairly entitled to a spell of merry-making.' 
 
 ' Boys ! ' shouted Mole, who seemed somewhat excited, ' to 
 the lady, bullies ! Dip to her and to his honour atop, my livelies. 
 Time from me, my noble fellows ! ' 
 
 'Hold!' I cried, entering into the spirit of the thing, 'let 
 Ladova be of you. 
 
 I went to the wheel. ' Jump,' said I, ' and drink our healths ! ' 
 
 He ran forward. Mole then dipped for a second draught, and 
 tood with his pannikin poised, waiting for the others to fill. 
 It was a sea picture just then to haunt a man to his grave, so 
 charged was the colour, the beauty, the freshness of it, with the
 
 A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH 171 
 
 horrible significance of the condition of things aboard. The 
 manly, handsome figure of Mole, in white duck trousers, blue 
 Bhirt leaving his mossy breast bare, round hat perched on the 
 back of his head, arms of ^ a giant naked to above the elbow, 
 holding his pannikin high in marine festive posture, the group 
 behind, with their pannikins upheld in imitation of him, here 
 and there a bright eye gleaming out of a shaggy face past some 
 brawny shoulder, the olive features of the half-blood contrasting 
 with the dingy white of the cook, the smoking crimson back- 
 ground of the west, against whose effulgent reaches, rising from 
 scarlet at the sea-line to a sweep of delicate golden haze over 
 -the mastheads, each figure stood out clear cut, the loveliness 
 of the great circle curving from the glory over one cathead into 
 the dark blue of the east, and back again to the effulgent sky 
 and sea over the bow ; it was indeed a scene not to be lightly 
 forgotten, charged as it was with the spirit of the beauty of the 
 evening, and with the memory of murder and of bitter wrong- 
 doing, and with our present fears. 
 
 _ ' Time from me, my livelies ! ' cried Mole, with a look over 
 either shoulder ; then holding his pannikin high and gazing aft, 
 ' One Two Three ! ' At the last word, and in utter silence, 
 flash went every man's pannikin to his mouth, and in token 
 that our healths had been effectually drunk, every fellow held 
 his pannikin inverted. The thing was done with a military 
 precision that must have won a laugh from me at any other 
 time ; but before merriment was practicable, one wanted to 
 know how much liquor the kid held, and how much spirit had 
 gone to the manufacture of the contents of the little tub. 
 
 Miss Grant rose and courtesied towards the forecastle with 
 inimitable grace, whilst I raised my hat to the dumb salute of 
 the inverted pannikins. Then Ladova returned, and I fell to 
 pacing the deck again, saying to Miss Grant, as I lingered abreast 
 ot her a moment with a careless glance aloft, that this was a 
 sign of goodwill on the part of the men that ought to help the 
 courage of us both. 
 
 Mole seized his fiddle afresh, and vaulting on to the forecastle- 
 capstan played a brisk polka. Next to jigging, Jack loves 
 polking ; the hornpipe heads the list, but the polka stands next. 
 The sailors formed themselves into couples z and in a few moments 
 were twisting and sliding round the musician, There was fun 
 to be got out of even the mere sight of the capers their legs cut, 
 and the enjoyment on their faces grinning over one another's 
 shoulders as they revolved. The cook, wanting a partner, danced 
 alone, a detail or this little passage or jollity that rendered the 
 whole scene inexpressibly childish. I said to Miss Grant, ' Is 
 there in all human nature a simpler-hearted creature than the 
 sailor t What landsman could find diversion in dancing as those 
 fellows are I In fact,' said I, ' Jack has all the simplicity of the 
 savage, with a touch of the savage's unpleasant qualities. There 
 is nothing in memory to hinder him. O bserve how heartily Mole
 
 172 MAROONED 
 
 saws, as if all had been and still was as well with this ship a* 
 at the day she lay in the PooL Only a few hours ago one or 
 maybe more yonder struck Broadwater down and tossed him 
 overboard. Yet the punch is not the less sweet to their palates. 
 They shake as lively a foot as any sinless soul could.' 
 
 ' See the half-blood I He dances all over. Every bit of him 
 to his very eyes is on the move. He hops about with pure 
 Spanish enjoyment. That rude deck there might be a ball- 
 room for him, and the rough company of the sailors a polished 
 fandango,' said Miss Grant. 
 
 'Ay,' said I, 'and I dare say he would not quiver about the 
 less briskly for the thought that the shadow of the gallowg 
 which awaits him lies dark to the light of the setting sun, 
 somewhere behind the slope of that sea-line.' 
 , And yet somehow, spite of the gloomy thoughts which came 
 to me out of these merry-making Jacks, there was something in 
 the sound of the fiddle, and in their skimming and twisting 
 ligures, to give a deeper oceanic meaning to the whole picture 
 of the brig, slowly pushing her way towards the crimson west, 
 , with the ripple from her stem curling into a flash of golden fire 
 as it arched round to the sun, than it got from the mere sapphire 
 and scarlet and hectic of the heavens, and the lovely blue of 
 the sea floating ahead of us, and melting into the brightness 
 under our jibboom. I thought to myself, What ship sailing 
 within earshot of us would guess that this peaceful brig had 
 been the theatre of tragedies as dreadful in their way as any- 
 thing of a like kind that has ever happened upon the high seas T 
 But every vessel afloat has an inner and secret life of her own. 
 A procession of ships is like a concourse of human beings ; no 
 man can imagine what is passing in the hearts of them what 
 wild, what glad, what frigntful, what pathetic memories may 
 linger in their dark and sealed depths. V iewed from a distance 
 on this evening, the Iron Crown would have presented a spectacle 
 full of beauty, of softness, of gentleness, into which there would 
 have entered a seeming element of happiness, of peace, and of 
 innocence, from the cheerful notes of the fiddle over which 
 yonder manly-looking sailor's head drooped, and from the brisk 
 and hearty figures which slided round about the capstan, with a 
 sailor's true delight in every heave of the leg and in every 
 revolution of the body. 
 
 When the polka came to an end, Mole dismounted and handed 
 the fiddle to the half-blood, who, grinning with an almost negro- 
 like countenance of enjoyment, took the other's place, and 
 struck up the well-known hornpipe air, Jock Robinson. Mole 
 took the deck alone ; the others, every man holding a pannikin 
 newly dipped, drew off hot and merry to look on, some sitting, 
 eome lounging. Carefully screwing his hat on his head, Mole 
 took the preliminary walk round, and then broke into the 
 ocean-dance, with the perched figure of the half-blood behind 
 him fiddling most ably. I never in all my life saw the horn-
 
 A FESTIVE DOG-WATCH 173 
 
 pipe better danced. There was so much expertness indeed as 
 almost to make one forget one's dislike or the fellow. The 
 admiration of the spectators sobered their grins, and they gazed 
 with sedate appreciation. Sometimes one or another rapped 
 put, * Hurrah, bully ! You're the lad for the girls ! ' ' Swing to 
 it my lively ! ' 'Bully for you, Terry, bully for you ! ' and the 
 lite, accompanied by a frequent lifting of the pannikins. With 
 his hat | on nine hairs,' as sailors say, his arms sometimes folded 
 upon his breast, sometimes one hand upon his hip, the other 
 lifted, his loose white trousers fluttering against the scarlet 
 background, his rough hair tossing upon his brow, with the 
 spirit of the thing shining in his eyes, Hole slappeo. the deck 
 "with^his feet till it rattled like castanets in the hands of a 
 Spanish dancer, jigging it so inimitably well indeed that Miss 
 Grant could not remove her eyes from him, whilst I gazed 
 positively fascinated by the gilded sea-picture. Indeed, it 
 stirred old memories in me as nothing else had done since we 
 first weighed anchor. It took me back to the forecastle of the 
 grand old Indiaman when the sultry dog-watch was growing 
 cool to the dewy eastern shadow. I clapped my hands loudly 
 when Mole, half -breath! ess with exertion and purple with heat. 
 brought his dance to an end with a smart blow of his foot ana 
 a bow to us aft, as finely managed as any courtier could have 
 contrived it Then after an interval he took the fiddle again, 
 and the others fell a-dancing, and when they were tired they 
 ang songs. 
 
 _ By this time the evening had drawn over us. There were long 
 lines of hectic in the west and rusty streaks of expiring scarlet, 
 but the stars were shining brilliantly, and the gloom of the 
 night was already darkening out the forecastle upon the eye 
 into an airy dusk,amid which the shapes of the seamen were 
 scarcely visible. But I had already noticed with satisfaction 
 that the tub, which had been tilted that the last drop might be 
 dipped out of it, was left unreplenished. One fellow sang with 
 a fine voice who it was I knew not ; it was a clear rich bari- 
 tone, and went floating up amongst the sails, whose wan hollows 
 gave the notes back in aim echoes. I leaned with Miss Grant 
 over the rail listening. An occasional delicate sob of water 
 rose from the clear profound, clouded with misty bursts of sea 
 fire, which, mingling with the fellow's voice, gave a quality of 
 softness and even of pathos to it. Nearly all the songs sung 
 were of a sentimental cast, and were accompanied by either 
 Mole or Charles with the fiddle ; and though broad day- 
 light would no doubt have found the sounds for the most part 
 commonplace enough, yet the airs, even when delivered by some 
 hoarser pipe than usual, took a note of romance and a quality 
 of unreality from the overshadowing presence of the liquid 
 night, the melancholy spaciousness of the dark sea extending 
 on all sides, the dimness of the extended wings of canvas on 
 high, the stillness upon the deep that was scarce disturbed by the
 
 174 MAROONED 
 
 breathing of the warm, dew-laden night- wind into the sails, and 
 the almost oppressive hush you found when amid the intervals 
 of the songs you sent your gaze into the dark blue dome 
 brilliant with stars which jewelled every point of spar, every 
 shadowy end of boom, every phantasmal length of yard of the 
 faint, pale fabric, looming large above the delicate glimmer 
 of the decks. 
 
 All was hushed and in darkness forward ; one figure alone 
 could be made out crossing the stars in a regular pendulum 
 tread on the forecastle, when Mole came aft to relieve me. The 
 excitement of the drink and the dance had gone out of him. He 
 said, ' Ye see the men are well in hand, Mr. Musgrave : there's 
 nothen to be feared from their liquorizing, as I told you. 
 
 'I was glad to notice that,' I answered ; 'your jollifications, 
 indeed your doings of any kind, are no concern of mine outside 
 the lady's safety and my own. I heartily wish that you under- 
 stood navigation, and that you could take charge of the brig, for 
 in that case you would have no objection to putting Miss Grant 
 and me aboard the first craft that would be willing to take us. 
 The deuce of it is, Mr. Mole,' continued I for I hoped he might 
 have come to me with a disposition rendered a trifle generous 
 by the dog-watch festivity, and would be willing therefore to talk 
 a little more freely than at another time ' the lady is bound to 
 Eio under my 'jharge, to be married to a cousin of mine who lives 
 at that place, and the road there by way of Cuba threatens so 
 long a delay, that besides the secret grieving of the lady over 
 her prolonged separation from her sweetheart and you, Mr. 
 Mole, as an English sailor, will understand her feelings there 
 is the worry of my cousin to be considered. He will think the 
 ship lost ; he may fancy me false to my trust perhaps.' 
 
 He waited a little before answering, and then said very 
 civilly, * I can quite onderstand yours and the lady's feelings. 
 We're all sorry for ye both, I assure you ; but we don't 
 mean to let Charles swing : we don't intend to put ourselves 
 in the way of the law, and so, as you've been already given 
 plain to onderstand, Mr. Musgrave, there mustn't be, and there 
 won't be, no speaking of ships. 'Sides,' he continued, with a 
 sudden rounding upon me, so to speak, in his manner. ' supposing 
 the hands consented to your transshipping yourselves, ain't it 
 a million to one that the vessel woiddn t oe bound to Rio, or any- 
 wheres near it ? In that case,' he added with a laugh, which he 
 instantly checked, ' you're as well off here : for Cuba's nearer to 
 Eio than the Cape o Good Hope or the Indies 'ud be, and for all 
 you know, the ship you enter might be bound to them parts, or 
 further off still to Chiney or New Zealand.' 
 
 Spite of his civil manner, I judged there was little more to 
 come from a chat with him than ill-temper on his side and in- 
 creased mortification and anxiety on mine, so telling him that 
 the course to be steered throughout the night was the course 
 we had been heading all day, I went below to join Miss Grant,
 
 A FEStlVE DOG-WATCH 175 
 
 I told her what Mole had said, and we sat talking till about nine 
 o'clock; and then observing her to look very weary, for she had 
 slept but little during the previous night, I beggea her to with- 
 draw, saying that I myself needed rest, as I should have to turn 
 out again at twelve o'clock. Nevertheless, though professing 
 myself tired ; I was in no humour to go to bed. It was impossible 
 to sit alone in that cabin without thinking of old Broad water, 
 a fancy that sent the eye instinctively to the smudge that still 
 lurked darkly in the stain of the wood at the foot of the cabin- 
 steps. A stouter heart than mine might have owned to a sense 
 of timidity without a feeling of shame. The voyage indeed had 
 been more like a nightmare than the grim reality it was, with 
 its teeming life of brutality and ugly deeds. It seemed but 
 yesterday that the brig had floated past the bald terrace of the 
 South Foreland, and yet in the brief interval of the few weeks 
 seven men of our slender company had vanished one after 
 another, and every man to such an accompaniment of tragic and 
 scaring conditions as to cause the memory of his death or of his 
 going to lay upon the mind with the significance of yonder stain 
 upon the planks. Then again I was haunted by the recollection 
 of the gaping and supplicating figures which had that morning 
 piteously motioned to us for heip, and of the white-bearded 
 old man whose uplifted eyes and trembling, pointing hand 
 had made his curse upon us as articulate as though the ear had 
 received every syllable of the malediction. 
 
 But this sitting alone, with nothing to break in upon one's 
 thoughts but the thin, weak groans of the fabric stealthily 
 swayed, was but melancholy work. I went to my cabin, and 
 was about to undress myself, when it occurred to me, that since 
 the brig was now in possession of the crew, whose condition 
 might not be quite so sober as that of Mole, it would be as well 
 for me to look to my pistols. I charged and primed them both, 
 and then remembering that Miss Grant had talked as though 
 she could handle a fire-arm with thorough knowledge of its use, 
 I resolved to give her one of the brace to lodge under her 
 pillow, or to place ready to hand. I did not doubt that a spirit 
 such as hers would find something tonical and supporting in 
 the mere notion of a loaded weapon lying close to her grasp. 
 In sober truth, I feared more for her than for myself. My life 
 was too serviceable to the men just now to render me uneasy 
 on my own account ; but it was otherwise with Miss Grant. 
 Who could tell but that amongst that lawless band there were 
 some ^even one with instincts to be easily rendered devilish 
 with liquor? I see myself now, standing in that little cabin, 
 grasping a pistol in either hand, my imagination forward in the 
 torecastle : picturing the dim light of the slush- lamp there, fling- 
 ing its faint, wavering ^illumination over _ the seamen sitting in 
 their bunks, or with hairy faces overhanging the edges of their 
 hammocks, dangerously gay-hearted with the drink they had 
 drained, and with the dance and songs, which, coming into their
 
 17 MAROONED 
 
 hard lives, were a sort of intoxication in" themselves, talking of 
 their jinks ashore, of their carousals, of their Polls and Susans, 
 till one of them perhaps would speak of Miss Grant 
 
 I opened my door, crossed the narrow passage, and gently 
 knocked upon the bulkhead of my companion's cabin. She 
 instantly asked who it was that knocked. I answered. In a 
 few moments she opened the door. The light from my own 
 cabin-lamp was upon her, for the berths were exactly abreast. 
 Her hair hung upon her shoulders, one hand grasped the neck 
 of her dressing-gown against her white throat, giving her an 
 aspect of sudden alarm, which the peculiar brilliance of her 
 steadfast eyes could not have defeated but for the composure 
 of her lips. 
 
 ' What is it, Mr. Musgrave T ' she asked. 
 
 I now regretted my action. Here was I grasping a brace of 
 pistols, and it seemed a stupid and nervous bit of behaviour in 
 me to disturb this girl, and thus confront her. 
 
 'You have told me you are not afraid of fire-arms/ I ex- 
 claimed. * It has occurred to me that one of these ' 
 
 She looked at the weapon I extended with a smile, then 
 without a word entered her cabin and returned. 
 
 'There,' she exclaimed, 'you will see that I am as fully 
 prepared ai you. Indeed I think I am better off, for yours, 1 
 fancy, are a little old-fashioned, whilst mine I am sure would 
 prove the deadlier weapon.' 
 
 She stepped aside that the light might shine upon the pistol 
 she held. It was a very handsome piece, with a long glittering 
 barrel, mounted in silver. ' See,' she exclaimed, raising it. Her 
 nostrils trembled, she drew herself erect with a slight backward 
 leaning of her head, and levelled the pistol past me with a smile 
 that was made almost scornful by the proud, sparkling deter- 
 mination of the gaze she fixed upon me. On, for a painter's 
 brush to give you the queenly figure and pose of her as she 
 thus stood ! Her arms sank to her side, and she said quietly, 
 * Have no fear for me, Mr. Musgrave. Should I be called upon 
 to defend myself, I shall know how to do it.' 
 
 I again wished her good-night, and returned to my cabin, 
 feeling somehow, as Jonathan says, a bit mean, though tor what 
 reason I do not know, unless it was that such a combination of 
 beauty, coolness, and courage made one fancy that the best sort 
 of manhood in comparison with it could not but be somewhat 
 insignificant Indeed it did me good to think of the tear she had 
 let fall that day, and to remember that now and again a natural 
 timidity and fear had broken out. After all, thought I, as I 
 looked round for a convenient hiding-place for niy pistols, it is 
 always the woman that forms the most admirable part of the 
 heroine,
 
 MAROONED 177 
 
 CHAPTEB XXTT 
 
 MAROONED 
 
 HOWEVER, as it turned out, the fears which had led me to the 
 handling of my fire-arms, and to my disturbing Miss Grant, 
 proved groundless. The night passed, quietly. Mole roused me 
 at eight bells by beating over my head, and when I went on 
 deck I found him as vigilant as need be, the ship sailing quietly 
 along, the watch below turning out, everything as orderly, in 
 short, as though Broadwater still haa charge, with Mr. Both well 
 wit hand as an instrument to drive discipline home with. 
 
 So it was next day, and so it was next night, and for many 
 days and many nights afterwards. For a whole week together 
 we sailed along without handling a brace or lifting the clews of 
 a royal To be sure, it was weather to be expected in those 
 parallels. The trade-wind hummed over our quarter, sometimes 
 merrily enough to put an edge of froth to the curl or dark blue 
 ripple, sometimes so softly that I would think we had lost it, 
 when I noticed the light, long, azure swathes winding as un- 
 wrinkled as a surface of polished steel to the blue distance with 
 the shadowing of the tender draught between. The men were 
 very orderly ; they kept to their quarters, and never one of 
 them, with the exception of Mole or the cook, who punctually 
 waited upon us, so much as put a foot upon the companion- 
 steps. They did no work ; the decks remained unwashed : what 
 trifling decoration of brass there was about the vessel grew 
 green ; the paintwork became grimy and blotched with heat 
 and neglect ; the sailors lounged about the deck all day, smoking 
 and yarning, and then when the cool of the second dog-watch 
 came, they would fill their little tub with punch, dance, sing 
 songs, and fall to the sort of merry-making I have described. 
 The pigs belonging to the brig they killed by degrees, and also 
 made free with the cabin provisions and the live stock : but our 
 own private stores they never offered to touch. Every day, after 
 working out my observations, I would show Mole our position 
 on the chart, but I was careful not to question him. In fact his 
 own and the resolved attitude of the others satisfied me that 
 they had made up their minds, that they had agreed upon a 
 scheme from which nothing was to divert them, and of which it 
 was their intention to keep me in ignorance ; and I saw there 
 was no remedy for Miss Grant and myself but patience. 
 
 Well, the time passed in this way, one day being the counter- 
 part of another, and the hours seemed as minutes when one 
 looked back, so monotonous it all was, though our consuming 
 expectation and anxiety made the end seem so remote that I 
 would feel sometimes as if I must fall mad from the mere wait- 
 ing for it. Now and again, but at long intervals, we sighted a 
 sail ; but it was always at a distance, and I would bring my eye 
 
 V
 
 178 MAROONED 
 
 with a sort of loathing in me from the gleam of it. so ironical 
 would be its accentuation of our condition, so idle and distracting 
 the yearnings it awoke in me. But one day there came a change 
 of weather. A shift of wind had happened in the morning 
 watch when I was below, and when I went on deck I found the 
 atmosphere thick, the breeze off the port-bow, and the brig 
 under all plain sail, with the yards braced fore and aft. I made 
 nothing of this at first, for I never doubted that it would brighten 
 out into tropical fairness again in an hour ; but finding that it 
 continued, I grew uneasy. For, as I could catch no sight of the 
 sun, "* 
 and 
 
 navigator 
 
 rusty appliances of aged quadrant and infirm chronometer, I 
 feared that my earlier calculations, supplemented by such guess- 
 work as dead reckoning implies, would find me all adrift when 
 the time came, as I should suppose, to report that Cuba might 
 be looked for in twelve or twenty-four hours. I say I was 
 afraid, for reassuring as might be the behaviour of the men now, 
 it was impossible to foresee what posture they would take if 
 they should find me wrong in my navigation. Indeed my very 
 life might depend upon my accuracy. They would suspect 1 
 had wilf dlly deceived them, and God alone knows what usage 
 I should ^receive from them if they worked themselves into a 
 passion over this fancy. 
 
 The nights were as thick as the clays. I never turned out in 
 the dark without an eager look aloft ; but the gloom came down 
 to pur mastheads : not the leanest phantom of a star was ever 
 visible, and the dawn was again and again the same feeble 
 filtering of granite-coloured light through a sullen grayness of 
 heaven that yet left the sea-line bare to its confines ; and the 
 breeze, blowing warm and moist as a woman's breath over the 
 olive-tinctured deep, never once parted this melancholy shadow 
 into a break wide enough to give us the dimmest view of the 
 azure behind it. I told Mole that as the brig was off her course, 
 with a certain amount of leeway to be accounted for, and as I 
 had nothing to depend upon but the log-line, it would be impos- 
 sible for me to guarantee that we should hit the Cuba coast. I 
 said this to him at noon on the second day of the thick weather, 
 whilst with quadrant in hand I stood hoping for an apparition 
 of the sun. 
 
 He looked at me suspiciously under the mat of hair that 
 drooped upon his brow, and said, ' But we ain't outside five days' 
 sail of it, are we ? ' 
 
 'About that,' I answered. 
 
 'Then how can we fail hitting the island!' he exclaimed. 
 ' It's long enpTigh j there's range or coast to keep it in sight if it 
 was as high in the air as the moon is. The brig s head's west by 
 north, half -north, two and a half points off. Our position being 
 known, we shall be able to tell when it is time to go about.'
 
 MAROONED 17ft 
 
 'Ay,' said I, 'but put her about, and where will she be head- 
 ing to? South-south-east won't serve our turn, Mr. Mole. 
 Besides, Pm not sure of the currents hereabouts. Captain 
 Broad water's instruments are not of the best, you must know, 
 and his charts are as old as his quadrant. He had made the 
 run to Rio so often that he could smell his way along ; but here 
 am I, no experienced navigator, mind you, heading right away 
 off Broadwater's course, and thrusting into a smother that 
 leaves me nothing but the log-line to work my way by.' 
 
 I saw he did not like this at all. He eyed me very uneasily, 
 with a shadow of temper rising to his face. 
 
 'Should be mere crow-flying work, it seems to me,' he ex- 
 claimed ; ' 'tain't as if it was a rock you was heading for. Look 
 at the length of the Cuba coast, sir, on the chart. West by 
 south's the course ; that's ondoubted, if the compass don't lie. 
 Werry well ; you're within five days of a range pretty nigh as 
 long as one side of Europe. How can ye be a missing of it with 
 the log a-going every two hours, and the course showing clear 
 in yonder binnacle ? ' 
 
 ' As you are so cock-sure,' said I, defiantly, ' I heartily wish 
 you would relieve me of the responsibility of navigating the 
 vessel. Since you know all about it, take charge of her I I've 
 done my best, and will resign my trust gladly.' 
 
 ' No, no, by ,' he cried, with an oath ; ' we've kept to our 
 
 side of the agreement, you keep to yourn. You ondertook, 
 under conditions which the crew s complied with, to navigate 
 this brig to within a day's sail of Cuba, and then tell us when 
 we was arrived at it. We must hold ye to that, sir,' he added, 
 with a dark look. 
 
 ' What I've done, I've done honestly, 1 said I ; ' I have been as 
 loyal on my side as I admit the crew have been conscientious 
 on theirs. Use me as you will I am in your power and cannot 
 help myself, and you know it ! I have performed my share of 
 the cursed compact ! ' with which I turned on my heel, leaving 
 him standing and following me with his eyes. 
 
 Well, for five days and five nights the thick weather lasted. 
 The end then came, very fortunately for me, for had this spell 
 of bitter anxiety been protracted another week, I believe my 
 mind would have become unhinged. The distrust of the men 
 had grown so keen that they watched me as if I were a rattle- 
 snake. Their very ignorance of navigation rendered them the 
 more suspicious. Every day Mole took the chart forward and 
 showed them where we were, by dead reckoning, and you would 
 see them shouldering one another as they looked, flinging a 
 note of growling upon the air with their combined utterances, 
 pointing to the chart with their thumbs, and then gazing 
 around the sea as if there should be something there to furnish 
 them with a hint of the true situation of the brig. 
 
 At four o'clock on the morning of the sixth day, when Mole 
 arrived on the quarter-deck to relieve me, the ocean lay aa 
 
 N 2
 
 180 MAROONED 
 
 darkly shrouded as it had been at any time since the first of 
 tliis gloom had gathered around us. The wind had shifted at 
 noon on the previous day, arid the course I then shaped was 
 west-south-west, but at midnight it had headed us again, and the 
 brig had broken off to west by north. Yet the breeze had been 
 steady throughout ; we had shown royals to it the whole time, 
 and it had made life as easy-going aboard as ever the steady 
 wafting of the trade- wind had ; that is to say, it demanded no 
 pulling and hauling from the men, no furling or setting again. 
 Under a close luff the Iron Grown broke the short gray seas 
 with her larboard bow with a handsome trend to leeward, 
 as was to be noticed by the run of the short streak of oily 
 wake veering away on the quarter. 
 
 Mole was grim and surly as an unshaven sailor newly 
 awakened when he arrived. I was not less sullen than he, sick 
 at heart with the four hours' straining of my eyes in search of 
 a stan and weary besides with the fatigue that comes to a man 
 put 01 anxiety, idle conjecture, and a sense of uncertainty, that 
 in my case was heightened by waiting into a sort of anguish. I 
 briefly a$id sulkily gave him the news of the four hours, which 
 amountt \ to nothing, and with a yawn and a shiver went below, 
 and to bed. 
 
 I was awakened from a deep sleep by a thumping of heavy 
 knuckles on the bulkhead outside. I started up, conceiving J 
 had overslept myself ; that it was past the hour, in short, when 
 I should have relieved Mole ; but on looking at my watch, which 
 hung at hand, I observed it was but seven ox;lock. The knocking 
 was repeated. 
 
 4 Who's there t ' I sang out. 
 
 The gruff voice of a seaman named Williamson answered, 
 * Mr. Mole wants ye on deck, sir.' 
 
 'Right/ I answered, jumping out of my bunk, whilst I 
 wondered if some fresh tragedy had happened, for my being 
 called in this way brought the morning of Broadwater's dis- 
 appearance to my mind, and that was a memory to crowd my 
 imagination with a score of black fears and anticipations. 
 Meanwhile I took notice that the weather had cleared, and that 
 it was a fine bright morning. The shining of the sunlight upon 
 the scuttle puzzled me. It came full to the glass in a brimming 
 of white splendour off the sea, whereas if we were holding our 
 course the luminary should be nearly astern, with a slanting^of 
 his radiance along our sides, out of which no beam could twist 
 to lie as the light now lay in a circular tremble of pale gold 
 upon the door facing the scuttle. Nor could I immediately fail 
 to observe that the brig floated steady. My ear was too practised 
 not to rightly interpret the slopping sounds of water against 
 the run. She rolled slightly with much internal creaking, as was 
 natural to her ; but I did not need to go on deck to gather that 
 either her topsail was to the mast or that her anchor was down. 
 
 What had happened t I lingered a minute or two outside my
 
 MAROONED 181 
 
 cabin-door, with my ear against the bulkhead of Miss Grant'a 
 berth. All was still within. I knocked, then called out gently, 
 'Is it well with you, Miss Grant?' 
 
 'Yes ; what is it now, Mr. Musgrave?' she replied. 
 
 I answered, ' I cannot tell. I am now going on deck/ 
 
 'I will join you shortly,' she said. 
 
 It was comforting to hear her voice. In such a vessel as the 
 Iron Crown it was impossible to know what might happen 
 from hour to hour, and I protest, when I listened and heard no 
 sound in my companion's cabin, such a chill of dismay for an 
 instant fell upon my heart, that the sensation was as bad in its 
 jvay as the realization of a fear. But all was well with her, and 
 without further lingering I stepped on deck. 
 
 It takes a man a little time to collect the details of a picture. 
 For a moment perhaps I stood in the companion-way, looking 
 aloft and upon the decks, and then round upon the sea. The 
 brig, as I had expected to find her, was hove-to. Her mainsail 
 was hauled up, the topsail aback, the royals clewed down. It 
 was a very clear, brilliant morning. Every vestige of the 
 leaden, oppressive atmosphere that had environed us throughout 
 the week had disappeared. The sea-line ran with a crystalline 
 sheen like the edge of a lens out of the west ; carrying the airy, 
 delicate gleam with it in its curvature to the east, where it 
 broke into white flame under the hot and mounting sun. 
 
 Directly on our starboard-beam, at the distance of a mile or 
 less, stood an island. The blue went past it on both hands, 
 and the atmospheric hue of the sky beyond was assurance posi- 
 tive to the nautical eye that the ocean was on that side as well 
 as on this. It showed a seaboard of a couple of miles ; the 
 foreshore of it apparently coral sand, which to the sunshine 
 dazzled out almost blindingly against the dark green background 
 of bush, tree, and small savanna. Here and there that lustrous 
 beach curved into a little creek with an overhanging of palm- 
 trees on either side of it, like human beings bowing to one 
 another. The breeze was light, there was scarce an undulation 
 of swell, and the thin line of surf crawling out of the blue sur- 
 face on to the sand came to the eye in a radiant tremble ; the 
 shivering of it seemed to put a sort of pulsing into the whole of 
 the foreshore, as though the steamy heat of the atmosphere 
 caused the land to writhe upon the sight. It was a low island, 
 a Cay, as I might gather, of the true Bahaman type, with a green 
 hummock or two amidships of it ; here and there a volcanic- like 
 protuberance of land, with verdant slopes refreshing to the eye 
 to rest upon, and a kind of swarming of trees in places, their 
 tops above the sky-line of the shore, and their branches defining 
 a fibrine conformation as delicate as coral against the liquid 
 azure past them. 
 
 The sailors leaned over the side of the brig, looking at this 
 island. Mole stood gazing at it close to the companion, with 
 his arms folded, manifestly waiting for me to appear. I was a
 
 182 MAROONED 
 
 minute, however, in the hatch before he -was sensible of my 
 presence. 
 
 'That's not Cuba, sir,' he exclaimed, instantly levelling his 
 finger at the island. 
 
 At the sound of his voice the fellows who were hanging over 
 the rail looked round, and two or three of them dismounted and 
 drew near ; but merely, as I believed, the better to hear what I 
 had to say, for there was nothing threatening in their manner 
 or faces. 
 
 ' No,' said I, stepping out of the hatch to command a clearer 
 view of the horizon, ' that island is assuredly not Cuba, as you 
 say, Mr. Mole. "Tis a Cay, with a name of its own, I don't doubt. 
 Our drift must have been to the north of west, with a set of 
 current that has thrown me all abroad in my reckonings. Ill 
 step below for the chart.' 
 
 4 Never mind about the chart.' he exclaimed, with a note in his 
 voice that brought me to a dead, stand in a second ; ' that island's 
 beknown to us. 
 
 The half-blood Charles came from the rail with his hands in 
 his breeches-pockets. ' / know it,' he exclaimed, with a peculiar 
 expression in the roll of his sloe-like eyes upon me ; ' it '11 do as 
 well as Cuba maybe better,' he added, speaking the words 
 through his nose with a Yankee drawL 
 
 * What is the island ? ' I asked. 
 
 'It'll be in the West Indie boiling, anyhow,' answered the 
 half-blood ; ' it's all right. No civilization on it ; no blasted 
 lawyers to choke a man for doing his messmates a good turn.' 
 He whistled softly, with a half -smile at Mole, then swung on his 
 heel and returned to the rail 
 
 Mole eyed me steadfastly, like a man considering ; the others 
 methought with something of pity mingled with rough curi- 
 osity in the air with which they surveyed me. A miserable 
 feeling of uneasiness possessed my mind. Mole's manner was 
 authoritative, and even insolent, a behaviour he had no need to 
 open his mouth to utter. But the others showed a sort of 
 indifference ; the men at the rail just looked at me, then re- 
 sumed their posture of surveying the island ; the two or three 
 who had drawn near eyed me, but, as I have said, with curiosity 
 "only, for I could witness no malevolence in tneir regard. I 
 confess I would have been less scared had the whole of them 
 closed around me on my arrival in a hubbub of savage cries 
 and threats, charging me with having deceived them, and the 
 like. This at least would have been consistent with the appre- 
 hensions which had almost worn me out during the past week : 
 but the careless, half-composed demeanour they now opposea 
 to me was absolutely terrifying, and I vow 'twas almost a relief 
 to turn from those inquisitive faces, as of those of a crowd in a 
 street staring at some one injured, or in a fit, to the more 
 denned expression on Mole's face, showing sullenly some darfc 
 resolution at heart.
 
 ^lAROONED 183 
 
 I put my hand to my brow and swept the sea-line. It ran 
 without a break to the resplendent shaft of sunlight in its 
 bosom. 
 
 'Is this the only island in sight ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mole, curtly. 
 
 'Ay, but I mean,' I exclaimed, 'is there no more land visible 
 from the masthead ? ' 
 
 ' There's a film away to the west'ards in sight from the cross- 
 trees, that's all,' he answered grimly, no longer softening his 
 words with the ' sirs ' he was used to give me. ' We should nave 
 been ashore had it held thick. The course ye gave me was dead 
 _on end for it.' 
 
 I glanced at the topsail hollowing backwards to the mast, 
 then at the island, then at him, and said suddenly, ' What do 
 you mean to do ? ' 
 
 He fetched a deep breath, and said, ' After you and the lady 
 have breakfasted, we'll put ye ashore.' 
 
 On hearing this, the men who were standing near us at the 
 bulwarks approached, and looked on and listened ; yet they 
 exhibited little more than curiosity in their manner. 
 
 'Do I understand,' said I, controlling my voice, 'that it is 
 your intention to put the lady and me ashore upon that little 
 island, and leave us there ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered, trying to look me full in the face ; but his 
 eyes fell to my stare of horror and astonishment. 
 
 ' Men,' I cried, rounding upon the others, ' this is hard usage 
 to give a man who has -served you as I have. Even though / 
 should have deserved this treatment, what has the lady done to 
 merit it 1 Her sympathies were with you all from the very 
 hour ' 
 
 ' For God Almighty's sake, don't argue, Mr. Musgrave,' cried 
 Mole, stamping heavily with his foot, and accompanying the 
 gesture by a nervous sweep of his arm. ' Our minds are made 
 up. Had yonder island been Cuba, it would have been the 
 same ; we'd have set ye both ashore. You and the lady are 
 witnesses we're bound to leave behind us, no matter where. It 
 must be done ! ' 
 
 He stamped again. I looked at the half-blood, and was about 
 to address him, but he immediately returned to the rail, and there 
 hung whistling, keeping time by drumming with his fingers. 
 
 ' Mr. Mole,' said I, 'it is in your power to give us a better 
 chance for our lives than yonder island will provide. Why do 
 you fear us as witnesses ? I am willing to take any oath you and 
 the others may require to keep the events of this voyage secret. 
 Miss Grant will do the same. Put us in the way of reaching 
 some inhabited coast send us adrift, if you will, within a dajrs 
 reach of a town, I do not care where it may be, but to land 
 and leave us there I ' I pointed to the island. 
 
 He turned his back upon me, and walked without reply a 
 few steps forward, then turning suddenly and extending las
 
 184 MAROONED 
 
 arm, with his great hand clenched, cried out, 'Mr. Musgrave, 
 I have begged ye not to argue. It'll do no good. When a 
 man's in hell he's got damnation enough.' He swept his hair 
 off his brow, and continued, ' Your breakfast 11 be sarved afore 
 long, and we shall then want you to be ready. She'll carry ye,' 
 nodding towards the quarter-boat ; ' the water's smooth, and 
 you can take what you will that belongs to you. Best bear 
 a hand to get your traps together, for we've got no notion 
 ourselves of hanging hove-to here.' He turned his back again 
 upon me, thrust in among four or five men who were at the 
 bulwarks, and stood with them looking at the island. 
 
 'Do they mean to set us ashore, Mr. Musgrave ?' 
 
 Miss Grant was at my side, glancing from the island to around 
 her, with a face in which one saw the first flushing of conster- 
 nation yielding to a cooler mood even as one watched it. 
 
 ' Yes, I answered. 
 
 'What island is that ?' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' I &> not know,' I replied. 
 
 ' CaA you not find out I ' 
 
 'It is doubtless one of the Bahama group, but which it is 
 impossible to say, seeing how wildly wrong I nave proved in my 
 reckonings. It is seemingly known to the half-blood, but there 
 is nothing to be got from nim or from the others, the merciless 
 villains ! 
 
 ' Is it inhabited ? ' she inquired. 
 
 'No. If it were I should welcome the act of cruelty as a 
 deliverance from an intolerable situation.' 
 
 She took me by the arm, and led me a little distance aft out 
 of earshot of the men. Mole peered at us past the rounded back 
 of another fellow, with irritable impatience in his posture of 
 doing so. She viewed the island for a little while without speak- 
 ing, apparently lost in thought. Her breath came and went 
 tranquilly. The fear that had for a moment or two shone in her 
 eyes being gone, I could not discern the least symptom of alarm 
 in her. I stood silent, marvelling at her composure, wondering 
 indeed whether it did not owe much to her inability to compass 
 what the men's intentions signified to us. Presently she said 
 quietly, ' Will not the chart in the cabin tell us what this island 
 is?' 
 
 ' I will look when I go below,' I replied, but added bitterly, 
 ' How should the name of it concern us ? ' 
 
 She interrupted me: 'No; but if we can discover _its situa- 
 tion, the chart would show us which is the nearest inhabited 
 land, so that we shall know in which direction to steer when we 
 leave that place.' I was about to speak. ' Oh, Mr. Musgrave,' she 
 exclaimed softly, with the faintest tremor in her voice, though 
 her face flushed to the spirit of resolution in her, 'I would 
 rather things should be as they are I would indeed ! Our life 
 in this vessel has grown unendurabla My nights are miserable. 
 J can scarcely rest for thought of the plans those fellows there
 
 MAROONED 185 
 
 may be hatching. We shall be together on that island ; the 
 nightmare of fancy that haunts me of being left alone on this 
 brig of our being separated through some deed of violence 
 will be ended. The worst has come, so far as they are concerned,' 
 she continued, with a shuddering half-turn of her face towards 
 the seamen, and there at least,' directing her glance at the 
 island, ' I shall be spared the hundred _daily and nightly dreads 
 which terrify rne here. It is hard, it is hard ! ' she muttered in 
 an almost musing way. ' but it is less than I feared. They never 
 meant that you should be able to bear witness against the half- 
 blood, against themselves. Some kind of end must have come, 
 -Mr. Musgrave. It is miserable as it is ; but time after time 
 my terror has foreboded something? infinitely worse.' 
 
 It was afterwards that I recognized the truth of her words ; 
 but just then I was so wild and crazed by this blow, by the 
 cold, calculating inhumanity of the men, in whose demeanour I 
 had never witnessed the least hint of such barbarous usage as 
 they were now about to give us, which throughout had been 
 their intention towards us, and which doubtless was the reason 
 of their demand that I should let them know when we were 
 within a day's sail of the Cuba coast I say that at that time 
 the conflict of emotions was so violent in me, I could get nothing 
 out of the composure and thoughtful words of the sweet and 
 noble woman at my side but a sort of dull wonder at her 
 tranquillity. 
 
 ' Your breakfast's gone below, Mr. Musgrave,' shouted Mole ; 
 'me and my mates 11 be obliged by you and the lady bearing 
 a hand. Another half-hour's as much as we can allow ye.' 
 
 'Let us go to the cabin,' said Miss Grant ; 'your heart will 
 come to you again soon. I declare I thank God for this thing 
 as a deliverance.' 
 
 She led the way, and I followed. The cook was lingering at 
 the table, as though adjusting it to his taste, but on our showing 
 ourselves he ran nastily up the steps, fearful perhaps that we 
 should address him. It was not a time to think of eating. For 
 my part, I believe a crumb of biscuit would have sufficed to 
 choke me. In truth, the long hours of bitter anxiety I had 
 suffered had unnerved me ; but to what extent I should not 
 have known but for this sudden testing of my courage. I saw 
 Miss Grant look as though she meant to force nerself to partake 
 of the meal, to embolden me by a further illustration of her 
 coolness, but she turned away after a minute, and said, ' What 
 is next to be done ? ' 
 
 ' We must pack up our traps,' said I ; 'we are at liberty to 
 carry our luggage ashore. Asnore ! Good God ! ' 
 
 I could scarcely utter the words. You talk of going ashore 
 when newly arrived off a town ; or if off a coast, you go ashore to 
 return again to the ship ; but to think of going ashore to this 
 little island, to stop there with nothing in sight but a blue streak 
 of haze, visible only from the elevation of the cross-trees
 
 188 MABOONED 
 
 ' Shall we take all we have ? ' asked Miss Grant, as collectedly, 
 I protest, as if this Atlantic Ocean were the English Channel, 
 and there was a boat alongside ready to carry us to Plymouth 
 or Dover. 
 
 4 Yes,' I answered, almost mechanically, for this was a detail 
 indeed I found it hard to bend my mind down to ; ' throw what 
 you have into your boxes and portmanteaux. I will wait for 
 you here.' 
 
 In five minutes I had stowed my possessions away, and then 
 going to Broad water's berth, drew a chart of the West India 
 Islands from the bag, and returned with it to the cabin. I over- 
 hung it eagerly, but to little purpose. Here was a stretch of 
 islands starting from high abreast of the Florida coast and 
 trending away down to Dominica, and which of them that 
 
 greer <'and gleaming spot of land out to starboard was, it was 
 opeless to conjecture. At a later date I might have put my 
 finger upon it without much trouble, but Broadwater's charts 
 were exceedingly old, and this one of the West Indies was com- 
 plicated and disfigured with ink-marks and dim tracings like a 
 school-boy's lesson-book. However, there could be no doubt that 
 tliis island fringed the thicker zone, that it was some eastward 
 sentinel Cay, such as Rum, Cat, or Watling Island, and that civil- 
 ization therefore bore from it as the sun set ; so that our course, 
 should we make shift to get away, must lie to the west and south. 
 
 Whilst I pored upon the chart, the companion was darkened 
 by the figure of a man, and the imperious voice of Mole rang 
 down, ' Are ye ready, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 4 1 am waiting for the lady,' I replied. 
 
 I took the chart, and went to the foot of the companion-steps 
 with it. ' Mr. Mole,' I said, 4 I have served you as honestly as it 
 was possible to me in the navigation of this brig. It is surely 
 not too much to ask you the name of the island over the side, 
 that I may fix its position here,' pointing to the chart, 4 so as to 
 be able to tell in what quarter of this bare sea the inhabited 
 lands lie?' 
 
 4 The name's of no consequence, nor its bearings either,' he 
 responded grufHy ; ' ten to one if it's wrote down on a chart that's 
 brought us up with a round turn leagues and leagues clear of 
 the coast we aimed at. Bear a hand, if you please, sir ; the men 
 are growing impatient.' 
 
 I flung the chart down on the deck. It was a merciful thing 
 I had not armed myself, for I was so mad just then it was as 
 likely as not that I should have drawn upon the ruffian, and 
 paid the penalty by being tossed over the side with a lump of 
 holystone seized to my feet. Miss Grant came out of the cabin. 
 
 4 1 am ready,' she exclaimed ; ' are we expected to carry our 
 luggage on deck ? ' 
 
 I called to Mole, who still stood at the head of the companion- 
 ladder, 'You can send a couple of men for the boxes, and ao 
 saying, I conducted Miss Grant through the hatch
 
 MAROONED 187 
 
 They had lowered the boat and brought her alongside under 
 the gangway, that was unshipped with steps over it. A few of 
 the men eyea us askant as though ashamed, yet too curious not 
 to steal a glance. The half-blood was one of these. I thought 
 to myself ' You beauty ! Old Broadwater after all had the true 
 gauging of your nature. If ever the gallows were put to a 
 profitable use, it will be when you dangle from it, bleaching to 
 the wind ! ' I stood with folded arms, my eyes rooted to the 
 deck, Miss Grant by my side, neither of us speaking. Somehow 
 the sense of bitter humiliation induced by the thought of the 
 sort of men they were who were using us thus, weakened the 
 deep emotion of dismay with which I contemplated our abandon- 
 Tnent upon that island. In a few minutes a couple of fellows 
 arrived, bearing our luggage. There were four or five boxes 
 and portmanteaux, along with a carpet-bag or two, some bundles 
 of rugs, a hat-box, and the like ; and I cannot express the 
 horrible accentuation these prosaic things gave to our condition 
 when one looked from them to over the rail at the line of white 
 surf melting into the sparkling sand, with the greenery beyond, 
 without a hint even pi savage human structure to relieve the 
 spirit of wildness which was swept into the heart of the lonely 
 place out of the infinite oce*n distance by the blue line of the 
 horizon going past it on either hand. The two men who had 
 brought the luggage dropped over the side into the boat ; the 
 boxes and portmanteaux were handed over. 
 
 ' Now, sir,' said Mole. 
 
 I was about to speak. Miss Grant clasped my hand. ' Hush 1 ' 
 she whispered, ' come ! ' 
 
 Without a word I got over the side and helped her to descend. 
 Suddenly some one cried out^ 'They're going ashore without 
 anything to eat or drink.' 
 
 ' 'Vast with that boat, Jim ! ' shouted Mole. 
 
 There was a pause of a few minutes, then what was left of 
 our private stores was passed over, along with a couple of beakers 
 of fresh water and a jar of spirits belonging to the bi*ig. 'Shove 
 off ! ' sung out Mole, * and bear a hand back, lads.' 
 
 The two fellows threw their oars over, and the little boat, 
 deep with the weight of the provisions, the luggage, and the four 
 people in her, glided shorewards over the blue rippling surface. 
 It happened strangely enough that the two men were of the 
 three (the half-blood being the third) who had pulled us aboard 
 the Iron Crown from Deal. They were both Englishmen, with 
 a ginger-coloured fork of beard, a wrinkled skin, dingy with 
 weather, and covered with knobs like the foot of a sea-boot. They 
 never offered to speak to us, and strenuously avoided meeting 
 our eyes, watching indeed the shearing of their blades through 
 the clear under the sapphire edge, as though indeed they were a 
 couple of draper's assistants out for an hour's row. I held Miss 
 Grant's hano, scarce conscious of what I was doing, though I 
 afterwards remembered that she cherished my hola of it, aa
 
 188 MAROONED 
 
 though, with a woman's sympathy, she believed I drew courage 
 from the pressure of her fingers, and for that reason let me have 
 my way. Had we been going ashore to some bright town full 
 of life and conveniences, whence in a day or two we should be 
 able to start for Rio, she could not have shown herself more 
 perfectly tranquil and easy. Once she looked behind her at the 
 receding form of the brig, and breathed deep a moment, but the 
 respiration was not a sigh. For my part I never turned my 
 head ; my eyes were fixed upon the island we were approaching, 
 but with a feeling of numbness in my mind which rendered 
 curiosity so languid that I gazed as if it were some passing scene 
 in whicn I had no other concern than that of a spectator. 
 ^ The men made for the nearest of the creeks, where the tender 
 lifV of the summer sea ran foamless to the shadows cast by 
 tae leaning trees on either side ; the boat's forefoot struck 
 the almost snow-white sand, which went winding up like a 
 silver trail through the herbage, as you notice it on the 
 Mozambique or Natal seaboard, and the sailor in the bows 
 jumped out. The spit of shore that formed the right-hand 
 shoulder of this creek, looking seawards, shelved so flatly to the 
 wash of the surf, that you saw the ocean spreading beyond it 
 to the open sky, with the brig, her topsail still aback ; barely 
 leaning from the wind, her canvas and hull dark against the 
 flashing water and the airy splendour beyond her. I threw a 
 look at her now, and thought I could distinguish the tall figure 
 of Mole, watching us through a glass which he steadied against 
 a backstay. The seaman who remained in the boat handed out 
 our luggage and provisions, parcel by parcel, to the other, who 
 dragged or carried them a few yards clear of the water's edge. 
 On this freight being discharged, I went into the bow and 
 stepped ashore, Miss Grant springing easily from the gunwale 
 with her hand upon my outstretched arm. My inward rage and 
 despair raised so great an aversion in me from the two sailors, that 
 the mere being addressed by them would have been intolerable, 
 and I was brisk in quitting the boat and in assisting Miss Grant, 
 that they might have no excuse to order us ashore. But I had 
 no sooner felt the ground under my feet than the conviction 
 seized me that we were to be left without a boat ! I had not 
 thought of this. My consternation, ever since Mole had ap- 
 prised me of the intentions of the crew, had been so great that 
 such considerations as had entered my mind were, as I may 
 say, instinctive only; by which I mean, that when a thought 
 occurred to me it was accompanied by a sort of dull notion of its 
 being true. I had I know not why reckoned in this mechani- 
 cal, instinctive way upon our being furnished with a boat : had 
 looked at the chart with that fancy in my mind, and concluded 
 that when we left the island we must steer to the west and to 
 the south ; the unconsidered idea in me being that we should be 
 provided with a boat. But now I understood that these men, 
 to return to the brig, must go away with the boat, and that the
 
 MAROONED 189 
 
 girl and I were to be marooned to the very height of the 
 meaning of the wild old buccaneering word ! 
 
 One fellow sat ready to back water ; the other, standing in the 
 bows, was in the act of poling the little craft off to get her head 
 seawards. I sprang in a bound to the very lip of the shaling 
 water. 
 
 ' My God, men ! ' I cried, articulating with difficulty, so 
 tremulously was my heart beating, so choking was the sense of 
 constriction in my throat, 'you do not mean to leave us here 
 without any means of escaping t Lads, as sailors and English- 
 men, show some pity. We are without a refuge ! ' I cried, almost 
 hysterically, pointing inland ; * without tools, without skill to 
 contrive a fabric to escape from this horrible solitude. Men, as 
 you are English sailors ' 
 
 * Shove her off, Bill,' growled the fellow in the stern. 'Away 
 with us! There's no use talking, and nothen can come of 
 listening.' 
 
 The boat's head sped round to the thrust of the oar ; the two 
 blades dipped sparkled dipped again ; in a few moments she 
 was clear of the creek, with the two rowers bending to their toil 
 as though they were pulling for a wager. 
 
 I walked slowly to where Miss Grant was standing. I think 
 for a little while I must have been off my head, as the common 
 saving goes, for I recollect shaking my fist at the boat and the 
 brig beyond, and heaping fifty curses upon the crew ; until ex- 
 haustion, combined with the sweltering neat of the sun striking 
 off the white dusty dazzle upon which we stood, came to my rescue, 
 and most mercifully silenced me. Miss Grant never spoke, never 
 offered to interrupt or check me. She allowed me to talk myself 
 out, and then taking hold of the sleeve of my coat, quietly drew 
 me to one of the trunks that stood under the shadow of a tree, 
 upon which by a gentle movement of her hand she induced me 
 to sit, and then extracting a little silver-mounted bottle of 
 refreshing scent from her pocket, she damped her handkerchief 
 with it, and held it to my forehead. 
 
 I believe, had there been a tear in my composition my eyes 
 would have distilled it at that moment. 
 
 I broke from my spell of womanly weakness with a very 
 passion of resolution. 
 
 'I will not ask you to forgive this failure in me,' I cried, 
 'heartily ashamed of myself as I am. A little patience, and I 
 shall hope to prove myself worthy of so noble, so courageous 
 a companion as you. I should not have suspected so much 
 weakness in me. I cannot believe it a part of my nature. I 
 have been unduly, most heavily tried. But so have you ! ' I 
 exclaimed, finding more strength coming to me out of the clear 
 serene beauty of her eyes than any cordial could have inspired. 
 *Oh, we will make it well for both of us yet.' 
 
 I sprang to my feet with a shake of my body that was like 
 flinging away the whole miserable girlishness in me to the winds.
 
 190 MAROONED 
 
 ' Nay,' she exclaimed, ' keep your seat. I will sit by your side. 
 "We are not separated yet, Mr. Musgrave. I swear,' she cried, 
 lifting her eyes to heaven, ' I would rather that this should have 
 happened than that we should have had to endure another week 
 of the horrible life we were leading in that cruel ship. We are 
 not separated ; but who knows that another week might not 
 have found us so might not have found me alone?' She 
 shuddered almost convulsively, then instantly rallying with an 
 effort of will that was a miracle in its way for the energy of it, 
 she added, in a changed, softened voice full of sympathetic 
 sweetness and the melody of her tones, 'How refreshing is 
 the shadow of these trees ! how sootliing this stillness ! We 
 -,* 1 shall be able presently to think what is next and best to be 
 done. Let us meanwhile wait and see what they intend to da' 
 pointing to the brig. 
 
 CHAPTER XYTTT 
 
 WE VIEW 1 THE ISLAND 
 
 THE boat, creeping along the water with a spark of light to 
 the rise of the oars on either hand of her flashing out as 
 regularly as a revolving lantern, regained the brig, and in a few 
 moments the little fabric mounted jerkingly to the davits ; then 
 round swung the topsail-yard, the royals mounted slowly to a 
 taut leech, staysails were run aloft, and as the brig gathered 
 way she fell off a point or two with her head to the east of south, 
 the sea opening beyond her to the clear horizon, that just past 
 the vessel's stern ran with a sort of seething of its blue into the 
 hot and tingling glory that came in a blinding shiver from the 
 edge of the ocean there to the very feathering of the surf upon 
 the southward-facing beach of the island. 
 
 We watched the vessel receding from us in silence j fathom 
 by fathom she crept seawards, with her canvas trembling amid 
 the swimming sultriness of the atmosphere, and a short polished 
 tape as of shot satin dragging in tow of her rudder. 
 
 Distance makes her beautiful,' exclaimed Miss Grant, ' but 
 she has proved a most ugly ship to us.' 
 
 ' What do they mean to ao with her, I wonder t ' said I, watch- 
 ing the flickering of her high sails as she drew along a slope of 
 the shore whose shoulder would in a moment or two conceal her. 
 
 * What do you suppose t ' she asked. 
 
 'As they nave two good boats,' said I, 'they will probably 
 scuttle the vessel when within convenient reach of some habit- 
 able place. It is clear that they know their whereabouts ; and 
 as Mole can use the log-line, the chart will give him the rest of 
 the information he needs. They'll arrive ashore, or be picked 
 up as shipwrecked mariners, earn a deal of pity, pocket some 
 dollars in addition to what they may plunder from Broadwater's
 
 WE VIEW THE ISLAND 191 
 
 And the mate's cabins, then scatter, and never more be heard of. 
 There 1 She has vanished ! ' I cried, rising. 
 
 I turned to survey the island. It was partly coarse, thick 
 guinea grass, and partly soft, glittering, dusty sand where we 
 were, with a group of trees winding to the place to which 
 the sailor had dragged our luggage out of a line of palms 
 marshalled for the space of a couple of hundred steps along the 
 shore of the creek, with others opposite, both bending their 
 ostrich-like plumes to a combining of their boughs that formed 
 a little cool green tunnel under which the bright shoaling water 
 ran darkling, though it sparkled out green as emerald in the 
 opening beyond, with a rounding at the extremity like the end 
 of a thumb, where the white sand came down to it. The land 
 went in a slight rise to a grove of trees that was almost a little 
 forest in its way, with a twilight amid the greenery, spiked by 
 hazy beams of sunshine striking down any opening the light could 
 shoot through. Here and ^here a great red toadstool showed 
 like a small scarlet shield in the herbage. There was a clump 
 of cocoa-nut trees standing isolated to the left of the grove. 
 The white and flowing-like streams of quicksilver wound in 
 paths through the grass in all directions, and made one wonder 
 that the tropical vegetation one saw could take root and find 
 nurture in such soil. _ The air, blowing softly from the south- 
 west, was tremulous with the humming of many kinds of insects, 
 and sweet with indefinable perfumes as of convolvuli and the 
 passion-flower a commingling of nameless aromas. I watched 
 a frigate-bird come out from tne mere black spot he made sea- 
 wards, and glance like an arrow without stir of its wide and 
 graceful pinions to some haunt of its own past the little inland 
 forest. In places close beside us the long grass stirred, as though 
 there were human fingers beneath, to the movement of a lizard 
 perhaps green as a bottle, with eyes like rubies, and a flickering 
 fork of tongue as if it was breathing fire ; or maybe some dingy 
 thing that might have been a land-crab could be made out creep- 
 ing for a space through the fibres of the grass, and then falling 
 motionless as though, mole-like, it had sunk deep out of sight. 
 
 'I hope there is nothing poisonous in the way of snakes 
 hereabouts,' said I, pulling out a stout stick from one of the 
 bundles that lay strapped near a portmanteau, and very warily 
 I strode into the thick of the herbage, beating right and left, 
 keeping a bright look-out, and listening intently. I started 
 nothing but a lizard or two, and one of those half-lobsters 
 called soldiers, and a vast spider with a body as big as a crown- 
 piece, magnificently marked like the leopard, with the hues so 
 brilliant and shining that it was as good as beholding some 
 marvellously- wrou glit mechanism glorious with jewels to watch 
 the scamper of the thing with its long legs over the heads of 
 the spears of grass that bent to its weiglit. I returned, and 
 opening my portmanteau, pulled out the pistols which lay there 
 loaded, and thrust them into my pockets.
 
 192 MAftOONED 
 
 'I'll go and take a view of the scene,' said I ; 'there may bo 
 land in sight away west from the tallest of those hummocks. 
 This island must form one of the Bahama group certainly, and 
 if so, others cannot be very remote, though hidden from this 
 elevation. Will you remain here until I return ? ' 
 
 'No, I will accompany you,' she answered: '^there's nothing 
 to be afraid of, yet I do not like the idea of being alone.' She 
 sent a swift glance round her with a faint smile that was like 
 asking forgiveness for this little show of weakness. 
 
 The length of her dress made me feel a trifle uneasy. It was 
 impossible to know what small murderous fangs lay hidden 
 among the long coarse grass that showed yellow and bald in 
 places to the roasting eye of the sun. The folds of her gown 
 formed such a flowing drapery that the skirts of it trailed a 
 foot or two in her wak& -a regular net for the ensnaring of 
 anything venomous or distracting. Let her courage be what 
 it would, methought if she should hook up such a spider as the 
 chap I had just put to flight, it might go hard with us botli. It 
 was no time for ceremony. It is simply impossible for a man 
 to be marooned with a girl without the vessel that makes cast- 
 aways of them carrying off a mass of the superfluous decorums 
 which on shipboard kept them at arm's-length.^ 
 
 ' Miss Grant,' said L excuse me your dress is too long.' 
 
 She gathered the folds of it in her hand, and said simply, 
 * Yes, much too long ;' then going to one of her trunks she pro- 
 duced, after some fumbling a pincushion ! (to think, now, of 
 a pincushion on an uninhabited island !) and handing it to me, 
 bade me help pin her dress up for her. It was a task in its way 
 to reconcile one almost to being marooned for the moment, at 
 least. I don't think I had known how perilously emotional 
 this woman had made me at heart in all thoughts that had 
 reference to her, until I put my hand to the sweet and careless 
 intimacy of this pinning job. It was a sort of haunting of her 
 closest presence whilst it lasted, like bending the face to a 
 flower that one has long been able to admire with the eye only. 
 Sue watched me with a half -smile as I stooped round her, whilst 
 I trimmed her canvas suitably to the best of my judgment for 
 our adventure : with an air of unaffected indifference touched 
 but very subtly with the most delicate imaginable spirit of 
 coquetry. It was more like a flirting passage, indeed, in some 
 merry picnicking jaunt as though we two had strolled from 
 the rest of the people, and I was clumsily trying to make good 
 the dilapidations following an airy frolic than a detail of one 
 of the grimmest of all ocean incidents. She again explored the 
 box she had recently rummaged, and took from it the silver- 
 mounted pistol which she had shown to me on board the brig, 
 and after deliberating a minute or two, thrust the barrel into 
 the bosom of her dress. 
 
 'I will carry it for you,' said I, with a small recoil from the 
 recklessneu with which she had elided the loaded weapon
 
 WE VIEW THE 'ISLAND 193 
 
 aslant her beautiful figure^ " 'Should you stumbl let me hold 
 it for you.' 
 
 She withdrew it, saying, ' I must be armed as well as you. I 
 shall know how to carry it.' With that she opened another 
 trunk, and after a brief hunt drew forth a dainty leathern belt 
 of South American make and fashion, into which, after clasping 
 it loosely round her, she stuck the pistol, where it lay safe 
 enough, and ready to her hand besides ; and then equipping 
 ourselves with a cotton umbrella apiece, we started for the 
 green hummock that rose at about half a mile inland, taking 
 a bit of a circuit to the left so as to go clear of the trees, into 
 whose cathedral-like dimness it was difficult to peer without 
 uncomfortable fancies of savage things imaginations of bright 
 hungry eyes glistening between some mighty spikes of aloes 
 the small head of a serpent half-way up a tree, with fold 
 swelling upon fold of spotted, bloated skin, rising corkscrew- 
 fashion to the green intricacies atop all helped, as such notions 
 would be, by the novel tropical smell of flower and gum in the 
 wind, and the innumerable murmur of flies and insects 
 skirring across the sight on wings of translucent pearl, and 
 the melancholy, unmusical pipings of birds, one wailing to 
 another and waiting for the answer, as it seemed. 
 
 We stepped along very cautiously, Miss Grant looking down 
 for the most part, and I round about. The greenery soothed 
 the eye, but there was a savageness put into everything you 
 saw by the loneliness of the place that weighed perilously 
 upon the spirits. For my part, I felt as though the sand we 
 trod had never before received the impress of a human foot, 
 and there were moments during that walk when the helpless- 
 ness and hopelessness of our condition affected me so violently 
 that I could scarce draw 'a breath, and I had to call a halt, 
 feigning, with my hand to my brow, that I had paused only to 
 obtain a better view of the island. 
 
 From the summit of the hummock we could see all around us. 
 The sea went in a brilliant blue slope to the sky, the great dome 
 of which, brassy with the glory of the sun that was but a little 
 past the meridian, set you thinking of some mighty, brightly- 
 burnished copper bell charged with fiery splendour shutting down 
 over you, with this green spot of earth parching in the midst of 
 it to the roasting metallic glare. A little leaning shaft of white, 
 with an ice-like gleam upon it, broke the continuity of the 
 southern seaboard. It was the canvas of the brig. From her 
 right round to back again to her the clear horizon ran without 
 a flaw. If land were visible from the cross-trees of the Iron 
 Crown, it was concealed from us here. The little forest betwixt 
 us and the creek hid the foreshore of the island past it ; but one 
 knew how it would be there by how it was wherever else the 
 eye turned. The surf rimmed the white sands with three or four 
 lines of flashing snow, which seemed to melt into the coral beach 
 like liquid light, and the seething of it tell as delicately upon
 
 194 MAROONED 
 
 the ear as the hissing of champagne in a glass poised to tha 
 ftps. 
 
 'It is all clear sea apparently/ said 1^ 'the blue seems to me 
 to spread everywhere the same. There is some chance for us in 
 that, for in such soundings there can be no danger to navigation, 
 and a vessel may heave close enough into view to perceive our 
 signals at any hour.' 
 
 ' We should have some signals ready,' said Miss Grant. 
 
 ' Nothing to catch the eye like smoke,' said I ; ' I will build a 
 big bonfire up here this afternoon, ready to make a blaze when 
 the time comes.' 
 
 ' The island is certainly uninhabited,' she said, exploring it 
 with her dark eyes. ' It is hard to imagine that it has ever been 
 discovered; but it is best as it is, Mr. Musgrave. Surely the 
 very worst shipwrecks are those in which sailors and passengers 
 have been thrown amongst savages.' 
 
 ' It is blisteringly hot up here,' said I, ' let us return to the 
 cool of the trees. A moment though ! You have a keen sight. 
 Can you distinguish anywhere upon this island the least gleam 
 of water ? ' 
 
 She searched slowly and narrowly, as did I for the matter of 
 that. Again and again I was deceived by some thin sinuous 
 streak of sand that had the very sheen of a limpid stream in the 
 dazzle of it, as it seemed to creep like some little brook amid the 
 herbage of the denser growths ; but my eye could regularly 
 follow it to broader tracks which were unmistakably sand to 
 the sight : and I was about to give up, when Miss Grant, who 
 had been looking steadfastly in one direction for some minutes, 
 said, ' That must be a little waterfall yonder. Mr. Musgrave : 
 look past the curve there, over the head of that clump or 
 bushes.' 
 
 She pointed to the foot of the slope of another hummock, 
 lower arid smaller than the one on whose brow we stood, and in 
 a breath I caught the sparkle of a waterfall shivering like 
 splinters of bright steel against the green edge of the rise, and 
 amidst the interlacery of the bush whose density a little lower 
 down hid it. If it were fresh water it was of the first consequence 
 in the world to us, and without another word we started for it. 
 It proved as thirsty, bubbling, and murmuring a brook as ever 
 lipped glass-like to an English river. Its source was some 
 distance away ; it flowed freshly in a channel of its own, fret- 
 ting to the spot at which we had arrived, when it sulked again 
 in a wide pool, passing on afresh in a mimic torrent, narrowing 
 for a space till its volume made a foam of it, then running clear 
 under the sky for twenty fathoms, after which it pierced the 
 herbage and vanished amidst the trees. I scooped up some with 
 my hand and tasted it. New milk was never sweeter. I had a 
 brandy-flask in my pocket, and with the help of the silver cup 
 attached to it we drank our fill of this delicious water. No wine 
 was ever so well tasted ; it was ice-cold too, and of so diamond-
 
 WE VIEW THE ISLAND 195 
 
 Kke a clearness, that but for the whispers of it as it ran, and 
 the hue of the blue sky in it, it would have been as invisible as 
 water in a crystal vase. Short of the appearance of a ship 
 promising deliverance to us, nothing, I am persuaded, could have 
 so helped my spirits as the discovery of this fresh water. There 
 was thirst in the dry and blinding sparkling of the sand ; there 
 was thirst in the aspect of the tracks of rusty yellow herbage 
 which dashed the vegetation with their sickly tint like gangrenes 
 spreading even to the gaze of the eye ; there was thirst in the hot 
 air that everywhere trembled like the atmosphere over a flame, 
 until in places the horizon waved as though a high swell were 
 running out there, and the slender trunks of the cocoa-nut trees 
 Wound upon the sight with the movement of an archimedean 
 screw slowly revolving. Here then were inspirations to make 
 the discovery of this brook of running waters a positive rapture 
 in its way. Suppose it had no existence, I thought ; what should 
 we have done ? The beakers the men had dispatched us witli 
 held but a few gallons. Rain-water might have been found per- 
 haps by digging in the sand, but I had my doubts of that when I 
 came to look at the dust of the milk-white foreshore. The mere 
 fancy of our condition without this brook the central roasting 
 Eye sending an atmosphere of brass flowing to the furthest 
 confines the thirsty, salt noise of the surf (you could hear the 
 saltness of it in the seethe of each little recoiling breaker) was 
 almost enough to make one keep one's hot lips steeped in the 
 crystal coolness and sweetness of the prattling stream. 
 
 But my heart fell again as we walked slowly towards the spot 
 where our luggage was. Indeed, the mere sight of these details 
 of civilization portmanteaux, trunks of the latest fashion, rugs, 
 camp-stools, walking-sticks, the twenty odds and ends which 
 had gone to our equipment made such a contrast of the 
 inhospitable desolation of the spot of land on which we were 
 imprisoned, that the stoutest spirit must have yielded, I think, to 
 a feeling of hopelessness. How were we to obtain a shelter for 
 the night ? When our slender store of provisions gave out, where 
 were we to look for a further stock* Again, unless we were 
 taken off by some passing ship, what was our chance of escape? 
 There was no lack of wood on the island, and with tools I 
 might have contrived to put^ together some sort of log-fabric on 
 which, under Heaven, we might have made shift to blow away 
 to within reach of succour, whether of land or of ship ; but 
 without chopper or saw, yonder grove was of no more use to us 
 than a handful of the white sand by the creek there. However, 
 it was a little soon for lamentation, though on such an occasion 
 as this a man's groans would be deepest when his experiences 
 were freshest. 
 
 ' It is about time we broke our fast,' said I ; ' perhaps we should 
 feel faint had we nothing to think about but our appetites. 
 The men were merciful to send our luggage ashore with us. 
 Those camp-stools of yours are worth a million.' 
 
 o 2
 
 196 MAROONED 
 
 I opened one of the cases containing our provisions, and 
 prepared a meal of preserved meat and biscuit, along with the 
 remainder of a bottle of Madeira, The camp-stools made us 
 seats, and our table was the lid of a trunk. Of all the passages 
 of this particular nautical experience of my life, our first meal 
 on this little nameless island recurs to me the most vividly. I 
 think I hear now the hum of the sultry sea-breeze amia the 
 boughs overhead, rendered refreshing to the ear by the metallic- 
 like rustling of leaves, yet always blowing vibratory with the 
 innumerable buzzings of flies and insects. I see again the green 
 lizard, scarcely distinguishable from the foliage amongst which 
 he lurked, viewing us with brilliant eyes from some limb on 
 high. Occasionally there would come a harsh, short scream 
 from a paroquet, and a flash of lustrous plumage from one 
 verdant shadow to another, like a fragment of rainbow borne 
 along by the wind, accompanied by the sharp rushing skirr of 
 beating pinions. The sunshine was alive with the glancing 
 forms of coloured things now a great dragon-fly, a golden 
 shaft propelled by wings of gossamer now a butterfly of 
 glorious hue now some tiny red-breasted bird, a sort of wood- 
 pecker, maybe, for I noticed that a drumming as of bills would 
 spring up out of the quarter in which the streak of radiant 
 feathers had vanished. Had all been well with us, good beds to 
 look forward to at night, with even such necessaries to support 
 us as a back wood settlement might supply, why, this little island, 
 with my beautiful and courageous companion to talk to and 
 have by my side, would have been something say even for a 
 fortnight to have entered into the realities of life as a sort of 
 paradisiacal dream, a fancy for whose brief fulfilment under 
 happy conditions I would barter a dozen years of the delights 
 of the gayest and most showy cities of Eui-ope. But 'twas sheer 
 nightmare and nothing more, spite of the waving verdure of 
 the savanna, of the glitter of the tropic bird, of flowers lovely 
 as the constellations of the midnight of the Antilles, of the rain- 
 like pattering of the leaves of the palm-tree, of odours as of the 
 lime and the citron, when one sent one's gaze seawards, and felt 
 the whole solitude of the mighty deep melting through and 
 through into one in a kind of swoon, as it seemed, of the very 
 soul 
 
 However, we ate and drank, and were the better for it. I 
 lighted a cheroot, and fell a-thinking with my eyes on Miss Grant. 
 She was equally thoughtful, with a far-away expression in her 
 face. 
 
 * There are nervous folks,' said I, ' who would not accept the 
 gift of looking ahead even for a fortnight if they could make 
 their fortunes through it. Throw me back a couple of months 
 ago into Piccadilly, with leave to peer far enough to divine old 
 Broadwater's nature, and to guess at the issues it must shape, 
 and we should not be here.' 
 
 'It is all my fault.' said she.
 
 WE VIEW THE ISLAND 197 
 
 'Mine!' I exclaimed. 'I should have insisted on being put 
 ashore with you in the English Channel.' 
 
 'I mean it ia my fault that you ever made the voyage,' said 
 she. 
 
 'You would not wish to be alone though ?' said I, smiling. 
 
 She shook her head with an unaffected shudder. 
 
 'What conclusions will Alexander arrive at,' said I, 'when 
 day after day goes by, and no Iron Grown arrives at Rio ?' 
 
 I don't like to think of it,' she answered ; 'but he will have to 
 be patient. He must wait as / must wait.' 
 
 'Pity it is not the other way about,' said L 'He ought to be 
 here, and you safe at Bio.' 
 
 "She looked at me quickly, with a half -formed fancy, as it 
 seemed, hovering on ner lips, parted as if to speak, faintly 
 coloured, and plucking a blade of the coarse grass at her side, 
 appeared to study the texture of it. 
 
 'Alexander will conclude that the brig has gone down with 
 all hands,' I continued. ' The men are sure to scuttle her, and as 
 they know if rescued they will have to account for us and the 
 two men they have made away with Broadwater and Bothwell 
 I mean it is odds if they don t invent the name of the ship they 
 profess to have belonged to, so that the truth will never reach 
 my cousin until we carry the news ourselves to him.' 
 
 ' Poor boy ! his anxiety will be crueL But perhaps we shall 
 be with him sooner than we expect.' 
 
 ' I hope so, indeed, for your sake,' said I, with a lift of my 
 brows to the tormenting puzzlement of how it was to be done. 
 ' But sufficient unto the day, Miss Grant. Here are we marooned, 
 and what's next to do ? that's the question. No chance of our 
 being taken off this afternoon, nor of our escaping in any other 
 way. The night then is before us, and we must provide for it. I 
 have no means of erecting any sort of shelter, and the island 
 offers nothing. For my part, one of those rugs and a stretch of 
 that dry sand will make me as good a couch as I need, spite of 
 the land-crab and whatever else crawls hereabouts at night. 
 But the notion of your lying on the cold ground is intolerable 
 to me,' said I, turning my eyes about in vain search of any hint 
 for a high and dry bed for her in tree or slope. 
 
 ' I have a net-hammock in one of those boxes,' she exclaimed, 
 ' unhappily only one. If you ' 
 
 ' / / Lord love you, Miss Grant ! Why, if it were not for the 
 lizards aloft, I'd seize myself to a bough, make a bed of one of 
 those leafy forks up there, as Robinson Crusoe did. But there 
 may be monkeys in this island for aught I know, and on the 
 whole I fancy a sand-mattress promises me a quieter couch than 
 a tree. If you can find the hammock, we will turn to and rig it 
 up in as snug a place as we can light on.' 
 
 She immediately explored one of her boxes, and presently 
 found the hammock. It was formed of net, but very strong, 
 fchpugh so portable that one could have stowed it away in one's
 
 193 MAROONED 
 
 hat, with ship-shape clews and eyes and lengths of laniard ready 
 spliced for lashings. This, it seems, like her pistoL her belt, and 
 divers other matters, had been one of her Rio possessions. It 
 was an odd thing to carry home from South America to the Eng- 
 lish climate ; but it was an old home relic, she told me, in which 
 she had passed many a long slumberous hour under the scented 
 and myriad-voiced shade of the cotton-trees, of the gleaming 
 leaves of the star-apple, and the slender branches bending to the 
 weight of the golden shaddock. Besides, she knew little of Great 
 Britain, and might have believed that the sun was as constant to 
 the garden plains and smoking cities of the greatest maritime 
 nation on the face of the earth, as it was to the country in 
 which she had been bred. But a spell of the Edgeware Road 
 would suffice to correct even odder fancies than that. 
 
 I swung the hammock between two trees which exactly 
 fitted the length of it. They stood somewhat forward from 
 the group where our boxes were, with a tract of white sand 
 hard by, which I had resolved should furnish me with a bed that 
 night; so that she would swing close over me, and be as free 
 likewise as one could possibly contrive it, from all risks of visits 
 during the dark hours from the lizards and tree-toads in which 
 I reckoned this island abounded. I formed a mattress and 
 pillow for her of shawls and rugs, and learning that she had 
 some mosquito-curtains in her boxes, I borrowed a roll of white 
 tape from her, wanting a better kind of line, and made a ridge- 
 rope of it along her hammock, with a couple of pieces of wood 
 cut from the bough of a tree to serve as stanchions, that the 
 ends of the curtain might float fair past the clews, and so 
 protect her at both ends. 
 
 'Perhaps there are no mosquitoes,' said she, watching me 
 as I worked. 
 
 ' I hope not,' said I, doubtfully ; ' anyhow I shall borrow one 
 of your curtains, and roll myself up in it when the time comes. 
 Unless my system has undergone a change since I was at 
 Bombay, a mosquito-bite with me signifies a lump rather larger 
 than a crow's egg, and as red as Broadwater's nose.' 
 
 ' We have plenty of them at Eio,' said she, ' but they never 
 tease me. Though the species may be different here,' she added, 
 with a glance at the contrivance I had rigged up, which made 
 me fancy that, bad as our melancholy and dreadful situation 
 was. there would be nothing in it to hinder her from objecting 
 to the defacement of her fair face by the singing pests of these 
 rich and sparkling parallels. 
 
 I now found that occupation of any kind was helpful to my 
 spirits, and thereupon pulling off my coat and waistcoat, and 
 baring my arms, I went to work with a tolerably stout knife I 
 happened to have in my pocket one of those useful combina- 
 tions of corkscrew, gimlet finger-long saw, and the like to 
 cut as much dried stuff as I could make shift to deal with ; of 
 which I manufactured faggots by securing them with ligatures
 
 WE VIEW THE ISLAND 109 
 
 of grass strong enough to knot. Miss Grant insisted on helping 
 me. She had replaced the somewhat small-brimmed hat she had 
 come ashore in with a great yellow sombrero-fashioned head- 
 covering that sheltered her like an umbrella, and I see her now 
 bending her graceful figure to the faggot at her feet, her white 
 hands, with a flashing ring or two upon them, nimbly and 
 swiftly knotting the grass bindings, lifting her face occasionally 
 to address me, with her dark eyes the brighter, her teeth the 
 whiter, her complexion the fairer, for the softness of the shadow 
 which lay upon her beauty. We manufactured a great number 
 of these faggots, and conveyed the whole of them between us in 
 several journeys to the summit of the hummock, where we built 
 "them up in a goodly pile, taking care to fence them about, that 
 they should not be blown away by a sudden squall or rising of 
 wind, and further protecting the whole by a thick cover of live 
 branches, densely leaved, which would also thicken the smoke 
 whenever the time came for us to set fire to the heap. The 
 great heat made this labour very arduous, but though its com- 
 
 Eletion left us both wearied, it was a thing to be done, and we 
 3lt the easier in our minds when it was finished. It was 
 impossible to know but that at any hour we might happen to 
 look seawards and spy a vessel slipping fleetly past, too far off 
 to witness any waving signal of shawl or handkerchief, but well 
 within view of such a volume of smoke as our body of faggots 
 would make. 
 
 We paused a moment on the brow of the little elevation, before 
 returning from our last excursion to the hummock, to take a 
 long look round. The sun was sinking in the cloudless western 
 heavens ; he was a great shield of fast reddening fire, -and the 
 placid purple ocean beneath him seemed to rise with a rounding 
 of its polished bosom to the huge luminary, as though he was 
 some mighty magnet up there drawing it. One could not look 
 a moment, without a weeping of the sight, into the blinding 
 ardency ot the western atmosphere, so charged was it with the 
 ceaseless gushing of the crimson glory ; it seemed to palpitate 
 and contract and dilate like a lake of liquid glowing iron newly 
 
 Eoured from the heart of a blast-furnace. But the sea went 
 x>m there into a tender deepening of turquoise against the 
 orange reflection in which the eastern sky was bathed ; the 
 rippling of it was so exceedingly delicate, that it looked more 
 like the shimmering of light upon it than the fine wrinklings of 
 the wind ; the thin edge of surf broke with a tincture of lemon 
 upon the sands, that now shone golden to the evening radiance. 
 The air blew very gentle and warm. The tropic picture was 
 deepened to every sense by the strange uncommon sounds 
 rising from the island, queer chirpings and snorings; sharp, 
 short cries from the greenery, like women's voices calling 
 hoarsely ; brief melancholy pipings making answer to like notes, 
 sad, low, and more distant. The sound of the surf seethed 
 through this curious eoncert v but nothing moved, look where
 
 200 MAROONED 
 
 one would, if it were not the flash of a bird / f gorgeous plumage, 
 a stir of some near tall spears of grass, or the curled head of a 
 palm slightly swayed by the wind into a beckoning posture or 
 an airy salutation. There was a (juality in the Light of the 
 waning day that put a melancholy into the spirit of the solitude 
 of this place far beyond the reach of moonlight or the starry 
 darkness of the night. Fresh as we were from days and days of 
 the loneliness and immensity of the deep, yet there was some- 
 thing in the boundless aspect of the ocean, as we surveyed it 
 from the height of that hummock, which, speaking for myself, 
 shocked and scared one's instincts as though one gazed at some 
 preternatural revelation of sea. I saw Miss Grant droop in her 
 posture, so to speak, to the sight of it ; her clasped fingers hold- 
 ing her hands before her relaxed, her arms fell to her side, her 
 head sank as she slowly brought her eyes from the flawless 
 ocean to my face. She breathed slow and deep, as one in whom 
 perception has grown to the weight of a burthen upon the heart. 
 
 'Come,' said I, taking her gently by the hand, 'there is a 
 morrow, and yet a morrow, before us. The good God is over all 
 besides. 
 
 We walked quietly, but in silence, back to the spot where we 
 meant to pass the night. 
 
 CHAPTER XXTV 
 
 THE MIDNIGHT BELL 
 
 THE clear, fine, spangled dusk speedily followed the setting of 
 the sun. The night lay dark upon the sea before we had 
 finished the meal to which we had sat down when the hot crim- 
 son of the luminary was still flushing the heavens to the zenith 
 with a blood-red atmosphere, against which the trees behind us 
 on the west side of the island showed out black and lovely with 
 the effect of the rich light between the boughs and the leaves, as 
 though some hand had studded every interstice with a red-hot 
 ember. The discordant cry of the parrot ceased, the multi- 
 tudinous buzzing that had been going on all day came to an 
 end, the melancholy wailing wliistlings that had been answer- 
 ing one another down to sunset were hushed as if by magic as 
 the last of the brief twilight glimmered off the sky. It was 
 now the cricket's opportunity, and from every part of the 
 island there rose up a very storm of bell-like chirruping, 
 mingled with the sultry horns of the sailing beetles, odd 
 whistlings and strange groanings coming from heaven knows 
 where, along with the confused croaking of reptiles and the 
 wild snoring call of the tree-toad. Here and there upon the 
 darkness, in small hovering constellations, appeared a swarm 
 of fire-flies. In places, these Lbtle galaxies of yellow-greenisli 
 jx>ints of light seemed to copihine with the dust of tfle stare
 
 THE MIDNIGHT BELL 201 
 
 beyond them, and the eye catching them on a sudden would be 
 startled for the moment by the fancy of some astral dance up 
 there in the dark blue obscure, as though a fragment of the 
 milky way had parted from the main body and was making 
 a night on't ! 
 
 The sea-breeze blew languidly, cool with dew, and fragrant 
 with borrowings from the moist vegetation it breathed over 
 as it floated down to our part of the island from the south and 
 east. The wash of the light and lipping surf right around 
 was as soft as the voice of a child ; the sea spread out black as 
 ink from the ivory of the beach, touched at wide intervals with 
 .the gleam of phosphorus or the silver wire-like wake, tremu- 
 lously riding the ripples, dropped by some particular bright 
 star. The moon would be rising anon, and we waited for her 
 coming j for the dusk, clear as it was, rendered movement 
 uninviting and even menacing. In fact it was impossible to 
 tell what creeping thing might squirm to the tread in the 
 darkness that blackened nearly everything but the sand. We 
 had not, it is true, observed the least hint of snakes about 
 throughout the day, but if any there were, the night might 
 tempt them forth to walk. The puff-adder loves to stalk in 
 gloonij and the rattlesnake's delight is the forest shadow. That 
 we might not give anything poisonous a chance, we planted 
 our camp-stools in the centre of the broad tract of sand that 
 tlowed fan-shaped to the creek betwixt the herbage, where 
 even to the starlight it glanced out clear as a ship's deck, so 
 that anvthing that stirred upon it we should instantly perceive. 
 
 Happily for me I had a good store of cheroots in my port- 
 manteau. The fragrance of the tobacco seemed to civilize the 
 island. 
 
 'Even with a companion by one's side,' said Miss Grant, 
 speaking softly, * the loneliness, now that the dark has come, of 
 such an ocean spot as this terribly oppresses the spirit. But to 
 be alone without hope of escape, without the means perhaps 
 of prolonging life beyond a little while oh, Mr. Musgrave, there 
 are some forms of human suffering of which the world can never 
 know anything ! ' 
 
 ' I should go mad if I were left alone in a place like this, after 
 a bit,' said I ; 'imagination would prove too much forme. Even 
 when all's well I find myself ill-trimmed in that way. But to 
 be alone here, without a chance, as you say, of escaping I pro- 
 test I would not give myself long to witness shapes as wild as 
 ever the sailors of Columbus dreamt of, stalking out of the 
 blackness of that grove yonder; to behold grotesque forms 
 sliding out of the gloom of the sea ^into the gleam of the 
 surf to have a look at me ; to hear airy voices syllabling my 
 name ^well, fancy does make horrid fools of us certainly ! 
 
 It might have been the chill of the dew in the dark sea-breeze 
 that blew with a little moan past us just then that sent a chill 
 through me, but I must own to being possessed by a wild fit of
 
 2n2 MAROONED 
 
 dejection at that moment also. It did not linger j it was like 
 one of those giddinesses which come and go, but which whilst on 
 
 B>u make you grip anything for support with your eyes shut, 
 oubtless it came to me out of the boundless surface of liquid 
 blackness broadening out to the low stars. I could not see how 
 we were to get away from this island, and the briefest mental 
 look ahead shrunk up the very soul in one to the prospect of 
 days passing into weeks, weeks into months, with God knows 
 what in the far end for some newly-arrived people tlten to 
 stumble upon as a memorial of nameless human suffering. 
 
 Presently the moon arose, throwing up a delicate rosy haze 
 first, then mounting into it red as a rose, which changed into 
 greenish silver after a brief climb, with an icy sparkling upon 
 the sea-line just under her, as though the edge of the ocean there 
 were a long single breaker arching over into foam. 
 
 ' What is that t ' suddenly exclaimed Miss Grant, pointing to 
 the sandy spit that formed a shoulder of the creek. 
 
 In the gathering light of the moon it might have passed for a 
 circular mahogany dining-table that had been stranded by the 
 tide, and that having felt its legs had started on an excursion 
 inland. I was exceedingly puzzled, and as I could now see to 
 walk, I approached the black object full of curiosity and 
 wonder ; but it was not till I was witliin ten yards of it that I 
 made it out a vast turtle, weighing, I dare say, four or five 
 hundred pounds. I knew very little of the habits of these 
 animals, but I had somewhere read that the creatures are easily 
 frightened, and so returning to Miss Grant I told her quietly 
 what the thing was. ' It will have come to lay its eggs, I dare 
 say,' said I ^ ' I have often handled a turtle's egg, but never tasted 
 one. I believe they are very good eating. Let the thing by all 
 means contribute to our stock of provisions. Since there is one 
 there will be others, and if I can manage to turn one of them 
 over, I will ; though how to get steaks and soups out of her 
 I'm sure I don't know, unless we can rig up some sort of an 
 oven ; but even then wiiat are we to boil the meat in 1 ' 
 
 'We shall be very poor creatures indeed, Mr. Musgrave,' said 
 she, ' if we cannot overcome difficulties of that kind. The one 
 problem is how to get away from the island. We cannot stay 
 here, you know.' 
 
 The black figure of the turtle crawling steadfastly along the 
 sand, like some gignntic spider from which a mischievous boy 
 has cut off all but a little bit of its legs, slided behind the tall 
 grass and disappeared, but I marked which way she went, for I 
 meant to have her eggs if she laid any. The moonshine on the 
 water was now glorious, and came rippling in pure silver to the 
 very wash of the surf ; the trees rose pale, and the foliage 
 trembled to the breeze with the sheeny glitter of the South 
 African silver-leaf. Our shadows lay black as sketches in India 
 ink upon the coral sand. Ou ! there was wonder, there was 
 beauty, but there was terror too in the marvellous gush of haze
 
 THE MIDNIGHT BELL 20$ 
 
 which swept smoke-like from the bland planet eclipsing the 
 stars in her vicinity. Distance grew horribly infinite to it, and 
 the sense of isolation a physical torment. 
 
 * If the ruffians had but spared us a boat ! ' I cried. ' We 
 could have provisioned and watered her for days and days, and 
 sailed in her too without risk on yonder equinoctial surface. 
 There is nothing for it but to wait, Miss Grant. This is a great 
 sea, steep to our foreshore, or I am much mistaken. The island 
 is bound to be in some kind of highway, and to-morrow, pray 
 God, may give us the sight of a ship.' 
 
 With this kind of talk we killed some time. The light of the 
 mounting moon was so brilliantly clear that I could witness 
 every varying expression in my companion's face as plainly as 
 if a shining dawn had broken ; only that the moonlight gave a 
 spirituality to her beauty which her charms were perhaps 
 the richer for not discovering by sunlight. When the time 
 arrived for me to press her to seek rest, I found her reluctant. 
 And small wonder ! It was not that the hammock was un- 
 inviting. Indeed, nothing fitter could have been devised for 
 the languid, dewy warmth of such a tropical night of pale 
 gold-like splendour as this, than the airy couch that spanned 
 the black pillars of the two silent trees. One thought of what 
 was up above! some scaly betailed thing, creeping down the 
 dry bark with a clawing of its armoured feet like the pattering 
 of a land-crab upon an uncarpeted floor, to awaken one by a 
 cold pressure of its belly upon one's brow pah ! The tropics are 
 a glorious region to read about, to be ^sure ; but give me an 
 English summer evening dying out with the lowing of a cow 
 or two, the chime of a distant church-bell, a drowsy chirp 
 stealing from the shadow of some sweet-blossomed orchard 
 into the delicious repose of night, unbroken by a note louder 
 than the dim cheep of the grasshopper, or the faint midnight 
 crow of an uneasy cock. Why here, now, as we sat, if we paused 
 in our speech for a moment, the ear carried even engrossing 
 thought away to the rickety chorusing of the million crickets ; 
 winged things as prickly as a cork stuck over with needle-points 
 would sail into one's cheek with a hum that was like a little 
 trumpet-blast in its way, so near and sudden was the sound of 
 it ; the snore of the tree-toad too awakened an echo as of an 
 innumerable croaking of frogs ; and if ever this sultry and 
 unwholesome concert sank a little, it was only, as it seemed to 
 me, to give one a chance of catching more distinctly the thin, 
 red-hpt-wire-like singing of a mosquito hard by the ear. The 
 fire-flies were wonderfully plentiful. A little cloud of them 
 hovered for nearly ten minutes in front of us, within arm's 
 reach almost ; and bright as the moonlit air was, they glittered 
 so sharp and clear, that I believe had the night been dark they 
 would have shed illumination enough to enable us to have seen 
 each other's face by. 
 
 Finding Hiss Grant reluctant to go to her hammock, I
 
 204 MAROONED 
 
 proposed a little stroll along the glittering beach, and for over 
 an hour, I think, did we measure^ to and fro some quarter of a 
 mile of the sparkling shore, pausing often to watch the curl of 
 the little breaker, arching black against the moon an instant ere 
 seething into foam, or to direct a searching eye seawards for any 
 inky spot upon the tremulous stream of brilliance, or any pallid 
 shadow in the deep blue obscure on either hand of the showering 
 moonlight, or to listen to some few brief, flute-like notes break- 
 ing from the inshore forest, or to mark a meteor of magnificence 
 hurling westwards comet-like, and leaving a white, steam-coloured 
 near upon the sky long after it had burst into spangles and 
 vanished. 
 
 At last she consented to ' turn in.' I dragged a trunk to the 
 hammock to enable her to step to her swinging bed, and when 
 her head was pillowed I made her snug with a shawl, and then 
 enveloped her in the floating gauze of the mosquito-net, through 
 which I could see her dark eyes watching me. The spreading 
 branches of the trees screened her from the moon, but nere and 
 there a ray fell through, and one white beam rested upon the 
 hammock. I doubt if any dream that ever sweetened man's 
 rest was more enchanting than the vision of this girl's face 
 under the moonlit, gauze-like transparency. Though no vision, 
 indeed, yet it affected me as with the unreality of one. I could 
 see a smile in her eyes as I raised my hat with a little bow, and 
 wished her good-night. One must go to sea for such experiences 
 as this. Name me such a conjuncture ashore as could produce it. 
 When I stole a peep at her again, the moonbeam had slipped off 
 her, and the hammock was in gloom. 
 
 1 1 hope nothing will tease you on the sand,' I heard her say. 
 
 ' I hope not,' I answered, looking at the branches overhead to 
 make sure that the coast was clear up there. 
 
 I had now to make my own bed. The boxes were of unequal 
 height, or I should have stowed them together into a couch. I 
 stretched out a rug to lie upon, brought a small carpet-bag to 
 the head of it to serve as a pillow, drew a mosquito-curtain over 
 me, and lay down, pistols in pocket within ready grasp, and 
 covered myself with such another rug as I rested on. The dry 
 sand yielded with a sort of spring in it, and I found it a very 
 tolerable mattress. But I lay extremely uneasy in my mind, 
 however, for some time, constantly imagining that something 
 was stirring on one side or the other ot me. But I was more 
 wearied than I was sensible of, and presently felt a pleasing 
 sense of drowsiness stealing over me. There was something now 
 almost soothing to the ear in the myriad chirpings of the 
 crickets, and in the subdued soft creaming of the surf. Just 
 over my face hovered a swarm of fire-flies, and I watched them 
 sleepily. The night wind sighing through ^the trees filled the 
 air with a fountain-like murmuring of rustling leaves. 
 
 I was nearly asleep when I started, instantly broad awake, to 
 a peouliar, melodious, but most melancholy whistling of a bird
 
 THE MIDNIGHT BELL 205 
 
 amid the branches of the tree to whose trunk the head of Miss 
 Grant's hammock was attached. What sort^ of bird it was 1 
 cannot say. Maybe it was one of the species which induced 
 Columbus to believe that there were nightingales in these 
 islands, when he sat hearkening at sunset to the gush ot melodies 
 which came floating out of the foliage to mingle with the Salves 
 and Aves and the_ litanies of his crew. The few rich flute-like 
 notes were plaintive beyond expression. Aroused as I was from 
 my first noddings, it took a little thinking to collect the quarter 
 whence the piping flowed, and what it was that made it. Indeed, 
 to open one s eyes at all upon the bright moonlight, the white 
 sana, the froth of surf, the ocean washing out black from the 
 steel-like sparkling under the luminary, was surprise enough 
 after long weeks of waking up to nothing but my coffee-coloured 
 cabin in the Iron Crown, specially when the whole was blended 
 into a sort of mist-like dimness by the fold of mosquito-curtain 
 through which I peered. Indeed, if the sad musical pipings from 
 the boughs overhead had come instead from some creamy- 
 bosomed sea-nymph glimmering out white as ivory waist-high 
 past the foam that was shaling upon the sand, the sight must 
 have occupied some little time in filling me with astonishment, 
 so magic and unreal did the bird's awakening of me make me 
 find the scene ; so likely & theatre did the island seem for the 
 wizardry of the deep, and so qualified was my mind at the instant 
 for the contemplation^ without wonder, of astonishments. 
 
 But the song was brief, and after a little my mind came round 
 to its old bearings, and being now wide awake, after a glance at 
 the hammock, which I observed to hang stirless in the gloom, I 
 fell to some practical, anxious _ considerations of our condition ; 
 and the current of thought being set a-flowing ran into twenty 
 different channels. I recalled my first meeting with Miss Grant, 
 my instinctive hesitation in undertaking to escort her, the 
 bewilderment her beauty had raised in me, and how, as I believed, 
 nothing but the tender unconscious pleading of it could have 
 triumphed over my reluctance to embark on this adventure. 
 Then I mused upon the tragic and distracting incidents of the 
 voyage, and my lonely quarter-deck walks with my lovely 
 companion. I dared not deny to my own heart that I was 
 already perilously fond of her. Indeed, had my reason been half 
 imbecile it must have guessed at a growth of passion in me by a 
 trick of meditating and endeavouring to interpret the meaning 
 of her behaviour and looks as I could recollect them after 
 passages of conversation and prolonged association. 'Twas a 
 time for such a reverie as this, believe me, with her fair and 
 stately figure airily resting within hail of a whisper from me, 
 and the sweep of the silent sea round about closing as if to 
 combine us. By Heaven ! I thought to myself, though I know 
 my duty, yet should a time ever come when I must hand her 
 over to my cousin, it will be a bitter parting for me. Fool that I 
 was to mix my heart up in a business in which I had no concern I
 
 206 MAROONED 
 
 If the forfeiture of her companionship is to be the condition of 
 our escape, will my growing emotion presently leave me with 
 disposition enough to lift so much as a finger to procure our 
 deliverance ? 
 
 * Tut ! ' thought I, with a waft of the mosquito-net at a little 
 dance of fire-flies hovering over my knees, ' it is about time I 
 went to sleep ! ' 
 
 I had scarcely got my head down on the carpet-bag afresh 
 when I was indescribably astonished by hearing the chimes of a 
 bell rung swiftly. I listened breathlessly for an instant, be- 
 lieving the notes to be an illusion of my senses, but it was 
 impossible to mistake. No village church belfry on a Sunday 
 morning ever echoed a clearer summons to the faithful. The 
 ringing suggested the sort of agitation you notice in the quick, 
 eager pealing of a steamer's bell rung as a final warning to 
 passengers to step ashore. It continued without cessation. I 
 sat up, then clearing myself of the mosquito-net, leapt to my 
 feet. I saw Miss Grant sitting erect in her hammock. 
 
 * Oh, Mr. Musgrave, what is that ? ' she cried. 
 
 'It will be some vessel,' I exclaimed, 'close aboard the island ; 
 perhaps ashore.' 
 
 ' No ; it comes from those trees yonder,' pointing to the little 
 forest. 
 
 She threw the net like a veil off her head, sprang from the 
 hammock to the box, and thence to the ground. ' Oh 1 ' she 
 exclaimed, seizing my arm, ' what can it be f ' 
 
 The bell was no longer ringing rapidly ; a sexton might now 
 be tolling it. The slow, punctually-recurring chimes came along 
 like a knell ; they then ceased, and all was stilL I paused a 
 little to make sure if possible of the > direction whence the sounds 
 proceeded. On a sudden the ringing started off afresh such 
 a reckless, rushing, clattering of noise that my conviction was 
 there was a madman at large upon the island, and that this was 
 his way of killing the midnight hours ! The whole place seemed 
 distracted by the clamour. Queer grunts rose out of the grass, 
 hard snoring noises out of the trees, with a universal groaning 
 of frogs far and near, the hoarse inquiring cries of parrots, 
 whilst you caught a shriller edge in the shrill minstrelsy of the 
 crickets. The violent ringing of a bell in the dark hours of the 
 nightj even when one is^as secure as a safe lodging and all the 
 contrivances of civilization can make one, is, to say the least, an 
 alarming disturbance. But to hear such a sound in this lone- 
 some island, apparently amongst the trees yonder where they 
 rose blackest to their topmost foliage against the ^moon, when 
 it seemed as sure as sure could be that there was no living human 
 being within God knows what distance of us, was such a trial 
 to the nerves that I own to haying hung in the wind for a 
 space, amazed almost to a condition of semi-stupefaction. 
 
 The tumultuous T mrum-scarum ringing came to an end, and was 
 succeeded by a me lanchcly tolling, as though there were a funeral
 
 THE MIDNIGHT BELL 207 
 
 somewhere under way. Bidding Miss Grant stop where she 
 was a minute, I ran swiftly I was a very nimble runner to the 
 head of the creek, whence in a few moments I had gained the 
 beach on the north side of the island, a part that would have 
 been hidden to us on the hummock by the forest. The pale 
 golden light of the moon flooded heaven and ocean, and objects 
 could not have been more visible had the effulgence been of the 
 noontide. There was no sign of a ship hereabouts. The deep 
 ranged with a bare breast steeping and soaking to the indigo 
 of the sky ; nothing stirred along the platform of sand that 
 went twisting out of sight in a pearl-like haziness round the 
 bend of the island, veering westwards. All this time the bell 
 was tolling, and now I could not doubt that it was being rung 
 in some part of the island, for as at the creek, so here, the chimes 
 appeared to float directly from the black shadow of the central 
 grove. I returned to Miss Grant, by which time the sound of 
 the bell had ceased. 
 
 * It is no ship,' said I, 'be it what else it may.' 
 
 ' It is a real bell, though,' she exclaimed. 
 
 'Ay, real indeed,' said I, 'too real for superstition to find a 
 footing on it, though it is a chilly sort of thing to happen at 
 this hour, amid this wild loneliness too. It needed to have 
 been but a little less real to have thickened the blood with 
 fancies of an enchanted island.' 
 
 We waited, expecting to hear it again, but the ringer had 
 apparently exhausted his merry -making* fit for the time being, 
 and all remained silent, saving the chirp of the crickets and 
 the wash of the surf, with here and there a sulky croak. 
 
 Had I seen some figure stalking towards us out of the wood, 
 I don't think, armed as I was, and free from all superstitious 
 stirrings, that I should have been wanting in courage ; but I 
 confess I hesitated when it came into my head to penetrate the 
 deep ebon shadow of the forest, and search for the ringer and 
 his oell. In the wide glittering open, with the moon riding high 
 overhead, a man rendered desperate by such a condition as 
 mine might find heart enough for any sort of search or en- 
 counter ; but the wood was as black as the bottom of a well. 
 Here ana there one could just catch sight of a faint oozing of 
 moonshine into the dark mot which the trees made upon the 
 land and against the sky ; but it was easy to guess that one's 
 entrance into that heavy obscurity must signify a groping 
 rather than a, peering bout. Who or what might be there, who 
 could say 1 
 
 'No,' said I : '111 not venture it.' 
 
 ' Venture what ? ' asked Miss Grant. 
 
 ' Why,' said I, ' I had a mind just now to explore for that belL' 
 
 'You would be mad to do such a thing,' she exclaimed, with 
 energy ; ' indeed, I should not permit it/ and she grasped my 
 arm. 'There must be a man in that wood,' she continued, 
 lowering her voice. ' There must be human agency to set that
 
 208 MAROONED 
 
 bell going. Perhaps after all the island is inhabited, and there 
 may oe a nest of savages in that forest, who hid themselves on 
 seeing us, and now dream of scaring us away by ringing a belL 
 Oh, I wish we could be scared away ! ' she continued, as with a 
 shiver she glanced over her shoulder seawards. 
 
 I shook my head. *No,' said I, 'I'll swear there are no 
 Indians hereabouts. Had they existence, we were bound to 
 have met with some signs of them j a canoe a wigwam, or 
 whatever else their dwelling-place may be called remains of 
 fires relics of feasting. I should like to have a good look 
 round from the hummock. Will you stay here? I shan't 
 be gone long.' 
 
 * Certainly not. I would not be alone for ' she broke off 
 whilst she stepped to where her hat lay and put it on, and I 
 saw the glint of her pistol-barrel in her hand. ' It is wicked to 
 feel nervous,' she exclaimed, ' but what could be so unnatural 
 as the sound of a bell here ? and then not to be able to imagine 
 what dreadful creatures may be hidden amongst those trees.' 
 
 We walked to the hummock, thinking much more of the 
 sound of the bell and of the hidden being that had swung it than 
 of the noisome or venomous objects we might by chance tread 
 upon, and having gained the elevation, sent many a look round 
 the sea and into the heart of the little island ; but all this side 
 of the ocean was as bare as the northern quarter, whilst not 
 the faintest movement of dark substance or of black shadow 
 could we see, scrutinizingly as we gazed, on any part of the 
 land. The night breeze haa died away ; there was scarce move- 
 ment enough of air to breathe cool upon the moistened finger. 
 South and east the ocean stretched, motionless as a surface of 
 polished black wood, and the languid seething of the near surf 
 was so delicate that it stole into the air like the moan of 
 breakers leagues distant. We lingered ten minutes, then returned. 
 
 It took me some time to persuade Miss Grant to enter her 
 hammock afresh. I told her that I would keep watch ; that there 
 was really no more reason to be afraid now than there had been 
 before we heard the bell ; that if the bell had been rung with 
 the idea of scaring us, it was plain that, whatever might be our 
 alarm, we also were held in fear ; that if there were Indians in 
 hiding, treacherously disposed, they were not very likely to 
 arouse us from the sleep in which they could have stolen upon 
 and murdered or otherwise dealt with us as it pleased them. 
 
 ' It is a puzzle,' said I, ' that we must wait for the daylight to 
 resolve. Meanwhile rest is necessary to you, and you must please 
 lie down. Trust to my vigilance, and sleep without misgiving.' 
 
 Eventually she complied. I made her comfortable as before, 
 carefully enveloped her hammock with the mosquito-net, then 
 with a look at my pistols to see that all was right with them, I 
 lighted a cheroot, swigged off a dram of brandy, and fell to 
 pacing the stretch of sand, sentinel-fashion, close to the hammock, 
 and keeping a bright look-out on the trees beyond, believe me.
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIR 209 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIB 
 
 THB time slipped wearily and heavily away. The march of 
 the moon was so slow that it was enough to make one think 
 sometimes she had come to a stand. 1 paced the breadth of 
 white sand till I was weary, then sat down, nodded, perhaps 
 dozed, sprang to my feet again with a keen look towards the 
 density of trees, which, as the moon floated westwards, stole 
 j>ut black and yet blacker, till the whole block of it was like a 
 great staining of ink upon the liquid silver atmosphere behind, 
 and resumed my pacing. Now and again Miss Grant lifted 
 her head, bride-like with the drapery of the mosquito-curtain ; 
 but a time came when she lay still, and on stepping close very 
 softly and peering, I found her sleeping peacefully, breathing 
 gently and regularly, and looking the very phantom of a lovely 
 woman under the filmy texture of the curtain, with a sort of 
 lunar twilight sifting through the umbrageous shadow to her 
 out of the softj golden-tinctured air where the open was. 
 
 It was as if the night were bewitched, so hushed it was ; I 
 never witnessed a movement anywhere save the black shapes 
 of turtle crawling up the sand by the creek side, or on to the 
 beach facing the east. How puzzled I was by the ringing of 
 the bell, by its ceasing for the rest of the nighk by nothing 
 whatever having encountered my eye as a hint of inhabitants, 
 by the dead repose in the little forest, with never a shadowy 
 flicker anywhere about to define the flitting of a human form, 
 I cannot express. At last, having seated myself to rest after a 
 considerable spell of walking, I fell asleep, and so lay till I was 
 awakened by the rising of the sun, and opened my eyes upon 
 his blinding stream pouring aslant from three or four degrees 
 above the horizon. 
 
 I stepped to the hammock ; Miss Grant still slept, but so 
 sweet and fair did she look that I could not break away from 
 watching her. My fixed gaze aroused her ; she opened her eyes 
 suddenly, and I backed a step, confused, and perhaps feeling a 
 little mean at being detected. However, she awoke with too 
 much wondering at her own situation and the strangeness of 
 her surroundings to imagine my inqusitiveness, or to note the 
 admiration which I doubt not would have been perceptible in 
 me by her clearer vision. She threw the mosquito-curtain off 
 her, and sat erect, and exclaimed, ' Thank God, it is daylight ! ' 
 looking in a restless way arouna her, with her hands clasped, 
 her cheek with the hectic of slumber still on it, her beauty rich 
 with the disorder of her hair, and the light in her eyes of 
 transient bewildered thought that fired them like contending 
 passions. 
 
 However, she had slept for three or four hours, and was the 
 
 p
 
 210 MAHOONED 
 
 stronger and fresher for it. For my part, I felt so jaued and 
 stale that every instinct in me clamourea for a plunge, so I 
 trudged away past the head of the creek to the north shore, 
 and spent ten delicious minutes amid the surf there, venturing, 
 however, no further than waist-high ; for whilst undressing 1 
 had spied seawards, within musket-shot, a motionless black 
 object, with a lean 01 it that made me fancy at first it was an 
 empty bottle, but which, when it flashed out on a sudden with 
 a wet gleam, I very promptly accepted as the dorsal fin of a 
 shark. 
 
 I returned to Miss Grant feeling years younger, and found 
 her dressing her hair before an ivory hand-glass, which she had 
 hung against the trunk of a tree. Well, thought I, marooning 
 brings about strange intimacies ! Perhaps it might be married 
 people only that a scrupulous mutineering crew would think 
 proper to set ashore. But it was no time for fastidious feelings, 
 quite the wrong sort of occasion for prudery of any sort, for any 
 kind of modesty and decorum outside the dictation of plain 
 good sense, realizing accurately the conditions of the situation, 
 and admitting no other government than wholesome honest in- 
 stinct. In fact you must be cast away with a girl to find out 
 how artificial life is, and how much fairer the virtues show for 
 being purified by stress of obligation into artlessness. I was for 
 turning away, with the idea of searching for the eggs the turtles 
 might have laid in the night, but she continued placidly brush- 
 ing the long lengths of her glowing hair, with a smile on her face 
 as she looked at me out of the mirror j so I walked straight on, 
 and set about overhauling our provisions with the idea of pre- 
 paring a little breakfast for ourselves. I had taken a view of 
 the sea from the north side, and now I searched the horizon on 
 this, but no sail broke the shining line. At a rough guess I 
 reckoned that the remainder of our private stores, which had 
 been set ashore with us by the men, might with great care be 
 made to carry us through another fortnight, helped by such 
 food as we should find on the island. Indeed, this question of 
 provisions did not very greatly worry me, for there was not 
 only promise of a bountiful supply in one direction in the shape 
 of turtle : there were cocoa-nuts, also oranges in plenty, green or 
 ripe, on the north-west side of the little forest, as I had perceived 
 whilst I sat drying myself after coming out of the sea. We 
 could count too on a good store of crawfish, which fortunately I 
 knew how to catch. There were iguanas besides, delicate to the 
 palate _ as spring chicken if properly dressed, though loathsome 
 in their lizard form to the eye. No ! the fear of starving did 
 not visit me, but mainly I believe because the mind resolutely 
 shrank from the contemplation of the possibility of our im- 
 prisonment lasting long enough to render famine imaginable. 
 The consuming thought was. How, if no ship should approach 
 the place, were we to escape i This consideration engrossed me 
 > cii whilst my mind seemed busy in reckoning up the stock of
 
 A PIRATICAL LATK 211 
 
 provisions, and again and again I would find myself pausing in 
 that work, with a dull sense of hopelessness that was a sort of 
 distraction in its way, whilst I looked round the island wonder- 
 ing if it was in human ingenuity to manufacture out of it any 
 sort of floating fabric to which we might commit ourselves 
 without the certainty of perishing by drowning. 
 
 Miss Grant was full of the subject of the bell. She could talk 
 of nothing else, and whilst we sat at our little repast of preserved 
 meat and sweet biscuit, she was incessantly directing looks 
 towards the wood. 
 
 'There may be people there,' she said, 'watching us all the 
 time. I thought I saw something move when you had left me 
 just now. We must find out to-day if this island is inhabited. 
 The approach of the night will be intolerable if we are to expect 
 that bell to ring again without knowing whei-e it is, or what 
 produces the sound.' 
 
 ' I shall explore those trees shortly,' said I ; ' let me have your 
 pistol. With mine it will give me three shots without obliging 
 me to reload.' 
 
 She drew it from her belt where it had lain all night with 
 her. I thought I would try its quality, and taking aim at a leaf 
 that stood in clear green outline against the sky, I pulled the 
 trigger, and the leaf fluttered slowly to the ground. The sharp 
 ping of the pistol was followed by many hoarse cries of paroquets, 
 and a large bird broke like a shape of burnished gold out of a 
 dense cover of leaves in the heart of the tree at which I had 
 fired, and sailed away towards the forest, waking many hideous 
 echoes with its discordant notes. 
 
 'An excellent little weapon indeed,' said I, going to my port- 
 manteau for a powder-flask, and reloading the pistol. ' Pity it 
 is not old Eroadwater's blunderbuss though. The blast of that 
 bell-mouthed engine would be the sort of hint one would like to 
 give if there be ears yonder to receive such messages.' 
 
 'I will accompany you,' said she ; 'it is inaction and expectation 
 that keep me frightened.' 
 
 'Lord preserve you,' said I, 'look at that growth of grass! 
 You would need to be dressed as I am to penetrate it.' 
 
 Indeed it was only too plain that nothing in the shape of 
 petticoats and skirts could be forced, short of one's wake after 
 a plunge or two becoming a raffle of shreds and tatters, through 
 the dense, coarse, bush-like herbage which stood to the height of 
 a man's waist among the trees. Indeed, the better to equip 
 myself for this adventure, I laced on a pair of stout leather 
 leggings, whilst I buttoned myself up in a short pea-jacket so as 
 to oppose the trimmest figure I could contrive to the stubborn 
 dusky confrontment of bush and guinea-grass. Leaving her 
 standing and watching, I walked briskly towards the trees, with 
 the butt-end of a pistol projecting from either side-pocket, and 
 Miss Grant's weapon in my hand. Piercing as the sunlight was, 
 the foliage was so dense, the intermingling of boughs so thickly 
 
 2
 
 212 MAROONED 
 
 complicated, whilst the trees, moreover, stood so close together, 
 that within half-a-dozen paces of the eastward opening of this 
 little forest the green gloom lay beyond belief heavy. The 
 obscurity brought me to a stand at least a minute, until the 
 blinding glare of the open had gone out of my eyes, and I could 
 see plainly. Climbers and creepers of all kinds, training and 
 coiling like serpents, added < yet to the dusk by filling the 
 spaces between the trunks with a vague showering of crimson, 
 star-shaped blossoms. ^ After the heat outside, the atmosphere 
 here struck almost chill ; there was a sickly smell of rotting 
 vegetation too, and nearly every tread of mine was upon some- 
 thing pulpy that yielded to the pressure with an ugly, juicy 
 sensation as if 'twas soddened through with centuries of black 
 miry damp ; though maybe it was no more than a toadstool, 
 or a frog, or a bunch of decaying fruit. Through a little cleft 
 at wide intervals you'd catch a glimpse of the sea spreading 
 brimful of soft blue light to the sky, with a wild buzzing of 
 insects coming in through the opening on a gush of hot air. 
 
 I moved with a vigilant eye, crushing warily through the 
 quickset understuff, gazing at every tree-trunk as though 
 another step should open a figure behind it watching ine. I 
 need uot deny that I felt very timid. The mere cathedral - 
 gloom made by this dense interweaving of greenery was almost 
 preternatural in its way, when one thought of the dazzle that 
 was just outside. Then again, even if there should be no 
 human beings here to suddenly let fly at me with a spear, or 
 arrow, or fusil, how was I to know what savage beast lurked in 
 this wild tangle of shadows? Some of the snaking branches 
 wore the very aspect of giant serpents writhing in folds off one 
 tree to another. Here and there fell a smoky, golden haze of 
 sunbeam, but it only deepened the obscurity of the leafy aisles ; 
 though had I had an eye for such matters at that time, I must 
 have found something lovely beyond imagination in these dashes 
 of soft radiance, bringing out some bunch of huge leaves, some 
 cluster of green fruit never maybe to ripen, some scarred and 
 ragged elbow of bough, forking black through a drapery of 
 runners and white-hearted flowers which looked to be falling 
 like a cataract of green waters flecked with foam from the con- 
 fused darkling roof of branch and foliage on hisrh. Whether the 
 sight of my moving figure alarmed the scores of birds amongst 
 the trees, I know not ; but the cries, pipings, hoarse parrot- like 
 bawlings which broke from them, fell tormentingly upon my 
 nervous ear, that longed for peace that it might hearken for any 
 signal of danger. 
 
 I had been pushing my way forwards for seven or eight 
 minutes without catching sight of anything more than the 
 flickering plumage of some strange bird here and ^there, with the 
 glint on it as of a self-luminous object, or as if it still carried 
 the brightness oi the sunshine it had been steeped in, when on 
 iuy left, just past a couple of trees whose trunks rose to their
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIR 213 
 
 brancnes with a twist in them -which made one think of a jvair 
 of petrified boa-constrictors, I caught sight of a bell hanging 
 from under a cover like the lid of a box, supported by two stout 
 stanchions, the whole as green as the wooden piles of a pier 
 washed by salt water. ' That's it ! ' thought I. ' Come ! here is 
 discovery number one. It is a real bell anyhow ! ' and somewhat 
 marvelling at the sight of such a thing, I made for it. The 
 frame that supported it might have been a hundred years old, 
 and the bell itself twice as ancient as that. The metal was green 
 and bronzed with time and weather. I made out some faint 
 lingerings of what had been an inscription upon it, but the 
 -characters were indecipherable. I opened my knife and put the 
 blade of it into the wood of the frame, and it was like sticking a 
 cheese, so damp and tinderous too was the timber, like soaked 
 matchwood. A piece of grass line was attached to the clapper, 
 and hung a foot below the mouth of the^bell. It looked rotten, 
 though I gave it a tug without parting it. To make sure that 
 this was the same bell we had heard in the night, I struck it 
 two or three times. The tone satisfied me. I also knew that 
 Miss Grant, by hearing the notes, would conclude that I had 
 discovered the bell. But who on earth could have rung it T I 
 sent as penetrating a gaze as the twilight of the forest would 
 permit in all directions, but nothing approaching human shape 
 or signs of human life was to be seen. 
 
 It was clear enough that this bell was seated in the very 
 heart of the little forest, and as I was resolved that my over- 
 hauling of the place should be thorough, I pushed on to the 
 western extremity of the trees, till I could see the sea opening 
 like a great blue eye over the slope of down to the ivory of the 
 sand ; and then worked my way with a fight for every foot I 
 advanced, so dense, spike-like, and briery was the tangle. Again 
 and again I paused, always with Miss Grant's pistol ready 
 cocked in my hand, and gazed earnestly right and left and 
 behind me, till I presently came to where the trees thinning 
 gave me a view of the smaller of the two hummocks, with the 
 herbage and trails of sand rounding north-east to the spot 
 where we had passed the night. The daylight here lay broad, 
 and after walking a little I came to sheer sand, with patches of 
 grass sprouting out of it, a clump of cocoas flourishing beyond, 
 which made me wonder again, for I could see no sign of soiL 
 
 I halted a little while to recover my breath, and cleanse my 
 face of the sweat that poured down it. I could no longer doubt 
 that the wood was as untenanted as the rest of the island. 
 "What hand then had rung the bell? There had been no 
 draught of air to stir the weight of metaHn the night. The 
 alighting of some heavy bird upon it might indeed have caused 
 it to sway, but there was nothing living with wings the wide 
 world over to account for the several sorts of peals which had 
 rung forth the dirge- like tolling, the quicker beat, then the 
 mad helter-skelter clattering, ana then the solemn requiem
 
 214 MAROONED 
 
 chimes again. It was enough to put the wildest thoughts into 
 the most prosaic brains that ever mortal head carried, and I 
 must confess to looking backwards into the dim twilight from 
 which I had emerged with a sort of shrinking feeling in me, 
 and with a bit of wonder too that I should have found heart 
 enough to carry me through the exploration with the stoutness 
 I had exhibited^ 
 
 I started to walk afresh to join Miss Grant, when, having 
 made three or four steps, forgetful perhaps of preserving the 
 shambling gait I had used in the high grass, the point of my 
 boot struck something in the sand, and down I went, measuring 
 the whole length of me, the pistol I grasped exploding as I fell. 
 I jumped up not a little flurried by this unexpected capsizal, 
 and on looking to see wliat it was that I had kicked against, I 
 observed a large iron ring lying black upon the sand. I thought 
 to pick it up, but on grasping it I discovered that it was fixed 
 to an eye screwed or bolted into either wood or masonry hidden 
 by the sand. I was busy in scraping away the sand lying 
 around about the ring with the sharp of my foot when Miss 
 Grant arrived. 
 
 'What have you seen, Mr. Musgrave ? ' she cried. ' At whom 
 or what have you fired ? ' 
 
 0h,' said I, 'I tripped over this ring just now, and the pistol 
 went off as I felL* 
 
 She barely glanced at the ring ; her thoughts were elsewhere. 
 
 ' I heard the bell ; did you ring it ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' I replied. 
 
 'What else did you see amongst the trees ?' she inquired. 
 
 ' Nothing else. It is some old ship's bell,' I replied, ' hanging 
 at a kind of scaffold that might be a hundred years old, perhaps 
 more.' 
 
 ' No man ^ ' she asked. 
 
 * Nothing in the faintest degree approaching one, black, white, 
 or yellow,' I replied. 
 
 ' But, Mr. Musgrave, wlio could have rung the bell then ? ' 
 
 'We may yet find out. At present I have not the faintest 
 .lotion. But see here, Miss Grant ; what is the meaning of this 
 ring? It is a fixture. There will be some sort of trap down 
 here, or I am much mistaken. If I had but a spade now ! ' 
 
 She looked again at the ring, and her interest came to it. 
 She stooped and pulled at it, and then finding it fixed, recoiled 
 a step or two and said, ' We had better not meddle with it. The 
 bell is wretched enough as a puzzle. Don't let us seek fresh 
 adventures, Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 I mused a bit. ' At all events,' said I, ' no harm can attend 
 our seeing to what sort of arrangement the ring is secured.' 
 
 There were shells of many kinds strewn about the beach, some 
 of them as big as dishes, sharp-edged enough to cut a man's 
 head off. I picked up three or four, and brought them to where 
 the ring was, and fell to scratching and digging with them. Miss
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIR 21 
 
 Grant helping me. The shells spooned up the sand plentifully, 
 and after working a little we laid bare what had unquestionably 
 been some small ship's hatch-cover, about four feet square. On 
 scooping yet a little at the lap of the edges, I found that this 
 cover rested upon a timber frame, which in its turn was doubt- 
 less steadied by piles driven into the earth under the surface of 
 sand. I tugged with all my might at the ring, but could not lift 
 the hatch. Miss Grant, whose curiosity was now aroused, and 
 who seemed willing that we should look a little further into this 
 business, put her hands to the ring too, but our united efforts 
 could do nothing with the cover. I had no mind, however, to be 
 balked, and after considering a while what I should do, I pulled 
 out my knife, and opening the saw-blade, swarmed up a tree to 
 a stout, straight, marline-spike-looking bough that had caught 
 my eye, and putting my knife to it, worked away patiently till 
 I had cut three-quarters through it, after which I sprang on to 
 the bough and came down with it in a fall to the ground. It 
 was as good as a handspike. I reeved it through the ring, 
 using it as a lever, and pressing it upwards with my shoulder, I 
 so jarred and shook the hatch-cover that it was presently loose 
 enough to lift. 
 
 On removing it, I found that it had concealed a tunnel which 
 vanished after a gradual slope of a few feet into utter blackness. 
 Three or four rude steps fell in a flight to where the slope began, 
 so that on descending a man needed but stoop his head to move 
 clear of the roof of this strange cellar. I kneeled down to peer 
 sideways into the obscurity, but saw nothing for the blackness 
 there. An old faint, damp sort of smell arose. 
 
 4 We had better put the cover on and go away,' said Miss Grant ; 
 1 there may be something horrible hidden in that grave.' 
 
 ' Nothing living, at all events,' said I ; 'it is some old freebooter's 
 lair, some ancient piratical hiding-place, or I am very much 
 mistaken. That secreted bell yonder is a part of the equipment 
 set up to serve as an alarm, and to signal with, and perhaps 
 to tell the hours too. I must probe that hole ; there may be a 
 discovery under our feet worth making.' 
 
 ' Mr. Musgrave, you will not be so rash ! What can you hope 
 to discover that can be, I mean, of the least use to us 1 ' 
 
 The sense of our helplessness seemed on a sudden to smite her 
 as a shock ; she drew a quick breath, and sent a yearning glance 
 along the ocean line, almost unconsciously, as one looks up to 
 heaven in a prayer. I thought to rally her with a stroke or 
 two of idle fancy, and said, 'Time was when many of these 
 Bahaman Cays were the haunts of the picaroons ; swift and 
 tidy little schooners, loaded to their ways with the treasure 
 of plundered galleons, came ratching to these secret verdant 
 islands ; the treasure was brought ashore by the beauties who 
 had stolen it t and buried. Occasionally a black man was mur- 
 dered, that his ghost might haunt the sepulchre in which the 
 booty lay, and sentinel it against other maurauders. Maybe it
 
 218 MAROONED 
 
 was the ghost of a murdered black man who rang that bell last 
 night Miss Grant, I give you my word I am speaking the 
 truth. The Goodwin Sands themselves have scarce gorged 
 more wealth in their time than the pirates and buccaneers 
 have buried in the islands and costa firme of these waters, 
 though I don't say there,' said I, pointing into the square hole 
 that looked like the mouth of a well. 'Yet when we have made 
 our escape from this place, and are safe and snug in civilized 
 quarters, should I, on recalling this secret vaultj endure to think 
 that I had wanted spirit enough to explore it? Conceive of 
 our coming across several chests down there crammed to the 
 lids with golden doubloons, crucifixes of the precious metal 
 sparkling with gems, chalices which might make a Jew kneel 
 to the Sacrament for love of the beautiful workmanship.' She 
 smiled; I burst into a laugh. 'No,' said I, ' my expectations 
 are not so high-pitched. Nevertheless, I must take a view of 
 that interior.' 
 
 ' Mr. Musgraye,' she exclaimed, with a little pout and some 
 warmth of feeling in the look she shot at me, with a droop of 
 the lids instantly afterwards the most womanly touch that 
 could be imagined, with its flash of reproach and the pleading 
 of the averted eye that followed, 'pray do not forget that if 
 anything should happen to you, / am alone.' 
 
 I hung in the wind, for it grieved me to give her a moment's 
 anxiety. But unless a ship took us off it was certain that we 
 must regard ourselves as prisoners for hfe, if we failed to devise 
 some fabric for making our escape in. It was impossible to 
 know but that we might discover something in this cave which 
 should prove of inestimable value to us, even as a step towards 
 our deliverance, and on my dwelling upon this and assuring 
 her that I could not imagine there should be any risk in my 
 taking a view of the interior, her face cleared, and she seemed 
 to agree with me ; but I could read in her that though she had 
 the heart of a lioness, it fell short of prompting her to offer to 
 accompany me. I doubt if there was ever yet a woman who 
 would have found courage to have entered that black hole, even 
 though her refusal should have cost her her lover. For my part, 
 I felt no reluctance whatever, and yet Miss Grant was so much 
 more heroical than I, in the truest sense of the word, that 
 recollection of the disparity tempts me almost into egotism 
 in illustrations of my own humble doings. 
 
 I had a parcel of sperm candles in my portmanteau useful 
 articles to carry to sea in those, as perhaps in these, days. I 
 fetched and lighted one of these, and slinging it by a length of 
 tape, lowered it into the square to test the atmosphere below. 
 It burned brightly. Indeed my nose had given me sufficient 
 assurance of there being nothing wrong in that way. Then 
 bidding Miss Grant to remain where she was, and not to feel 
 uneasy, I descended the steps, and holding the candle up. took 
 a look ahead. I found myself on a shelving floor of hard sund
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIR 21? 
 
 and mould, walled on cither side with stanchions and pieces of 
 timber, running athwart into a slender passage, which, however, 
 opened rapidly into an apartment, the roof of which was about 
 a head higher than my full stature. This room might be about 
 nine feet square. Beyond it, led to by a doorway that had in 
 its time been screened by a curtain, as I gathered from the 
 sight oT a small metal pole bracketed athwart it, was a second 
 room, black as any tomb, as you will suppose. The flame of the 
 candle burnt bright, yet it was but a feeble light for the illu- 
 mination of such an interior as this, and I found it difficult to 
 distinguish objects. On the left-hand side of this first room in 
 which I stood was a low structure of bricks, which, on approach- 
 ing it, I found had served in its time as a furnace for cooking. 
 Over against it, suspended by nails driven into one of the beams 
 which formed the transverse supporters of the wall, were 
 several quaint, extremely old-fashioned cooking utensils, such 
 as saucepans, frying-pans, a kettle, and the like. Two or three 
 articles of a similar description lay under them upon the ground, 
 whence they had dropped through rottenness of the spikes or 
 timber, like over-ripe fruit. On the right stood a queer 
 rustic-looking table very rudely made, the legs branching out 
 like open compasses. I had seen such tables with villagers 
 drinking at them outside old rural public-houses in England. 
 On either hand were a couple of high-backed chairs. I 
 approached _ the opening conducting to the inner apartment 
 somewhat timorously. 1 was never a superstitious man, but 
 there was something in the aspect of this dim, mouldy under- 
 ground haunt that, affected as the imagination might also be at 
 such a moment by recurrence to the mystery of the midnight 
 bell-ringing, might well have set the hair of a stouter-spirited 
 man than mine creeping and lifting upon his head. I listened 
 attentively ; the stillness was unutterably deep, something to 
 make one think of the silence that a man interred alive might 
 hear in his coffin. However, I had talked somewhat big to 
 Miss Grant, and perhaps was in no temper to be dismayed by 
 my own fancies ; so breaking from my posture of hearkening, 
 with a look round at the shadows flitting to the movement of 
 the candle in my hand, I advanced to the threshold of the second 
 chamber and peered in, holding the light in advance of me. 
 
 There was some furniture here, and consequently objects suf- 
 ficient to excite a passing emotion of consternation by the dark 
 flickering, so to speak, of several kinds of outlines. I stood 
 staring, and presently made the chamber out to have been a 
 bedroom. A four-post bedstead, the uprights of which^ how- 
 ever, had been cut short to admit of their erection in tins low- 
 ceiled apartment, stood opposite the entrance. The candle-light 
 seemed to find a dull reflection in the legs of it, and on draw- 
 ing near I saw that they had been gilt. It had been a very 
 magnificent bedstead in olden times, no doubt. The feet were 
 ricllly carved figures of mermaids, the posts of ebony, with signs
 
 218 MAROONED 
 
 lingering of a once gaudy inlaying. There was a mattress upon 
 the bed and a great bolster, along with a huge, coarse, dark rug. 
 Slung by straps to the wall were several firelocks of the pattern 
 the buccaneers of the seventeenth century were wont to level, 
 and the like number of pistols, all nearly of the dimensions 
 of a fowling-piece of our time. There was also a small array of 
 broadswords and hangers, some fallen, having rotted from the 
 straps by which they had hung. I spied a small chest in one 
 corner, of black oak, and walked to it, having by this time got, 
 rid of my timidity. I opened it let me admit, with a pulse 
 accelerated by expectation and holding the candle close, looked 
 in ; but alas ! instead of massive treasure the chest contained 
 nothing more than a quantity of fish-hooks of various sizes, a 
 ball or two of rotted cotton-thread, and three or four parch- 
 ment-like rolls, which proved to be charts, of which the tracings 
 were rendered indistinguishable by dirt and mildew. The side 
 of this cavernous chamber where the chest stood was papered, 
 as it were, with a sort of loose hangings. I had not noticed 
 this but for their swaying to the little current of air wafted by 
 my moving the lid of the box. This drapery was of yellow silk, 
 covered with strange devices wrought in black, but time or 
 damp had obliterated so much of the figuration, whilst my 
 candle gave forth so uncertain a light, that it was impossible to 
 make a guess at the nature of the designs. Here too were a 
 couple of black wood stools, the legs showing traces of gilding, 
 and a circular steel mirror cut in facets, so tarnished that I 
 viewed it for some time without knowing what it was. Whilst 
 I was gazing around me lost in wonder, but with a tolerably 
 clear conception of the character of this subterranean dwelling- 
 place, my eye was taken by a faint reflection directly amidships 
 of the roof, and on elevating the candle I observed that a large 
 frame of glass had been let into the ceiling, every pane lozenge- 
 shaped. It was indeed like a skylight on a ship's deck. I 
 passed into the first room, and observed the same contrivance 
 there. The sight of these windows gave me an idea, and I at 
 once stepped into the shelving corridor and mounted the steps, 
 blinking like an owl at the brilliant morning blaze. 
 
 * Oh, Mr. Musgrave,' cried Miss Grant, ' I was afraid you 
 would never return ! I have been expecting every instant to 
 hear the report of your pistol. What have you seen ? Oh, some- 
 thing, I do hope, that will explain that bell-ringing last night.' 
 
 'What I have seen you shall presently see,' said I. 'It is as 
 snug a two-roomed dwelling-house as one could wish, a bit 
 mouldy perhaps, but a tidier lodging than a tree anyhow. 
 There will be two windows under the sand here. How will 
 they bear now ? ' 
 
 ' Two windows ! ' she exclaimed ; and there was little to 
 wonder at in her surprise either, for the sand trended smooth 
 to the dense thickets of herbage, where the trees went huddling 
 toto the forest as though it were formed of the quicksilver
 
 A PIRATICAL LAIR 219 
 
 which the metal dazzle of it like the fiery points of new tin 
 flashing back the sun made it resemble ; and.it needed some- 
 thing more than imagination to enable one to conceive of such 
 a. thing as a windoio having anything to do with this surface of 
 coral, almost powdery, softness. 
 
 After pondering a minute, I walked to the spot, shells in hand, 
 where I reckoned the window of the kitchen underneath to be 
 situated, and fell a scraping ; and when I had made a hole 
 about a foot and a half deep, the edge of the shell scratched 
 crisply over something polished. This proved to be a frame of 
 glass. Miss Grant stood beside me, looking on, scarcely under- 
 . standing what I was at, whilst I shovelled away with a couple 
 of big shells, tossing the sand aside as a child digs for sport on 
 the sea-shore, until I had laid bare a good space of the skylight. 
 It was easy work, for the admixture of soil was too trifling to 
 give much density and weight to the sand ; yet it took me near 
 an hour to lay bare the first skylight. I found it formed, as I 
 had previously conjectured, of the frames of some vessel's sky- 
 light, but of a vessel that had been afloat in an age when, as I 
 supposed, shipwrights were here and there to be found willing 
 to embellish the fabrics they launched with lozenge-shaped 
 windows in the deck fittings. The frames lay flat, like the cover 
 of a hatch, solidly overlapping the edge of a timber casement. 
 With the help of the handspike I had manufactured, I prized 
 one of the frames out of its fixings, which had been tautened by 
 wet running sand into a kind of cement, then with my hands 
 tore it bodily up. The high sun struck full through the opening ; 
 Miss Grant peered down. 
 
 ' It is a room 1 ' she cried. 
 
 * Yes,' said I, ' and it will furnish us with the sort of asylum 
 we stand in need of until the moment of our deliverance arrives.' 
 
 ' You do not intend that we should sleep down there ? ' she 
 exclaimed, flushing to the startling thought, whilst her eyes 
 brightened with the dread in her. 
 
 'You shall judge for yourself presently,' said I, laughing. 
 
 ' Sleep in such a hole as that ! ' she cried, with her white fore- 
 finger dramatically pointing downwards, and a fine imperiousness 
 in. the pose of her figure springing as it were out of a sort of 
 passing^ indignation at my suggestion. 'Why, Mr. Musgrave, 
 supposing the man that rung the bell last night should discover 
 that we were underground : he might put the covers on these 
 holes, and then and then ' 
 
 ' We should be buried alive,' said I ; ' only there is no man 
 here, so I am not afraid.' 
 
 ' Who rung the bell then ? ' she asked. 
 
 'No man, I'll swear,' I answered, 'unless he be endowed with 
 some mystic power of converting himself into a bush or tree 
 at sight. Indeed I hope we may not be able to find out who did 
 ring the bell,' I continued, sending a lock at the ocean, ' for I 
 should like to be taken off at once, at this very minute indeed.
 
 220 MAROONED 
 
 But if we are forced to tarry we shall solve the mystery, depend 
 upon it. There's another window somewhere to be cleaned, 
 Miss Grant,' I continued, speaking cheerfully, ' and when that's 
 done I'll show you so quaint and surprising a curiosity in the 
 shape of a piratical lair, that if I had it within reach of the 
 millions of Great Britain I should make a fortune in a month 
 by exhibiting it at a shilling a head. But how goes the hour 1 ' 
 I looked at my watch ; it was after eleven. * It is time,' said I, 
 ' to take a peep at the sea from the hummock. Pray God some 
 gleam of canvas may be showing.' 
 
 She refused to remain until I returned, and so we went 
 together. I must own to finding her most fascinating when she 
 was most timorous. In her fearless moods she seemed to be 
 withdrawn to a distance from me, so to speak ; but her manner 
 
 grew tenderly clinging when she was nervous. She passed her 
 and through my arm as we walked away, giving a glance over 
 her shoulder at the dark square of hatch upon the sand, with an 
 unconscious pressure of her fingers upon my sleeve. It was 
 strange that she who had sat calm in the presence of the body 
 of the murdered mate, who had confronted with wonderful 
 composure the most threatening and malignant experiences of 
 the voyage, should tremble at a black hole in the sand, and at 
 my proposal to tenant a lodging which would protect us at 
 least from the dews of heaven, from the sting of the mosquito, 
 and from the jaws of the land-crab. But may not one read of a 
 field-marshal fainting at sight of a mouse ? It might not have 
 needed more than a spider on her petticoat to wring a wilder 
 screech from Joan of Arc than ever the stake extorted. One is 
 sorry to say it but it is true, nevertheless that it is in the 
 weaknesses of human nature that one finds its lovableness. 
 
 There was nothing in sight. I searched with a shipwrecked 
 eye, but the brim of the ocean ran in an unbroken sweep of 
 blue to the mirroring of the sun. The heavens were cloudless, 
 not the faintest feather of vapour in the whole spacious dome 
 from its azure at the horizon to its brassy central glare. The 
 heat would have been unendurable but for the shelter of the 
 wide umbrella under which we both stood. The faintest 
 draught of air was stirring, sometimes expiring to let the fiery 
 buzzing of the island swing tingling to the ear, then floating 
 afresh, hot as a fold of atmosphere from a furnace, driving the 
 sound of the feverish concert back. The atmosphere trembled 
 to the drawing of the sun : branch and tree and every spear of 
 grass, the slim length or the cocoa to its tufted head, the 
 plumed arch of the palm, the great drooping leaf of the wild 
 cotton-tree, faintly writhed upon the sight, till you thought 
 you could gec^ the mass of tropic vegetation growing with 
 many a crackling noise as of growths rent by the roasting glare 
 cleaving the shrill, fierce humming with a strange and startling 
 edge of sound. 
 Miss Grant brought her eyes away from the sea, and looked at
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 221 
 
 tne as we stood close together under the shade of the umbrella. 
 'What is to become of us?' she exclaimed thoughtfully, 
 without expression of alarm or dejection. 
 
 'We must trust to God and to our own energy,' I replied, 
 ' and above all keep our hearts up. Some means of escape, if 
 nothing comes from outside, will suggest itself. Meanwhile we 
 have abundance of fresh sweet water, there is no fear of our 
 lacking food, we have found as decent a lodging as marooned 
 people have a right to expect.' She sighed and tried to smile, 
 but you saw she could get no comfort out of the thought of the 
 lodging. ' Our health is good, and one wish at least of yours 
 is gratified we are not separated.' 
 
 I know not in what sort of tone I may have uttered this last, 
 but I noticed that her* eyes fell at the close of my speech, her 
 white teeth shone over her under-lip to the just breathless biting 
 of it, and then she said in her purely natural manner, ' And wo 
 must not be separated, Mr. Musgrave, until until I mean you 
 ought not to undertake anything rash such as exploring tombs, 
 for instance.' 
 
 I smiled and said, 'A mouthful of something to eat will not 
 hurt us, and I am pining for a long draught of yonder cold 
 bubbling brook. Afterwards we will have another look at the 
 tomb, as you call it. Only think of a kitchen ready-made to our 
 hands ! We shall be having turtle-soup to-morrow, and delicate 
 fricassee of iguana. There are some plantains 'tother side there, 
 past that hump of green, along with an orange-tree or two, 
 and with patience, Miss Grant, we may even yet see our way to 
 a fruit-pie.' 
 
 ' Oh dear, Mr. Musgrave,' she cried, with an almost hysteric 
 laugh, and an eloquent impassioned toss of her hands that could 
 only have come to her with her mother's blood, ' if we could but 
 have foreseen all this in London when we were talking over the 
 voyage ! ' 
 
 I fancy she read the thought that was in my mind at that 
 moment, and to rescue myself, I said, but perhaps too sedately, 
 ' It will make a thrilling story for you to entertain Alexander 
 with.' 
 
 'Ah, poor dear old boy!' she exclaimed, taking my arm as 
 before, and we walked to the spot where the luggage lay. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 AN UNDEEGEOUND LODGINO 
 
 BY two o'clock that afternoon I had entirely cleared the 
 second window of the sand that rested nearly two feet thick 
 upon it. I prized open a casement that the apartment beneath 
 might obtain purification from the air as well as from the 
 sunshine, and I then asked Miss Grant to step below with ma
 
 222 MAROONED 
 
 and view the rooms. She had seen enough by peering through 
 the skylights to excite her curiosity, and moreover to reassure 
 her mind ; and so she now let me hand her down that black 
 hole from which she had shrunk with her eyes ashine with 
 dismay in the morning. 
 
 The coolness of the atmosphere in this cavern was nigh as 
 refreshing as a bath after the roasting glow up above, and the 
 softened light of it fell soothingly upon the eye, fresh from the 
 blinding whiteness of the sand and the blue brilliance off the 
 ocean, where the atmosphere was sheer effulgence, though the 
 afternoon sun had carried his wake around south, away from 
 the quarters we had confronted. Miss Grant looked quickly 
 about the place, advancing to the doorway of the inner room 
 with a hurried survey of the chamber, nd then her manner 
 lost its restlessness. 
 
 ' Do you know, Mr. Musgrave,' she said, ' I expected to find 
 that you had missed some secret way of getting out of this 
 place. I felt almost certain that this was the haunt of the 
 person who rung the bell last night.' 
 
 ' You are satisfied, I hope ? ' 
 
 4 1 see two rooms, and only one entrance. Yes, I am satisfied,' 
 she said, continuing to look round her penetratingly. ' Have 
 you lifted that faded silk hanging ? ' referring to the yellow 
 drapery against the wall in the inner apartment. 
 
 'No, I answered, 'but I'll do better than lift it,' and so 
 saying, I went and pulled it down. It was like dragging at a 
 cobweb. No stagnant flag rotting in the gloom of an abbey's 
 roof over an aged stall would have parted more easily to a pull. 
 The wall the stuff had concealed was like the others, soil and 
 sand, solidified and shored up by a great number of stanchions 
 and transverse beams. Miss Grant now behaved as if she were 
 in a museum. Her face was lighted up by curiosity, and she 
 peered at everything with the liveliest interest. The daylight 
 lay bright in each room, and the damp and mouldy smell was 
 fast yielding to the aromatic air gushing warmly in, laden with 
 the island's multitudinous voice, through the open casements. 
 I overhauled the contents of the old black chest afresh, in the 
 hope of meeting with some hint of the story of this queer dwell- 
 ing-place, but found nothing to suggest an idea even. The 
 charts, so far as I could make them out, were buccaneering 
 maps of the Antilles and the Panama main, with here and there 
 a rude, ill-digested, most deceptive outline stealing out of the 
 grimy thickness of dirt and mildew. I stretched the silk to the 
 light, but the figurations were as vague as they had shown by 
 candle-light. The fire-arms were crumbling, rusty old pieces, 
 great curiosities no doubt in their way, as were the pistols and 
 the hangers, and indeed every piece 01 furniture in the place. 
 
 'And you think,' said Miss Grant, coming to a_ stand after 
 the narrowest imaginable inspection of everything in true 
 womanly style, and gazing around her with wonder unmixed
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 223 
 
 any longer with apprehension, ' that this was many years ago 
 the home of a pirate ?' 
 
 'Ay, no doubt of it,' I responded. 'A hundred and fifty years 
 ago I dare say this was a very glittering and sumptuous 
 interior. Look at the legs of that bedstead. ^Saw any one the 
 like of such carving, I mean on so prosaic a piece of furniture t 
 It was the princely decoration of some rich galleon's state-cabin, 
 I dare say, and one need not shut one's eyes to realize the idea of 
 a head like Cervantes who, by the way, was an exceedingly ugly 
 man snoring on a pillow there, the figure concealed to the 
 throat by some exquisitely-worked counterpane of silk. Here 
 .is enough to set the imagination off into a brisk trot. The 
 high-sterned pollacre, striking the glory of the westering sun 
 from her windows into the dark blue beneath, is riding within 
 musket-shot of the beach : her captain, mate, and boon com- 
 panions of the crew are here carousing. See them in their 
 great flapping hats, their yellow belts, their big jack-boots, 
 their spiked beards, and moustaches curled to their piratical 
 eyes, roaring put some song of old Spain, with goblets before 
 them filled with a vintage of which we, a debased posterity, 
 can never know the generous, the magical qualities. The 
 old villains ! they drank all the fine liquor, and left us the 
 gout ! ' 
 
 ' Your picture wants a heroine,' said Miss Grant, laughing. 
 
 'Oh,' said I, 'I have not forgotten her. She must be yellow- 
 haired ; some Saxon sweetheart captured out of an English 
 ship, bound shall we say to Bio, Miss Grant? She has ex- 
 hausted the language of entreaty, wept her glorious eyes dim, 
 and grief as she sits yonder is eating away her trembling little 
 heart as she listens with a loathing ear to the deep-throated 
 chorusings of the black -browed roysters, as they sit clinking 
 their silver flagons at that very table there, perhaps ! _ The Lord 
 preserve us ! what a brush has fancy to one's own intellectual 
 eyesight, I mean when her pigments are such realities as 
 yonder bedstead, those high-backed chairs, those queer-looking 
 irying-pans, in which many a hearty turtle-steak has hissed, 
 many a Friday's absolving fare of fish has spluttered ! But to 
 be serious, Miss Grant, will not these rooms yield us the 
 accommodation we require ? ' 
 
 She shook her head a little dubiously. ' If we could remove 
 that gloomy old bedstead ' she said. 
 
 ' Oh, certainly,' I interrupted. ' A little hammering of it with 
 one of those muskets should render it portable. Your hammock 
 will take its place excellently. Then, with the skylight case- 
 ment a bit open for the fresh air it would let through, and a 
 shawl swung from that metal rod over the doorway, the room 
 would provide you with as snug a retreat as any hotel could 
 offer ; whilst I should make my bed here ' we were conversing 
 in the room which I must call the kitchen ' ready at a moment's 
 notice to interpose, pistol in hand, betwixt that entrance which
 
 224 MAROONED 
 
 your presence beyond will render sacred, and the villainous bell- 
 ringer, whoever he may be.' 
 
 'You do not think of sleeping here to-night, at all events,' she 
 said. 
 
 'No, since I see how reluctant you still are. But your health 
 is precious, and mine too is precious for your sake. A few 
 nights of exposure to the damp of these moonlit heavens 
 would, I fear, tell upon us both, breed a fever, afflict us with the 
 ague, disable us by some sort of sickness, and leave us in a very 
 bad case indeed. We have to get away from this island, you 
 know; and if we design to achieve our deliverance we must 
 keep well* 
 
 Her good sense came to her rescue ; she perceived the truth 
 of my words, and said she would do as I wished, only not to- 
 night. When that terrible bedstead had been removed the 
 place would look more wholesome. 
 
 'Whatever I propose,' said I, ' is with thoughts of your com- 
 fort, your health, your security chiefly indeed, nineteen times 
 out of twenty wholly. 'Tis a bitter, hard experience for you, 
 and would to God I knew how to soften it, better still how to 
 end it. But the thing looks us in the face, and we must meet it 
 as bravely as we can. My part is that of a protector. If I 
 know myself I shall play it dutifully.' 
 
 She glanced at me a moment as if she would speak, then 
 hung her head to hide the tears which filled her eyes, whilst she 
 extended her hand, saying, 'I thank you I thank you, Mr. 
 Musgrave,' just above her breath. 
 
 I never recall this strange wild time without asking myself 
 whether I acted as a true, upright, high-minded gentleman 
 should towards this lady, situated as she was, forced by stress 
 of ocean into intimate association with me, at the mercy of my 
 feelings and instincts as a man. I did my best. I know that 
 my one whole-hearted desire was, she should never suffer an 
 instant's pain, be sensible of a moment's grief, of the lightest 
 stir of uneasiness, through this obligation of bare unconventional 
 companionship with me. I could summon no better government 
 of thought for my behaviour than this resolution. But then 
 her own frank, fearless, beautiful nature helped me. Her very 
 purity was like a meeting of my efforts half -way. A little too 
 much of modesty in her would nave constrained me with a con- 
 stant sense of embarrassment by which I might have been led 
 into blunders. Indeed I have to thank her own heroic, honest 
 nature for the successful accomplishment of my desire, that our 
 association on this island should be as painless to her ^modesty 
 as a woman as though the formidable conditions of our isolation, 
 which forced us close and bound us, so to speak, together, had 
 been as stringent as they were indeed relaxing. 
 
 I devoted the rest of the afternoon to dismantling the under- 
 ground rooms ; again and again, however, intermitting the 
 work to repair to the summit of the hummock for a view of the
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 225 
 
 sea, but without beholding the least sign of a vessel, though 
 never could despair have rendered human gaze more strenuously 
 eager and searching than mine. The task I had set myself 
 distracted my thoughts ; yet it was extremely depressing too. 
 It was as though we felt there was no help or hope for us, and 
 that there was nothing for it but to reconcile ourselves to our 
 miserable lot, and effect the best settlement upon the island 
 that could be contrived by persons who were almost wholly 
 without resources. I caught Miss Grant eyeing the aged sauce- 
 pans and frying-pans with an air of mingled doubt and thought- 
 fulness, and then she presently made a little collection of them, 
 and was going up the steps. I asked her what she intended to 
 do with the tilings. She answered that she meant to clean 
 them ; they were not fit to use as they were. I looked at her 
 delicate white hands with a movement of remonstrance in me, 
 but then I reflected that occupation of any sort was good for 
 people situated as we were, and that the soiling ^or coarsening 
 of her hands would be but a very small matter indeed side by 
 side with the desperate needs which might presently grow 
 upon us. But it was with something almost of a laugh of 
 bitterness that I turned from her handsome form as she mounted 
 the steps to the open, and resumed my work. 'A pretty 
 leveller is the sea ! ' thought L ' To think of this stately and 
 lovely lady, who ought to be drawing close to her sweetheart, 
 and to the comforts and refinements of a sunny and pleasant 
 home, scouring old pots and pans upon a desert island ; with 
 myself, a gentleman at ease, forsooth ! a Piccadilly dawdler, 
 knocking an old bedstead to pieces, as though he had bound 
 himself apprentice to some old rag-and-bone merchant, and 
 furbishing up a residence which even a mole might eye with 
 distrust ! 
 
 Nevertheless, denuded of my coat and waistcoat, and my 
 shirt-sleeves rolled above my elbows, I continued to toil man- 
 fully, making very little account of the gloomy thoughts that 
 weighed on me. With the stock of one of the muskets 1 
 speedily demolished the bedstead, carrying it piecemeal above, 
 where I found Miss Grant seated, shaded by an umbrella, 
 polishing the saucepans and other contrivances with a wet rag 
 and sand. One showed bright to her scrubbing, and she watched 
 me with a well-pleased face as I inspected it. The fact was, 
 there had come to my mind the story of a party of shipwrecked 
 people who had been poisoned by eating food cooked in 
 utensils which they had found in an old house hard by the 
 spot where they had been cast away, and I considered our 
 sufferings already too lively to demand the supplementary 
 punishment of a deadly stew-pan. However, the kettle was 
 of iron, and the other things of stout block tin, and so I went 
 back to my work, leaving her to go on with hers. 
 
 I remember I was sufficiently silly, as I cleared this cavernous 
 retreat of such grimy furniture as we did not need, to continue
 
 228 MAROONED 
 
 in some small hope of meeting with something unexpected 
 Must I confess it? I was weak enough to suffer myself to be 
 haunted by a little dream of treasure. I was but a young man, 
 with much of the boy still clinging to me. After all, this was 
 a sort of adventure to make even an older heart than mine feel 
 virginal with romantic fancy. A cave into which the light of 
 day may not have penetrated for above a century as true a 
 copy of a piratical lair as the most ardent imagination could 
 body forth into which the dullest eye could not have peered 
 without peopling it with a score of spectral things vital with 
 the colours of imagination, and gathering a character of sub- 
 stantiality almost from the odd fantastic surroundings of dim 
 silk and drapery, of a bedstead that carried one's thoughts to 
 the great galleon with its bristling broadsides, and its mast- 
 long pennons ; of cutlass, matchlock, and hanger charged with 
 suggestions of the Tortugas, Panama, the train of mules laden 
 with silver, bracelets of gold on arms of ebony, and the citadel 
 ramparting store-houses of ingots built roof-high why, I say, 
 it was impossible for me, with such young eyes as I then carried 
 in my head, man though I was in years, to dismantle such a 
 retreat as this without the sort of hope that must have set me 
 laughing had it been told to me of another. But I explored 
 to no purpose. Floor and wall were solid ; no hint of a trap- 
 door, no sign of a secret hiding-place. Whether the discovery 
 of a chest of bullion, or a sack full of ecclesiastical furniture 
 in precious ore would have served to reconcile us to being 
 marooned, I don't know ; but on looking back I cannot but 
 think that we deserved some such reward, and am still weak 
 enough to imagine that had I hunted more diligently yet, I 
 might have met with it. 
 
 I again examined the charts in the chest, with the hope of 
 being able to make a guess at the name or situation of this 
 island, but to no purpose. Mildew and dirt had done their 
 work, and the tracings were as indistinguishable as the black 
 background of an aged portrait. I let the chest lie as it stood. 
 When I came to look at the chairs I found them very finely 
 carved, and old enough to have formed part of the equipment of 
 a manor in Henry VIII, 's time. The part of my work I least 
 liked that afternoon was the handling of the mattress. It was 
 a great bloated bed. I laid it upon the floor, and when I had 
 knocked the bedstead to pieces, was about to lay hold of it to 
 drag it up above, when I thought it stirred as though something 
 were inside it. It was mere imagination, of course, yet I own 
 that the fancy so frightened me that I stood staring at it for 
 some moments like a fool. Then I gave it a pull to make sure 
 that it was as light as I had before believed, and not yet being 
 satisfied, I jumped upon it, trying to make out if I could feel 
 anything inside with my feet. This I managed so cleverly that 
 I fell plump over the odd inflation of the thing just as Miss 
 Orant arrived for another pan to polish. I saw her start as I
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING >7 
 
 got up, and toss her hands with a brilliant stare of sudden fear, 
 then she burst into a tit of laughter. 
 
 'Oh, Mr. Musgrave,' she cried, laughing continuously whilst 
 she spoke, and pointing to the mattress, ' for a moment I actually 
 believed it was a man that you were wrestling with.' 
 
 I rose crimson with my fall and with the exertions I had 
 been undergoing, and said, *I believed something was alive 
 inside it.' 
 
 4 Something alive inside it ! ' she exclaimed, in a tragic voice, 
 with her gravity coming back to her in a breath, and recoiling a 
 step. 
 
 It was now my turn to laugh. ' It's all right,' said I, giving 
 the thing a hearty kick ; ' it was mere fancy ; but something 
 seemed to move, and so I jumped upon it.' I then seized hold of 
 it to drag it up the steps, and I laughed again to see how she 
 ran. She would have confronted a band of savages, I do believe, 
 with a resolute face, but this mattress was too much for her. I 
 did not let go until I had got it down to the sea, where it floated 
 away handsomely and sank. It is odd how, in such a situation 
 as we were placed in, little things will affect the imagination. I 
 am sure that had that mattress remained in the cave, I should 
 never have been able to occupy, or at all events to sleep in, the 
 place. I believe I could not nave consigned a dead body to the 
 deep with graver satisfaction at being quit of it. 
 
 There was no chimney to the kitchen, but on making up a fire 
 of wood, dry grass, and the sweepings, so to speak, of these rooms, 
 in order to test the furnace, I found that the smoke passed out 
 freely through the open skylight, whilst despite the apparent 
 want of draught, the tire burnt briskly enough to roast us a leg 
 of mutton, had we such a thing. I should have been glad to 
 take up my abode that same night in these secret chambers, for 
 I could see my way to as comfortable a bed of leaves and grass, 
 with a rug for a sheet and another for a coverlet, as I needed 
 to lie on, with promise besides of escape from the mosquitoes 
 and the cold clip of the land-crab's jaws. But Miss Grant's 
 soft shake of the head determined me to say no more about it. 
 It was her humour to sleep another night in the hammock 
 under the trees, and it was my duty to be near her. I thought 
 to myself, should the bell toll to-night, her mind may come more 
 willingly to the underground shelter to-morrow. For my part 
 it seemed like mocking at luck to lie all night with nothing but 
 blue atmosphere betwixt the trembling stars and one's body, 
 when there was as good a roof for one as old mother earth 
 could supply close at hand. But he must be a clever man who 
 can even dimly guess at but a portion of what goes to a woman's 
 timidity and reluctance. 
 
 I was mightily glad when sundown came. The fierce glare 
 of the day striking down out of the swimming brassiness of the 
 skies, and flowing back in intolerable sheen, like an echoing of 
 if such a thing could be, off the dazzle of coral sand and 
 <4 2
 
 228 MAROONED 
 
 silk-smooth -water, made a veritable anguish of the eyesight 
 when clear of the shadow of the trees. The evening fell upon 
 us sweet as a blessing, with its dewy richness and coolness of 
 air, and the hush of the discordant voices of the island, in a 
 pause between the ceasing of the cries and screams of birds, 
 and the small, fierce, sultry concert of the insects, and the first 
 notes of the crickets, and the sullen croak of the frogs. We sat 
 or strolled, as on the previous night, till the moon was high, 
 talking of Rio, of what my cousin would be thinking, of the 
 probable fate of the Iron Crown, of our prospect of escape, 
 and a score of such matters. Once, on the sheer rim of tho 
 sheet of glory lying under the moon, we both thought we could 
 make out a black speck, and I never could have imagined how 
 wildly passionate was the desire for deliverance in us both 
 so smoothly would we talk of our rescue, so quiet was the face 
 we had put upon our distress until, as we stood gazing with 
 our hearts in our eyes at the extremity of the silver wake with 
 the purple gloom lifting like the banks of a river to it on either 
 side, I felt her hand in mine trembling, and damp with the 
 dew of an ungovernable emotion, whilst on my side my breath 
 came and went as thick, dry, and difficult as though a poison 
 worked in me. That it was a ship we neither of us could say. 
 Sometimes we fancied we saw it, then it would go, then seemed 
 to blacken out again into a tiny spot. So dead was the calm 
 the lightest craft could scarce nave floated the distance of a 
 fathom in an hour. There was something almost of a physical 
 burthen to the sensibility in the profound, stir less tranquillity 
 that seemed to come weigliing down with the fine clear dusk of 
 the night. You almost blessed the crickets for the rising and 
 falling of their bell-like chirping^ and bent the ear to the 
 delicate ripple of surf, for the relief you got out of the soft 
 simmering noise of it. But let it have been a ship or fancy, 
 'twas all the same to us. The spangled indigo 01 the dome 
 went down with its stars to the lustrous sea-line, smoothing it 
 there to a flawless rim ; and Miss Grant let fall my hand with 
 a deep sigh, and a sudden look of grief at me in the moonlight, 
 for which there was no answer but silence. 
 
 However, partly with the wish to distract her mind, and 
 partly because of the necessity for such a thing, I thought I 
 would see if there were any craw-fish to be obtained ; so first of 
 all I cut a bough from a tree which I had previously observed 
 to be of a resinous nature, and on putting fire to it found that it 
 made just such a torch as I needed. I then fashioned a shawl 
 into a sort of bag, which I requested Miss Grant to hold, desiring 
 her also to take her stand close by the wash of the water on tho 
 beach, ready to pick up and pop into the shawl such fish as I 
 might have the luck to capture ; then turning up my trousers 
 to above my knees, I waded a little distance into the sea, not 
 without some anxiety regarding my toes, for I knew there would 
 e plenty of crabs hereabouts, big and powerful, with tho jawg
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 229 
 
 almost of a young shark in their gripping and cleaving qualities. 
 The smoky flame of my torch threw a yellow illumination 
 through the water to the bottom of it, and after waiting a little 
 I was rewarded by the sight of several black objects crawling 
 like lizards to my legs out of the darkness past the sphere of the 
 sulphur-coloured radiance. I dipped briskly, ana in a few 
 minutes had chucked a good round score of craw-fish on to the 
 beach, and as fast as they fell Miss Grant picked them up, till 
 the improvised bag writhed to the movements of the creatures 
 as though it were something living in her hand. She had 
 recovered her spirits, and called out laughingly to me that 
 some of these days she would endeavour to draw my portrait as 
 I then stood, for she could not imagine a more romantic scene. 
 Romantic it was, I doubt not, and she meant what she said, spite 
 of the touch of banter her cordial girlish laughter gave to her 
 speech. To see that it was so, one has but to think of my figure, 
 black to the moonshine on the water, spite of the yellow tinctur- 
 ing of it by the flame of the torch ; twin shadows of me flung by 
 the firebrand and the moonbeam slightly swaying on the dusky 
 ripple that floated shorewards into a mere wire-like breaker, 
 jay companion's fine figure pallid in the showering of the silver 
 light, but clear-cut too against the snow-white softness of the 
 sand which went shelving up behind ; her dark eyes neverthe- 
 less stealing out even to a brief gaze at the glimmering phantasm 
 of her lineaments ; the island background of huddled blocks of 
 vegetation ; the stars jewelling the fibrine outlines of the trees 
 the sweep of the land to the hummocks looking mountainous and 
 remote in the illusive atmosphere, and then the smooth plain of 
 ocean glooming out into the vast distance with a sudden arrest 
 of it against the sky, and a stern bending round of its confines 
 that made the imagination desolate with the sense of irremediable 
 imprisonment. 
 
 There was some labour in the occupation of dipping for the 
 fish ; but the water circled cool to my knees, the breath of it 
 too floated refreshingly to the face, and flinging away the 
 smouldering remains of my torch I waded ashore, brisk as 
 though from a bath, and lighted a cigar with immense relish of 
 the fumes of the tobacco. I dropped the bundle of craw-fish 
 clown the hole that led to the underground rooms, and sat for a 
 long while with Miss Grant ; our camp-stools in the heart of the 
 ivory whiteness of the tract on which I had slept last night, 
 and on which I was again to sleep. Occasionally my com- 
 panion would look a little nervously towards the forest. No\v 
 that the silent night had come, thoughts of the mysterious bell- 
 ringing troubled her afresh. Since it was impossible for the 
 bell to ring itself, she said, it must have been tolled by human 
 agency of some sort. No bird or beast alighting upon or 
 thrusting against it could have produced the varied ringing we 
 had heard, and consequently she was certain there was a matt 
 hidden iu the wood.
 
 230 MAROONED 
 
 ' Why should he hide ? ' said I, wanting to reassure her, for 
 some hours of moonlight and gloom yet lay betwixt us and the 
 daybreak. 
 
 ' For fear of us, perhaps,' she answered. 
 
 'If that be so,' said I, 'would not he be mad to make his 
 presence known by ringing the bell?' She could not answer 
 this. ' Besides,' continued I, ' where would he hide himself ? I 
 searched^the forest pretty narrowly. "Tis true he might have a 
 lodging in the hollow or a tree, but you can't reconcile any 
 motive that a man would have in concealing himself, with his 
 lusty ringing of a bell at midnight^ raising about the most 
 alarming clamour that human ingenuity could hit upon.' 
 
 'Then, Mr. Musgrave, you wish me to believe that the bell 
 rang of its own accord, or that it was struck by some spirit 
 hand?' 
 
 This silenced me in my turn. For my own part, I could not 
 make head nor tail of the matter, though, spite of the clear 
 expression of human agency that I had found in the changes of 
 the performance of the mysterious bell-ringer, I would have 
 been willing to bet all I was worth that I was the only man on 
 that island, as Miss Aurelia was the only woman. But it was 
 not a thing to bother ourselves too much about. It was an odd 
 ocean puzzle, which grew a bit wild with the deepening of the 
 night, and the thickening out of the dusky shadows of the little 
 forest to the westerly drawing down of the moon. But my mind 
 was too greatly worried with other considerations to give it 
 heed enough to render me restless on its account. 
 
 Whilst we sat conversing I spied the black shape of a turtle 
 creeping out of the creek, with the moon sparkling in the wet 
 of its shell. 'I must have that lady,' said I ; 'she looks but a 
 tortoise, and a small one at that.' I fetched the handspike I had 
 manufactured that day to prize open the skylight casement in 
 the sand, and then waiting till the creature had put a good dis- 
 tance between it and the water's edge, I made for it, and with 
 more dexterity than I should have believed myself capable of, I 
 slipped my pole fair between the flippers, and with a hearty 
 spring turned the thing fair on to its back. I then opened my 
 knife and cut its throat, feeling as remorseful through the horror 
 of the needful operation as a conscience-stricken murderer, 
 despite my perceiving how needlessly inhuman it would have 
 been to let the poor creature lie all night in the torment of its 
 capsized posture, only to decapitate it next morning after all. 
 It was a small hawk's-billed turtle, I believe weighing less than 
 one hundred pounds, or I should never have been able to deal 
 with it single-handed. I returned with a guilty feeling of blood 
 upon my head to Miss Grant, and told her what I had done. 
 
 'How shipwreck to call our condition shipwreck,' said I, 
 'forces one's hand! I should have thought myself no more 
 capable of murdering yonder creature than of slaughtering an. 
 OX How much of what is ignoble, of what is purely anima^
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 231 
 
 comes out of one in stresses of this kind 1 A man, to remain 
 only a little lower than the angels, should^ be luxuriously fed 
 and. housed, I think. His vileness grows with his needs. The 
 nature of beasts remains the same in essentials, whether they be 
 pursy with food or mere ribs with famine. But bring human 
 nature down to such destitution as an open boat, for instance, 
 expresses, without a crumb of bread or a thimbleful of fresh 
 water, and how base, oh, how base it will show in its instincts ! ' 
 'And all this,' she exclaimed, smiling, 'because you have killed 
 a turtle ! Yet I dare say your appreciation of the god-like 
 qualities of man in you would not suffer through your chasing 
 41 hare, in company with twenty horsemen, over miles of ground, 
 or killing a long afternoon by shooting at harmless little 
 pigeons.' She rose. 'It is too ^ late to provoke you to an 
 argument,' she continued ; ' what is the time, Mr. Musgrave ? ' 
 
 I brought the face of my watch to the moonlight. ' Twenty 
 minutes past twelve,' said L 
 ' Have you my pistol 1 ' 
 
 I had it in iny pocket. I loaded, primed, and handed it to 
 her ; she adjusted it in her belt as on the previous night, then 
 removed her hat, and gave me her hand, as her manner always, 
 was ere retiring to rest. I pressed my lips to it in the old- 
 fashioned salute, grieved to the heart to think of the hard- 
 ships that had befallen this brave and beautiful girl, and 
 deeply moved too by the pathos I found in her uncomplaining 
 acceptance of our sorrowful and seemingly hopeless condition. 
 When she was fairly in her hammock, I rigged the mosquito 
 curtain over her, and turned away from the beauty of her face, 
 complexioned to marble by the transparency under which sht< 
 lay, with a feeling that made me almost wild at heart for a little 
 with the sense ot betrayal of the trust whose obligation, con 
 found it! -grew more imperious in proportion as it taxed my 
 weakness. I threw a rug upon the sand, rolled up a coat for a. 
 bolster, saw to my pistols, threw the mosquito-net over my head, 
 and lay down. This was our second night on the island. I felt 
 the solitude of the place and the dismalness and melancholy of 
 our look-out far more keenly than I had on the previous day. 
 There was something of noveltv about our situation during the 
 first few hours which worked with a little quality of buoyancy 
 in the spirits ; but that was gone, and there was nothing now 
 between the heart and the crashing burden of imprisonment. 
 The fire-flies swarmed in brilliant constellations, the tingling 
 horn of the mosquito sounded shrill against my ear, odd mid- 
 night/notes of dreaming fowl broke into the silence out of the 
 inland dusk, down upon the ivory of the creek side lay my 
 slaughtered turtle, with a look in it of a great stain of ink upon 
 the moon-whitened sand that importunately and unpleasantly 
 sent my thoughts straying away to the murder of Mr. Bothvvell 
 and the ugly blotch on the cabin-floor. The brig, the mutin- 
 eers, the loss of Gordon and the men, Broad water s mysterious
 
 232 MAROONED 
 
 disappearance why, these were things already growing dream- 
 like, so heavy was the thrust this last experience of ours gave 
 even to the freshest memories, sending the latest incidents reel- 
 ing back into a sort of antiquity, till, on my oatk it seemed as 
 long as twenty years ago since we had embarked on the Iron 
 Crown in the Downs. How were we going to escape ? If we 
 lifted no hand to help ourselves, what was to become of us? 
 Yet, great Heaven, I thought to myself, mechanically eyeing 
 the soaring of a cloud of fire-flies till they looked to dance into 
 the stars and make a green and silver whirlpool of the firma- 
 ment iust over my head, by the mingling of their phosphor 
 with the diamond points past them, how is a man to deal with 
 timber which he has neither saw nor chopper to level it with ? 
 What sort of ark is he going to contrive when he is as destitute 
 of all appliances for building such a thing as he is of know- 
 ledge ot what to do, though he had the conveniences of a 
 shipwright's yard within hopping distance of him ? 
 
 I was restless and hot, and was in the act of sitting up with 
 the design of lifting the mosquito-curtain high enough to bring 
 a cigar to my lips, when the Dell hidden away in the blackness 
 behind us began to tolL 
 
 4 There, Mr. Musgrave ! There it is again ! ' cried Miss Grant, 
 almost hysterically, and in a breath she had sprang from her 
 hammock and was alongside of me, with her hand on my 
 shoulder, listening. The ringing was much the same as on the 
 night before first a slow and solemn tolling, making one think 
 of some mortuary bell timing the melancholy pacing of a 
 funeral winding along a cyprus-shadowed path to an ugly rent 
 in the earth ; then after a pause, as though the ringer had 
 halted to refresh himself with a drink, a hasty clattering, a 
 most alarming clamorous vibration ; then the dirge-like chiming 
 again, followed on by all sorts of beatings, fast and slow. 
 
 'Will you say now? cried Miss Grant, holding my hand 
 tightly ; ' that there is no man there ? ' 
 
 'Be it man or devil,' I exclaimed, 'ghost or goblin, it is a 
 riddle we must solve for our peace' sake. Wait you here.' 
 
 'What do you mean to do ? ' she cried, still clinging to me. 
 
 ' Why, since it is impossible to see, let drive in the direction 
 of the sound anyhow, and listen for some squeal to follow, that 
 we may know the ringing is not an hallucination ; for I protest 
 to Heaven, the incredibility of such a thing is enough to make 
 one think one's self mad for hearing it.' 
 
 She dropped my hand, and I walked towards the trees with 
 a pistol in either fist. She followed me, however, holding her 
 own little weapon, but the dense tangle, I knew, would stop her 
 presently. I had no intention of penetrating the wood Jby the 
 road I had taken when the morning shone brilliant. If it were 
 dark then, it would be blacker than thunder now, which neces- 
 sarily increased the astonishment I laboured t under at hearing 
 the bell ; for unless the thing that rang it lived within a pace
 
 AN UNDERGROUND LODGING 233 
 
 of it> its power^of being able t^find it amid that blackness 
 was as astonishing as the sound itself. Yet all this while the 
 chimes continued. Whatever the ringer might be, its mood 
 seemed merrier on this than on the last night It rang heartily, 
 with a curious suggestion of enjoyment in the sound produced. 
 The disturbed birds sent a hundred remonstrant cries, yells, and 
 whistlings from the trees, which apparently merely increased 
 the appetite of the ringer for his lalbour, for 'tis not in mortal 
 pen to express the preternatural wildness, melancholy, and I 
 may Bay horror, of the sound of that secret ringing echoing 
 through the island out of the central midnight fastness, and 
 dying away in ghostly tones far out upon the silent sna. I was 
 as angry as I was bewildered. The character of the sound 
 staggered my doubts of there being a man there. It seemed 
 impossible that anything but a human hand should produce 
 such noise. Closely followed by my companion, I skirted the 
 trees to that thin scattering of them whence I had emerged 
 after my morning's hunt, and where I had tripped over the 
 ring in the sand. Methought from ^this point I could better 
 collect the bearings of the belL Miss Grant soon came to a 
 stand. Her clothing rendered the growth impenetrable by her. 
 
 ' Oh, if I were only dressed as you are, Mr. Musgrave 1 ' she 
 exclaimed, in a voice so charged witli bitter vexation that it 
 was almost like hearing her sob. ' Do not venture too far. Be 
 cautious, for my sake. What shall I do if I am left alone here 1 ' 
 
 'I will not go far,' said I; 'stand you in this black shadow. 
 In the haze of the moon you will be able to see anything that 
 may run this way. Let fly at it, will you, should it come. 
 Only please take care not to shoot me.' 
 
 With that I left her, and drove with trudging steps through 
 the coarse wiry undergrowth, helped somewhat by recollection 
 of the road I had taken in the morning, and aided also by the 
 sound of the bell. From the whole area of the island the concert 
 of the crickets rose in a volume of chirruping ; the croaking of 
 the frogs was distracting ; everything seemed awake, and 
 nothing could be imagined more confounding than this sweep 
 of multitudinous noise, closing to one's very ear as it seemed 
 with the notes of unseen things crying out of the grass upon 
 which one trod, and from the near hidden trunks of trees, and 
 the stoop of the dusky boughs overhead. 
 
 However, I had not advanced fifty paces when I found further 
 progress impossible. There was no question, however, that the 
 chimes came from the bell I had inspected in the morning, so I 
 levelled a pistol at the blackness in the direction whence the 
 sounds were coining, and fired. The trees all about me glanced 
 out yellowly to the flame ; the bell instantly ceased ; but one had 
 to listen to make sure, so deafening was the noise among the 
 branches of the terrified creatures roosting up there. I levelled a 
 second pistol, and fired again, with a renewal of the distracting 
 outbreak overhead, rolling in a wave of discordant uproar, so wild
 
 234 MAIiOONKD 
 
 with intermingling of tropic throats, with single near yefls. 
 groans, snores, gasps, and pipings, following as it were in the wake 
 of the rushing clamour, that the effect upon the hearing denes 
 language. I waited a little, eagerly hearkening. The ringing 
 had ended. The forest noises died away, and in a few minutes 
 you heard nothing but the familiar croakings and chirrupings. 
 chiefly out in the open. There were too many trees in the roacf 
 to render it likely I had hit the ringer ; indeed I had not fired 
 with that idea. But I thought that whatever it was that rang 
 the bell might come sneakmgly my way, and I strained my 
 hearing for any sound resembling the rustling of the coarse 
 growth pressed by the foot ; but nothing of the sort was audible, 
 so I returned to Miss Grant, and walked with her back to where 
 the hammock was. 
 
 Well, it was a mystery not to be solved by wondering at it. I 
 own I slept but little that night through thinking of it, whilst 
 Miss Grant next morning confessed that she had not closed her 
 eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER XXTO 
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGEB 
 
 INDEED, this mysterious midnight bell-ringing was a puzzle 
 that presently threatened to render the island solitude desper- 
 ately uncomfortable whilst the sun was up, and absolutely 
 hideous when he had gone down. It was time it was dealt 
 with some way or other. A few more such nights as the two 
 we had passed might play havoc with Miss Grant's nerves ; 
 and our loneliness ana helplessness were already so extreme 
 that one felt it might presently go hard with one's brain if the 
 paralyzing conditions of being marooned were to be supple- 
 mented by an element of mystery nicely calculated to nnish 
 off in the intellect the work which grief, suffering, and despair 
 had begun. 
 
 So when the morning came I slipped away for a plunge, feel- 
 ing the need of a refreshment of that kind, after lying long in 
 my clothes upon the powdery dust of my sandy couch ; then 
 returning, and asking Miss Grant to spread a little breakfast 
 for us meanwhile, I clapped my pistols into my pocket, and 
 plunged into the wood. I steered a pretty straight course for 
 the bell, looking earnestly about me as I thrust my way along : 
 and when I arrived at it, I stood surveying it for several 
 minutes, wondering if the problem of the ringing was to be 
 solved by an explanation that should be ridiculous for its 
 simplicity when hit upon. But not the ghost of a solution 
 offered. No ' } some hand man's, beast's, or ghost's must have 
 rung the thing. I touched it, and it swung so heavily and 
 stiffly that it was impossible any bird, even the biggest on the 
 island, alighting, could have swayed it to the emission of a
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER ;;.5 
 
 single chime. I peered curiously at the adjacent trees, but 
 witnessed no sort of hollow in wliich anything of bulk could 
 hide itself. I stared searchingly round for mark of human or 
 any other tread, for hint of subterranean habitation, for any 
 sign, in short, to resolve me this bewildering mystery ; but the 
 scene, to as far as I could see, was as bare of such suggestion as 
 I sought as the bell itself. I considered for a minute whether 
 I should return for a musket and beat down the green and 
 mouldering frame, but on peering close at the bell I observed 
 that it was suspended to an iron hook in the gallows-like beam. 
 This gave me an idea, and putting my hands to the bell I lifted 
 it off its hook and placed it upon the ground. 'Twas a tolerably 
 heavy piece of metal, though not BO weighty but that I could 
 easily carry it. There has been so little change for centuries 
 in the fashion of bells, that no man could have told how old this 
 one was by the look of it. No doubt I was right in reckoning 
 it to have been a ship's bell. Its sonorous notes may have 
 been reverberated in its time by the long-ago-vanished timbers 
 of a carrack, or some tall ship belonging to old Spain or England. 
 
 I was forgetting it lie, but thought, no! for the thing that 
 hammered it last night may have sense enough to sling it 
 afresh and worry us as before ; so I seized hold of it and 
 succeeded in staggering with it painfully out of the wood, the 
 thing occasionally tolling in a very melancholy way to the sway- 
 ing of my figure as I lurched through the knee-high tangle. I 
 succeeded in lugging it to where our luggage was, and sat down 
 hot as fire and pretty nearly spent. 
 
 'There,' said I, 'if the bell-ringer has a mind to enjoy himself 
 to-night, he'll have to show himself, and if he does I'll pot him, 
 if I never forgive myself for his murder afterwards.' 
 
 ' One wants to know the cause,' she returned, peering at the 
 bell much as she had at the mattress when I told her I believed 
 it moved ; 'this is the effect only. The mystery will remain the 
 same although the bell may not ring.' 
 
 'May not! Should there be any further ringing to-night,' 
 said I. 'I vow to steadfastly believe in ghosts for the rest of 
 my lire. As for the mystery, what we want is to be able to 
 sleep when we lie down. It will be nothing to me what made 
 the noise, providing we don't hear it. Of course the puzzle is a 
 supreme one. but that need not signify. We shall be sailing 
 away before long, please God, and it will be something for us to 
 be able to boast about in such an age as this, that the villains 
 of the Iron Crown marooned us on an enchanted island.' 
 
 She looked pale and worn, her eyes were listless, but this 
 might have been owing to want of sleep, and to the harassment 
 of fretful semi-superstitious thoughts ; yet the set of her beauti- 
 ful mouth showed a spirit of resolution staunch in her still. 
 The refreshment that was to be obtained by privacy I felt 
 would help her, and I resolved to devote the morning to con- 
 veying her luggage to the inner chamber, to suspending her
 
 236 MAROONED 
 
 hammock, and to isolating the little room by draping the door 
 that led to it. Speaking from experience, I know that the 
 misery of such a situation as ours is to be lightened not a little 
 by the comfort of a shift of garments, by a plunge in the blue 
 water, and the like. Robinson Crusoe dwells at large upon the 
 sweetness of the feel of a clean shirt. It looks but a light 
 stroke, yet it is as deep a touch in its way as any of the best of 
 the others in which Defoe's marvellous romance abounds. 
 
 After breakfast I climbed with her to the summit of the little 
 hill It was all bare sapphire sea, streaked here and there 
 with long shining curves like a running of quicksilver on the 
 surface. The sky was brilliantly blue and cloudless, the wind 
 a faint, parched draught from the north-east ; the bite of the 
 sun upon the exposed flesh was as though his beam touched the 
 skin through a burning-glass. It was insupportable, and we 
 descended the hummock, my companion pale and silent, I sick 
 at heart ; for though I had not dared hope to see anything, yet 
 the fulfilment of such an expectation as this brings a mgo and 
 grief with it, as of madness almost, with every recurrence, though 
 you should look for a ship fifty times a day, and always be sure 
 in your soul before lifting your eyes that you will see nothing. 
 
 * Can it be possible,' exclaimed Miss Grant, ' that no ship ever 
 passes within sight of this island ? ' 
 
 * Don't let us think that,' said I, 'for a long time yet, at all 
 events. We only came ashore here the day before yesterday. 
 The speck that floated last night on the rim of the moonlight 
 might have been a sail. This island lies very low, and there is 
 plenty of ocean beyond the line of it all round us, so that a 
 vessel might be within four or five leagues of us without seeing 
 this Cay or we her.' 
 
 * But there is land down in the west, Mr. Musgravet* 
 
 'Yes, the film of it, so the men said, was visible from the Iron 
 Crmm's cross-trees.' 
 
 'Then,' said she, 'that stretch of water yonder must be a 
 passage between this island and the land there ; so that a sail 
 ought to be visible now and again.' 
 
 'The mischief lies,' cried I, 'in my not knowing where we 
 are. Those days of thick weather, with a head wind and some 
 sort of current of which I knew nothing, threw me all adrift ; 
 not to mention old Broadwater's chronometer, which in my 
 opinion just ticked close enough to Greenwich time to tell him 
 when the hour for another glass of grog had come round. Of 
 course, this island is one of the Bahamas. There is sure to be 
 shipping hereabouts, making for the West Indies, or the Panama 
 or Mexican sea-boards, or steering eastwards for European 
 ports. We must be content to go on waiting and hoping. We 
 nave the materials ready stocked for a great smoke, and who 
 knows but that before even sundown to-day we may be safe on 
 board some craft, bound to a port whence we may easily mak* 
 our way to Rio ? '
 
 t SHOOT THE BELL-KING EH 23? 
 
 Tliis was fancy to put a little light into her face. 'I 
 suppose,' she exclaimed suddenly, with a slanting glance at me 
 as though she could not summon courage to look at me fully, 
 'you would never again undertake to escort a girl to her 
 sweetheart ? ' 
 
 ' Why should 1 1 ' I answered, wondering at the meaning of 
 the very faint smile that hovered airily as a shadow about the 
 beauty of her lips. ' It is thankless work, after all* 
 
 ' Indeed, you may say that,' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' Oh, understand me. I don't mind the horrors of a mutineer- 
 ing experience, or of being marooned. No, there may be a 
 companionship sweet enough to neutralize the direst conditions. 
 I mean, 'tis going through a very great deal, you know, to 
 oblige another.' 
 
 ' Poor dear Alexander,' she cried, ' he vn&feel obliged, I know ; 
 at least ' she paused suddenly with a reining in of her speech 
 that made her cheeks flush somewhat to the effort. She 
 struggled with an instant's confusion of mind, and then asked 
 me calmly what I proposed to do that day, and what help she 
 could be to me, but I saw in her eyes that she was still under 
 the surprise of the thought whose utterance she had narrowly 
 arrested. I could have sworn that she had only just saved her- 
 self from saying something which she would rather have bitten 
 her tongue in halves than express. I looked at her again for a 
 moment or two before answering ; she was gazing seawards, as 
 though the question she had this instant put was gone from 
 her memory. Something in her manner a subtlety as indeter- 
 minable as the aromas floating into the hot still air out of the 
 hearts of the thousand secret and nameless flowers scattered 
 throughout the island quickened my breathing, till I broke 
 with a start from a fancy that might nave held me profoundly 
 meditative for the rest of the day, and told her what I meant 
 to do. 
 
 'But is there nothing for met' she inquired, bringing her 
 eyes to mine, though I seemed to miss the peculiar, familiar 
 steadfastness that 1 had again and again found as fascinating 
 as it was perplexing. 
 
 ' Can you cook, Miss Grant ? ' 
 
 She elapsed her hands, sunk her head with a little shake of it, 
 and said, * Not nicely, I tear.' 
 
 I said, ' You will not mind trying your hand at a dish of turtle- 
 soup?' 
 
 'How is it made?' 
 
 'Why,' said I, 'by boiling the meat, I suppose. It will be 
 something to do. Then there are those craw-fish. I'll make a 
 
 start by lighting the kitchen fire.' 
 I forthwith fell 
 
 to work to collect a quantity of wood, which 
 I carried to the furnace, where it was soon blazing merrily, with 
 the thin blue smoke of it passing fairly out through the skylights, 
 which I took care to open to their fullest extent ; so that though
 
 238 MAROONED 
 
 at the start the smoke set me coughing a bit, the atmosphere all 
 round the spiral volume was presently clear enough to enable 
 me to breathe without inconvenience. Indeed, I learnt from 
 this subterranean kitchen how our forefathers had managed 
 without chimneys, a matter that must have puzzled me all my 
 life had I not observed how this smoke going straight and clean 
 to the roof formed a cloud there^that drained away through the 
 skylight as cleverly as if its vehicle had been a smoke-stack. I 
 then filled the vessels we had discovered in the cave with fresh 
 water, and put on a big _saucepanful to boil. 'Twas roasting 
 work, what with the fire inside and the sun out, and I had to 
 strip to my shirt and trousers, with a big straw hat for the pro- 
 tection of my head, though there were several times even then 
 when I came very near to fainting. Meanwhile, to make sure 
 of something to eat, I popped half-a-dozen of the craw-fish into 
 the saucepan, and then knife in hand went down to the turtle ; 
 but was a very long while indeed coming at the inside of it. It 
 was like jobbing at a man in armour; but the secret dawned 
 upon me after many experiments, though I confess I never fell 
 to any work that was more distasteful to me in my life. That 
 the sun might not corrupt my turtle, I dragged it at the expense 
 of many groans and much perspiration to the entrance of the 
 underground rooms, down which I tumbled with it as though 
 marooning had converted me into a sort of ant ; and indeed I 
 felt like one, I can assure you, as I painfully dragged my prey 
 to the hole and staggered with it into subterranean gloom. 
 
 I see now with the eye of memory the stately and beautiful 
 figure of Miss Grant stepping from the furnace, as I call it, 
 after a peep at the humming saucepan, to the short length of 
 passage for the cool of the shadow, though there was no breath 
 of air to descend. I had left her at work when I went on one 
 of my errands to the brook, or to the turtle, habited in her long 
 dress, the clinging folds of which, with a yard-long measure of 
 it trailing astern, I saw must bother her presently, and I looked 
 forward to the pleasure of helping her pin her gown clear of 
 her feet : but on my return I found that she had divested her- 
 self of the dress, and that her attire now was an under-skirt of 
 brilliant hues. I imagined she had changed her gown, so 
 ignorant was I of the mysteries of ladies' apparel, and thought 
 that never could any sort of female garb more gracefully 
 harmonize with any particular kind of beauty than did this 
 short, richly-coloured frock, as I supposed it, with the fine form 
 of Miss Grant. I've heard it said that the Spanish are the 
 only ladies in the world who can walk ; all others waddle, glide, 
 amble, do anything in short but step with a proper sort of 
 
 frace. I might believe this after recalling the gait of the ladies 
 have known, and contrasting them with Miss Aurelia's 
 another maternal legacy, no doubt, as I might suppose now 
 that there was sufficient disclosure of her movements to enable 
 me to appreciate the perfection of their freedom and their
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 239 
 
 inimitable, easy, gentle dignity. She had removed her hat ; 
 the furnace flames tinctured her soft hair with their yellow 
 hue ; and in the subdued shadowing: of the room her eyes looked 
 to have recovered their earlier brilliance. Her arms were bare 
 to the elbow limbs of moulded ivory. I stood at gaze for 
 some moments, as startled by this new revelation of her charms 
 as I had been on the day when I had first met her. I know this 
 dwelling upon a girl's perfections in the face of the acres of 
 paper which have been covered again and again with like 
 accounts is but poor work, and can but make tiresome read- 
 ing ; but one is not often marooned with such a woman as 
 Aurelia Grant, and seeing even then how it was with me in my 
 thoughts of her, I ought to be forgiven for this trick of pulling 
 out her likeness, and asking you just to look at it once more. 
 
 By noon I had managed to transport the luggage to our 
 underground home, lightening the burthen of the larger boxes 
 by conveying parcels and bundles of their contents in my arms. 
 I also took care to bring the bell along and place it in the 
 kitchen, on the left of the entrance, where it was out of the 
 road ; and it will be strange, thought I, as I gave it a bene- 
 dictory kick, if anything resembling this blessed thing torments 
 us again to-night. My next business was to drape the entrance 
 of the room that Miss Grant was to occupy. I had slung her 
 hammock, spread rugs to serve as a carpet, and put a couple of 
 high-backed chairs into the apartment ; so that with the boxes 
 convenient to her hand, and the sunshine streaming fair upon 
 the skylight, and flooding the atmosphere with its radiance, 
 whilst the tropic perfumes floating heavy and languid above 
 came sifting down to sweeten the air, as though you should 
 have wafted a nosegay of flowers there, the odd, earthy chamber 
 looked positively nabitable. The entrance was low, and a 
 single shawl effectually served as a curtain. 
 
 'Yonder turtle-shell/ said I, pointing to the creature I had 
 killed, *when cleaned out and purified will make an excellent 
 hand-basin. You have a looking-glass, and all other toilet re- 
 quisites, as the hairdressers call the things. As matters are. 
 Miss Grant, we might > be worse ofil Better surely this root 
 than the two trees twixt which your hammock swung. Con- 
 fess now that you have no longer any reluctance in taking up 
 your abode here?' 
 
 She smiled, casting her eyes over the room with a glance at 
 the skylight ; and I observed the tremble of just a little falter- 
 ing 01 resolution, so to speak, in the delicate pout of her 
 under-lip. 
 
 * I have one small misgiving,' she answered. 
 
 4 What is it t' I asked. 
 
 'Suppose there should be a man on this island.' 
 
 Well?' 
 
 4 Von don't believe there is : but somebody must have rung 
 the boll.'
 
 240 MAROONED 
 
 'And supposing there should be a man t ' said L 
 
 She shot another glance at the skylight, and answered, 'He 
 might shut us up down here.' 
 
 4 How?' I asked. 
 
 'Why, Mr. Musgrave, by closing the skylights, and covering 
 them with sand, and then putting the cover on to the opening, 
 and piling sand on that too.' 
 
 ' Well,' said I, smiling, for my mind had long since got rid of 
 the fancy that there might be a man somewhere hidden, though, 
 as I admit, the midnight ringing was all the darker as a puzzle 
 to me for that very notion, ' there is but one way of checkmating 
 the skulking rogue, assuming him to be of flesn and blood, and 
 I'll attend to it immediately lest it should escape me, and 
 mounting to the open, armed with one of the old muskets, I 
 hammered at the hatch-cover until it lay before me in several 
 pieces. These I carried one by one below, for the hatch was not 
 to have been squeezed through the opening in its entirety, and 
 stowed the fragments hard by the belL Now,' said I, 'your 
 friend the ringer may indeed close the skylights-but it will put 
 him to his trumps to cover that entrance. Think there is 
 nothing on the island that would serve him for such a purpose, 
 unless he should cut down a tree, and whittle out a balk of it 
 as a cork for that mouth. No, Miss Grant, little risk I think of 
 our being buried alive.' 
 
 My talk and the knocking to pieces of the hatch-cover re- 
 assured her, and as we might hope now that our turtle-broth 
 had been boiling long enough, we prepared the little rustic table 
 for dinner, and put on it a bottle of wine, a few biscuits, the 
 remains of a tin of meat, the cooked craw-fish, along with a big 
 bunch of plantains I haa cut after bathing. But alas ! we had 
 but one knife between us, no forks, spoons, nor plates. How 
 then were we to ladle up the soup I Hitherto we had eaten 
 with our fingers, and drunk from a meat tin ; but the broth 
 demanded an effort of ingenuity. 
 
 'I have it,' I exclaimed, and stepping into the sunshine I 
 made my way to the beach, where, collecting an armful of 
 shells, big and little, I carried them to the brook, thoroughly 
 cleansed them of the sand and salt, and returned with them to 
 the kitchen. Better soup-plates than the large shells made we 
 could not have desired, and the smaller shells made excellent 
 spoons. How the soup relished it boots not to say. Wanting 
 salt, herbs, and the like, it lacked perhaps the savouriness 
 that a City Alderman is accustomed to meet with in a potage 
 of turtle, but the meat proved juicy, and the liquor grateful 
 enough in its way, and though, to be sure, it was a sort of 
 mess that I could not look at now, I swallowed it then with 
 enjoyment and appetite, giving secret thanks to Heaven that 
 there was plenty more or it. 
 
 It is quite likely that any Jack coming ashore to peer about, 
 discovering these underground rooms, and looking down into
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGEB 241 
 
 them, might have taken Miss Grant and myself for a corsair 
 and his ieman. The rich dyes of her petticoat made her 
 apparel ^romantic to the eye, and the poetic suggestiveness of 
 her attire was heightened yet by the free graces of her 
 roughened hair, and her fair and most shapely arms bare to 
 the elbow. I, habited in shirt and trousers, needed but a red 
 sash round about my loins to present a very fair copy of a 
 pirate. It was entirely in keeping too^ that we should appear 
 as though we were feasting, and the picture would have been 
 faithful enough, I doubt not, to the liveliest imagination, of a 
 piratical lair, coloured as it was with details of aged muskets 
 .and cutlasses, the venerable cooking intensils, the two century - 
 old^ chairs, the queer, aged, straddling table at which we sat, 
 if, instead of lifting shells to our lips, my lovely companion 
 and I had been able to pledge each other in cool sparkling 
 draughts from richly-chased goblets of precious metal. In 
 truth, what the picture wanted to complete it was a hint of 
 plunder. Miss Grant's sparkling rings were but a meagre 
 intimation in that way. You would have looked for a golden 
 candle-stick or two, a silver crucifix, a sack in a corner bulged 
 into a glittering yawn at the mouth by the pieces of eight 
 which filled it. 
 
 ' This is a sort of experience,^ said I, ' which a man should need 
 to be very young indeed to enjoy. One should be quite a little 
 boy to think it fine. Yet I am realizing the dreams of millions 
 of small lads. To think of being all alone with a beautiful lady 
 upon an uninhabited island to live in a cave that in bygone 
 years resounded the revelry of the sea-robbers again and again 
 to have within arm's-reach several of the exact sort of muskets 
 which Crusoe carried on his shoulder to live upon turtle and 
 plantains, with the delightful prospect of having some day to fell 
 a tree and scoop out a canoe oh ! the bliss to countless small 
 boys of such realization ! What spasms of envy would thrill 
 through the schools of Great Britain were the young friends 
 of the old Whackums to learn that at this moment there was a 
 young gentleman in company with a young lady living in a 
 pirate's cave in an island hard by the Spanish Mam.' 
 
 * I am afraid school-boys would not envy you quite so much 
 as you think,' said she ; ' they do not greatly value ladies' 
 society either in books or in life. To be cast away with a 
 beautiful female to be marooned even with a lovely princess, 
 and live all alone with her in a cave ' She shook her head, 
 laughing quietly. 'No, Mr. Musgrave, if I know boys at all, 
 they would not thank you for such an experience. Give them 
 guns and canoes and pirates' caves, with plenty of oranges j but 
 no girls, if you please.' 
 
 * It is strange that little boys should ever make men,' said I, 
 going to my coat for a cheroot. 'I am not very old myself, 
 yet I find it difficult to believe that I could ever have been 
 younger than sixteen. Would to Heaven that the light and 
 
 B
 
 242 .MAROONED 
 
 colour and fancy of childhood attended us to the end ! Tis 
 miserable to have to sail out of a glowing horizon into the gray 
 of the middle sea, and thence onwards yet to gloom. It is 
 Byron, I think, who asks who would not be a boy again. Not 
 I, for one, unless I could remain so. If a man has to turn out, 
 it is better he should get up at once and have done with it. I 
 love a sweet dream as fondly as any, but since the awakening 
 is inevitable, don't delay it, say I j and then let the vision 
 pass away for good. Who would live again through a mere 
 phantasy, knowing it to be such ? For those who incline that 
 way we build lunatic asylums. No, I wouldn't be a boy again. 
 The opening of one's eyes upon the reality don't make it worth 
 while, as the tailor says when you offer him less for his coat 
 than he can cut it for. 
 
 She listened to me with her cheek resting in her hand, her 
 figure inclined, the swell of it methought gathering a particular 
 beauty from the white of the arm on which her head reposed, 
 her dark eyes fixed on mine with a hint of mingled merriment 
 and puzzled inquiry in their serene scrutiny. But when I 
 ceased she changed her posture, removed her eyes, and with a 
 careless look around, said almost abruptly, as though the shift 
 of mood in her was an effort rather than unconscious transition, 
 ' How are we to get away from this island, Mr. Musgrave ? You 
 have been a sailor is there no remedy for people in our situa- 
 tion ? I wonder what Alexander would suggest if he were here.' 
 
 I lighted my cheroot stolidly. There seemed to me something 
 insincere, though I protest I don't know why I should have 
 thought so, in her speaking of my cousin at that moment. I 
 eyed her in silence a minute, and then said, 'I believe if 
 Alexander were here he would take my view of our condition. 
 There are plenty of trees, but we have no tools. Had we a 
 chopper we might fell a trunk, and in the course of months, 
 perhaps of years, succeed in hacking and hewing the timber 
 into the aspect of a canoe. But then how to launch it? The 
 trunk of a tree, even when shaped into a canoe, is not to be 
 whipped under the arm as though it were the model of a boat, 
 and cai'ried to the water. I think if Alexander were here, Miss 
 Grant, he would agree with me, that pur one chance lies in our 
 making our presence known to a passing vessel ; which reminds 
 me,' said I, rising and looking at my watch, ' that it is about 
 time! should take a peep sea wards, for it will be some hours 
 now since I visited the hummock.' I was walking to the steps. 
 'You do not ask me to join you,' said she. I turned and noted 
 a look in her, half wistful, half amused. 
 
 'Do pray join me,' I cried ; 'I was afraid that the heat ' 
 
 * No, she interrupted ; 'I expect there will be nothing to see.* 
 I smiled at the coquettish feigning of gentle resentment in her 
 manner of drawing aside the shawl that screened her room. 
 She disappeared, closing the drapery afresh, and I climbed 
 through the opening into the sunshine.
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 2tt 
 
 My hat was wide-brimmed like that of a southern planter. It 
 sheltered me as effectually as an umbrella, and under the 
 shadow of it I paced leisurely towards the hummock, but puff- 
 ing perhaps with unnecessary energy at my cigar, to certain 
 thoughts of Miss Grant which rose in me as I advanced. ' Pooh ! ' 
 thought I, ' what a madman must I be, situated as we are, to 
 think of anything under this wide blue sky but our deliverance, 
 and how to effect it ! ' 
 
 It chanced just then that, my eyes happening to turn towards 
 the scattering of trees which came thinning out of the mass of 
 the forest round to that part of the sand where I had met 
 with the iron ring of the hatch, I spied, or seemed to spy, a 
 human face peering at me from the midst of a huddle of leaves 
 big enough to serve for the foliage of a cotton-tree. I stopped 
 dead like a man transfixed, the cigar I was about to raise to my 
 lips arrested midway, as though my arm had suddenly been 
 blasted. The light rained in a blue dazzle betwixt me and the 
 heavily-leafed bough, and the glare of it obliged me to blink, 
 that on looking again I might make sure. Yet when I stared 
 afresh the face was gone. I hollowed my hands into the form of 
 a binocular glass to shelter and strengthen my sight, and gazed 
 again, but there was nothing to be seen saving the surface of 
 green leaves which seemed to arcli the solid bough they draped, 
 as though each was of the weight of a giant banana. It seemed 
 incredible that I should have been mistaken. The vision, if it 
 were nothing more substantial, had been that of a swarthy faca 
 with white whiskers, and eyes that might have been of a reddish 
 tinge, glittering under shaggy white brows. I listened, but 
 nothing was audible save the humming, chirruping, and 
 whistling, which swelled to the ear like the commingling of the 
 notes of a bagpipe with the vibratory hum of a church organ. 
 All was stirless in the tree, though I watched it attentively. I 
 had left my pistols in the kitchen, as I must call it, or I should 
 certainly have let fly at the branch, and taken my chance of a 
 murdered man falling out of the foliage of it. Still thinking it 
 impossible that my sight could have been deceived, I walked 
 briskly towards the tree, and looking upwards searched it as 
 penetratingly as the greenery would permit : then seeing no- 
 thing saving a paroquet or two, I walked a little further towards 
 the forest, still gazing upwards, but nothing answering in the 
 least imaginable degree to the object, real or imaginary, that had 
 confounded me, met my eye. I again strained my sight, sending 
 glance after glance around, then returned to the open, and pro- 
 ceeded towards the hummock, satisfied that what I had beheld 
 was a deceit of the imagination, though this notion did not help 
 to soothe my secret perturbation. Unless the man actually lived 
 inside the trunk of the tree out of whose leaves he had peered, 
 'twas impossible if he were human to have escaped the searching 
 gaze I had directed at the intermingling of boughs. I said to 
 myself it was some illusion of the sight, some fantastic creation 
 
 B 2
 
 244 MAROONED 
 
 wrought by the trembling flash of the sand and the wide blue 
 brilliance of heaven and ocean upon the ball of the eye. And 
 yet it was an apparition, too, to so fit the bewildering enigma of 
 the bell-ringing, that, spite of my declaring to myself it was 
 fancy, I was as uneasy as if I had been sure it was reaL 
 
 However, on reaching the hummock my thoughts underwent 
 a sudden and violent change, for on glancing leisurely along 
 the sea-line, thinking of nothing but the man's face in the tree, 
 I caught sight of a ship's canvas down in the south, like the 
 point of a sea-fowl's pinion, projecting white as foam and 
 lustrous as pearl above the horizon. I clapped my hands with 
 the sudden transport the sight awakened in me, and without 
 pausing to consider the distance at which the craft hung, I set 
 fire to the pile of faggots. There was but the mildest breathing 
 of air. The wood took some time to kindle, and then the smoke, 
 darkening and fattening out in thickness to the green coating 
 of grass and leaves with which I had covered the faggots, went 
 nobly straight up to a great height a grand signal indeed, as I 
 thought, where it lazily arched over plume-like and floated 
 softly into the east. I stood watching for upwards of three- 
 quarters of an hour, with my eyes thirsting for a sign of the 
 growth of the sail, staring with such tormenting intensity, that 
 again and again the vast plain of sea brimming out to the 
 brassy azure of the sky, steeping to it streaked with the silver 
 lines of currents and turquoise-coloured swathes, winding and 
 dilating and melting into the richer hue of the brine, would 
 start as if to spin with gathering speed round and round, and I 
 had to blind my sight with my hands to check the mirjhty 
 waltz, the first reel of which was as sickening as a swoon to the 
 brain. I was alone, and exerted but little judgment, or I might 
 have guessed that on that stagnant surface the sail must hover 
 for hours apparently motionless. Yet it was certain that she 
 had hove in sight since the morning, that is to say, since I had 
 last viewed the sea, and either a faint breeze of wind had 
 brought her to where she was, or she was a small vessel stemming 
 the water to the propulsion of her sweeps or long oars. 
 
 The fire was burnt out ; the smoke drained dimly into the 
 air off the smouldering embers, and was of no more use as a 
 signal than the flourish of a handkerchief. Then, after waiting 
 a little while, and watching as intently as the heat and glare of 
 the giddy atmosphere, swimming to the sea from the dazzling 
 brass of the heavens, would suffer, I could no longer doubt that 
 the distant vessel was drawing down the slope into the south- 
 west ; whence, as there was no wind to propel her, it was certain 
 that she was being urged by oars. In that case she would 
 probably be some small drogher or coasting craft. 
 
 My disappointment was not so bitter as I should have ex- 
 pected to find in me at sight of a ship lingering long enough to 
 wildly tantalize hope, and then tardily melting out of view. 
 Maybe I found a large stroke of comfort in the very vision of
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 245 
 
 her, for now I might suppose that the speck we had seen in the 
 wake of moonshine last night, and taken to be a deception 
 of the fancy, was a real ship after all ; so that with yonder one 
 we might say that two sail had hove, in near upon twelve hours, 
 within reach of our eyes, even from the very low elevation we 
 occupied. This was as good as understanding that the sea 
 round about us was navigable water, that the ocean betwixt us 
 und the film of land away down west might be a sort of high- 
 way, as Miss Grant had suggested, and that therefore a ship 
 might at any hour pass close enough to our little principality 
 of crickets and parrots to catch sight of our smoke and send a 
 boat. So, not very greatly disheartened, I sent another look at 
 ' the pearl-like fragment in the south, and making sure now by 
 the airy blending of it with the azure that the craft was head- 
 ing away and would be out of sight presently, I descended the 
 little hill, purposing when the cool of the evening came to build 
 up another fire ready to signal with. 
 
 As I approached our secret chambers, Miss Grant came out 
 of the opening. It was the strangest sight in the world to see 
 her rising, as it were, out of the earth ; that was the impression 
 you got from the flat of the sand. It put a fancy into me of the 
 resurrection of the body, followed on by a daintier imagination 
 of Venus shaping white out of the foam though the girl's 
 apparel was a little in the way of tliat idea. You saw nothing 
 of the grave-like hollow, merely the figure of the beautiful girl 
 that seemed to float up out of the blinding silver of the sand. 
 Her apparition in this way was as sweet a surprise as could 
 fascinate the eye. She had changed her attire, robed herself in 
 a white gown, dressed her hair afresh, heaping it on her head, 
 with a wide straw hat tilted on it like a picture of a beauty in 
 George IIL's day. 
 
 'You have been a long while watching the sea, Mr. Mus- 
 grave,' she exclaimed, smiling as if to the surprise and admir- 
 ation with which I regarded her. 
 
 ' I have been endeavouring to signal a ship,' said I. 
 
 'A ship ! ' she cried, approaching me close, and staring at me. 
 
 4 Yes,' I answered ; 'she will have faded out by this time like 
 the smoke of my fire. But no matter. The sight of her is a 
 warrant of more to follow. All I have to do is to keep a bright 
 look-out. We shall be rescued yet, and soon, depend on it.' 
 
 We strolled together to the shadow of the trees where our 
 camp-stools were, and seated ourselves. For a long time she 
 talked of nothing but the ship, and I could see, by the flush in 
 her cheeks and the gathering light in her eyes, how useful to 
 her spirits was (he hope that my news of having sighted a 
 vessel had brought with it. 
 
 'We ought to feel grateful to the crew of the Iron Croivn,' 
 said she, 'for having sent our luggage with us. Oh, Mr. 
 Musgrave, how am I to express the refreshment of a complete 
 change of apparel ? It robs the island of half its terrors,'
 
 246 MAROONED 
 
 'Rather lucky,' said I, dryly, ' that I kicked up that iron ring, 
 though it cost me a sprawl. Is not the privacy of a bed-chamber 
 in such a place as tins almost as nice as a change of clothes ? ' 
 
 *Well, I didn't like the idea. I confess,' she replied, with a 
 pretty shake of the head. ' I don't like it much yet, I admit. 
 Those tomb-like rooms are very well in the day; but when 
 the long dark night comes I ' she added, with a light shiver. 
 
 At this I involuntarily turned my eyes towards the forest, 
 with a glance up aloft and at the trees beyond, thinking of the 
 demoniacal white-whiskered old face, with its cairngorm eyes 
 brilliant in the midst of its swarthy countenance, that had seemed 
 to peer at me awhile gone. But I would not even hint at the 
 possibility of such an apparition. I was still inclined to reckon 
 it a mere fancy ; besides, I knew that even though I should 
 vaguely refer to it as some optical delusion occasioned by a 
 fantastic writhe of the leaves to the folds of the hot blue air 
 between, sleep would be murdered for her that night. Never- 
 theless, I made up my mind whilst the sun was still high to put 
 my pistols in my pockets and search the little forest afresh ; tor, 
 to speak honestly, the memory of the swart malignant coun- 
 tenance coming into my mind again rendered me secretly very 
 uneasy, and I felt, when the night drew down and I was at rest 
 in the profound stillness of the underground kitchen, that I 
 should regret not having made again a careful investigation 
 of the wood. 
 
 I got up, saying, 'I'll just take another walk through those 
 trees, Miss Grant. I want to satisfy myself that there is not a 
 second bell hidden somewhere in the green thickness. It would 
 be insupportable, you know, to be awakened by a new kind of 
 chiming to-night/ 
 
 * Why should you imagine there is a second bell t ' she asked, 
 with her eyes seeming to enlarge to the very thought of it. 
 
 'I dorit imagine there is,' said I, 'but no harm can follow 
 another look round ; besides,' I added, smiling, ' I might chance 
 upon the fellow that has troubled us for the past two nights, 
 so that even should we be unable to hang him oefore sundown, 
 we might seize him to one of those trees as Broad water seized 
 the half-blood to the foremast, and go to our rest without 
 apprehension of being corked up.' 
 
 I laughed out to let her suppose that I talked for talk's sake 
 only, and fetching my pistols made for the forest, taking the 
 road into it past the tree in which I had seen the real or 
 imagined face, waving my hand to her as I strode into the 
 shadow. And a shadow it was when you penetrated into the 
 thick of the trees, coming as you did from the sultry whiteness of 
 sand, and the hot radiant stare of the unwrinkled deep up at the 
 sky that opened and contracted its atmospheric folds of sapphire 
 as it seemed a shadow cool, dark, green, and as slumberous 
 a spot as one could have pictured, with its sombre, pillar-like 
 trunks of trees rising out of the stillness of the tall and prickly
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 217 
 
 undergrowth into the cathedral hush of the gloomy density of 
 boughs and leaves, but for the incessant splitting of the silence 
 by the cries, whistlings, and croakings, as familiar now to my 
 ear as the twitter of the London sparrow, or by the airy dis- 
 turbance of the plumes and pinions of birds rustling on the 
 wing with a sound as of the rending of satin as they sailed 
 from one tree to another, brushing the foliage as they flew. 
 
 The direction I was unconsciously following brought me, with 
 some painful thrusting of my legs for in places the tangle was 
 as hard and stubborn as a fence to the spot where the gallows- 
 looking frame from which I had unhooked the bell stood. It 
 ^was scarce within view of me when I caught sight of a large 
 "hat placed exactly over the hook from which the bell had 
 depended. I looked and looked, greatly amazed, and let me 
 frankly own, with a mind for some moments not a little dis- 
 ordered by consternation. I was of course as sure as that I 
 lived that no hat was upon the frame when I had unhung the 
 bell. I stared nervously around me, mechanically drawing a 
 pistol from my pocket, and looking first into one twilight 
 avenue and then into another, then gazing narrowly at the 
 herbage round about, afterwards staring overhead, listening 
 meanwhile intently. I approached the hat by a step, and 
 inspected it. It was such a piece of headgear as might have 
 been washed up by the sea. I raised my hand and pulled it 
 down, but instantly dropped it, for it was horribly clammy and 
 cold, and made you think, from the sensation you got from it, of 
 groping in the dark and stroking down a dead man's face. It 
 was apparently a felt hat that had once been black, but it was 
 now green and bronzed with time and wet. It was very broad- 
 brimmed, with a sort of sugar-loaf crown ; much such a sort of 
 hat indeed as the boys clap upon Guy Fawkes' head when they 
 carry him off to the stake. I turned it over with my foot to see 
 what the inside of it looked like, but it had long since been 
 divorced from any lining that may have garnished it in its hey- 
 day. It was old enough indeed both in fashion and aspect to 
 have belonged to one of the people who had dug out and used 
 the underground chambers. But who or what since the morning 
 had placet! it upon that bell-frame? It gave me a kind of 
 shrinking feeling, I can tell you, to think that there might be 
 human eyes watching me out of some of those green dyes of 
 shadow round about, and as I stood there I never knew from 
 instant to instant but that the flame of a h're-arm would leap 
 from behind a tree, or an arrow sling past my ear. 
 
 The sight of this hat convinced me that I had not been mis- 
 taken in supposing the wild, grotesque face I had caught a 
 glimpse of to be that of a man. Miss Grant was right. There 
 must be one or more human creatures in hiding here. The bell 
 could not ring itself ; the hat had been brought from a distance 
 I must certainly have seen it when I first explored this place, 
 and stood looking from the scaffold to the grass far as my sight
 
 248 MAROONED 
 
 could follow it : I say, the old hat had been brought here and 
 placed upon the frame, and if this did not signify human 
 agency, then it was not to be accounted for but by supposing 
 the devil himself to be at large upon the island. I was startled, 
 astonished, alarmed, as I believe any man would have been; 
 but I was resolved, nevertheless, not to quit the wood without a 
 further good hunt, and so pushed on, pausing incessantly to 
 listen and to look, to kick at some suspicious huddle of huge 
 blades of aloe-like growth, to stare into the trees, or to fight 
 my way to some trunk looming with a yawn in it in the 
 twilight so as to make one suppose it hollow. But to no pur- 
 pose. I believe there was no part of that forest I did not 
 traverse, and in all I sp^ent a full hour in making the rounds of 
 it ; but not the least hint of anything approaching humanity 
 did I see. 
 
 The puzzle was so supreme as to depress my spirits by the 
 heaviness of the perplexity it excited : but I made up my mind 
 to say nothing about the hat to Miss Grant. I was now as con- 
 vinced as she that there were more people than ourselves on this 
 island, though but one more only, and I believed that it was his 
 face I had seen amongst the leaves. All sorts of wild notions 
 occurred to me as I staggeringly made my way out of that little 
 forest. It had been the face of an old man. Was the bell-ringer 
 some aged pirate, who had gone mad, and wandered about the 
 place, living upon such fruit and herbs as he could grub up, 
 grown expert in the art of climbing trees, and secreting himself 
 by such years of practice as had enabled Selkirk to hunt the 
 goat more fleetly than the goat itself could run, using the spread- 
 ing branch for his bedroom, through not having intellect enough 
 to hunt after and dig out the sand-covered portals of his sub- 
 terranean home ? Or, thought I, is it conceivable that there are 
 such things as spirits? that the old navigators' fables about 
 demon-haunted islands are not the lies which our scientific age 
 protests them to be ? Upon my word, thought I, as I broke my 
 way along with a nervous glance over my shoulder, how many 
 weeks, nay, how many days of marooning go to the addling of 
 the most healthy brains t 
 
 'What have you seen, Mr. Musgrave t ' asked Miss Grant, as I 
 approached her. 
 
 Just a parrot or two,' said L 
 
 'You have been a long while watching them,' said she, eying 
 me so attentively that I feared she would find in my face some 
 small signs of the astonishment and misgivings which filled my 
 mind. 
 
 ' Oh,' I exclaimed carelessly, ' the forest is dark, as you know, 
 and a sheer maze in its way. with spots where the high guinea 
 grass leans to you tough and piercing as a crop of bayonets. I 
 was resolved to hunt the place through and through, a thing 
 not to be done in ten minutes. Now, Miss Grant,' I went on. 
 glance at my watch, ' suppose we go to tea, as I must call
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGEP 249 
 
 the meal though for a real homely cup of tea just nr v, served 
 up with buttered toast and a new-laid egg, with a p.ateful of 
 watercress, I'd part with every inch of turtle betwixt the sheila 
 I opened this morning. Heaven bless us all, to what weak 
 desires will marooning reduce a man ! ' 
 
 I had to build up the beacon fire again that evening, and when 
 we had made a meal off some cold turtle and plantains, a sweet 
 biscuit or two, and a shellf ul of sherry, and water fresh and cool 
 from the brook a sort of incipient sangaree I fell to collecting 
 as much wood as would go to the making of a great smoke, but 
 the sun had been sunk some time before I had stacked and got 
 ready the pile for firing. When I had made an end of this, I 
 "gathered a quantity of grass and leaves, and took the heap to 
 the kitchen to serve me for a mattress by and by. Again and 
 again I looked at the ocean, but it always stretched out blank, 
 without a tip of cloud even to quicken the pulse for an instant 
 with the fancy of a sail. As the evening darkened into night, 
 with the moon rising slow and red directly in the face of us, 
 where the eastern sea, black as ink, washed to the huge dull 
 gold shield of the sulky-looking planet, as though the orb was 
 some glorified head of land against whose very face the deep 
 brimmed without a ripple of breaker, the disquietude raised in 
 Miss Grant by the prospect of a night underground increased 
 in her. I felt her uneasiness rather than gathered it from her 
 speech ; but it would have been unkind to us both to humour 
 her a mere provoking, in short, of some wretched tropic dis- 
 temper to sling her hammock between the trees again, and to 
 make my bed among the land-crabs. Indeed, though to be sure 
 we had passed two nights safely in the open, the memory of 
 the ugly glimmering face amongst the leaves, along with the 
 odd and astonishing sign of the hat, would have rendered the 
 obligation of sleeping out here again very disagreeable to me, I 
 can assure you. Why, it was only necessary to fancy that there 
 was a man on the island to suspect that he might cut our throats 
 if we gave him the chance. Underground, at all events, we 
 should feel tolerably secure, by which I mean that the courage 
 that would bring the wild creature, whoever he was, to the side 
 of a girl motionless in a hammock, or to a man slumbering 
 peacefully on the sand, with his figure clean cut on the face of 
 the coral dust as though it were an inlaying of jet, and a very 
 visible mark therefore for the assassin's knife I say, the courage 
 of the mysterious creature might fail him when it came to his 
 having to seek us in a dark vault. He knew we were armed, 
 and though he might have a knife, or spear, or something of the 
 kind, it was a hundred to one if he had a musket or pistol, or 
 ammunition for it at least. So, to my companion's disquiet, 
 obvious in her fits of thoughtfulness and her uneasy glances 
 towards the cave, showing where her thoughts lay, I seemed to 
 pay no heed. 
 
 The wight came on very glorious, with the soaring of the moon.
 
 MAROONED 
 
 the stars thick strewn, just stir enough of night air to send th 
 sweet smells of the dew- washed island flowers lazily floating to 
 us in folds of aromatic atmosphere, and a delicate seething of 
 surf to blunt the edge of the shrillness of the inland concert. To 
 kill the time, I proposed that we should go and hunt for turtles' 
 eggs, and we went together to the creek, keeping a bright look- 
 out for the impress of the tread of the turtle. But though we 
 saw marks in the sand which fairly well resembled the tracks 
 we sought, they led us to nothing. 
 
 'Perhaps/ said I, 'the turtle doesn't lay in this month. If I 
 could have foreseen our adventure, I should have read a little in 
 the natural history of this part of the world.' 
 
 We continued our search for some time, probing at the sand, 
 but if there were any eggs about, they were too cleverly hid for 
 us to come at, so we stepped down to the beach, facing the 
 moon, where there was a clear, long, white walk, flat, and but a 
 little less hard than a ship's deck, and paced to and fro for a 
 long while ; though there was no complete surrender of our- 
 selves to eacli other this night as on former occasions, when 
 she would reflect my mood, or I hers. The fact is, she could 
 think of little but the underground bedroom, and I of the hob- 
 goblin face and the old Guy Fawkes hat. Indeed my imagina- 
 tion was so wrought up, that twice when glancing towards the 
 forest I could have sworn I saw the shape of a man flit a little 
 way past the two trees where the hammock had swung ; for the 
 shadows there were a greenish faintness of dusk with the pour- 
 ing of the moon, and one's sight went a little way into the 
 block of blackness. But the hour came round at last when it 
 was time we should endeavour to take some rest. Miss Grant 
 reluctantly walked by my side to the entrance, looking down a 
 little into the hatch as though her heart failed her. 
 
 * Indeed there is nothing to fear,' said L 
 
 ' Oh, but it is like being buried alive,' she exclaimed, descend- 
 ing nevertheless, but with a quickened breath. I lighted one 
 of the wax candles and carried it to the inner room, where, 
 wanting the convenience of a candle-stick, I stuck it in the 
 mouth of a bottle, earnestly looking round me to see that all 
 was well. The skylight lay open. I asked if I should close it. 
 
 ' No,' she exclaimed, quickly. 
 
 4 But supposing it should come on to rain in the night,' said I, 
 'an electric storm say, with a Wast Indian shower pouring otf 
 the edge of it? Besides, the mosquitoes will find their way in.' 
 
 'I must take my chance,' she exclaimed. 'If that glass were 
 shut, I should feel as if I were buried alive.' 
 
 'Then good-night. May God bless you, and send you refresh- 
 ing sleep and sweet dreams,' said I, bringing her cold white 
 hand to my lips. 'My bed will be there,' I added, pointing to 
 the threshold of her door, ' so that literally nothing could enter 
 this room -without treading on my body.' 
 
 She glanced at the skylight, and looked at me wistfully, as
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 251 
 
 though she would have me linger yet. I lifted my hat and 
 quitted the strange chamber, carefully drawing the curtain 
 after me. 
 
 The moon rode high over the island : her radiance lay upon 
 the skylight, and on the hatchway, as I may call it, and light 
 enough came sifting in to enable me to see without a candle. 
 I gathered the dry stuff I had collected for a mattress close 
 against the shawl that hung from the doorway of the inner 
 room, and made me up a bed of rugs, with a rolled-up coat or 
 two for a bolster. I then carefully looked to my pistols and 
 placed them on the floor, one on either hand or me ; which 
 gone, I threw off my boots, removed my light camlet jacket, and 
 lay down. The skylight was open, but I needed air, for the 
 atmosphere was close with the furnace-brickwork that still 
 retained the warmth of the fires which had been kindled in it 
 during the day, and since Miss Grant's skylight lay open too, 
 it mattered little that mine should be so ; for, should a down- 
 pour happen in the night and I knew of old what a downpour 
 in these parallels meant the rooms would be flooded very 
 nearly as swiftly with one as with both windows to let the wet 
 in, specially with the entrance gaping like the mouth of a 
 funnel to vehicle any deluge that might come. I lay down, I 
 say, but not to sleep. I could hear Miss Grant moving with 
 something of restlessness in her pacing, then all was still in 
 her room ; and I heartily hoped she would soon forget our 
 situation and her fears in slumber. The stillness was deep. 
 I had anticipated a pretty deep hush in these undersand cells, 
 but the reality was oppressive beyond any kind of breathless 
 repose that I could have imagined. Not so much as the hum 
 of a mosquito stirred upon the hearing ; the metallic-like 
 chirruping outside was a little storm of noise in its way, I 
 knew ; but not an echo of it penetrated underground, spite of 
 the open skylight. I lay musing upon our extraordinary con- 
 dition. It was difficult to credit that my beautiful companion 
 and I were finding shelter and seeking rest in what was 
 practically as much a grave as any hole in the earth that 
 should in God's own time receive our bodies. Up above in the 
 moonlight, with the spread of the sea widening out black from 
 the shaft of silver in its heart, the trees overhead, the stars 
 beyond, the innumerable voice of insect life in the air, our 
 condition was real enough to the imagination heart-breakingly 
 real indeed ; but down here it was like some wild fancy, one 
 of those strange dreams which hover in the brain betwixt 
 waking and sleeping. Besides, it was a time and an occasion 
 too for whatever was superstitious in the soul to creep into 
 self-assertion away from the clutch of reason. I don't know 
 that I should have felt nervous but for the memory of the face 
 I had seen ; but I confess that I was more uneasy than I should 
 have been willing to admit to Miss Grant, as I lay in the dim, 
 ashen-tinctured atmosphere of that underground apartment,
 
 252 MAROONED 
 
 running my eye from the grim memorials of sabre and musket 
 on the wall, to the old table over against my head, on to the 
 short corridor going black to the square of faintness that over- 
 hung the extremity, thence to the skylight, through which I 
 could see a hundred soft and trembling stars. 
 
 However, after lying awake for a good long while, I fell into 
 a vein of dozing, rambling thinking, the sure precursor of sleep, 
 more like the shadows of dreams flitting before me than the 
 presentments of waking thoughts ; a sort of stupid confusion 
 of pirates, mistily and soundlessly flitting about the chamber, 
 with a few turtle mixed up amongst them, and God knows what 
 besides ; saving that, though reason was faltering, I was sensible 
 enough to kno\y I should presently be fast asleep. 
 
 I was in this condition of mind, my eyes fixed upon the 
 skylight, though the lids were drooping fast and I was scarce 
 conscious of what I viewed, when I saw a shadow as of the hat 
 that I had met with in the forest, as it seemed to me, overhang- 
 ing the open space. The posture of this shadow was that of a 
 man peering down. 'Twas unmistakable ; I could not be deceived. 
 The dark outline was clear against the stars, and it was the 
 head of a man wearing just such a steeple-crowned hat as I had 
 encountered, bending over and gazing down. 
 
 I was instantly startled into broad wakefulness. ^ Brave I 
 should be sorry to call myself, though I think there is no man 
 i whose nose I should hesitate to pull who called me otherwise to 
 my face ; but at sight of that sugar-loafed hat and the motionless 
 peering human shape revealed to a little past the shoulders, I 
 must confess to having burst into a cold sweat. It was the beinr* 
 shocked perhaps out of the drowsiness into which I had sank 
 that made me think the tiling a phantom for a minute or two. 
 I lay stirless, softly sneaking my right hand to the pistol, by 
 which time I had come to a sense of the reality of the vision ; 
 but before I could point the weapon, being resolved to fire cost 
 what it would, the hat vanished\ Now, thought I, the fellow 
 has been able to obtain a tolerable view of this interior, and 
 concludes I am sound asleep. His next step will be to come 
 below 1 
 
 I rose very lightly, being anxious not to disturb_Miss Grant, 
 and holding both pistols in my hands, I stepped in my stock- 
 ings over to the corner made by the projection of the furnace, 
 where I crouched in the deep shadow that lay upon this part of 
 the room, with my head lifted over the edge of the brickwork 
 to enable me to command the entrance. Hardly had two 
 minutes elapsed when I spied the hat again overhanging the 
 skylight, but it did not offer such a mark as I could hope to pot 
 from the place I stood in ; so I continued to wait and watch. 
 I could hear no sound, not the faintest crunch of a footfall 
 upon the grit of the sand outside ; but the quick breathing of 
 the fellow was as audible as the beating of my heart in my ear, 
 and as full a warrant as I could have asked that the thing
 
 I SHOOT THE BELL-RINGER 2 
 
 no ghost. " The peering and meditative posture of the hat was 
 preserved whilst I might have counted twenty; the shadow 
 then disappeared. Now, thought I, will he return to the forest, 
 or will he descend t Is he alone, or was the second apparition 
 that of a companion wearing such another hat as the iirst had 
 on t Suddenly I saw the sort of film of light that came cloud- 
 ing a little way into the corridor out of the hatch die out, and 
 in an instant, with the swiftness of a leap almost, the man was 
 in the room. Softly as the footfall of a cat I got my pistol to 
 bear upon him, but before I could pull the trigger he fell upon 
 all fours, and a moment after I heard the clank of the bell 
 grasped and overset. I sprang out of my hiding-place, took 
 full aim, and fired. The explosion made a thunder in the room. 
 By the flash of the powder I saw the creature spring to the 
 height of the ceiling, whilst he uttered the most piercing scream 
 that ever broke from mortal lips. The wild cry was echoed by 
 a shriek in Miss Grant's room. I was half -crazy with rage and 
 consternation, and flinging down the pistol I had fired, I levelled 
 the other at the creature as he ran, dropping to the earth with 
 one hand as he went in staggering leaps through the dark pass- 
 age, and sent a second ball at him. The report was followed 
 by another ear-piercing shriek horribly human. The curtain 
 behind me was dashed aside, and Miss Grant stepped forth. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she cried. 
 
 The silver mounting of the pistol she held gleamed in her 
 grasp as she raised her hand in addressing me. 
 
 'I have shot something,' I exclaimed; 'but whether man 
 or beast I know not. Be it what it will, it has two bullets in 
 its body. _ Let me have your pistol.' 
 
 I took it from her, and walked right to the steps which led 
 above. There was nothing in the passage. I sprang into the 
 open and looked around. The moonlight lay bright as day, 
 the shadows of the trees sloping eastwards black as indigo 
 where they rested on the sand. VVithin a stone's-throw of me 
 was a dark object that looked like a small tortoise at the 
 distance whence I viewed it. I approached, and found it to be 
 the hat that I had found in the forest. Miss Grant had fol- 
 lowed me noiselessly, and I only knew that she was at my side 
 by her breathing, the sound of which was not a little startling 
 to me, bending down as I was to examine the hat. 
 
 ' Look, Mr. Musgrave ! ' she exclaimed, in one of her tragic 
 whispers, ' that must be the man you shot.' She pointed with 
 her white arm to the stretch of sand some distance past the 
 opening that led to our cells, where I instantly observed a figure 
 prone and motionless. In a moment I was making towards it, 
 but with increasing bewilderment as I advanced ; for as the 
 outline stole out clearer and clearer in the icy radiance to my 
 steps. I witnessed features which gradually but surely changed 
 my alarm into a conflict of quite other emotions. The body lay 
 on its back ; its half -closed eyes looked straight up at the star*
 
 254 MAROONED 
 
 put of a brown and puckered face ringed with white whisker* ) 
 its arms were stretched out in the posture of a crucified person, 
 
 ' It has three legs ! ' cried Miss Grant. 
 
 ' By thunder, no ! ' I exclaimed, bursting into a wild laugh ; 
 *that is no leg. but a great tail ! As I hope to go to heaven, 
 'tis a huge Madagascar ape ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 A GALE OF WIND 
 
 THE murder was now out, the mystery made very plain indeed, 
 and the solution, like most others which come to a man in this 
 life, looked so simple that one seemed half a fool for not having 
 hit upon it at once. How this great monkey happened to be in 
 the island who is to say f Not very likely, I think, that he was 
 born here, unless he happened to be an only son, and both 
 parents dead. Most likely he had belonged to a ship, and been 
 cast away with the crew many years before. I do not know how 
 long monkeys live, but this fellow, as he lay in the moonlight 
 with his teeth gleaming in the grin of death out of the wrinkled 
 leather of his face, framed by a pair of long snow-white whiskers, 
 seemed eighty years old. It was likely that he had belonged to 
 a ship because of his bell-ringing trick, and then his wearing 
 that Guy Fawkes hat looked as if he had been bred in his youth 
 to a knowledge of clothes. 
 
 But be this as it may, the bell was "rung no more. I pitched 
 the hat into the sea ana met with no other ; no wild convulsed 
 face looked at me out of the high greenery, and the skylight 
 remained unshadowed by any outline of sugar-loaf headgear in 
 peering and hearkening posture. 
 
 Miss Grant and I talked late into the night, for tame as the 
 issue proved, it was, I can tell you, hotly exciting whilst it 
 lasted. But we got some rest towards the small hours, sleeping 
 well into the morning, and then my first business was to drag 
 the monkey down to the creek where the sand was steep to, 
 with a depth of three fathoms to the shelf of it ; and with no 
 further service than a few sea-blessings upon its head for the 
 worry and alarm it had caused me, I rolled the body overboard, 
 guessing that it would presently float seawards, where John 
 Sharkee lay in readiness to provide it with a sure tomb. 
 
 And now for three weeks nothing that I need tease you with 
 happened ; no such incident, I mean, as that of my discovery of 
 the underground rooms, or the midnight tolling, and the sight 
 of the hat on the bell-frame afterwards ; but it grew into a 
 bitter distressful time for us as the hours swelled into days, and 
 the days rolled into weeks, and found us still imprisoned upon 
 this island, not utterly hopeless indeed of deliverance, though 
 we presently scarce dared to expect it God knows that never
 
 A GALE OF WIND 258 
 
 a shipwrecked eye kept a steadf aster look-out for vessels than I 
 did ; but though during those three weeks I reckoned that I 
 had sighted ten sail in all, none of them ever grew to more than 
 a glimmer of white upon the distant line ; so showing and so 
 fading worthless to us as though they had been no more than 
 the wreaths of steam or little curls of white vapour which they 
 resembled. Only twice indeed did I fire my faggots and make 
 a smoke. The distance the vessels showed at made my heart 
 hopeless, and I could scarce step a pace from one shadow to 
 another through the roasting dazzle of sand without asking 
 myself how it must have fared with us had there been no fresh 
 water on the island. For food, there were turtle and craw-fish 
 Fn abundance, alonjj with an occasional paroquet which I would 
 knock over with Miss Grant's pistol, the precisest little weapon 
 of the kind I had ever handled. We brought at the start no 
 great relish to theso birds, but they proved dainty eating for 
 people in our situation, when carefully plucked, cleansed, and 
 boiled. We found a plentiful growth of plantains, citrons, 
 whose juice mingled with water furnished us with a refreshing 
 drink, wild oranges, and a small delicious fruit resembling the 
 Australian passion fruit, but its proper name I do not know. 
 There were, as you have heard, a large stock of fish-hooks in the 
 little black chest in Miss Grant's room. I had no means of 
 pushing out seawards to any distance to fish, so between us 
 Miss Grant and I manufactured lines of twisted linen, which wo 
 laid up to strengthen the least rotted portions of the small stuff 
 I found in the chest ; then attaching a sinker to the baited 
 hook, I buoyed it to a little piece of timber, the sinker going 
 about two fathoms below the surface, and let the apparatus 
 drift out from the mouth of the creek to the end of the line 
 which I held in my hand, and in this manner I caught a great 
 number of fish, incredibly various in hues, shapes, and sizes ; 
 some of them coming out of the water like flashes of dark gold 
 light, others green as emeralds, others with half-a-dozen of 
 brilliant colours glowing upon them as though fantastically 
 painted, yet with exquisite cunning, by an artist. It was merci- 
 ful that we did not poison ourselves with some of these fish, for 
 we ate all we took, if I except a great bloated, spotted thing 
 with a green back, fins like a man's arm amputated at the 
 elbow, and a white breast freckled with sulphur-coloured spots. 
 Even this creature I think we should have devoured but for its 
 ugliness, yet nothing that we ate hurt us. Indeed our health 
 continued, very good, which I attribute to our being lodged out 
 of the touch of the night air, to our exposing ourselves as little 
 as possible to the sun, and to the sweetness and purity of the 
 water we drank. 
 
 As you may suppose, it was impossible for such an association 
 as ours not to deepen in me the sentiment that had been excited 
 BO long before as the first week or two of our being aboard the 
 Iron Grown. We were hour after hour together ; it was indeed
 
 258 MAKOONED 
 
 almost only during those intervals when I would walk to the 
 hummock to take a view of the sea that we were separated. My 
 couch of leaves and rugs was at the threshold of her doorway. 
 All through the night there was nothing betwixt her and me but 
 the curtain I had contrived. In the deep hush of that strange 
 interior, made solemn to my mind by thoughts of the grave, and 
 sanctified to my imagination by the presence of the beautiful 
 Avoman it sheltered, I would lie listening to the regular respira- 
 tions of her slumber, disturbed at long intervals by some low 
 melodious flutterings of speech breaking from her dreaming lips, 
 and sometimes I would catch my name clear in these unconscious 
 utterings ; and it was significant to me almost to an emotion of 
 grief that I would notice myself hearkening for the name of her 
 lover, and smiling when her babbling died out in a long sigh, 
 followed on by peaceful regular breathing. It seemed a sort of 
 mocking of fate, so to speak, to think of love, to be sensible of the 
 stir of the emotion, in such a situation as ours was ; but then, 
 unhappily, it was no more to be helped than the thirst that 
 would come upon me, or the yearning after our deliverance. 
 That I concealed from her what was in my mind I cannot say. 
 I strove most strenuously to do so, not only from love of my own 
 honour, and because it would have wrung me to the heart to 
 have been the occasion of a pang in her, but because I instinct- 
 ively feared indeed let me say I clearly foresaw that should 
 she guess at my thoughts of her, a sort of alienation must follow, 
 a condition of inexpressible embarrassment to us both, banded as 
 we were in intimate partnership^ by our imprisonment. I could 
 foretell pity, shyness, reproach in her ; an estrangement which 
 would be as a perpetual wound to my pride ; a cessation of our 
 free communion, to end maybe in a mere bleak civility of inter- 
 course ; the inspiration of our requirements rather than of her 
 desire. You will think me unduly sensitive ; yet when I look 
 back I cannot but think that I rightly governed myself in the 
 matter. If ever this fair and charming woman was under my 
 protection she was so now, with infinitely deeper claims on me 
 than she could have had in our darkest hours aboard ship. Her 
 very defencelessness, methought, was God's own protest in her 
 against the lightest exhibition of passion that would give her 
 uneasiness. If I was in love with her, it was for my honour as 
 a gentleman to wait until our escape should strengthen her 
 womanhood by the surroundings of a civilized life to tell her so, 
 or enable her to conjecture my mind. Thus I reasoned with 
 myself, and so reasoning I acted ; but I must admit the weak- 
 ness of a deep wish in me at times to interpret her by looking 
 into her eyes. She was heavily subdued, as you will conceive, by 
 the conditions of our life, otherwise I witnessed no change in 
 her manner. There was nothing to be divined from what she 
 said, by what she did, or what she looked, and no gaze was ever 
 more eloquent, more darkly beautiful with spirit, thought, and 
 intelligence
 
 A GALE OP WIND 257 
 
 But to proceed, for this threatens to become mere parish 
 chatter. 
 
 For days and days the weather had been lovely and quiet, 
 the sun regularly going down behind the island rayless in the 
 whirl of his crimson haze, the evening opening to his descent 
 soft, dark, and fragrant as the heart of a violet ; nights of 
 marvellous stillness, saving always the island voices, with the 
 firmament that seemed to hover like a sheet of silver dim in 
 places, so lustrous was the star-shine, so thick the dust of the 
 constellations when the moon was gone and left the heavens 
 uneclipsed from sea-line to sea-line ; Avith calm blue dawns 
 ^dazzling fast into tropical glory, and then the_ long, brassy, 
 liery day, and the silent sea sparkling with the tingling glitter 
 of new tin under the soaring luminary. At intervals a cloud 
 would show no bigger than a man's hand, like a burst of steam 
 from a boiler on the horizon, and then melt out into the blue 
 air as though the heat within the cincture of which our island 
 was the centre were so fierce as to absorb the substance of it 
 ere it could float to its shoulders. 
 
 But one afternoon, three weeks after the date on which we 
 had been set ashore, there came a change. That a shift of 
 weather was at hand one might have gathered by the general 
 uneasiness expressed by the life on the island. The birds' 
 whistling had a subdued note, the parrots' scream was softened 
 somewhat, the ear detected a hint of agitation in the peculiar 
 snoring noise made by the tree-toad ; there was a constant 
 hurried flight of feathered things amongst the trees, the con- 
 tinued restless glint of coloured plumage darting like prismatic 
 rays amongst the leaves. The insects bit fiercely, and the 
 universal humming rose with a sharp note of anger and fear 
 in the shrilling that was new to me. Miss Grant told me that 
 these queer symptoms of disquiet might be prophetic of an 
 earthquake, and certainly the intolerable heat of that day 
 should have led one to expect such a thing. Indeed the sultry 
 air seemed to press down upon one with a sensible weight, and 
 with the stifling breath of the atmosphere of a hot oven. 
 
 When I saw the blue thickening into a kind of dinginess of 
 no colour that I could give a name to, with a rounding of the 
 sea at the edge of it like a lifting up of its flood, though it 
 would be no more than the shadowing it got from the sky, with 
 a sort of airy whitish gleam the whole horizon around, I 
 thought to myself, if a tropical outburst is to happen, it is as 
 well that I should turn to at once and provide that all things 
 under hatches shall be as snug as possible. So I fell to work to 
 bring up the hatch-cover I had knocked to pieces, and shipped 
 the fragments into a compact form over the opening, regretting 
 that ever I had been fool enough to break it up. I then took 
 a view of the skylights and mused a while over them ; for, 
 thought I, when they are shut, the sweep of wind and wet will 
 speedily load them with sand, and then, with the entrance
 
 #58 MAROONED 
 
 covered by the hatch, how is fresh air to enter these cells so 
 that we shall be able to breathe 1 But it was imperative any 
 way that the skylight should be closed, if, supposing the rain 
 to fall heavily, the rooms were not to be swamped out of hand. 
 I tried to consider how the buccaneering folks who had dug 
 out the place dealt with an extremity of this kind, but was 
 quite at a loss. Some trick they must have had, but it was 
 above my art. I conferred with Miss Grant, and she was for 
 facing the approaching tempest above. I told her that she 
 must know more about tropical weather than I did, but that 
 it seemed to me, if a West Indian tempest was threatened by 
 the gathering gloom, we were bound to perish if we did not 
 shelter ourselves from it ; and what shelter was there on the 
 island save the vaults in which we lived. 
 
 ' Yes,' she exclaimed, ' but should they be flooded we must be 
 drowned ; for how shall we escape when the water is pouring in V 
 
 Well, I understood this danger clearly, and was fairly non- 
 plussed ; and indeed how we should have managed, had the 
 weather fulfilled its threat of tropic storm, I don't know. But 
 very fortunately for us, a little before sundown the sulky dim- 
 ness above shaped out into bodies of clouds heading south, with 
 a sea-board full of well-defined shaggy heads, showing rusty to 
 the sun, lifting fast in the north. Then it came on to blow, in 
 small moans at first, a sullen swell leagues in length rolling 
 along the course taken by the clouds and swinging silent to the 
 island, where it burst in thunder with a roaring, foamless slide 
 of it past the eastward facing beach. But the moans quickly 
 grew into the hooting and whistling of a brisk wind increasing 
 yet, even as one listened to it, to tempestuous bellowing high 
 aloft, with a wild flying of the dry white sand, a fierce stooping 
 and shearing of the trees, through which the wind seethed with 
 a sound as of red-hot hissing, and a magnificent smoky scarlet 
 that put a lining of blood whilst it lasted to the shadows flying 
 athwart the angry beams. I saw, or hoped perhaps, that there 
 was to be no rain, and that was comforting ; but the weight of 
 wind, and the blinding flashing into the eyes of the flying coral 
 grit soon forced us below ; though not before we had seen 
 enough of the suddenly enraged ocean to stamp a memory fit to 
 last for life. You almost feared for the island, so thunderous 
 was the blow of the surge, so scaring the sight of the pallid 
 bodies of foam sweeping in shrouds of faintness like the colour 
 of the brow of the snow-cloud discharging its white burthen to 
 the tempest-ythrough the evening gloorn that rapidly followed 
 the suns going. The wind struck the cheek salt and heavy 
 with spray, which swept through the lashed and writhing trees 
 with the crackling, rending, and tearing noise of storm after 
 storm of bullets volleying into them. 
 
 In this way the sand became in a very short time too wet to 
 fly, nor was the briny showering so heavy as to excite in us 
 ton least apprehension of being flooded by it. With the sky-
 
 A GALE OF WIND 259 
 
 lights closed and the hatch-cover on we were snug enough in 
 our underground chambers. As for fresh air, more than we 
 needed came blowing down through the cracks of the cover I 
 had broken up, and whose fragments I had put together over 
 the orifice. But though we were sheltered, and safer maybe 
 than we should have been in a house, having regard to the wind 
 only, there was to be no rest for us that night. The mere fear 
 that the tempest might play us the familiar tropic trick of 
 ceasing all at once with a driving up of the hindmost clouds 
 into a compact blackness of vapour, breaking on a sudden into 
 a mighty roar of rain heavy enough to swamp a city to the 
 very roof of its cathedral, was enough to keep us wide awake ; 
 for should such a downpour happen, there would be nothing 
 for it but to instantly rush into the open, before the rooms 
 filled, and perish if perish we must in sight of the sky, 
 instead of drowning like rats in a hole ! 
 
 'Twas as wild a night as ever I remember ; the glass frames 
 above were soon coated with wet sand, but the occasional flash 
 of lightning darting out of some rushing cloud glanced with a 
 violet glare in the passage through the chinks in the cover ; but 
 if ever thunder followed it was out-bellowed by the hurricane, 
 or swept by the headlong rush of the blast clean out of hearing. 
 Our cells hummed to the elemental torment for all the world 
 as though there was an endless procession of locomotives 
 dragging heavy trains of cars over the island. We had hus- 
 banded our slender resources so carefully that we had a few 
 wax candles left, and most grateful were we this night for the 
 light one of them gave us. Without it we must have sat in 
 total blackness throughout those long and raging hours. 
 
 'It is the proper sort of storm,' said I on one occasion to Miss 
 Grant, ' to blow vessels ashore here. It should be an ill wind 
 indeed if it blows us no good. What an imprisonment is ours ! 
 Enough to make one so wicked as to pray for a shipwreck, on 
 chance of the sight of a survivor, or of a boat washing ashore, 
 or material to help us to get away.' 
 
 'It should frighten a poor shipwrecked sailor horribly, I 
 think,' she said, 'to cleanse that glass up there and look through, 
 and see an illuminated room with a man and woman sitting 
 in it.' 
 
 She gave a little hysteric laugh, bringing her hands to her 
 eyes. 
 
 It was a very nightmare of an experience then to my mind, 
 and her beauty was powerless to soothe or soften it. There 
 were three weeks of this life working in us, and had I been 
 alone, though I should have kept my senses sound as a bell to 
 this moment, I believe I must have fallen mad as a thirst-crazed 
 sailor before the dawn broke. Expectation rose into positive 
 agony with waiting for the thunderous subterranean humming 
 to cease, for then the rain might come, and the necessity of 
 carrying my companion into the open to face the black deluge, 
 
 a 2
 
 260 MAROONED 
 
 and whatever else might happen there, was only less frightful to 
 my overstrained nerves than the fancy of such a quick flooding 
 of these chambers as would give us no time to escape from 
 them. A man should wield a pen above my power to put such 
 a picture of us and of this room before you as might make you 
 witness it even dimly. I see at this moment the candle stuck 
 in a bottle, with the remains of our poor supper of such odds 
 and ends as we had been able to collect still upon the table 
 as mocking a regale as ever eye rested upon ! shadows like the 
 reflection of human forms mopping and mowing on walls and 
 ceiling to the slant of the flame stirred by small hurryings of 
 draugnt coming out of the black corridor ; the black shapes of 
 the old muskets and hangers, the doorway yawning past the 
 half -drawn curtain, courting the glance to the dungeon gloom 
 within, the whole gathering a preternatural element to my 
 imagination, stirred to its depths as it was by the trembling of 
 the earth to the shocks of the sea upon its northern board, from 
 the look of wild beauty my companion's eyes got from the 
 candle-flame, as they showed dark to it out of her face, whitened 
 to the very complexion of a spirit by our vigil and the thoughts 
 that worked in her. 
 
 All through that night, down to an hour past dawn, it blew 
 a fierce and heavy gale of wind, never rising, however, to the 
 hurricane force that is to be expected in weather of this kind 
 hereabouts. We knew by the cessation of the humming noise 
 in our rooms that there was tranquillity overhead, but the 
 skylights were so thickly coated with sand that no ray of light 
 broke through, and the change in the weather was only to be 
 gathered by listening. It took me some while to break my 
 way out through the entrance in consequence of the heavy 
 plastering of the hatch-cover by the wet soil hove by the wind 
 upon it ; and seeing that our dwelling-place must have been 
 air-tight for some time, it was strange that we found no incon- 
 venience from breathing the atmosphere. But then, to be sure, 
 the chambers were tolerably big, and there were but two of 
 us to breathe in them, with but a single candle-flame besides. 
 I battered the hatch with one of the muskets, and so forced it 
 open, and on emerging found a sullen, wild, though silent morn- 
 ing, dense masses of white cloud hanging, brooding fashion, 
 over the sea, with their violet shadows lifting up to them, as 
 it were, great lagoons of blue sky between, the sun in one of 
 them shining with a fiery and piercing light. 
 
 Indeed the wind was all gone j but there was a great swell 
 still running which made the sea a noble and majestic sight. 
 The polished flowing of the vast folds caught the sunlight as 
 they rolled, till under the luminary the ocean seemed to be 
 formed of sweeping hills of molten silver. The gale had played 
 havoc with the island ; many trees lay fallen, and the weather 
 side of the little forest showed as though the branches there 
 had been trimmed by the shears of countless gardeners during
 
 A GALE OF WIND 2GI 
 
 the night. _ But the insects and flies had come off with their 
 lives. Their concert was prodigiously shrill, with a note of 
 thanksgiving in it, Miss Grant thought; but it sounded to me 
 more like an impertinent hymn of triumph, the clamour of 
 multitudinous insignificance, as one might say, over the defeat 
 of the mighty forces of nature. We stood eagerly looking 
 towards the sea and along the sands far as our sight could trace 
 them, not knowing what might have happened during the long, 
 dark, howling hours ; but there was nothing to be seen saving 
 the mighty, brilliant blue welter sending its brows washing to 
 the edge of the distant sky. We then made for the hummock, 
 ,and took another view thence ; but the prospect was barren of 
 wreck ; not a glimpse of the wet flash of a fragment of black 
 timber wallowing no hint of any sort of disaster at sea. 
 
 I will not say I was disappointed, for I had scarce felt expect- 
 ation ; but my sickness at heart was deep never had it oeen 
 deeper in those three weeks that we had spent upon this island 
 when I sent my gaze around the winding and waving horizon, 
 and found no vaguest symptom of life in it outside its own 
 ponderous turbulence. Down on the northern strand the surf 
 was vast and glorious, with the bursting of the swell arching 
 into giant breakers upon the beach. The giddy dazzle, the 
 creaming splendour detained us. The prismatic, snow-white 
 boiling, along with the cold thunder of the headlong and recoil- 
 ing masses of water, were grateful beyond expression to every 
 sense in us, coming now to loathe, as we did after many days of 
 it, the stifling stagnation of the great plain. However, the 
 swell of the sea soon flattens when there is no wind, and by noon 
 the heave of the deep was languid enough, the clouds gone, 
 saving a small, pearl-coloured heap in the south, and here and 
 there out at sea faint tricklings of air delicately smearing the 
 glassy blue, like the tarnishing of moistened lingers upon a 
 looking-glass. 
 
 The sight of the fallen trees raised an idle hope in me of 
 manufacturing some sort of fabric out of them by which we 
 might escape ; for we were now arrived at such a condition of 
 hopelessness that, sooner than go on lingering in this island, 
 which we dared no longer believe any vessel ever approached 
 close enough to witness a signal of distress in the smoke of our 
 fire, we thought it would be better to take our chance on the 
 roughest contrivance we could put together, and launch. We 
 had material to stitch into a sail, which, under Providence, might 
 blow us within eyeshot of a ship. But it was not necessary to 
 look long at the fallen timber to understand that, without help 
 and without tools, it was as useless to us as the coral sand under 
 our feet. What were we to do ? Was it the will of Heaven that 
 we should end our days on this beautiful but most melancholy 
 island ? 
 
 As we sat conversing, Miss Grant on a sudden gave way. 
 Never once during our imprisonment had she let fall a tear ; but
 
 262 MAROONED 
 
 now she broke down. She covered her face with her hands, wept 
 most piteously, sobbing as if her heart were broken. If ever I 
 had wondered whether I was in love with her, my doubts would 
 have ended as I watched her in her grief, waiting for the first 
 passion of her sorrow to spend itself before I addressed her. 
 The natural timidity of a woman she had indeed exhibited on 
 several occasions ; but taking our wild, miserable, most distress- 
 ful experiences throughout, her spirit had shown clear, noble, 
 heroic, and it was this fine character in her that made her 
 sudden outbreak miserable to witness. One would have given 
 little heed to such a display of emotion as this in a woman who 
 had been fretful and mopish during our trials, with tears always 
 at hand, and a weak heart aggravating with repinings. But 
 here was a girl whose courage had proved superior to every 
 demand made upon it ; in those darker and sterner experiences, 
 I mean, which might well have caused the spirit of the stoutest- 
 hearted man to shrink within him. The sweetness of her nature 
 had never failed her. Again and again had our gloomy under- 
 ground haunt resounded with the gentle melody of her laughter, 
 often uttered, as every instinct in me knew, for no other purpose 
 than to cheer me ; and to see her giving way now 
 
 I waited a little, and then I could no longer bear it. I took 
 her hand and put it to my lips and fondled it, and said but I 
 know not what I said, only that I was sensible my secret had 
 slipped from me. "Whether she gathered the import of my 
 words, whether indeed she even knew what I spoke, I cannot 
 tell. The cloud passed presently, and she was again meeting 
 my gaze with steadfast, shining eyes, the more brilliant they 
 looked for the very tears she had wept. Well, thought I, every- 
 thing that happens is for the best, we must believe : yet for the 
 rest of the day the memory that I had been hurried into saying 
 more, much more, than I felt I ought to have addressed to her, 
 haunted and bothered me ; but though I would eye her keenly, 
 if furtively, and listen to her with an attention so strained that 
 it could not have missed a single note in her utterance inter- 
 pretable by my sensitiveness, I could no more have told, when 
 the night came and we had parted to take our rest, that she 
 had heard or heeded what I had said to her, than I could have 
 predicted what was to happen to us next day. 
 
 It was the morning of the twenty-first day of our captivity. 
 I was awakened from a dream of my old home in England a 
 cheerful vision of an English landscape, with the soft May sky 
 shining over budding hedgerows and the delicate green of 
 spring vegetation by the loud singing of a bird perched on a 
 ledge of the open skylight, which I need hardly say I had long 
 before purified of the sand that the storm had accumulated 
 upon it. This singing had something of the note of a linnet in 
 iti only very strong and piercing, and doubtlessly it was the 
 melodious piping that set me dreaming of English meadows 
 nd woods, and the house in which I was brought up till I wwat
 
 A GALE OF WIND 283 
 
 to sea. I had passed a good night, felt strengthened and 
 refreshed by the long rest, and at once kicked off my rug with 
 the dosign of taking my usual morning plunge off the sand 
 away round past the creek. All was quiet in Miss Grant's 
 room. I climbed the steps, and found it a brilliantly clear 
 morning, roastingly hot after the pattern of the days here, the 
 sea very calm, witn a light swaying like a long sigh running 
 through it, and a soft air floating languidly down out of the 
 **orth, with just weight enough to put a trembling into the 
 needle-like rays spiking off the edge of the sun's light in the 
 water, as though the seams of his wake were ravelled. I cast a 
 careless look around the ocean, tliinking more of my bath, 
 maybe, than what might be in view ; for this looking for ships 
 had grown into a habit, and habit becomes mechanical. I then 
 xindressed and waded to the height of my hips, a depth I durst 
 not exceed for fear of sharks, and after revelling for nigh half 
 an hour in the cold blue swing of the little breakers, whose 
 caressing foam sang to the ears Tike the seething of the froth of 
 a sparkling wine, I stalked again on to the beach, dried, and fell 
 to dressing myself. 
 
 Whilst I was thus occupied I suddenly spied something black 
 out upon the water, but how far off I could not tell. I took it 
 to be the back of a shark at first, or the black spine of a porpoise 
 that would round away out of sight in a minute ; then I thought 
 it must be a piece of wreck ; but as it seemed to me to be very 
 slowly growing, I walked to a clump of trees to shelter me from 
 the heat of the sun, and sat down to watch the thing. It was 
 little more than a speck when I first sighted it, but after wait- 
 ing some time, and observing that it increased in size, I could 
 not question that it was approaching the island, and that it was 
 either a boat or canoe impelled by human agency, for there was 
 no sail to bring her along, though the faint breeze favoured her ; 
 nor, though the tide might be helping her a bit, was the set of it 
 swift enough to account for the thing's growth. I was gazing 
 intently when I heard Miss Grant calling. I hallooed back, 
 telling ner to come to me. She arrived presently, exclaiming, 
 as she approached, that she was growing alarmed by my long 
 absertce. I pointed to the object on ^he water. 
 
 'It must be a boat, I think/ I cried. 'I am watching it 
 waiting to see what it means.' 
 
 She looked, instantly saw it, and cried, ' Oh ! ' starting 
 violently, with a quick clasping of her hands, and then, with 
 her manner full of excitement, came and sat close beside me. 
 ' Oh, Mr. Musgrave, if it should prove a boat ! ' 
 
 ' It is a boat ; it is being rowed too. Look attentively, and 
 you will see the glint, on the right-hand side of it, of the wet 
 blade of an oar lifting to the light.' 
 
 1 T see it ! ' she cried. 
 
 My mind was agitated beyond my capacity of expressing 
 the commotion raised within me by the sight of the boat. I
 
 264 MAROONED 
 
 seized Miss Grant's hand with both mine, pressing it whilst I 
 cried out in my transport that a chance nad come, that we 
 might now regard our deliverance as certain, that my frequent 
 bitter, imploring prayers were heard at last, and we were now 
 to be supplied with the means of escaping. The distress of the 
 sea makes a very child of a man. I felt the tears which my 
 eyes refused to distil scalding at my heart. One may bear up 
 stoutly for days, for weeks, for months amid the misery of 
 solitude; hope dying out in one to a mere spark amid the 
 embers of dreams ana expectations I say, one may endure the 
 heaviest afflictions the sea can heap upon the soul with a lion's 
 spirit ; yet it will be strange if, when succour comes at last, one 
 do not give way as a little child might. 
 
 Within three-quarters of an hour of my first catching sight 
 of the minute speck, it had enlarged upon the calm white 
 heave of the sea to the proportions of what was apparently a 
 ship's quarter-boat, with a spot of red in her that puzzled me, 
 a mast like a hair rising out of the black rounding of the gun- 
 wales, and an occasional gleam of oars wielded most languidly 
 and intermittently, as though handled _by a dying man. Indeed, 
 I cannot convey how suggestive of distress was this slow and 
 irregular motion of the oars, gatherable from the sparkle of 
 them whenever the blades rose languidly from the blue surface. 
 Presently I saw that what I had taken to be a spot of red in the 
 boat was a soldier's jacket, and waiting yet a little while longer, 
 I observed that the fellow was a negro. There was no other 
 occupant of the boat to be seen. I ran down to the beach, 
 followed by Miss Grant, to motion the man to head for the 
 beach at the head of the creek ; for small as the breakers were, 
 it would have been madness to imperil so precious an object as 
 the little fabric by grounding her amongst them. He evidently 
 understood me, for he pulled a little with his left hand to point 
 his boat according to my gestures, and then let go both oars 
 to stand up, with his hands clasped above his head, and his 
 face lifted as in a posture of entreaty to God, whilst his body 
 reeled in such a way that I expected to see him go overboard. 
 He next' made certain signs, pointing to his mouth and then 
 down into the boat, and then clasped his hands again, but I 
 could not understand him. I shouted, to encourage him, con- 
 tinuing to point towards the creek, which would be visible to 
 him, and presently he sat down and fell to his oars afresh, but 
 rowing so weakly that it was miserable to watch him. He made 
 shift, however, to bring the boat within a fathom or two of the 
 head of spit of sand that formed one side of the entrance to 
 the creek : then looking round, he got his port oar inboard out 
 of the thole-pins, and had his hand on the loom of the other, 
 when he fell back and disappeared. 
 
 My terror lest the boat should drift away rendered me as 
 reckless as if I had fallen crazy. Without giving a thought to 
 the sharks that might be about, I waded into the water till it
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 265 
 
 was out of my depth, then swam with the utmost fury ? and 
 after a few strokes caught hold of the gunwale, and with a 
 hard spring rolled head over heels into the little fabric, and 
 seizing the oar that lay jammed in the thole-pins, I headed the 
 boat into the creek, and sculled her right fair to the gleaming 
 round of the little inlet without so much as glancing at what 
 lay inside the craft, till her forefoot was aground and I had 
 leaped ashore. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 
 
 THERE was a second man in the boat, a negro also. He lay 
 dead in the bottom, a dreadful sight, naked to the waist, and 
 clothed with a pair of sailor's old drill trousers, the right 
 leg discoloured by many blood-stains. He was twisted, as 
 though his spine was broken, with his breast partly turned 
 towards the stern of the boat, whilst his knees, which were 
 drawn up, pointed forwards, and his face stared straight up, 
 the eyes open like dull glass, and the skin of that indescribable 
 sort of greenish ashen hue which death contrives as a com- 
 plexion for the dead black man. The other fellow was on his 
 back, as he had fallen, with his head in the bottom of the boat, 
 and his legs over the thwart. He still breathed, but I noticed 
 the foam gathering upon his lips even as I looked on for a 
 moment or two at this terrible picture. He was dressed in a 
 soldier's or marine's coat, a cloth round about his loins, and his 
 attenuated cucumber shanks naked ; an old ragged Scotch cap 
 clung to his woolly head. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to tell you how this little ocean 
 tragedy was heightened by the element of the grotesque in it. 
 There was no sail in the boat, no breaker that might have held 
 water, no hint of the miserable blacks having sailed or been 
 blown away with so much as a bite of biscuit. The oars were 
 scarcely more than paddles, and evidently had not belonged to 
 the little fabric. She was black outside, painted white within ; 
 clearly, as I had thought at the beginning, a ship's quarter- 
 boat. The words Prince William were painted in smaU black 
 letters on her stern, inside of her. Miss Grant overhung the 
 craft in a posture of pity and horror. 
 
 ' This poor fellow in the bows is still alive,' she cried. 
 
 *I see that he is,' said I ; 'we will help him in an instant ; but 
 the value of this boat signifies the worth of our lives, and we 
 must make her a bit securer yet. Please pull at this rope as I 
 pull.' 
 
 I handed a bight of the line in the bows to her, and then put 
 my hand on the gunwale at the head, and together we ran her 
 another few feet out of the water, the wet keel and bottom of 
 her slipping readily enough up the ivory-like grit of the sand.
 
 2CS MAROONED 
 
 All this -was done as swiftly as I can write it. " I then jumped 
 into the boat, and with some trouble, for he was an exceedingly 
 heavy man, I raised the negro on to the thwart, and set his back 
 against the mast. His head lolled upon his shoulder like that 
 of a person hanging. He looked at me with a gleam of intelli- 
 gence in the lift of his bloodshot eyes, and his lips moved, but 
 the merest rattle of noise trembled through the foam that filled 
 his mouth. He raised his hand and pointed to his throat. 
 
 * Why, of course ! ' cried I ; 'I must have been mad not to 
 perceive it. The poor fellow is dying of thirst. Will you get 
 some water, whilst I keep him propped up here ? ' 
 
 She was off in a bounu like a stag, and in the briefest imagin- 
 able time returned with a preserved meat-tin full of water, 
 which I put to the negro's lips ; but the moment he tasted the 
 cold of it against his mouth a frenzy seized him. He grasped 
 the tin, throwing me from him with a jerk of his elbow that 
 was like to have broken my back for me against the gunwale, 
 and uttering a strange throaty cry that made one think of the 
 yell of a hunted negro to the first leap of a bloodhound upon 
 him, he drank the whole of the water at one draught a full 
 quart, as I should reckon, for the tin was a big one let drop the 
 vessel, flinging both his hands against his breast in the manner 
 of a man furiously striking himself, stood bolt upright with a 
 most mad and murderous look in his eyes as they met mine, ere 
 they rolled right up till you saw nothing but the crimsoned 
 wliites of them, and then without a groan fell backwards across 
 the other body and lay motionless. 
 
 I looked round at Miss Grant. * The draught has killed him, I 
 fear,' said I. 
 
 She turned away her head with her hands over her eyes. I 
 kneeled down and grasped the poor wretch's wrist that showed 
 like a bit of ebony forking out of the ragged sleeve of the red 
 coat, but could feel no pulse. I then felt the arm of the man 
 beneath him, designing to gather if he lived, but instantly 
 twitched my fingers away from the clammy chill of the unmis- 
 takably dead flesh. I next soaked a handkerchief in salt water, 
 plucked the Scotch cap off the head of the man who had fallen, 
 and bathed his brows, but nothing followed. Once a movement 
 as of muscular contraction went in a twitch through him, but 
 the drop of the jaw told me all I needed to learn. 
 
 It was proper, however, that I should let him lie for a while 
 to make sure that he was dead, and so I stepped ashore, and to 
 still further secure this precious gift that had come to us, I 
 earned the end of the painter, which was a good long length of 
 coir rope, with the strands at the extremity showing that it 
 had parted, to a tree which stood near the head of the creek, 
 and secured it, then withdrew with Miss Grant to the shelter of 
 some tufted heads of the cocoa to sit down and rest and think a 
 little, and wait to observe if the man had actually expired. 
 
 My companion was greatly overcome. The appearance of
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 26? 
 
 the negro, the white foam blanching his purple lips, and the 
 short, stubborn hair under his nose and chin, the deeper horror 
 that was put into his anguish by the absurdity of his apparel, 
 the suddenness of his rising, the frightfulness of his collapse 
 after he had drained the tin, with a swing of his hands to his 
 heart, and the terrifying glare of his eyes, had proved so over- 
 whelming a picture, with the unexpectedness on top of it 
 besides of the body in the bottom of the boat, that she could 
 scarcely raise her head ; shudders went through her, and I 
 feared she would faint. Dreadful indeed it was, but the pitiful- 
 ness of it, I am almost ashamed to say, was largely qualified to 
 my mind by the transport of joy with which I viewed the boat, 
 and understood that the time of our deliverance a chance not 
 to have been dreamt of two or three hours before had come to 
 us. It needed but a very brief spell of thinking to arrive at 
 how this thing had happened. As one who had used the ocean, 
 I could not fail to see it all clearly and quickly. In fact the 
 parted strands of the coir line told me the tale. It was no 
 painter, but such a rope as a boat would ride astern of a ship 
 by. It had broken, maybe, in the gale that had stormed over 
 us two nights before, and the boat had gone adrift with these 
 negroes in her, without a sail, with a rudder that was without a 
 tiller, without water, and without food. 
 
 I waited for some time, and went to the boat to have another 
 look at the man, and then his appearance persuaded me that he 
 was dead. I was heartily grieved that this should have been so, 
 for now that he lay at rest he showed, methought, a very bland 
 and honest countenance, besides being of a most muscular and 
 robust make ; and I felt that had lie lived he might have proved 
 of the utmost use to us, not as a pilot only, and as one perhaps 
 who would know the situation of this island and its name, but 
 as an assistant to help me to rig the fabric and navigate her. 
 However, the truth lay before me ; and I suppose these hard 
 island-experiences of ours having rendered me extremely prosaic 
 and matter-of-fact in directions which at another time would 
 have stirred all the sentiment in me to its depths, I determined 
 to deal with the bodies without ado^> So looking around me, I 
 picked up two good big stones, one of which I secured to the 
 body of the man who had just died by the cloth round about 
 his middle, whilst I attached the other to the second body in a 
 manner I need not describe ; then without saying a word to 
 Miss Grant, who sat watching me, clearly understanding my 
 intentions, I unhitched the Hue from the tree, shoved the boat 
 afloat, ana sculled her clear of the creek where the water was 
 deep, and tumbled the bodies overboard. It was as odious a bit 
 of necessary work as ever mortal man could put his hand to. 
 Hot as the sun was, the job made me feel as cola as if the chill of 
 an English November night w<;re upon me ; but I breathed more 
 freely when I came to scull myself back to the shore, and when 
 I stepped out with the end of the line in iny hand, the earlier
 
 288 MAROONED 
 
 emotion of joy that the possession of the little craft had raised 
 was again so active in my heart that I could scarce hold myself 
 from singing like a boy at the top of my voice. 
 
 The morning was already advanced, and we had not yet broken 
 our fast. I disliked the idea of turning my back upon the boat, 
 lost on my return I should find her gone. However, her forefoot 
 being hard and fast ashore, and the line in the bows secured to 
 the trees, it was impossible that the flow of the tide in the creek 
 could play me any ugly tricks with her ; so we walked to our 
 underground chambers to get some breakfast. I remember that 
 our repast consisted of cold turtle-steak, plantains, sweet oranges, 
 and a, draught of cold water from the brook. The stock of 
 provisions that had been set ashore with us was now exhausted ; 
 we had a small quantity of spirits left, but the biscuit, tongues, 
 preserved meat, and the like, were gone. Such a breakfast as 
 ours was hardly fare to grow fat on, but it was wholesome and 
 cool, and perhaps the sort of food that nature intended for the 
 use of such human beings as should live in this island. It seems 
 to me that the properest food for the people who inhabit a 
 country is that which grows good for eating in it. Think of 
 Broadwater's bill of fare, for instance, under such a dog-star as 
 raged over the spot of earth we had been marooned upon ! roast 
 pork, massive sausages, turbid pea-soup, and the atmosphere 
 all the while so hot that you heard the spikes and leaves and 
 tendons of the breathless vegetation quivering with tingling 
 noises like the faint crackling in burnt paper, or in a sheet of 
 tin curling to the roasting glare of a furnace 1 I was mighty 
 sick of turtle, and so was Miss Grant, but then it was a sort of 
 meat in its way, and combined to make out a meal of the fruit, 
 which was too delicious to weary us. One helped the other, and 
 rendered the whole diet nutritious ; and maybe it was the 
 simplicity of the fare that kept us welL We had been a long 
 three weeks upon the island, yet Miss Grant had never once 
 uttered a complaint of indisposition, whilst for my part I was 
 almost unreasonably hearty in face of the heavy anxieties that 
 weighed down my spirits. 
 
 ' Thank God,' said I, with a look round the room, as I seated 
 myself with my companion to our lenten meal, ' we shall soon 
 be taking a long farewell of this most melancholy haunt. It 
 would have been strange indeed if that ill wind the other night 
 blew us no good. A boat is the next best thing to a ship/ 
 
 'How strange it is,' she exclaimed, 'to watch the working of 
 the hand of fate I Ashore, it is an influence, a hidden govern- 
 ment ; but at sea it is as apparent as a billow, or the rising of a 
 cloud. One saw that in the boat as she approached. Fate was 
 at her helm, and if I were an artist, and desired to materialize 
 the conception of fate, and make it a visible thing, I should 
 figure two people standing as we did, hopeless arid imprisoned 
 on this island, watching the boat coining out of the tiny blot it 
 made in the far blue distance, gliding towards us without a
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 269 
 
 swerve, with a final complete surrendering of itself to us, as it 
 were, through the death of the two poor creatures in it.' Her 
 fine eyes shone to the high religious mood that was in her. 
 ' Little wonder,' she continued, ' that we should always be saying 
 God's hand is most plain on the deep. The Ancient Mariner 
 was not mad when he spied the little bark with Death on board 
 gambling with a woman for human souls. The sea is to me 
 so much more wonderful than the land, that I believe I could 
 credit any amazing thing that should be related of it. Where 
 else does one come closer to one's Maker 1 Oh, Mr. Musgrave, 
 it seemed to me like seeing the Divine finger itself when I 
 watched that boat growing upon the calm sea, urged, as we know 
 now, by dying hands.' 
 
 She shuddered, and pressed her fingers to her temples. She 
 had been overtaxed, nor was the horror wrought in her by the 
 incident of the morning to be soothed by the deep excitement 
 that the opportunity for escaping from this island brought 
 with it. Hysteria, I thought, was bound to dog the heels of 
 such moralizing as she had started on ; so there was nothing 
 for it but to be blunt and prosaic, though, but for the fear I 
 had that the humouring of the mood she was in would be bad 
 for her, I could have listened all day. It was not so much 
 what she said as the thoughts which lay behind her words, 
 which spoke in her face, making her beauty eloquent with the 
 rich fancies flushing to her delicate cheeks, and flashing a 
 brighter light yet into her eyes. 
 
 'We shall have to go to work briskly,' said I; 'if all were 
 prepared I would start at once.' 
 
 She came back to herself with an effort, and brought her 
 hands from her white brows with a faint smile, as if she under- 
 stood what was in my mind concerning her. 
 
 'What is to be done, Mr. Musgrave, that I may know my 
 share?' she asked. 
 
 'Well, first of all we must victual the boat,' said I ; 'we have 
 bottles enough for the storing of fresh water, and you can do a 
 useful hour's work by hunting for the corks which we have 
 drawn and thrown away, and fitting*them to the bottles afresh. 
 For food we must be content with the handsomest stock of 
 craw-fish, fruit, and turtle that we can contrive. The boat 
 wants a tiller. That is easily managed. She also wants a sail, 
 which we shall have to manufacture out of your shawls. 1 
 must likewise make a yard for the sail, which may be got from 
 a bough off one of the fallen trees. This done, our business 
 will be to embark and head away west.' 
 
 'It is a little boat for so great a sea,' she said, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 ' Ay,' said I, ' but then the film of land that was visible from 
 the cross-trees of the Iron CVotwi is not too far distant for her to 
 fetch, and it will be mighty odd indeed if that streak of blue 
 haze which the men talked about be not an inhabited island,
 
 270 MAROONED 
 
 with houses to lodge in, and tho means of proceeding to Jar.irtica, 
 which can't be far distant ; whence our next departure will be 
 for Rio, and for Alexander.' 
 
 She looked down suddenly, with tho pearl of her teeth showing 
 over the under-lip she slightly bit, then her eyes sought mine 
 again with a soft gaze so full of inquiry that my heart seemed 
 to stop for a breath, as though to catch the words that must 
 follow her look ; but she did not speak. I jumped up. 
 
 'I must go to work now,' cried I ; 'in fact it frightens me to 
 think of the boat, lying half dry as she is, being un watched.' 
 
 She rose too, with the air of one starting from deep thought. 
 * My business then,' said she, smiling, ' is to look for corks, and 
 fit them to the bottles ?' 
 
 ' If you please,' said L 
 
 For the rest of the day I worked very hard, stripped to my 
 trousers and shirt, with my wide straw hat to shelter me, scarce 
 intermitting my labour but to eat and drink, and obtaining 
 quite fortitude enough out of the prospect of getting away from 
 this island with Miss Grant, to enable ine to defy the intense 
 heat. I found amongst the fallen trees the very bough to serve 
 my turn, and without much difficulty I severed it with my little 
 saw, trimmed it of its leaves, and proportioned it to the size of 
 the required yard. I also cut a tiller for the boat. This work I 
 was able to accomplish under the shelter of the trees. Miss Grant 
 possessed several shawls of different textures and colours, and 
 when she had collected the bottles, and gathered what corks 
 there were to find, I set her tacking some of these shawls to- 
 gether into the shape of a sail, which she managed by perforating 
 them with a bodkin, and then connecting them with tape, of 
 which she had a little parcel. She made no trouble over mutilat- 
 ing her shawls^ though I ca,nnot but think that the first thrust 
 of lier bodkin into them must have caused her a pang. I cut off 
 a short length of the coir-rope, and got yarns enough out of it 
 to convert into as many robands as were necessary to connect 
 the head of our queer sail to the yard. There was still plenty of 
 line left for a tack and sheet and halliards, which I rove through 
 a sheave in the head of the mast. My impatience gave me very 
 great energy indeed. We had a good supply of fresh turtle, 
 which needed boiling, and this, with other matters which it 
 would only weary you to specify, gave my fair companion plenty 
 to do. I was resolved not to quit the island without being well 
 stocked with food, for should it come on to blow from the west- 
 wards, I foresaw that our sail would not help us, that we should 
 not be able to lay up to the wind more than six or seven points, 
 so that we should stand to be blown away into the Atlantic 
 eastwards, where we might spend days without a view of a ship. 
 My hope was too high perhaps to suffer me to contemplate such 
 a probability as this with the least notion of its coming to pass, 
 but my seafaring instincts governed me without my perhaps 
 being very sensible of their influence, and I schemed, ill a
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 271 
 
 mechanical sort of way almost, so to provision the boat that 
 you might have thought we intended to sail to England. 
 
 When the cool of the evening came, I plucked some hundreds 
 of plantains and oranges, which I carefully stowed away in the 
 little lockers aft that served as seats in the boat's stern, and I 
 then fired a torch and waded into the sea for craw-fish in the 
 manner I have before described, meeting with a more plentiful 
 harvest than had at any other time happened to me, insomuch 
 that I had to give up stooping and throwing them to Miss Grant 
 through sheer aching of my back, though the sandy bottom was 
 still black with the dusky, lizard-like shapes of the creatures 
 -ci-awling into the sheen, when I extinguished my torch to step 
 ashore. I also provided the boat with a stock of cocoa-nuts, but 
 I never could discover a single turtle's egg, spite of my earnest 
 exploring of the sand for several nights running during those 
 three weeks. 
 
 We were wearied rather than sleepy when the darkness was 
 deepening into midnight. There was a young moon in the sky, 
 with a wire-like waving of silver under her in the glooming sea, 
 that spread very darkly to the stars. I had still several bundles 
 of cheroots left, and lighting one of them, I brought our camp- 
 stools close down to the wash of the ocean, where the sand 
 stretched like ivory glimmering to the dusk, for the cool of the 
 atmosphere upon the water t and to get away from the trees, in 
 whose shadows the suffocating air of the day seemed to linger 
 as though imprisoned. This was to be our last night on the 
 island, and neither of us could think yet awhile of shutting 
 ourselves up underground. The phosphorescence of the water 
 was shown by the light-green flashings which broke from each 
 little purring breaker, as it melted into yeast and seethed soft 
 as snow up the coral strand. But the ocean lay too silent and 
 still for the fires to show themselves out upon its breast, if it 
 were not that here and there at intervals you spied a greenish, 
 smoke-like burst, as though some huge jelly-fish were shining 
 under the surface, in the black bro^ of the silent swell that ran 
 without sound and without break. The outline of our boat 
 stood clear like a sketch in ink against the sand on the other 
 side of the creek, 
 
 'We shall have much to tell,' said I, 'when we are released 
 from this place ; more than many will think credible, I dare say. 
 Tis almost like some old Arab's yarn, this marooning of a young 
 man and a lady, the old piratical lair underground yonder, the 
 incident of the monkey, and strangest of all, at least to my 
 mind, the arrival of that boat there this morning with its tragic 
 burden of dead and dying blacks. What will Alexander think ?' 
 
 'If our meeting is much longer delayed,' she answered, 'he 
 will think us lost. 
 
 ' What grief for him, poor fellow 1 ' said I ; ' but then, you 
 know, the meeting will be the sweeter for its unexpectedness.' 
 
 She made no answer ; nor indeed was I much surprised by
 
 #2 MAEOONED 
 
 her silence. In truth. I had grown somewhat accustomed to * 
 reserved attitude in her whenever I spoke of her sweetheart. 
 However, I was in the humour, I cannot say why, I am sure 
 to twang this chord just a little longer. 
 
 * Now/ said I, 'as to-morrow will see us under way and the 
 night, please God, safely on board ship, or within view of the 
 lights of a little town in some island hidden behind the sea-line 
 I feel equal to talking a bit freely, Miss Grant. I have not set 
 eyes on Alexander for years. He was a fine, handsome young 
 fellow when at sea with me ; always bold enough to excite my 
 admiration ; but since then his courage seems to have increased. 
 Do I admire it in its excess ? I will not say so. The emotion 
 it excites is one, I fear, of supreme wonderment only.' 
 
 The moonlight was thin, but I could see her looking at me 
 by it, with a little contraction of her white brows as evidence 
 or the intensity of her gaze. 'Some satirical fancy about 
 Alexander has occurred to you ? ' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' No, Miss Grant, nothing of the sort, on my honour.' 
 
 'What is this courage of his that you wonder at?' 
 
 4 The astonishing pluck he showed in confiding you to my 
 care.' She did not or would not understand. ' Here am I,' I 
 continued, 'a young man, for days and days in the society of a 
 lady of whose charms he has proved himself very sensible in- 
 deed.' She uttered a soft laugh scarcely above her breath. 
 ' NoWj would not my cousin, as a young man himself, conclude 
 that it could be scarcely possible for me to be so incessantly 
 with you without without well now, what I mean to say is, 
 without my falling in love ? ' 
 
 ' He would not think of such a thing, Mr. Musgraye.' 
 
 ' Oh, I fancy he would. A thought of the kind is bound to 
 occur, and it is this triumphing of nope in him over what must 
 lie at his heart with the strength of a conviction, that ' 
 
 I was arrested by her suddenly clutching at my hand ; her 
 swift fierce grasp, as I thought it for the instant, almost took 
 my breath away. ' Heaven forgive me ! ' I mentally ejaculated, 
 *I have aroused the Spanish blood in this^woman. I I ' 
 
 ' Look, Mr. Musgrave ! ' she exclaimed, in a tone that thrilled 
 to my ear with the fear in it, ' what is that?' 
 
 ^ Her face was turned towards the creek, and following the 
 direction of her glance, I observed the figure of a man standing 
 a little on this side of the spot where our luggage had been 
 deposited by the boat's crew. He was clear of the shadows of 
 the trees, and it was bright sand where he stood, and in the 
 light of it lifting into the atmosphere he resembled a statue cut 
 in ebony. He was motionless save for the occasional raising of 
 his hand to his mouth from time to time, as of a man taking a 
 bite at something in his fist. 
 
 ' Gracious mercy ! ' I exclaimed, a little above my breath, 'not 
 another monkey, I hope. The deuce is in this Island. But he is 
 too big surely even for a baboon. 1
 
 A STAETLING APPARITION 273 
 
 'Tt is a man !' whispered Miss Grant, 'and a black man too.' 
 
 * There must be another boat come ashore,' said I. 
 
 I stood staring a little, waiting to see whether he would 
 advance, and what he meant to do. My heart beat fast. It 
 would be impossible to express to you now startling was the 
 apparition of that black figure. The suddenness and unexpected- 
 ness of the apparition was rendered the more alarming by the 
 faintness of the moonlight. Standing where he was, the 
 brilliance of the full orb would have interpreted him ; but 
 though he stood jet-like upon the sand, he yet seemed to mingle 
 with the dusk in a visionary sort of way, and this blending of 
 . the blackness of him with the gloom caused him to appear as 
 phantasmal as though he were the veritable shade of some negro 
 anciently murdered for the sentinelling by his spirit of hidden 
 treasure in the place. 
 
 ' Are there others about, I wonder ? ' said I. I sent a swift 
 look towards the forest and past it, but all was motionless. I 
 bent my ear with the fancy of catching the notes of voices 
 beyond where the man stood, suspecting that his boat had 
 arrived off the western sand; but no sound of the kind 
 penetrated the distracting shrilling of the crickets. 
 
 * He is watching us ! ' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 
 It was time to end this. In fact the more one stared at the 
 dusky shape, with its rising and falling arm, the more one stood 
 to grow afraid of it. 
 
 ' Hallo there ! ' I sang out, walking a little way towards the 
 figure, ' who are you, and where have you come from ? ' 
 
 No answer was returned, but the figure moved uneasily, as if 
 uncertain how to act. I nailed again, still advancing towards 
 him, Miss Grant keeping close by my side ; and then he ap- 
 proached us, but very slowly, whether through physical weakness 
 or fear I could not say. He was sufficiently close now to enable 
 me to make out that he was a negro, and I was sensible at sight 
 of him of a sickening chill coming into me, though at that 
 moment certainly I could not have accounted for the sensation. 
 A wild fancy entered my head, wdrking almost like a touch of 
 insanity there, that I had seen the man before. Was it the 
 build of him t Was it his gait ? I could not say. He was still 
 too far distant to enable me to see what clothes he wore, if in- 
 deed he were dressed ; but I remember coming to a stand with 
 a coldness about my forehead as though some icy air were 
 fanning me, whilst I let fly my breath with a sound that came 
 very near to a cry. On a sudden Miss Grant screamed out, 
 stepping in a terrified way backwards, then coming to me again 
 and clutching my arm. 
 
 ' It is a ghost ! ' she cried ; 'it is one of the men you buried to-day. 
 Look at the soldier's coat on him at the white cloth under it ! ' 
 
 He was now near enough to render these features unmistakable. 
 The red of his ragged jacket stole put ashen to the wan light ; 
 round his loins was the cloth to which I had secured the stone
 
 274 MAROONED 
 
 I had sunk him by. Nothing was wanting to Mm but hia 
 Scotch cap, and that I knew he would not possess, as I had 
 removed it to bathe his head, whilst on noticing it that after- 
 noon lying in the bottom of the boat, I had chucked it overboard 
 into the creek. I stood stock still, as though some blast of 
 lightning had struck me dead. Very distinctly indeed do I 
 recollect the sensation of the stirring of the hair upon my head, 
 an effect I had once looked upon as a mere poetic imagination, 
 beyond the reach of the extremest form of terror in real life. 
 The dew started from my brows, and my hands turned as wet 
 as though I had lifted them dripping from a basin of oil. Had 
 I endeavoured to run away my legs must have failed me. I felt 
 Miss Grant trembling from head to toe, in the vibratory, nervous 
 grasp she had of my arm. Why, here was a man who hud at least 
 twelve hours before fallen dead in our presence, and whom I 
 had soon afterwards buried in the sea, securing him against the 
 possibility of rising by a sinker weighty enough to keep two 
 such fellows down ; here was this same man, I say, now stand- 
 ing before me, stalking out of the forest^ it would seem, instead of 
 out of the ocean, dressed as I had buried him a dusky outline 
 with a black face combining with the gloom, and his eyes touched 
 with the faint sparkles of the moonlight that he confronted. 
 
 * Oh, speak to him ! What is it ? ' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 Thrice I endeavoured to articulate, but my tongue clove to 
 
 the roof of my mouth, dry and parched as the sand upon which 
 we stood - } but at the fourth effort I managed to find my voice, 
 and nothing huskier ever rattled in human throat. 
 
 * In God's name,' I said. ' who are you ? ' 
 
 He answered, but in a language I did not know. 
 
 * It is Spanish,' whispered Miss Grant, ' negro Spanish. He 
 is not a ghost then ; but oh, what can he be ? He was dead, 
 Mr. Musgrave, when you buried him.' 
 
 ' Do you speak Spanish, Miss Grant ? ' said L 
 
 She answered, yes. 
 
 'For Heaven's sake then, address him, and resolve this 
 horrible mystery,' I cried. 
 
 But she was too terrified to speak to him yet. She continued 
 to cling to me with shivers chasing her. Why, the heart of a 
 Boadicea might have swooned to such an apparition. And 
 then the time of its coming too ! this dimly tinctured gloom 
 the streak of westering moon the dark sea floating into the 
 distant silence, with our supreme conviction that the corpse of 
 the black object we were looking at lay with a stone attached 
 to it fathoms beneath the surface ! 
 
 He addressed us again in the same tongue, in the thick, 
 throaty guttural of the African, this time delivering a pretty 
 long sentence, whilst he stood before us with his arms hanging 
 up and down, and a supplicatory inclination of the head 
 towards us, and an occasional totter of his black shanks. 
 
 ' What does he say ? ' I cried.
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 275 
 
 'It is hard to catch his meaning,' she said ; 'he speaks a very 
 strange kind of Spanish. I think what he wants to say is, that 
 he is alone and ill, and asks us not to hurt him.' 
 
 It was about time now that I should see something miracu- 
 lous had happened in the shape of the preservation of this 
 negro's life. I was still prodigiously amazed and confounded, 
 astonished almost to the height of imagining that my mind was 
 all abroad, and out and away more scared than a natural 
 danger could have rendered me. But common sense was begin- 
 ning to break through, and after a little I had sufficiently 
 mastered myself to think intelligently. 
 
 ' This is no ghost, Miss Grant,' said I ; ' the poor devil has in 
 some astonishing fashion come off with his life, and we must 
 learn how. There's a sup of spirits below ; a dram along with 
 something to eat will help his tongue.' 
 
 I stepped up to him, Miss Grant meanwhile keeping a tight 
 hold of my arm, and with a motion of my hand invited him to 
 accompany us. He at once complied, and the three of us 
 walked to our underground chambers. We had made a very 
 thrifty use of our candles, and had still a few wax ends left. 
 I asked Miss Grant to request him to remain outside till I 
 called him. She did sex, and then said, ' Do you mean to ask 
 him to come down here * ' 
 
 ' He won't hurt us,' said I ;' he is no ghost. Kindness will 
 make him gratef uL' 
 
 4 But suppose he believes you meant to drown him?' she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 ' Oh, we'll clear his mind of that notion,' said I, for I was now 
 rallying fast, with a hope rising in me that something helpful 
 to ourselves might come out of this business, and consumedly 
 curious besides, as you may suppose, to learn how the fellow 
 had come to life again. 
 
 ' I will go first,' exclaimed Miss Grant. 
 
 Indeed the negro was still little more than a ghost to her 
 mind, and if she led the way, then of course I was between her 
 and him. It was pitch dark, but we were most sorrowfully 
 well acquainted with the road by this time, and easily making 
 our way to the kitchen, struck a light, and then called to the 
 black man to come down. He arrived, staring about him with 
 an air of stupid bewilderment, apparently thunderstruck at 
 the sight of our hidden lodging. I lighted a couple of wax 
 ends to have a good view of him, and found him sure enough 
 the same Ouashee whom I had supposed dead, and whom I had 
 buried, and whose very existence, I may say, so full of business 
 had the hours been between, I had almost forgotten. His 
 soldier's coat sat dry upon his shoulders, his loin-cloth was also 
 perfectly dry ; so it was clear his resurrection had not been 
 recent. His grotesque garb and ebony figure formed a detail 
 to fit this subterranean place to perfection. Indeed, somehow 
 it was impossible to glance at him and around the chamber 
 
 T ?
 
 276 MAROONED 
 
 without finding a new kind of significance in everything the 
 eye rested upon stealing into it out of his presence ; the 
 muskets and cutlasses looked as grim again, the walls and 
 ceilings more wildly and piratically rugged than ever they had 
 shown, to the turning of the black, wondering face upon them, 
 as the fellow stared here and there. We had still a drop of the 
 ship's rum left ; I mixed a dram for him in a soup and boulli 
 tin, noticing that he threw the remains of a plantain which he 
 haa been eating into the furnace, to receive the draught. In- 
 deed, as he afterwards told us, he had found a tolerable meal 
 amongst the fruit past the forest, and he was eating plantains 
 when ne first hove in sight, as I had gathered from the motion 
 of his arm. However, he could find a corner for a large piece 
 of turtle which I handed to him, devouring it with great relish 
 and avidity. 
 
 Miss Grant posted herself the other side of the table, away 
 from him. She stared incessantly, as if she could not realize his 
 existence, and indeed, though one saw him eating and drinking, 
 sitting solid and substantial, with the whites of his eyes rolling 
 most realistically over the room, whilst he chewed upon the 
 turtle with the true negro smacking of the lips over every bite, 
 yet when I reflected how stone dead he had been, ana how 
 completely I had buried him, I would start to the fancy that if 
 it were not all some odd and ugly dream, why then the black 
 creature might be a spectre after all, a solemn intimation to my 
 incredulous mind that such things were. But I must say that 
 these notions grew feebler with their recurrence. 
 
 ' Let us get nis story, Miss Grant,' said L 
 
 She addressed him nervously ; he stood up on being spoken 
 to, but sat asrain on my motioning to him to resume his chair. 
 I shall not in this Hie forget the peculiar magic that Miss 
 Grant's beauty took on this silent night in our underground 
 haunt, from the emotions which were in her ; the struggling of 
 her brave spirit with the superstitious fears excited by the 
 negro, and his black face at hand to contrast her whiteness with. 
 She sat beside but behind me, having regard to the black man's 
 position ; and full as my mind was of the fellow's startling 
 apparition and miraculous recovery if recovery it were, and 
 not some baleful bit of fetish necromancy I'd find my thoughts 
 scattering away with confusion when I d look from the bland 
 ebony countenance on my left, with the whites of the eyes 
 glowing out into orange to the candle-light, to the loveliness of 
 the face on my right, charged with the revelation of new beauty 
 to every glance I gave it. I had never heard her speak Spanish 
 before. Nervous and agitated as she was, the rich syllables of 
 the noble tongue rolled in honey from her lips, and as was her 
 face by the negro's, so was the melody of her Castilian utterance 
 inexpressibly sweetened and heightened by the hoarse, thick 
 speech of the red-coated fiend. It was like the warbling of 4 
 Jj ute alternating with the gong-like roll of a tom-tom.
 
 A STARTLING APPARITION 277 
 
 'What does he say?' said I, after he had been spinning a 
 twister lasting over five minutes. 
 
 'Why,' she answered, 'that he -woke as if from a long sleep 
 this evening, some time after sundown, and found himself lying 
 on the beach on his back, on the west side of the island, as I 
 suppose, from his speaking of the situation of the hummock. 
 He does not know how he came there. He recollects arriving 
 here this morning in a boat, and fainting away after drinking 
 the water you gave him. He says, after lying a little he rose 
 and walked towards some trees, where he presently heard a 
 sound of running waters. It was the brook that he means. 
 He drank, and then sought for fruit, but appears to have lost 
 "himself in the forest ; though a little before he made his 
 appearance he came across the plantains. That is his story.' 
 
 Then,' said I, looking at him, ' it is no great mystery after 
 all, though a mighty wonder all the same. He was not dead, of 
 course, when he dropped after the drink. Well now, the big 
 stone that I jammed into his waist-cloth must have rolled out 
 of it when I hove him over the side. It was a sickening busi- 
 ness, and the instant I had cleared the boat I sculled up the 
 creek without looking astern. Then what could have followed ? 
 The poor fellow floated up on to his back, for he must have 
 drowned with his face down, and was cart-ied away by the tide 
 to that part of the island where he stranded. Had we looked 
 we might have seen him floating, but we were too busy with 
 the boat ; and when he had weathered the spit of sand he 
 would be out of sight to us at the head of the creek. Ask him 
 if he knows what this island is 1 ' 
 
 She addressed him again, speaking now with growing confid- 
 ence, though her first superstitious fear hun^ a little lightly upon 
 her. He snook his head whilst lie answered. She spoke to him 
 afresh, and then told me that he was not only ignorant of the 
 name of this island, but had not the least idea of the situation of 
 others in these seas ; so there was an end of my expectations of 
 him as a pilot. She questioned him further, and his story was 
 to this effect : First of all, he and his companion had been run- 
 away slaves. They stole a boat, and blew out to sea from 
 somewhere near Point Maysi, thinking to land at Tortuga, but 
 were sighted and picked up by an English craft, and were 
 entered as seamen aboard her ; but the usage they met with was 
 so barbarous, mainly owing to their inability to understand the 
 orders addressed to them, that they resolved to run from the 
 ship at the first opportunity that offered. A chance was pro- 
 vided by the master of the vessel bringing up under the lee of 
 an island, probably not very remote from our own, to seek 
 shelter, as was to be supposed, from the storm that had swept 
 these waters the other night. There was a boat riding astern 
 to a long line, and when the night came down dark, and the 
 hands were below, saving the anchor watch look-out, the 
 blacks dropped over the side, their dusky skins making their
 
 278 MAROONED 
 
 movements very secret in the gloom, and swam stealthily to the 
 boat. But it was already blowing with a bit of a popple on in 
 the bay where the ship rode, with the flight of the wind scurry- 
 ing down the mountain side, and they had scarce rolled in- 
 board over the gunwale when the line parted, and they drifted 
 out to sea. So tliis was the fellow's story, a bit of which I had 
 anticipated hours before at the sight of the shredded strands 
 of the rope. Trusting he might have a few words of English 
 sufficient to understand my questions, so as to save Miss Grant 
 the trouble of inquiring and then interpreting, I sang out 
 to him 
 
 ' You speakee English ?' 
 
 ' No, no ; no speakee,' he cried, shaking his head vehemently. 
 
 'You no sabbe how to pilot boat ? ' I roared. 
 
 'No speakee, no speakee,' he bawled, wringing his hands; 
 and then looking at Miss Grant with eyes full of piteous 
 entreaty, oddly accentuated by a broad supplicatory grin that 
 bared his great ivory teeth to the junction of his jaws almost, 
 he poured out a whole torrent or words in Spanish to her. 
 clasping his hands whilst he rattled on, and then dropped 
 plump on both knees before us when he had finished. 
 
 ' What is it all about ? ' said L 
 
 ' He swears by the Holy Virgin and all the saints that he 
 does not speak English,' said Miss Grant, ' and implores you to 
 believe him. The poor fellow has been horribly cowed by ill- 
 treatment. He thinks because you are English you will punish 
 him for not being able to speak our language.' 
 
 I motioned to him to rise, and to top the encouragement of 
 my face I mixed him another dram, which he drank on his 
 knees ? making some mysterious motion of amity, or perhaps 
 affection, by holding one arm stiff u plight after the manner of 
 certain South African tribes ; then rose and seated himself. 
 
 ' It is getting very late,' said I, looking at my watch ; ' there 
 will be a long day before us in that open boat to-morrow, 
 though pray Heaven it may not prove longer than a day. I 
 would urge you to take some rest.' 
 
 ' I am not at all sleepy,' she replied. ' I am too excited to lie 
 down ; what with this apparition and the prospect of our sail- 
 ing to-morrow, I shall not be able to sleep indeed.' 
 
 That poor fellow will want to turn in,' said I. 'Rolled up 
 in a rug, ne'll lie snug enough near the furnace. You will not 
 object to his occupying this room ? ' 
 
 She looked askant at him, and said a little doubtfully, ' No, 
 I should have no fear of him at all but for the really terrifying 
 wonder of his restoration to life.' 
 
 Here the negro yawned prodigiously, uttering a bawling sound 
 as he gaped. 
 
 ' There is indeed notliing to be afraid of.' said L ' Harmlessness 
 in natures nearly allied to the animal as his is, is almost always 
 expressed in the face, and I'd stake my right arm upon his being
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 27fl 
 
 honest to the core abjectly so indeed. For my part, humanity 
 aside, I consider it my duty to cherish him. A hand to help in 
 the boat will be invaluable. Imagine, for instance, a dead calm, 
 with the gleam of a ship's canvas just visible on the horizon 
 from the low level of the gunwale. Two of us might manage to 
 row the boat to her ; whereas my single pair of arms would 
 give up exhausted long before I was able to rise the ship's hull. 
 He is a powerful fellow ; observe the breadth of his chest. 
 Besides, he is a child of the sun, and the fittest help in the world 
 for such an excursion as we are meditating under these heights, 
 as the Ancient Mariner would call them.' 
 
 So speaking I took a rug and handed it to the black, motion- 
 'ing him to make a bed of it against the furnace, to which I 
 pointed. He understood me promptly, grinned gratefully, and 
 wrapping the rug around him as he stood, with a proud glance 
 at the embellishment, he lay down with the docility of a trained 
 dog, using his arm for a pillow, and in a couple of minutes was 
 snoring like thunder, sound asleep. Miss Grant withdrew to 
 the inner room, whilst I stole up the steps to take a peep at the 
 boat and see that all was right with her. Her outline showed 
 black against the sand. The ebb of the water had almost left 
 her dry, and I had no fear for her. 'Twas a breathless night, 
 with its odd accompaniment of whistling lizards, snoring toads, 
 and chirruping crickets. It wanted but three hours to dawn, 
 and at the first peep of the sun it was my intention to be up 
 and away. The slip of moon glowed rustily over the western 
 rim of the forest, where the heads of the trees spread like funeral 
 plumes motionless against the sky. I lingered a little, earnestly 
 contemplating the heavens in search of any hints of weather, 
 then went back to the kitchen and lay down, but not to sleep. 
 Indeed if the agitation of my spirits at the prospect of getting 
 away had not kept me restless, I must have been held so by the 
 negro's snoring. He now lay flat upon his back with his mouth 
 wide open, and I can only compare the sounds he produced to 
 the noise made by the keel of a boat dragged over shingle. 
 
 Presently Miss Grant called softly to know if I was awake. 
 
 * Very much awake indeed,' said I. 
 
 *All is well whilst he snores like that,' she exclaimed. 
 
 'Yes,' I answered. 'But it is happy for us that he should be 
 our guest for one night only. Imagine three weeks of this I ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 
 
 I HAVE heard sweeter music in my time than that negro's 
 snore ; but though it might have disturbed the repose of the 
 dead, nothing was ever more comforting and soothing to me, as 
 you will believe, When I say that I could not listen to the poor
 
 280 MAROONED 
 
 felloVs gasps without reflecting how very near indeed I had 
 come to murdering him. My restlessness was a sort of fever, 
 and six or eight times before the daylight came, I crept softly 
 up into the open to take a peep at the boat, and make sure that 
 she lay safe. Indeed, we had met with so many surprises on 
 this island, that I was in a manner prepared for the strangest 
 thing that could happen ; and I believe had I looked forth out 
 of the hatch and found the boat gone, whatever might be the 
 emotions which would have helped to the madness such a loss 
 must have raised in me, wonder would not have been of them. 
 
 I had made up my mind to steer west, knowing that the 
 American seaboard lay that way, to say no more : but it was 
 very vexing that the negro should be ignorant of the situation 
 of tnis island, and unable to pilot me to the nearest inhabited 
 land. The joy caused by possession of the boat had overwhelmed 
 all other considerations ; but now that I lay sleepless upon my 
 bed of grass and rug, waiting for the skylight to glimmer out to 
 the dawn, I found myself a bit disheartened by the prospect of 
 the new voyage. That there was land down in the west within 
 view from the ship's masthead, I did not doubt ; but then it 
 might prove such another little spot as this, verdant and unin- 
 habited ; in which case we should have to push on ; and how 
 far off might the nearest land to it be 1 It was a great ocean, 
 as Miss Grant had said, for so little a boat. Strange, too, that 
 one of my minor seafaring nightmares should be fulfilled long 
 after I had abandoned the profession, for I recollect that when 
 I was at sea I would think with horror of exposure in an open 
 boat, which to my young imagination threatened an experience 
 scarce less fearful than the raft. Indeed, of the two, perhaps, 
 the raft was the less horrible, for a man was not likely to linger 
 long on such a contrivance, whereas in an open boat he might 
 go on languishing for days until he died, and then be found a 
 skeleton in the bottom of her, with the little craft afloat and 
 buoyant after months of different kinds of weather. Nay, had 
 not that morning indeed illustrated the significance of the open 
 boat at sea ; the dead man in her, that creature yonder pointing 
 with ebony forefinger to his mouth filled with froth, the empty 
 locker, the thirsty, oily smell of the paint, inside and out, 
 exhaling to the roasting glare of the sun ! Well, well, thought 
 L the sort of spirit I require is not to be got out of thoughts of 
 this kind ; and my eye then catching the dim, greenish lustre 
 of the dawn, lying like waning moonshine upon the skylight, I 
 started up, thanking God for daylight, and feeling that, let the 
 future hold what it might, the bars of our prison here were 
 broken, and we could now free ourselves from an unendurable 
 confinement, which but yesterday morning was as hopeless to 
 the heart as the bald sweep of the sea was to the eye. 
 
 'Is that you moving, Mr. Musgravet' exclaimed Miss Grant, 
 from behind her curtain. 
 
 * Yes/ sa;d I j ' the dawn has broken. You have not slept, I fear I *
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 281 
 
 'No,' she answered, 'I have not closed my eyes.' 
 
 *Pray endeavour to get a little sleep,' I exclaimed. 'Mumbo- 
 Jumbo here can help me in the few preparations that remain, 
 and I don't doubt of making myself understood. Even an hour's 
 sleep will be helpf uL Don t doubt that I shall call you when, 
 we are ready to get under way,' I added, laughing. 
 
 She answered me by whipping back the shawl along the rod, 
 and stepping forth. ' How can you talk of sleeping now ? ' she 
 exclaimed ; 'the instant you are ready, Mr. Musgrave, let us start.' 
 
 I was glad to hear her say this. There was no fear of her 
 hesitating to sail in the little boat into the vast sea that 
 stretched around : but I had suspected she would express in 
 her manner that her mind hung in the wind a trifle, and that 
 she would show herself a little scared by a prospect that was 
 far more formidable than it appeared, as she would know, as 
 well as L 
 
 The negro was snoring as briskly as ever. Heaven knows, 
 this miserable old kitchen was only too familiar to us ; yet it 
 seemed to be made fresh, as though in faith we had stumbled 
 upon another underground room, by the novelty to our eyes of 
 that black man, resembling some immense performing monkey 
 in his red coat, lying flat on his back, his mouth wide open, his 
 arms extended, and the palms of his hands showing like dirty 
 yellow paper inlaid in his skin to the jetty points of his thumbs 
 and fingers. I stirred him with my foot, but I probed him in 
 this way for some time before he opened his eyes. He then 
 sat up with a glare of astonishment, whilst he grasped his wooL 
 and whipped out in a thick, half-awake voice with a string 01 
 Spanish, sounding like the gurgling of water in a sucked hubble- 
 bubble. However, he speedily grew conscious enough to under- 
 stand Miss Grant when she informed him that it was time to 
 get up, and that we wanted him to help us complete our 
 arrangements for promptly leaving the island. He rose slowly 
 on to his cucumber shanks, scratching his head with a dull 
 stare of mystification, as I thought, in his dusky eyes as he rolled 
 them from me to my companion, and then addressed her. She 
 answered ; he spoke again with growing energy ; she nodded, 
 on which, to my astonishment, he clasped his hands and dropped 
 upon his knees, and fell to pouring out a whole iumbleof words, 
 the imploring character of which was gatherable from the tone 
 of his voice. 
 
 'WhVj what is the matter with the poor wretch f said I; 
 *have his wits left him during the night r 
 
 'He is entreating me to beg you not to take him away 
 from the island,' said Miss Grant, viewing him with surprise 
 and pity. 
 
 'But does he know,' I cried, *that if we leave him here he 
 will be all alone ; not another black even to keep him company ? ' 
 
 She spoke to him again, motioning to him at the same time to 
 rise from his knees. Her question produced a very long answer.
 
 2S2 MAHOOXED 
 
 His looks and inflections of speech pronounced him desperately 
 in earnest. I could not follow a syllable ; time was pressing, 
 moreover, for I desired, when afloat, all the daylight I could get, 
 and I was growing a little impatient, when Miss Grant turn- 
 ing to me said, ' He desires to stop here. Indeed, I believe, 
 could you even carry him to the boat by main force, he would 
 jump overboard and swim back to the island on your letting 
 go of him. He says it would be like being a king in his own 
 country to live in these fine rooms, and have the island all to 
 himself.' 
 
 ' Humanity forbids it/ said I, amazed. 
 
 'But what is to be done?' she exclaimed; and I instantly 
 echoed the question mentally, when I glanced at his robust 
 figure, with some stupid thought of compulsion in my mind, 
 and then reflected that he might detain us here for hours 
 whilst we endeavoured to persuade him, without perhaps alter- 
 ing his resolution, after a most wearisome course of exhortations 
 and representations, all of which would have to be translated 
 if he was to understand them. I noticed him ogling the old 
 muskets and cutlasses upon the wall, with a negro's affection 
 for such toys kindling in his eye. No good could come of 
 bothering ourselves over the matter, so I formed my resolution. 
 
 ' If he won't come, why then of course he must stop.' 
 
 ' He will not come,' she exclaimed ; ' he is a runaway slave, 
 remember, fresh too from being cruelly treated even when 
 dealt with as a freeman. He means to stop here, indeed.' 
 
 'Then please tell him, Miss Grant, he may do as he 
 pleases ; but I should have been glad^ to have the use of those 
 brawny arms. He can't starve, I believe, and maybe when he 
 wishes to leave he'll know how to go to work. We have no 
 powder, but he is welcome to those muskets yonder,' nodding 
 towards them, I caught him watching me eagerly as I did so, 
 ' and he may as well take possession of all the traps we must 
 leave behind ; so there '11 be clothes enough for him,' said I, with 
 a look at his shanks, ' not to mention some pretty dresses when 
 he has worn my coats out.' 
 
 On this being interpreted to the poor fellow, he burst into a 
 hundred passionate exclamations of joy, was so convulsed with 
 delight, indeed, that I expected to see him plump down upon 
 his nose and roll upon the floor in his ecstasy. He clapped his 
 hands, made as if to embrace me, recoiled a step with a frantic 
 skip, leapt with such agility that he struck his head against the 
 ceiling with force enough to have stretched him motionless had 
 his cranium been a white man's. 
 
 ' Pretty good all this,' I exclaimed, laughing in spite of my- 
 self, 'for a man who was last night a ghost, ana yesterday 
 morning a corpse.' 
 
 I had nearlycompleted all necessary preparations on the pre- 
 ceding day. The halliards, formed of a length of coir rope, the 
 strands uuLdd, halved, and laid up again into a smaller lino,
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 283 
 
 were rove; the sail of coloured shawls was bent to the yard. 
 There remained but little more to do than fill a few outstanding 
 bottles with water, stow away the craw -fish, and the like. The 
 boat was a roomy little craft ; yet though there were but two of 
 us, we found there would be space for no more than a small bundle 
 of necessary articles chosen from the luggage we must perforce 
 leave behind us. I asked Miss Grant to make a collection of 
 such things as she might deem needful, taking care that at the 
 utmost the parcel should be but a small one ; and then putting 
 the negro to the job of filling the remaining bottles with water 
 from the brook, I slipped round past the creek for my morning 
 -plunge, from which I returned as much refreshed as though I 
 had slept soundly all night. My next act was to climb the 
 hummock, and take a last view of the sea from a spot whence 
 I had surveyed it again and again, with many contending 
 emotions of misery, hope, and despair. There was nothing in 
 sight, a light air was fanning out of the north and west, with 
 weight enough in it to put a blinding twinkling into the water 
 where it was sun-touched ; the heavens spread in a soft light 
 blue, without the phantasm of a cloud anywhere visible. Shel- 
 tered by my wide, sombrero-like hat from the bite of the sun 
 that, low as he yet hung over the sea, stung the naked flesh 
 like nettles, I lingered a little, after bringing my eyes away 
 from the silken brimming of the blue ocean to the azure 
 distance where it blended with the heavens, to rest them for a 
 few minutes upon the island. 
 
 The harsh squawk of the macaw, or some such fowl, came like 
 the edge of a saw out of the heavy greenery of the forest ; to 
 every pause in the fitful blowing of the morning breeze a 
 hundred sounds of bird and reptile life on the island whist- 
 lings, croakings, rook-like cawings, the jabber of green and 
 golden shapes, with short notes as of _ bells accompanying, 
 chimes-fashion, the clear, melodious pipings of the very few 
 birds who really could sing on that island came stealing in a 
 growing volume upon the ear, then softening again to some 
 not, soft gush of the wind that floated the strains of the concert 
 backwards to the trees. The tall guinea-grass stirred to the 
 creeping of invisible things ; the draught of air breezing upon 
 the weather-side of the forest set the branches dancing, and 
 the verdure seemed to flash again to the lift of the foliage, as 
 the silver under-lining of innumerable leaves shone out with 
 this stirring of the air. Maybe I did not loiter above a couple 
 of minutes, but thought has lightning rapidity, and I lived 
 again throughout the three weeks we had spent on this beauti- 
 ful island in the few seconds during which I stood contem- 
 plating the sunny scene. The setting of us ashore by the 
 cold-blooded rascals of the Iron Crown, the crushing weight of 
 hopelessness upon us as we sat together yonder, where the 
 white sand wound in ivory to the creek, with our luggage heaped 
 about us, no shelter for our heads, no prospect of deliverance ;
 
 284 MAROONED 
 
 then the hollow and startling notes of the midnight belL my 
 strange discovery of the sand-covered hatch, our life in the dark- 
 some chambers underground there, the fright occasioned by the 
 monkey, and now that boat snug in the creek yonder ! memory 
 affectea me like a succession of wild dreams. The mighty 
 surface of the sea stared blindly at the sky, and for the life of 
 me I could not repress a shudder as I glanced at the boat, and 
 thought of the tiny speck it would presently be making upon 
 that huge, broiling, merciless expanse. 
 
 I broke from my thoughts, and quitted the hummock with an 
 odd and most bothersome fancy in me so perversely does the 
 imagination steer the mind of what my cousin Alexander would 
 say and think, supposing we should live to tell him the story, 
 of the intimate association forced upon Miss Grant and myselr 
 by the perils of the ocean, of our living as though we were a 
 couple of Indians underground, of our being thrown together 
 for another spell of yet deeper intimacy in an open boat, 
 pshaw I thought I, 'tis high time we got away. 
 
 But first it was our business to make as good a meal as we 
 had appetite for. The negro ate like a cormorant, and since 
 his resolution was formed, I hoped for his sake that there would 
 happen no dearth of turtle whilst he chose to remain all alone 
 by himself here. It made one think of Juan Fernandez and 
 the solitary Mosquito Indian, to look at him. I asked Miss 
 Grant to again endeavour to persuade him to accompany us, 
 thinking that the fellow might now have changed his mind. 
 But the moment he gathered her meaning his face filled with 
 alarm ; he stared at me so appealingly that it was impossible to 
 watch him unmoved, and I think he would have gone down on 
 his knees again but for something which Miss Grant said that 
 reassured him. 
 
 ' It cannot be helped,' said I ; ' he is not a little boy ; I cannot 
 carry him to the boat. He may be even more lucky than we 
 I mean that a vessel may heave-to off here even before he is 
 tired of the place. Have you collected what you want, Miss 
 Grant?' 
 
 ' Yes,' she exclaimed, rising, and going to the inner room she 
 brought out a little bundle. ' I have shown great self-denial, 
 don't you think ? ' she exclaimed, laughing, as she held it up. 
 
 I did not ask what it contained, though I afterwards came 
 to learn that it consisted mainly of a few parcels of letters 
 and bits of jewellery, and the like, prized entirely for the givers' 
 sake. 'It seems hard,' she added, with a wistful look at her 
 trunks that showed through the opening, ' to leave all my pretty 
 purchases behind. How patient you were, Mr. Musgrave, when 
 you accompanied me on my shopping trips ! What a number 
 of things I could have done without, if this experience had 
 been foreseen ! ' 
 
 ' Better,' said I, ' that this honest negro should possess them 
 than that they should have foundered with the //w* Crotm;
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 285 
 
 for the bottom of the sea was bound to be their destination had 
 they remained aboard. Now, if you take my advice, you will 
 put on your broadest-brimmed hat, and our stock of umbrellas 
 must go with us, lest a breeze of wind should carry one or more 
 overboard.' 
 
 I beckoned to the negro, and Miss Grant made him under- 
 stand that he was to carry certain articles to the boat ; and then 
 entering her room I took down her hammock, which was a 
 thing that stowed very compactly, and might be of use to her 
 were we driven ashore upon such another island as this. I also 
 gave the negro a good warm cloak to carry, a well-lined gar- 
 ~ment, that would serve as an excellent wrap for Miss Grant at 
 night ; but though we took these things, there was little more 
 we conveyed to the boat my monkey jacket, I remember, her 
 and my pistols with powder and ball, a few remaining bundles 
 of cigars, all the umbrellas we possessed, some rugs, and a few 
 other items which I need not tax my memory to recalL 
 
 All being ready we slowly left the underground rooms which 
 had sheltered us for three weeks, both of us sending lingering 
 glances around as we quitted the dreary, dream-like haunt, and 
 accompanied by the negro walked to the boat. 
 
 She was lying, half the length of her dry, upon the sand. The 
 negro placed the parcels he carried in the bottom of her, then 
 came to me, and letting go the line which held her, we put our 
 shoulders to the bows, and drove the craft afloat. I jumped 
 in as she slided into the brilliantly clear, calm surface, and 
 throwing one of the paddles over, got her head round, then 
 sheered her alongside the bank of the creek, extending my arm 
 to Miss Grant, who sprang aboard. My next business was to 
 coil the line away in the bow, then to thoroughly overhaul our 
 little ship to see that her freight more precious to us, mere 
 craw-fish, turtle, bottles of fresh water as it was, than the 
 richest treasure that ever put to sea in the hold of a register 
 ship was properly trimmed, and that nothing the island could 
 supply us with was wanting. Miss Grant sat in the stern- 
 sheets, sheltered by an umbrella. The radiance of the early 
 sunshine came streaming down from the far eastern sea-line 
 hot as molten silver into the creek, and the glare of it, rising ofT 
 the surface to the face, which it stung as though the lustre was 
 formed of flaming needles, furnished a mighty uncomfortable 
 hint of the sort of roasting that awaited us outside, when the 
 luminary should rise to the middle of the sky. I threw the 
 paddles over, and rowed slowly down the creek. There was no 
 draught of air to be felt here, though the water outside was 
 wrinkling to the fiery breathing that came softly out of the 
 north-west. The negro walked along the bank to the edge of 
 the sp^it, where, drawing his figure erect, he held his right 
 arm high, and so stood watching us motionless, like a black 
 statue whose nobly-proportioned trunk and arms some fool 
 had smeared with red paint. I noticed my companion, gaza
 
 2S8 MABOONED 
 
 wistfully landwards as we drew out. You saw in the expression 
 of her eyes how busy her memory was, with a change in their 
 soft, brilliant depths into a look of mingled wonder and un- 
 certainty rather than of dismay, as they went seawards from tne 
 bright vegetation, the arid hummocks, and the tracks of white 
 sand, whitening out from the dense undergrowth to the long 
 space of dazzling coral platform on which the blue breaker was 
 melting. 
 
 There was scarce an experience of mine on yonder island that 
 did not recur to me as a passage in a dream might, so vague 
 did the memory of it offer to my imagination through the sheer 
 strangeness of the whole adventure. But nothing approached 
 the dreaminess which the reality of this our departure took. 
 It was not only the feeling that we were leaving the place for 
 good a prison from which we had again and again feared we 
 should never have power to deliver ourselves ; no ! the realiz- 
 ation of escape, when the hope of escape has long lain dead, will 
 always affect the mind at the first start as something visionary, 
 something that one durst not believe. But it was not that only, 
 tt was the manner also of our going. It might have seemed to 
 a strange eye, ignorant of the truth, as though this young girl 
 and I were some young bride and bridegroom, with a little 
 summer ocean home hidden away among the cool trees up there, 
 and that we were starting upon a pleasure cruise, intending 
 maybe a survey of our tiny principality, to which we should be 
 returning anon. This was my fancy as we glided down the creek, 
 and it was this that made the thing as unreal as a dream to me. 
 It was fitter for a summer Thames scene than an illustration of 
 human distress at sea. Who would have imagined, watching 
 me in shirt and trousers and shoes, bare-armed, slowly plying 
 the flashing paddles who would have conceived, observing the 
 quiet figure of the girl seated aft draped in white, carefully 
 sheltering her face, the shadow of her wide hat enriching her 
 warm beauty with the softness of the tint it made, though there 
 was sparkle enough in the water alongside to touch~her hair with 
 a delicate light of gold that we were quitting the island in search 
 of succour, that we had launched ourselves on a boat voyago 
 which might prove darker with peril to us than the blackest 
 hour we had yet passed since we boarded the Iron Crown ia 
 the DownSj that instead of a sultry morning jaunt alongshore 
 we were going to lose ourselves in the heart of the mighty ocean 
 yonder, with no further hope in the result than we could get 
 from confidence in the Divine guidance 1 
 
 Once clear of the creek I hoisted our sail of shawls, flattening 
 in the sheet and putting the helm down to test the little 
 craft's capacity of looking up to it. The colours of the shawls 
 were red, white, and blue, and at a distance the boat sliding out 
 of the creek might have passed for a huge aquatic parrot, out- 
 ward bound on some predatory excursion. The negro, with his 
 figure standing boldly out at the extremity of the tongue of
 
 WE LEAVE T1IE ISLAND 28? 
 
 sand, now held up both arms, slowly moving his hands at the 
 wrists. It looked as if he was blessing us, but I suppose it was 
 his country's way of saying good-bya ^Miss Grant waved her 
 hand to him, and I bade him farewell with a flourish of my hat, 
 whereupon he turned on a sudden and ran with incredible 
 swiftness to the underground rooms, down whose hatchway 
 he shot with the rapidity of a skip-jack plunging from its leap 
 out of water, and so vanished. 
 
 ' He has gone to clothe himself,' said Miss Grant.- 
 
 'Wonderful how he could^have held out so long,' said I ; 'the 
 desire to squeeze himself into my patent leather boots and 
 -frock-coat, not to mention my green satin stock and several 
 coloured shirts which he will come across, must have risen into 
 madness whilst he stood holding up his arms. One guesses 
 that by the rush he made when nature gave in. And now, Miss 
 Grant, how is this little craft going to serve us ? ' 
 
 There was, as I have said, a draught of air fiery hot as the 
 waftings of the atmosphere of a furnace blowing out of the 
 north-west, with just weight enough to keep the water twinkling, 
 and to thread it here and there with long, silken, dark blue 
 shadows with the heavier scoring of its sparkling pressure. I 
 hauled the sheet of the sail as flat as it would come, but could 
 not get the boat's head round to within six points of this air ; 
 and even at that, when she had got way enough upon her to 
 set the water slobbering and tinkling a bit along her clinker- 
 built sides, I noticed a leewardly trend that sent her fathom or 
 two of wake, oil-smooth with a few holes of eddies in it, veering 
 away upon the weather quarter. I had no compass, and when 
 we lost sight of land there would be nothing but the sun or 
 stars to steer by ; meanwhile, however, I made up my mind to 
 head away north, keeping the boat as close as she would lie, and 
 then, supposing the breeze to hold, when we had put the island 
 a mile or two astern, to go about on the starboard tack, and 
 blow away as best we could, south and west, partly with the 
 hope of rising the land in the west before sundown, and partly 
 witli the expectation of thrusting into the fairway south ; for it 
 was nearly always in the south quarter that the sails we had 
 sighted from the hummock hove into view, with one or two in 
 those three weeks gliding blue and ghostly in the far east, but 
 none that ever we saw north or west. 
 
 'Our sail should make a brilliant signal,' exclaimed Miss 
 Grant, 'if a ship should come within view of it.' 
 
 'Yes,' said I, that was the thought in me when I hoisted it. 
 Red, white, and blue, the proper sort of colour for English 
 hearts to beat under. Quashee's soul will have yearned for 
 them. The red shawl would have made him a fine turban ; 
 indeed it would be finer as a turban than as a sail,' I added, 
 with a glance at the yawns where the shawls had been taped 
 together. Yet the fabric was giving the boat some sort of 
 way, and the island was slowly dwindling. It looked a radiant.
 
 288 MA1100NED 
 
 gem-like spot now upon the ocean, that brimmed with a line of 
 silver to the white sand. I sat watching it, the boat steering 
 herself, for which I was mightily thankful, for the little tiller 
 1 had shipped grew into a heated bar of iron to the touch, and 
 my bare knuckles felt as if they were flayed after keeping my 
 hand spread to the sun a few minutes. I could not but hope that 
 I was acting rationally in quitting the island in this little boat, 
 for the solid land there at least supplied a certainty of refuge, 
 which induced a wild emotion or misgiving when I glanced 
 away at the huge sea, and thought of the gale that had swept 
 it the other night. Yet we had both of us pined and prayed 
 for such an opportunity of escape as had now come, and there 
 seemed something like the profanity of ingratitude in hesi- 
 tation, natural and reasonable as misgiving was at such a time. 
 
 I was startled from the reverie into which I had plunged by 
 a sudden exclamation from Miss Grant, who sat near me bend- 
 ing over the side. She pointed down into the water t shrinking 
 a little as she did so, with an expression of consternation glitter- 
 ing in her glance and dilating her eyes as she looked round at 
 me. I peered over and saw immediately below, scarce six feet 
 deep in the clear, blue, glass-like profound, the long dark form 
 of a great shovel-nosed shark, with the upper barb of its tail 
 rounding out like a scythe, the whole outline absolutely motion- 
 less, without a tremor in its fins that I could witness, though we 
 were sliding along at some two or three miles in the hour, and 
 the thing held its position as though it were our shadow. For 
 the life of me I could not help a sudden recoil. It was as big 
 and ugly a monster of the kind as ever I had seen, and by 
 simulating, as it were, the reflection of our boat, furnished an 
 appalling mockery in that way to the imagination to mine, at 
 least, which instantly went to work to construe the grim and 
 foul adumbration into a foreshadowing of our fate. 
 
 But I pulled myself together quickly, and said, 'One cannot 
 sail these waters without sights or this kind happening. Stop ! 
 he may be routed out of this.' 
 
 I took an oar and plunged it harpoon-wise at the brute, and 
 struck him fair on the back. Ugh ! the touch, the feel of it 
 threw me into a cold sweat. It would have been otherwise 
 with me had I barbed the beast, but the soft slippery contact 
 was like the blow of a baby's fist upon the snout of a tigress. 
 Yet it started the creature nevertheless. With a sweep of its 
 tail it drove ahead, sending a shoal of bubbles to the surface, 
 with a line of sparkles in the blue beneath, and when we came 
 to look for it again it was not to be seen on either side the boat. 
 I met Miss Grant's eye thoughtfully fixed upon mine. The 
 whole weight of my responsibility came upon me then, some- 
 how. I knew that her trust was in me that wherever I led 
 she would follow in full faith in my judgment. Her life had 
 grown so precious to me, that the mere fancy of imperilling it 
 by any resolution I might form, hoping always for the best,
 
 WE LEAVE THE ISLAND 28fl 
 
 unendurable. I gent a glance into the hot azure distance, 
 then at, the island, then met her eyes afresh. 
 
 4 If you are in the least degree timid it is not too late. We 
 c:m be ashore again in an hour,' I exclaimed. 
 
 'I am not timid,' she replied; 'the sight of that great fish 
 frightened me. Why should we return f Here is our chance 
 for escaping ; why should we neglect it ?' 
 
 'True ; but often bitter perils and privations attend attempts 
 of this kind,' I rejoined. 'Your life is dear to me, Miss Grant ; ' 
 her lips stirred, but I did not catch what she said. ' Is it right,' 
 I continued, ' that I should subject you to the risks and exposure 
 . of such a venture as this ? I may have acted in too great a 
 hurry, scarcely shown prudence in my hot desire to break from 
 that jail there. This proposal now occurs to me. Let us return 
 to the island. The negro will help me in my new plan. Here 
 is a boat in which he or I may every day row or sail away into 
 the southward, which is apparently the navigated tract of these 
 waters, and it will be strange indeed if we do not meet with 
 some vessel before long to which we can make our condition 
 known.' 
 
 'You would take me with you on such excursions ?' 
 
 'No need. I should leave you on the island until we could 
 obtain help.' 
 
 She shook her head. ' No,' she exclaimed slowly, with great 
 emphasis ; and then she added, ' Imagine the evening to come on 
 one day, and no sign of your boat. The night passes, and next 
 day, and then weeks pass, and I am still alone. On, Mr. Musgrave, 
 how can you suggest such a thing ? When we were set ashore 
 you said it made you happy to think that we were together. 
 That was my happiness too, she continued, dropping her eyes 
 an instant, and then lifting them again to mine, ' and now you 
 will risk a separation that that She shook her head again 
 almost bitterly, but smiled a moment after. ' Besides,' she went 
 on, as though she had no patience to hear me, nor indeed meant 
 to give me a chance to speak, ' you would not get the negro to 
 accompany you. No threats, no entreaties would prevail upon 
 him, I am sure. He would dread to be recaptured. He has that 
 island all to himself now, and a hole to live in, and is as free as 
 a monkey in any forest in Brazil, and should you attempt to 
 persuade or force him, what might happen ? Another mutiny, 
 Mr. Musgrave, more dreadful than the one on board the Iron 
 Croitm, with a chance of his taking your life, and of my being 
 left alone with him ! ' 
 
 ' Be it so,' I said ; ' we are together, and together we will 
 remain at least for the present/ I added, cooling down my 
 voice suddenly to check the gathering ardency of it* 
 
 She made no answer.
 
 1290 MAROONED 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 
 
 BY four o'clock in the afternoon I reckoned the island to be 
 about two leagues distant, scarce visible, so low it lay, save 
 when the slide of the boat to the brow of the swell showed 
 it 'dipping/ as they say at sea just a blot of indigo blue upon 
 the gleam running to it, and against the whitish azure behind. 
 At about this hour the small, scorching breeze, that had held 
 fairly steady from the north-west since the early morning, died 
 away as though devoured out of the atmosphere by the blazing 
 eye overhead, and the deep turned into liquid glass, with the 
 heave of it due east. It was not an undulation to notice from a 
 slap's sidej or from the low elevation of the island ; but to us in 
 that boat it seemed as heavy as a strong sea, with the rise of it 
 putting the horizon out of sight one moment, and the next 
 making the bright line look to spread twice as far as it went in 
 reality. One may talk of getting a sense < of the mightiness of 
 the deep when aboard a great ship that is hove by the surge 
 with her thousand tons of freight, and the massive fabric of 
 her spars and rigging roaring into the gloom of the tempest as 
 a boy tosses a ball ; but it is surely in the little open boat that 
 one feels the power of the giantess most. You lie close to her 
 heart, you feel the beating of it, your eyes are within arm's- 
 length of the mysteries under her shining breast, the spirit 
 within you takes measure of the volume and altitude of her 
 respirations, and you are oppressed by an indeterminable 
 emotion of awe, of a kind different from any the mind is 
 sensible of in viewing the sea from an elevation, whether it be 
 the edge of a range of coast or the rail of a tall vessel. 
 
 I had put the boat's head round for the southward a little 
 time before the stark calm fell, but without her measuring a 
 quarter of a mile of water in the time, I should say, so faint 
 grew the breeze whilst slowly slackening into breathlessness. I 
 said to Miss Grant that I could not imagine it hotter in the most 
 scorching circle of Dante's Inferno. Why, I had but to stand up 
 and let my arms hang up and down, and the sweat drained from 
 my fingers' ends as though I had just been fished out of the sea. 
 It was not the blaze coming down that one felt so much as the 
 dazzle that rose off the edge of the water, lifting into the face as 
 though from polished copper, and making one writhe and twist 
 about in search of the shelter that neither umbrella nor hat 
 could provide. At one or thereabouts we had made a little 
 meal or plantains and craw-fish, along with a small draught from 
 one of the bottles ; and then though there -was wind enough 
 blowing to keep the feeling of fever out of the blood even then 
 I remember contemplating our stock of provisions with a melan- 
 choly eye as I ruminated upon the perishable qualities of them.
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 291 
 
 Bat when this * furious calm,' as the Spaniards call it, came, the 
 fear I had for our food deepened. Though everything was 
 cooked barring the fruit, it seemed cock-sure to me that our 
 miserable store of boiled turtle and the like must putrefy right 
 away off, and leave us nothing but our oranges and bananas to 
 eat. We were without bread, biscuit, flour. People putting 
 away from a ship in our condition will, for the most part, unless 
 they are very unfortunate indeed, carry with them food that 
 defies climate meat in tins, bags of bread, with other matters 
 designed for seafaring use. But two-thirds of our stock might 
 not keep sweet through the night, and the very plantains me- 
 thought must rot speedily to such a blasting and withering eye 
 as the sun looked down upon us with. But though now and 
 again I would send a wistful glance at the blue smudge in the 
 distance whenever it showed, I said nothing. The die was cast, 
 we had to abide by the throw. It would have been wanton in 
 me to suggest a return to the island after what Miss Grant had 
 said; and as to the provisions, I comforted myself with reflecting 
 that the cocoa-nuts, at all events, would hold their virtue, whilst 
 I also considered that I had done my best that what the island 
 yielded we had taken and that no man, though he thought with 
 the spirit of a prophet in him, could do more. 
 
 Miss Grant made no complaint. It was seldom that I met 
 her eye but that she had a smile. It seemed to me that, now 
 she was confronted with something tangible, a condition she 
 could realize, a situation of which the issue, whether life or 
 death, was within the grasp of her mind, her spirit rose to it. 
 It would make me shrink at times to cast a look around the 
 sea, for when the island disappeared the vast solitude in which 
 we floated became sheer ocean to every sense, full of the deso- 
 lation which the distressed heart would give to it, and which 
 there was nothing in the glory of the day to mitigate. But her 
 eyes sought the distance fearlessly ; twenty moods alternated in 
 her, as I saw in her varying expression ; but no hint of timidity 
 was ever visible in one of them. Indeed it was the heroic 
 tranquillity of her look that kept me still. The heat tried me 
 fearfully ; the dead calm was like a sensible weight upon my 
 spirits ; I had worked hard on the previous day, and had not 
 closed my eyes for twenty-four hours ; and such was my 
 temper, as I sat in that small scorched boat dodging the swing 
 of our preposterous sail for the idle comfort of the shadow of 
 it, that I needed but a face opposite me to reflect mine to have 
 exhausted myself with grumblings and lamentations, and may- 
 be to have resolved, the instant the cool of the evening came, 
 to hark back again for the island as nimbly as our paddles 
 would sweep us there. 
 
 However, I got the better of all this unmanly weakness after 
 the sun went down ; though whilst he was going I could have 
 stood up and shaken my fist, as Tom Cringle did, at the vast 
 red, rayless body that looked, as his lower limb hovered a 
 
 u 2
 
 292 MAROONED 
 
 , moment or two on the sea-line, to be sipping the blood stream- 
 [ ing from his own fiery substance into the water beneath him, 
 | There was no air, not the fluttering of a breath to touch with 
 
 !the shadowing of a feather the immeasurable liquid surface 
 breathing in oil with the sluggish panting of some sentient 
 f tiling half dead with the day-long pouring of the luminary 
 i upon it. Whilst the last beam of daylight sent its red flash 
 r across the sea, with a running of the crimson stream of wake to 
 the orb as though 'twere a length of cloth of purple gold that 
 he dragged off the sea with him as he slipped down the side, 
 I stood up on the thwart, with my arm around the mast, and 
 carefully scrutinized the horizon. There was nothing to see, 
 jno longer even the island's dim shadow, which was already 
 ; absorbed by the airy gloom creeping with tropic stealthiness 
 ' and celerity also into the atmosphere now that the hour of 
 sundown was passed. I lowered the sail to save the chafe of it, 
 and carrying a bunch of plantains into the stern-sheets, made 
 with Miss Grant a little supper of them, helped with a bit of 
 cold turtle. 
 
 'Do you remember,' she said, 'when we walked together at 
 Deal on that moonlight night, the day before we sailed, that 
 I said the beauty of the sea frightened me with its immensity, 
 that the magnitude of its sublimity was an oppression which 
 forbad delight 1 I remember some fancy of the kind occurring 
 to me,' she said, musingly, her face stealing out pale in the 
 shadow, with a corresponding deepening of the luminous dusk 
 of her eyes. ' But how should such beauty as this,' glancing 
 round, and then up at the sky that in the east was already 
 velvet-like, with the young moon in the midst of it, whilst the 
 stars seemed literally to shower out upon the gaze if you did 
 but watch any space in the heavens for a little, ' affect people 
 situated as we 1 How tremendous it all is, Mr. Musgrave ! There 
 was never this sort of repose on the island. Listen ! ' 
 j I strained my ear, whilst she looked at me with a faint smile. 
 *Not a sound,' she exclaimed, after a few moments; 'not a 
 breath, not a whisper of air. Ashore there was always the 
 simmering of the surf, some stirring of breeze or pinions amidst 
 the foliage, and the song of the crickets, and the rest of the 
 midnight concert. But here ; oh, listen ! ' 
 | She paused again, with her hand lifted. 
 
 * Holy Mother of God ! ' she cried, with a passionate toss of 
 her arms. ' Only think of being alone in this boat ! ' 
 
 'I don't think my loneliness would last anyhow,'said I ; 'I guess, 
 as Jonathan says, I would give myself about two such nights as 
 this to have a whole ship's company of spectres along with me. 
 There are plenty of green navies under our keel for marine 
 phantoms to rise up out of. Yes,' said I, pulling a cheroot from 
 rny pocket for the blessed solace of the mere smell of the weed, 
 *it would not take me two such nights as this to introduce a 
 verf ittracti ve society betwixt these gunwales. With my mind's
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 299 
 
 eye I already see it clearly : here, where you are sitting, some 
 mariner that fell overboard when Columbus was sailing this 
 way, his eyes full of Spanish fire, moustachios curled upon his 
 cheeks, and the body sheathed in old metal, for they wore 
 armour in those times, though I won't swear that the forecastle 
 Jacks went so clad ; yonder in the bows a grim old buccaneer, 
 some tough, sun-blackened rogue of the days of James I., wear- 
 ing a spiked beard, and grizzled locks flowing upon his back, a 
 great fusee across his knee, and a murderous hanger against his 
 hip ; it is not hard to see him sitting yonder in the bows, his 
 arms folded, his head drooped, and a falcon-look fixed tipon me 
 under the sleepy lid Why, Miss Grant, these imaginations 
 
 -won't do, you know,' I added, chipping at a little flint for a 
 light ; 'but this silence is wonderful though, and Lord, how the 
 dew falls ! ' 
 
 It was the dark roll of the swell perhaps that rendered the 
 hush more oppressive to one's thinking of it; for the silence 
 with which the folds swung along put an inexpressible quality 
 of ghostliness into the reality of the dusky run of the water. 
 Expectation seemed to crave for sound with the sight of such 
 voluminous movement, and it made me feel deaf sometimes to 
 look at it and hear nothing. 
 
 You would suppose that a couple placed as we were would 
 find nothing to talk about but our situation, of ships heaving 
 in sight, of the time our stock of provisions and water would 
 last, and so forth. Instead, we conversed on any other subject. 
 Not that we desired to shun such topics ; we would recur to 
 them at intervals : but in the main our chat was on matters in 
 which it seemed almost like a sort of impiety to take interest 
 at such a time as this. I very well recollect that, one thing 
 leading to another, she gave me a description of society at Rio, 
 of the balls, the dresses, the dances ; how the English held aloof ; 
 the brutal treatment of negroes by blacks who, having been 
 themselves slaves^ had ended by becoming the possessors of 
 slaves. There were long spells at a time when we forgot where 
 we were in listening to one another. I had been struck by her 
 exclamation when she spoke of how she should feel were she 
 alone in this boat, and asked her if she was a Koman Catholic. 
 
 'No,' she exclaimed ; 'how strange, now, that we should have 
 been together for so long a while, and that you should not 
 know what my faith is 1 ' 
 
 'Not so strange if you will but think of it' said L 'There 
 are no churches at sea, and old Broadwater's discipline was not 
 of a sort to furnish one with a chance of discovering a fellow- 
 passenger's religion.' 
 
 'My mother died a Catholic. She wished me to be of her 
 faith, and of the faith of her forefathers. My father belonged 
 to the Kirk, Mr. Musgrave, and my mother was a very sweet, 
 yielding, docile woman, and I am glad it is with me as it is, 
 though I feel that to be good is to be all To be able to say
 
 294 MAROONED 
 
 that if God can read your heart you need not be afraid, is to be 
 happy within yourself ' 
 
 Hark ! what was that ? We both started. A strange sound 
 came sweeping along the polished brows of the undulating 
 water, as though some steamer at the distance of a mile or two 
 were letting off steam in regular respiratory intervals. It was 
 a long, seething, blowing noise, followed by the sharp showering 
 sound of water foaming into water from the height of a cataract. 
 It was right astern of us.^ I turned and peered into the dimness 
 there, but could see nothing. 
 
 'What is it, do you think, Mr. Musgravet' 
 
 The girl's question was answered by the sudden upheaval of 
 a long black fine floating up like the keel of an inverted ship, 
 with a brilliant sparkling or phosphorescent light all along the 
 ebon side of it, off which rose a faint gleam to the reflection of 
 the horn of moon and to the shine of the planets and bright 
 stars in the wet blackness, instantly followed by the same steam- 
 like hissing we had before heard, only that it was now so close 
 the blast of it came tingling to the ear through the dead hush ; 
 and with this sound there rose into the dusk a great feather- 
 shaped, cloudy spout of water, green as emerald, and radiant as 
 though it were vapour illuminated by the glare of a signal-light 
 with the sea-fire that swarmed in it. 
 
 'A big whale, by Jove ! ' said I, 'and unpleasantly near to us 
 too.' 
 
 Indeed the black mass had risen within pistol-shot ; but the 
 very element of fear its proximity induced deepened the impres- 
 siveness of the dark grandeur, the majestic, mysterious beauty 
 of the show. Oh, never to be forgotten was the sight of that 
 leviathan shadow oozing out of the indigo gleamless stagnation, 
 looking half a mile long with the loom of it upon the clear 
 obscure, the sea rippling in fire against its sides, and its liquid 
 spout shooting up into a column like a dull green flame, arching 
 over at its summit as though curled by a breeze of wind, and 
 falling in a burning shower into the water that flashed to the 
 discharge, till the curved substance of the big fish loomed as 
 big and black again as it was against this mystic radiance of 
 its own making. Presently the huge shape melted out, but 
 some time afterwards it spouted afresh down in the south-west, 
 the bulk of it rising fair in the slender feathering of silver 
 under the moon, whilst a second monster blew about a mile 
 away down in the north, the sounds following one another 
 through the silence for all the world like some mighty giant 
 rumbling into a few snores in his sleep ; and then we saw no 
 more of the creatures, though the notion that there might be 
 others about kept us both exceedingly uneasy with the fancy 
 of a sudden shattering hoist-up starwards with the rising of 
 one of these monsters under our keel, its blow-hole right amid- 
 ships of us. 
 
 Not a breath of air yet Tou saw the exquisite polish on the
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 295 
 
 water in the untarnished flake of some large star's reflection 
 as it rode the black brow of the swell, widening as it went. 
 During such dead hours as these I knew there would be no 
 earthly_ chance for us ; for, as I have long ago said, steam was 
 not as it is now. There was but sail to think of, and nothing 
 could be stirring on such a night. The atmosphere was heavy 
 with dew that made it cool. The thwarts and the line of the 
 boat's gunwale sparkled with the moisture as though crystal- 
 lized. I shipped my pea-coat to keep my shirt dry, and wrapped 
 a shawl round Miss Grant. As bad a part as any of it all was 
 the want of space ; the cramped feeling that came into the 
 body with the very look of our narrow quarters, let alone the 
 "reality of them. She was a fat boat happily, of a lubberly, 
 motherly roundness, like the half of an apple, staunch and 
 comparatively new, an honest ship's quarter-boat, in a word, 
 worth dollars enough I dare say to have brought some evil 
 mutterings into the throat of the skipper of the ship she had 
 belonged to, when he peered over the stern and found her 
 gone. Her beam and the heaviness of her build, that gave 
 her a firm seat on the water, enabled us to move without fear 
 of capsizing her, and from time to time I would give Miss 
 Grant my hand, and get her to step from thwart to thwart 
 for the ease and comfort of the motion after the long spells of 
 cramped sitting. 
 
 At last it came to an hour when I told her she must lie down 
 and sleep. 
 
 * I shall be able to doze as I sit here, I am sure,' she answered. 
 
 'Be guided by me, my dear Miss Grant. Every bor.o in you 
 will ache like the gout if you slumber seated on this hard 
 board with your back against the side. See, now, the sort of 
 bed I have had in my mind for you all along.' 
 
 I placed a strapped rug in the bottom of the boat, closo 
 against the stern-sheets, to serve as a pillow, then spread other 
 rugs along with shawls as a mattress, reserving yet a rug, for 
 we were well supplied in this way, to cover her with. 
 
 ' Now,' said I, ' if you will remove your hat, and pull the hood 
 of your cloak over your head and lie down, you will rest as 
 comfortably as ever you did in your underground room.' 
 
 'Why will you not take some rest first, Mr. Musgrave? I 
 can keep watch, if indeed any sort of watchfulness is necessary 
 on such a death-like night as this. Sleep whilst you can. There 
 may come a change of weather which will prevent you from 
 obtaining repose. You can trust me to awaken you if the need 
 for doing so should happen.' 
 
 But I said no ; she had not closed her eyes last night. I 
 would call her by and by, and then she could relieve me, as the 
 sea saying is. She would have remonstrated, but I took her 
 hand, pressed it to my lips, with a gentle courting of her, by 
 retaining her hand, to leave her se.it, so without saying more 
 ghe removed her hat, turned that I might adjust the hood to
 
 2?tt MAROONED 
 
 her head, and lay down.' I covered her carefully, snugging hef 
 little feet which extended under the thwart, ana then fitted a 
 small umbrella over her head to shelter it from the dew. I 
 asked her if she was comfortable, peering as I spoke under the 
 umbrella at the delicate glimmer of the beauty of her brow 
 and cheek in the shadow there. She answered gently, yes ; and 
 disengaging her hand from the shawl, extended it to me. 
 
 ' How good you are, how kind you are 1 ' she exclaimed. ' Oh. 
 Mr. Musgrave, how would it have been with me but for you i 
 and how do I repay you? by bringing you into these cruel 
 experiences and wretched adventures. 
 
 I again pressed my lips to her fingers, that being the only 
 answer I dared make just then, and sat down to chip in an 
 agitated way at my tinder-box for a light to consume the cheroot 
 that was but half smoked out. When I hear people talk of 
 romantic situations, picturesque surroundings, and the like, I 
 sometimes look back and recall that night, and put it before me. 
 Romance ! let the reader, if he be a man, take my place in fancy 
 as my place then was and shut his eyes and think. Why 
 surely, if poetry is ever to be found in conditions of human 
 distress, I fancy you will find the sanctification of it in our situa- 
 tion this night in an open boat alone amidst the scarce visible 
 undulations of the dark ocean, stretching with a measureless 
 shadow into the liquid gloom that looked as far off as the 
 celestial lights which shone in it ; alone ! but the more alone 
 for the sight of the stars trembling their multitudinous, unsym- 
 pathetic gaze at us eyes as they seemed to me of countless 
 phantoms heedful of us only out of curiosity with the vast 
 silence between, that you felt as a breathless pause up there, 
 as if some expected end were at hand which the Spirit or Night, 
 inclining towards us with respiration checked, was awaiting. 
 And that was not all either ; indeed it was the least part of it 
 to my mood then. Add the lovely form of the woman, for whom 
 my passion was already deep it secret, reposing at my feet. 
 The eyes of a lover's imagination, like those of a cat or an owl, 
 see best in the dark ; and the wan gleam of her face for a gleam 
 the whiteness of it lookedwas wrought by my fancy into 
 the damask beauty and rich impassioned glances of the sunlit 
 reality; till, though she lay there vague as the dusk could make 
 her, she yet slumbered before me in her perfections, so that 
 through a long spell of that watch 'twas a sort of doting with 
 me, from which I was not to be broken away by an occasional 
 thought of Alexander clipping in between. 
 
 Indeed, I was beginning to think that I had earned this 
 woman ; that our association was now, as it had been all along, 
 of a kind to render possession an obligation; nor was my 
 honour any longer startled by such fancier In love, I suspect 
 a man's conscience towards others is sensitive as his passion is 
 weak. His fine talk of duty is proportioned to the slenderness 
 of his stake of emotion. As his heart sinks into a woman's,
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 297 
 
 moral obligations are left behind, floating atop like bladders 
 whose support he no longer requires. Whilst I sat swaying 
 with the heave of the boat, sucking at my cheroot, my mind 
 went to Alexander, and I thought to myself, as I glanced at the 
 sleeping girl, and then swept my sight over the great desolation 
 of the star-touched sea, Does not my cousin deserve this ? Has 
 he not brought it about ? He knew that I was a single man, 
 accentuated it indeed, that he might correct any hesitation in 
 me. He was also aware that I was young. Was it just in him 
 to urge upon me a long shipboard intimacy with a beautiful 
 woman, and expect me to emerge unscarred from such com- 
 merce, whole-hearted, capable of resigning her with a smile and 
 a"" handshake, as if she were some parcel of precious stones of 
 which he was the consignee? When the hour to surrender her 
 arrives, I thought, looking down but, Lord, will it ever arrive '? 
 And I remember shuddering wildly and on a sudden, with an 
 involuntary hugging of my pea-jacket to me, as though a chill 
 had come into my marrow, to the presence of this high and 
 sparkling night, and to the black sweep of the sea-line, and to 
 the solitude made awful by the silence and enormous by the 
 low-lying stars. 
 
 I dropped my extinguished fragment of cigar over the side. 
 The water was so full of fire that the fall of this mere morsel of 
 leaf chipped a flash out of it like a spark from a horse's hoof 
 against a flint ; and as though the lambent flame had ignited 
 some fantastic firework shape beneath it, there sparkled out, 
 green and bright, the huge outline of a shark, the beast of the 
 afternoon maybe. The creature looked as if it were the sketch 
 of such a thing, painted by a brush dipped in flame in the dai'k 
 water. It was moving stealthily ; the tremor of its fins made 
 just a little showering of spangles at those extremities, with 
 a thin, green, fiery vein of wake streaming out from its tail 
 like a rubbing of phosphorus on the wall of a darkened room. 
 The shining configuration drove ahead a short way past the 
 bows, and then the lines of light blackened out, whereby I knew 
 that the beast had come to a stand. But the shape shone again 
 presently, heading towards the moon's reflection, and vanished. 
 However, it was horribly uncomfortable to feel that such a 
 creature was lurking near, and it checked my romancing in a 
 most magical manner. I could think no more of Alexander. 
 My yearning now was for a breeze. But the star-flakes rode 
 as unblurred as droppings of quicksilver upon the swing of the 
 swell, and there was not the sound of a sigh of air to be caught 
 stealing through the silence of the night. 
 
 It would be about three o'clock in the morning some three- 
 quarters of an hour before dawn at all events that Miss Grant 
 suddenly sat up with a little exclamation of astonishment, to 
 which cramp might have added a note of its own. 
 
 ' Oh ! ' she cried, ' I have been dreaming I did not know where 
 I was. Pray help me up, Mr. Musgrave.
 
 298 MAROONED 
 
 *The dawn will be here shortly/ said I; 'why not sleep the 
 night out ? ' 
 
 ' The dawn ! Then you have let me take more than my share 
 of rest. Pray help me up. I have slept soundly.' 
 
 On this I cleared away the umbrella, removed the shawl that 
 wrapped her about, and assisted her on to her feet. 
 
 4 Still the same dead calm,' she exclaimed, looking round her. 
 ' Now, Mr. Musgrave, you will please lie down.' 
 
 'No, I can get the forty winks I want here quite comfortably.' 
 
 ' But you will go on talking, if you sit instead of lying down, 
 and thus a second night will pass without your having closed 
 your eyes.' 
 
 ' But I don't need to plank it to sleep,' said L ' I won't talk, I 
 promise you. Observe now how in earnest I am,' and so saying, 
 I turned up the collar of my coat, folded my arms, and let drop 
 my chin in a proper sleeping posture ; and sure enough, in less 
 than three minutes I was in a sound slumber, for I never could 
 have imagined how worn out I was until I shut my eyes and 
 fairly got under way for a doze. 
 
 It seemed to me that I had not been sleeping five minutes 
 when I was awakened by Miss Gi-ant moving ; I started, and 
 found myself leaning my full weight against her, my head very 
 coolly resting upon her shoulder. 
 
 4 1 am so grieved to disturb you,' she said ; ' but a little breeze 
 has sprung up, with some clouds darkening down in the west 
 there, and I knew you would wish me to arouse you.' 
 
 The dawn lay green to starboard, a queer, most melancholy 
 smudge of muddy light, looking to ooze rather than to flow up 
 into the dusk, as though it was some dull, thick, luminous atmo- 
 sphere lifting with difficulty against the palpable obscure. The 
 raven-hued sea-line ran straight as a rule against it. A twink- 
 ling of running waters was in the air, with delicate seething 
 noises of ripples coursing nimbly into foam. Indeed, it was 
 blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, with a hint of briskness 
 presently in the hum of it sweeping out of the western gloom 
 with the stars all eclipsed down tkere by range upon range of 
 dusky shadows, which gave a significance to this wind that woke 
 me to my full senses promptly enough, I can tell you, as soon as 
 ever my sleepy eye turned to the larboard seaboard. 
 
 ' Due west, as I live ! ' said I, ' since that faintness yonder 
 must be in the east. Heaven deliver us ! Why couldn't this 
 blessed air have come away with the sun ? ' 
 
 ' It may give us the sight of a ship though,' she exclaimed, 
 * let it blow whence it wilL' 
 
 ' Ay,' said I, ' and thanks for that grain of comfort. But it is 
 abominably mortifying nevertheless. Needs must, however, 
 where Old Nick drives, and so, Miss Grant, for a ratch to the 
 southward, if our shawls will suffer this little hooker to look 
 that way.' 
 
 I rose, and added, ' How good of you to pillow my head I We
 
 A BAY OF PERIL 299 
 
 are supposed to be irresponsible in our sleep ; but I think T 
 showed myself pretty rational I might have swayed towards 
 the gunwale instead but you should have shaken me off.' 
 
 'Indeed,' she answered quietly, 'you did sway towards the 
 gunwale, and that you might rest with some little comfort, I 
 coaxed your head to my shoulder.' 
 
 'And it went willingly enough, I don't doubt,' said I, somehow 
 wishing she had made more of this by her voice, for it was too 
 dark yet to see the expression of her face. But then it was im- 
 possible not to forget at moments that she and I were alone. 
 
 I laid hold of the halliards and mastheaded the yard, and 
 Jbringing the sheet aft, got it flat with a good lee helm, and in a 
 moment or two the breezy ripples were washing along the boat's 
 bends ; but though I dragged the sheet as flat as I durst, dreading 
 to rend the shawls by too hearty a pull, I found I could not bring 
 the dawn, that was brightening fast, on our lee-beam. In fact, 
 the sun rose broad upon our bow, and there were we heading 
 away south-east, with a westerly breeze in chase of us, and no 
 chance of the boat making a better course, trim as I might. 
 But this, like everything else that had happened, could not b^ 
 helped. So soon as the sunlight flashed fair over the sea, I stood 
 up and took a long look around, then seated myself again with 
 a momentary sickening of heart to the bitter familiar sterility 
 of the broad spread of ocean. There was no sign of pur island 
 either, though it was impossible it could be many miles below 
 the horizon. The clouds that at dawn had looked swollen and 
 dark as thunder, showed white and swelling as snow-covered 
 mountains now that the sunlight was upon them ; but though 
 they rose slowly, I was sure they meant wind, the more so from 
 the colour of the sky floating out of them, a dimmish blue, 
 rnoist and filmy, to where it brightened into the dazzle of th 
 sun. But spite of its being a bad wind for us, the sound of 
 it in the air, the sparkling movement of the waters, the lifu 
 t hat the blowing put into the whole scene, came grateful as a 
 relief after the clock calm of yesterday and the night. Some 
 hope was to be got out of it, at all events ; not a flicker of foam 
 but that might at any moment change into die star-like shining 
 of canvas ; whereas the roasting tranquillity of the hours we 
 had passed through, toppod by the doadness of the night, 
 forbade so much as a wistful fancy in that way. 
 
 I glanced at my companion to observe how she was weather- 
 ing this bad time. There was a little languor perhaps in her 
 eyes, a suggestion of weariness in the set cf her lips, and her 
 face was pale : but 1 witnessed nothing beyond ; no symptom 
 of the haggaruness which follows long exposure, and the sort of 
 anxiety that is bred by the constant conf rontment of danger. 
 She met my gaze with a smile full of spirit, and patience, and 
 serenity. 
 
 'You are bearing all this far better than I should have dared 
 hope,' said I, 'but some sort of end must be at hand surely.
 
 300 MAROONED 
 
 Why, it would imperil the reputation of a writer of romanca M 
 an artist to add in his book even but one more adventure to 
 the catalogue we have left astern.' 
 
 'We have been so mercifully watched over so far,' she 
 answered, 'that I am sure we need not fear what remains to 
 come. And then when it is all over how small it will seem ! ' I 
 shook my head doubtingly. ' Oh yes,' she cried, ' it is the same 
 with all sorts of trouble. People when they are ill think they 
 can never forget their sufferings ; but they do, or at^ least they 
 make very little of them when they get welL It is like the 
 weather that is hot or cold, or wet or dry, outside the memory 
 of the oldest inhabitant. But it passes from the mind, and at 
 the end of the year it is all one, Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 * Well,' said L ' yours is very good philosophy to help one to 
 triumph over ills which have passed, but whilst those ills are 
 with us, the victory, I fear, must remain with them.' 
 
 Slowly the breeze freshened, but scarce with weight sufficient 
 in it yet to raise sea enough to render me uneasy. The clouds 
 in the west gradually soared, and some scatterings of them in 
 feathers and crescents of vapour, blown from the brows of the 
 main body, sailed like so many new moons into the blue 
 mistiness. The sun glared strong over the bow, with so much 
 throbbing brilliance in the ocean all that way, that the eye 
 wept if you but rested it there for a moment. But the wind 
 took something of the sting out of the heat, and the plash of 
 the foam over the side was so refreshing to the ear that the 
 sound of it seemed to melt with a sensation of coolness through 
 and through the system. We broke our fast with some craw- 
 fish and oranges, and a drink of water : meanwhile incessantly 
 directing glances round the sea in searcn of a ship, for it seemed 
 impossible that such a wind as this could hang steady, with our 
 own southerly trend besides, without heaving something to 
 help us in sight. 
 
 As the morning advanced the breeze freshened. The clouds 
 were now broken up into vast puffs of vapour, white as steam, 
 which came rolling stately out of the west, darkening wide 
 spaces of the running, frothing blue with violet shadows. The 
 sea was beginning to hollow a bit, too ; the ridges growing 
 wider and deeper, along with a sound of snarling in the seeth- 
 ing slide of their heads. The yawns in the sail where the 
 shawls had been united widened ; the yard I had manufactured 
 from a bough of a fallen tree fell to buckling uncomfortably 
 to the growing leaps and plunges of the boat. Indeed, I 
 presently found that if the shawls were to stand the sheet must 
 be slackened out yet, so that before it was ten o'clock that 
 morning we were running eastward with the wind almost 
 astern of us, blowing away as fate would have it in the quite 
 wrong direction ; a windy sky behind, a hollow sea all about us, 
 and nothing in sight save a dull, slate-coloured smudge just 
 visible when a sea threw us up, far away down upon toe star-
 
 A DAY OP ! PERIL 901 
 
 board quarter our island no doubt, for its bearings, according 
 to my calculation, were thereabouts. Could we only have hoisted 
 cloths on our mast fit to sail such a boat as this by, I believe 
 I should have tried for that island again, if only to freshen 
 ourselves up by a rest ashore, and to lay in a further stock of 
 fruit. It was some years since I had nandled a boat, but it 
 would all have come back to me quickly, I dare say, had we had 
 shipshape and seaworthy materials to deal with : but there was 
 nothing to be done with the shawls. They would have parted 
 to any approach to tension of the sheet, and so there was no luff 
 at all to be got out of them. However, by noon I had begun to 
 Jthink that were we under as honest a lug-sail as was ever 
 mastheaded, I should have had to up helm and run for it, for it 
 was now blowing fresh indeed ; such a Avind as a ship on a bow- 
 line would offer a main-topgallant-sail to, and nothing above it. 
 Under our queer sail that looked like a Dutch flag, the colours 
 up and down instead of horizontal, we stormed along, driving 
 God knows where, saving that we knew the great Atlantic Ocean 
 stretched past the throbbing boundary over our bows. The 
 little boat sheered through it like an arrow, making one long 
 floating slide after another, with a short pause in the drop of 
 her stern to the yawn of water, and then a lightning-like rush 
 forwards as the running sapphire knoll in chase washed brim- 
 ming to her, giving us a hoist that caused the ocean to look as 
 wide and wild again ; with the flash of the wind too into our 
 gaudy spread of sail that made me regularly expect to find it in 
 rags next minute. The little craft needed nice steering. The foam 
 would come boiling to your fingers as they clasped the gunwale, 
 and the least swerve at such a moment must have swamped and 
 drowned us out of hand. It was a rushing scene indeed, and 
 there was something of madness to our distracted brains in the 
 eager flashing life of it all. The rolling of the clouds along the 
 sky ; the headlong passage of their shadows over us ; the leap 
 of the sun from the edge of one wide mass of vapour to the 
 next ; the swift hurl of the seas the swifter to the eye for their 
 impatient, impetuous heave of the snow from their brows to 
 ahead of them the sparking out of flying-fish from either side 
 our running boat ; the shriek of the wind past our ears when it 
 swept fair and full at us to the rise of the little fabric to the 
 height of the surge ; the blue finger-like dartings of the breeze 
 upon the smooth sides of the liquid slopes ahead, combined with 
 the sensation of our helpless velocity, offered such a picture of 
 movement to the imagination, that the mind might be defied to 
 witness the like of it even amidst the commotion of a tempest 
 from the deck of a large ship. 
 
 Miss Grant sat by my side, apparently unmoved. I'd see her 
 sometimes glance astern in the moment of some unusually high 
 billow running us up with a roar and dazzle of foam to the 
 level of the quarters, but without a hint in her face of quailing 
 to the sight, without a tremor in the decision you saw in the
 
 202 MAROONED 
 
 marble-like set of her lips. This was one of the realities indeed 
 her spirit could confront. She had shrunk from entering the 
 underground rooms, she had been exceedingly perturbed by the 
 midnight tolling of the bell in the forest, and now amidst a 
 peril that might most honestly have blanched the cheek of a 
 tough old salt, she was as calm as though she slumbered. Some- 
 times, but at long intervals, she addressed me. It was almost 
 impossible to converse, however. The mere sight of the flying 
 sea kept one's thoughts in a wild popple, like the water, dis- 
 jointing the links of coherence almost. The noises too were 
 horribly confusing the ceaseless hiss of billows breaking into 
 foam, the distant thunderous sound of warring waters swelling 
 into volume, with the scream of the wind cleaving it. Besides, 
 what wits I had I required to devote to the steering. Our 
 salvation indeed might lie in the holding out of our sail, and in 
 the drag of it that was rushing our keel clear of the smother of 
 the avalanches chasing usj but then it was just the sort of 
 navigation to be tyrannic in its demands upon the nerve and 
 eye; the swiftness of the boat made her responses to the 
 movement of the helm so instantaneously sensitive that the 
 controlling of her to the course of a dart engrossed every 
 thought I had mind enough to summon. One heedless move- 
 ment of the tiller, and the next minute would have seen the 
 boat bottom up. 
 
 And still the sea went frothing to its confines tenantless, our 
 little craft the only object visible upon its breast for leagues and 
 leagues. Were our adventures to end then in our being drowned 
 after all ? Had we quitted the island, where at least our lives 
 were safe if our existence was miserable, to court, as my fears 
 had sometimes foreboded, a miserable fatet My unemployed 
 hand instinctively sought that of the girl by my side. She held 
 it as if she would comfort me by so doing, smiling to my swift 
 glance at her, for I durst then have no eyes but for the boat. 
 
 * You are steering the little ship admirably,' she exclaimed ; 
 * the wind does not increase, I think, and if this be so, then since 
 we have been safe so far, we have a right to hope that all will 
 continue weD with us. Don't be dispirited. Your old instincts 
 as a sailor are equal to worse difficulties than this.' 
 
 ' Blessings on my head for having brought you here ! ' said L 
 ' You speak of my old instincts as a sailor ; they should not have 
 driven me into acting the fool. We ought to have remained on 
 the island. I was mad to subject you to the experiences of an 
 open boat.' 
 
 1 1 would sooner be here,' she answered j ' there is hope for ua 
 in this little flying shape ; there was none on that dismal rock, 
 with its gloomy cave and the silence of the night there ' 
 
 This was as much as we could say at a time. 
 
 The strong breeze held all day, freshening at moments with 
 noisy guns and spiteful blasts, but happily these stormy intervals 
 were of short duration, otherwise such a sea must have been set
 
 A DAY OF PERIL 303 
 
 running as would hare yielded me but a poor chance indeed of 
 keeping the boat afloat. I thought the day would never come 
 to an end, though I dreaded its ending too, when my mind went 
 to the prospect of the dark night that was to come, with the 
 added weight of wind, which in all probability would follow the 
 sun's departure. From time to time a sea dissolving in foain 
 under us would Lap inboard on either hand, with a pouring of 
 seething white water that hissed to our ankles as the little craft 
 swung her nose up ; and on these occasions, not daring to let go 
 the helm, I was forced to put Miss Grant to the job of baling, 
 which she managed with wonderful spirit and swiftness, flinging 
 the water out over the side with the soup and boulli tin that we 
 used for a drinking vessel as fast almost as the second-hand of a 
 watch travels, till the boat spi-ang forward again freed from this 
 cold, sobbing, and sinister f reight. 
 
 A little before sunset I spied a sail right ahead. The angry 
 crimson in the west seemed to roll like the clouds into the far 
 east, where it hung in a smoking red haze that looked cyclonic 
 with the huddled loom of the vapour behind it, driven in a 
 heap down there by the wind, and in the heart of this stormy 
 radiance I saw the sail But whatever the craft might be she 
 was hull down, and the red canvas of her, more like a live 
 cinder than the fabric of a vessel, was to be caught only from 
 the head of a sea when it lifted us. I pointed it out to Miss 
 Grant, rather for the hope the sight might yield her than for 
 any imaginable good it could be to us ; and she rose, passing 
 her arm round my neck to steady herself, and there was so 
 much of an unconscious caress in this action, as though her 
 heart dictated a gesture unnoted by her reason, that it was 
 through Heaven's mercy alone the thrill of delight the contact 
 of her white hand against my neck sent through me, did not 
 cause me to head the boat off and founder her. 
 
 She had barely resumed her seat, and was seemingly about 
 to address me, when the wind breezed up with a shriek, the 
 puff taking us precisely as we swung to the ridge of a billow, 
 and away went the shawls, all three of them vanishing ahead 
 like a fragment of rainbow, leaving the yard in halves, hanging 
 to the halliards like the legs of a pair of compasses slightly 
 open. I half rose with the intention of converting the shawl 
 that had been wrapped about Miss Grant during the night 
 into a jib-headed aii'air, which might provide surface enough to 
 scud under, with some promise of the pull of it keeping us 
 ahead of the seas, but I changed my mind on second thoughts. 
 * Where are we going to ? ' I asked myself. ' Here am I suffering 
 this boat to be blown out into the Atlantic Ocean, when our 
 hopes of salvation lie over the stern.' 
 
 I said to Miss Grant, 'Please catch hold of this tiller BO. 
 Hold it steady as you have it, straight fore and aft, that you 
 may keep the boat dead before the wind.' 
 
 She did as I bade her. I sprang forward, unstepped the mast,
 
 304 MAROONED 
 
 and taking the two paddles, bound the three together securely 
 by the halliards. This done, I secured the bundle to the ena 
 or the coir rope that lay coiled down in the bows. I then called 
 to the girl to put the helm over, motioning to her that she 
 might know which way to thrust the tiller, and the instant the 
 little craft came broadside to the sea, I flung the bundle of mast 
 and paddles overboard, then floundered aft, moving as low as I 
 could in the boat, scarce knowing whether the next minute 
 would not find us drowning. It was a necessary but a most 
 dangerous manreuvre in that sea. She rounded quickly head 
 on to the pull of that rope ; but ere the drag of her could 
 tauten the line she hung a breathless moment or two in the 
 trough, with the sea like a dark wall to windward rearing its 
 head to the height of my own stature, flickering duskily against 
 the crimson in the west, and I could not fetch a sigh, so sure 
 was I that the sweeping volume would tumble sheer over us. 
 But the broad-beamed little structure went floating up it 
 broadside on, with her keel at right angles, whilst I gripped 
 the gunwale with one hand, my right arm encircling Aliss 
 Grant to save her from sliding into the water to leeward and 
 this without shipping more water than a small thunder-shower 
 of spray blowing over us off the brow of the surge as we 
 mounted it. Then as the boat swept into the hollow behind, 
 she tautened the rope and whipped her nose round to the sea, 
 and so lay rising and falling, heavily indeed but comparatively 
 safely, behind the breakwater of the mast and oars to which 
 she rode. 
 
 ' It was the only thing I could think of to do,' I cried. ' Thank 
 God it is done, and well done. You have a magnificent nerve, 
 Miss Grant. For my part I thought it was all over with us, 
 and was too frightened to bawl out? 
 
 * We are safer like this than with the sail set 1 ' she said. 
 
 'Yes,' I exclaimed ; ' we shall be able to make something like 
 good weather of it now, even should the breeze freshen. I ought 
 to have thought of this old-world nautical stratagem long before 
 it grew perilous to practise it.' 
 
 It seemed to be blowing as hard again now that we faced it. 
 Our running before the wind had taken half the spite out of it, 
 and it was almost like the change from a pleasant breeze to a 
 sharp gale to feel the hurl of the damp wind rushing down 
 upon us, spray-laden, from every liquid acclivity we rose to. I 
 dropped on my knees and baled till I cleared the boat. The 
 sun was gone, but the scarlet of his setting flooded the sky to 
 the zenith, and went down in rusty red to the opposite sea-line 
 from which the sail I had spied had disappeared! The clouds 
 rising out of the western horizon were darkening to the fading 
 illumination, and the seaboard that way looked as though it 
 reflected the lustre of some mighty conflagration, with smoke 
 in volumes pouring from it. The ocean turned green as the 
 North Sea in winter, with a hardening of the shape and outline
 
 RESCUED 305 
 
 of every running ridge, and the rise and fall of the long tracts 
 of snow-like froth upon it rendered its aspect so indescribably 
 bleak, chill, desolate, that the sparkling stagnation of yesterday 
 seemed as a dream, and it defied the imagination to realize that 
 this melancholy picture of froth and warring waters was looked 
 down upon by the heaven of the Antilles. But the boat rode 
 well and buoyantly, and how the breakwater helped her you 
 saw by the savage leap of the froth against it ; though it was 
 smothered again and again, yet it made a sort of ' smooth,' as 
 sailors say, for our keel, and the prospect of the night was no 
 longer unendurable to me. Before the darkness fell I got some 
 fruit and turtle out of the locker. Miss Grant shook her head, 
 "but I insisted, and then she ate a few mouthfuls, but merely to 
 please me, as I could see. Happily we had a drop of rum with 
 us, and I persuaded her to take a small draught, and afterwards 
 I carefully wrapped the rug round her, and made her as snug 
 as the horrible plight we were in would permit. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 BESOTTED 
 
 THE wind fortunately did not increase when the darkness 
 fell, but the gloom of the night gave so stormy an aspect to the 
 ocean that you would have thought it blew as hard again as it 
 did. I cannot express how dismal was the appearance of the 
 weltering liquid blackness in whose heart our tiny ark laboured, 
 one moment flung to the sight of the stars, the next plunged 
 into the momentary stagnation and midnight of the Atlantic 
 trough, with long dashes of pale foam heaving like great wind- 
 ing-sheets all about us, and the slender moon leaping with a 
 troubled silver face from the rims of the flying clouds, to 
 render the picture ghastly with the cold, death-like complexion 
 of her light. There was to be no couch for Miss Grant at the 
 bottom of the boat. The fabric rode well, and took but very 
 little water over the bows, but the wet came in fast through the 
 showering of the spray off the seas curling into foam ahead of 
 us, and obliged me again and again to bale, though it occupied 
 but a very little while to free us. 
 
 My companion sat beside me in the stern-sheets, to which 
 place indeed I had transported most of our little cargo of fruit, 
 water, and the like, that the combined weight aft might give 
 the boat's nose a good cock-up for the run of the surge. Happily, 
 though it all looked chill as a wintry Channel scene, the wind 
 blew warm, wet as it was, and the water was warm too with 
 the first touch of it, though, to be sure, if you let it lie long 
 trickling upon your face the breeze made it frosty. There 
 was a great deal of fire in the sea ; a constant sparkling of 
 pallid flames flashing like summer sheet-lightning as they rose 
 
 X
 
 806 MAROONED 
 
 incandescent against the sweep of blackness over the horizon 
 where the night lay deepest. Conversation was out of the 
 question. The roaring of the near seas drowned our voices. To 
 render ourselves audible we had to put our lips to each other's 
 ear, sheltering our mouths even then with the hand against 
 the blast, that would otherwise have clipped our words away as 
 you'd snick the twig from a bough with a pair of shears. I saw 
 that the night was to be a fearfully trying one for us both. 
 My own attention was kept so much on the strain by observing 
 the plunges of the boat, and watching the seas rolling at and 
 past us, that I protest my very soul ached as if it were some 
 physical faculty in me. Our misery, too, was increased by the 
 obligation to keep seated. In calm water, as you have seen, we 
 moved about ana eased our cramped limbs by passing to the 
 end of the little craft, or standing ; but now we durst not stir, 
 not only for fear of throwing the boat out of trim, but lest we 
 should be flung overboard by one of her many extravagantly 
 wild leaps. 
 
 Thus passed the time. I occupied my mind by considering 
 what we should do on the morrow, if the dawn found us alive 
 and the weather moderated. The one ship we had seen at sun- 
 down made me hope that others might show next day, but I 
 could not forget that we made but a minute speck on this 
 mighty surface, invisible at a very short distance away, and 
 that our chance of being picked up must lie in a vessel passing 
 close to us. 
 
 Whilst I thus sat pondering, with my heart so heavy in me 
 that I could not have felt more melancholy had I been sure that 
 the sun was never again to rise for us, I felt the pressure of 
 Miss Grant's form against mine, and bringing my eyes close to 
 her face I saw that she was asleep. I passed my arm round her 
 that she might have the support of it, and yielded so as to bring 
 her head to my shoulder, as she had mine on the previous night ; 
 and thus she lay worn out in a deep sleep, breathing regularly. 
 The moon sliding into some indigo opening at times would shed 
 its light upon us, by which I could see Miss Grant's face as it 
 lay pillowed close to mine in the hood with which she had 
 replaced her hat. It was a radiance to spiritualize her beauty. 
 How passionately my heart had gone to hers, how deep was my 
 love, I never could have guessed so truly as now, when her 
 beauty was close to my lips, and she lay at peace against my 
 breast amidst this thunder of warring surge, this long howling 
 of the ocean night wind, this convulsive tossing of our little 
 boat. Murder ! what a passion is this same love that it should 
 triumph over such a time as that ; dominating every consider- 
 ation of the horrors of our situation, and forcing my spirit to 
 secretly whisper to itself, that in this delight of slumberous 
 embrace for an embrace it was in its way, with her head upon 
 my shoulder, her form against mine, and my arm clasping ner 
 to me there was solace enough for as many days of thus sort of
 
 RESCUED 807 
 
 thing as might go to a month of Sundays! I'd often fancy 
 that the poets mightily exaggerated when handling the subject 
 of love, as though the world's main occupation lay in thinking 
 of that, and nothing else ; but I now know better. Indeed, I 
 have only to think of that night to know better. Alongside 
 this passion, the passion of life itself is a feeble sentiment. Deatli 
 seemed to have no terrors for me whilst I held that girl to my 
 heart. The grim feature grinned in every black trough to the 
 glare of the graveyard lights scintillating in each ebon steep, 
 but I was without fear ; I was tranquil, at peace, even happy. 
 But I must own not for very long. 
 
 For an hour, perhaps, my enjoyment lasted, whilst I sat 
 .snatching at every opportunity which the glance of the moon 
 would give me to look at her as she slept, sorely tempted 
 indeed at moments to touch her lips, whose nearness made the 
 black, damp gale aromatic to me, only that my alarmed honour 
 would spring to the succour of my manhood, and transform my 
 desire into a vein of self- reproachful musing for which I thanked 
 my good angel ; for I VOAV to Heaven that I never afterwards 
 could have forgiven myself the lightest act of disloyalty to the 
 noble faith this woman had in me. For an hour, I say ; at the 
 expiration of which time my eye was suddenly taken by a pale 
 shadow a trifle on the starboard bow of the boat. It came and 
 went with our tossing. I sent a careless glance at it at first, 
 for it had the look of a small cloud, or some white boiling of 
 water, like to the many scattered all around, that seemed 
 to glare out in ivory heaps to the touch of the moonbeams; 
 but it hung steadily and grew rapidly, enlarging out of the 
 western darkness with a steadfast spectral sheen that presently 
 assured me it must be the canvas of a ship. The involuntary 
 start I gave awoke Miss Grant. She sat up, unconscious of the 
 posture her sleep had taken, and I withdrew my arm from her 
 waist 
 
 I pointed whilst I put my mouth to her ear, and cried out. 
 A ship!' 
 
 The mere sound of the word instantly brought her to her 
 full senses. She exclaimed, ' She will not be able to see us I 
 Can we not signal ? Can we not show a light ? ' 
 
 Alas ! I had no means of making a flare. Swiftly I over- 
 hauled the contents of the boat mentally, but there was nothing 
 in her that would burn. The shawls, the rugs which, wetted 
 with the drop of spirits we possessed, might yesterday have 
 been kindled into a flame, were now saturated with the flying 
 spray. Moreover, the vessel was approaching us too rapidly 
 to have enabled me to act, even had an opportunity for doing 
 so offered. It was very soon after I had sighted her that she 
 had shaped out to the proportions of a large vessel of eight 
 hundred tons at least, running under a press, all three royals 
 set indeed ; for what was half gale of wind to us down here, 
 lying in the eye of it and receiving its full pressure, would be 
 
 X 3
 
 303 MAROONED 
 
 but a pleasant breeze to yonder tall craft, who, by giving it her 
 stern, took most of the spite out of it. But my agony of annoy- 
 ance at being unable to signal her vanished on a sudden to the 
 horror which her approach excited, for as her hull stole out 
 black against the clusk beyond, blacker yet under the pile of 
 glimmering cloths, with a faltering streak of a white line broken 
 by ports running along it, it looked to me as though she were 
 heading dead for us, and that in a few minutes the thunder- 
 cloud of her shadow would be upon the boat. 
 
 I sprang to my feet, in my anguish sending a wild yell 
 against the gale to her, but was immediately flung down again 
 by the jump of the boat. I again staggerea up, but only to fall 
 atresh, this time fetching myself a thump that had like to have 
 broken my back. All the misery of our adventures boiled 
 down into one instant of time could not have approached the 
 torment of feeling with which I watched, breathless, helpless, 
 mute as a corpse, the drawing down upon us of that great fabric, 
 storming under cloths that, from the low point at which we 
 surveyed them, seemed to sweep the very clouds that rolled 
 onwards with her speeding trucks. The wind so drove her that 
 she heaped the foam to near the height of her spritsail-yard, 
 and the raging sound of the parted water there, along with the 
 hissing of the acre of white smothering spume which she sent 
 in thunder ahead of her with every stately stoop of her bows, 
 swept a noise along that rose high above the crying of the wind 
 and the clash of colliding surges, even when she was many times 
 her own length distant from us. It was impossible to suppose 
 that the mere black dot we made upon the tumbling waves was 
 visible to her people, but it did so happen that when she was 
 not above two or three hundred fathoms away from us her head 
 drew a point out, and a minute or two afterwards she was rush- 
 ing past us close, with ourselves becalmed for an instant in the 
 hang of her shadow as it were betwixt us and the wind, till we 
 rose high to the shriek of the gale again on the breaker-like curl 
 of sea that swelled in a long coil from her cutwater, flashing 
 into a snow-storm when abreast of the gangway. 
 
 Terror had constricted my throat ; I could not find my voice. 
 The mere effort to shout^ wrenched jme as though some hand 
 were upon my heart striving to tear it from my breast. I could 
 see no light along her until she gave us her stern, when there 
 shone out some squares of illuminated windows with a gleam of 
 gilt-work writhing round about them, and the wake rising 
 hump-backed from the blackness under the counter to the stare 
 of the lights above, as though it found its milkiness in their 
 lustre. She had the look of a frigate, and may have been one 
 for all I could tell, though more likely she was some fine West 
 Jndiaman, well to the westwards for the usual course of such 
 craft bound home. As she had risen as a cloud, so did she 
 vanish like one ; her squares of canvas paling to the moon, then 
 darkening to the brief eclipse, then brightening out afresh into
 
 RESCUED $09 
 
 visionary fragility, till the stars were trembling once more where 
 her stately, rolling spread of cloths had hidden them, and the 
 sea went frothing to the mere smudge she made in the desolate, 
 windy, distant dusk. 
 
 Miss Grant took my hand and held it, crying to me, 'God 
 watches over us, Mr. Musgrave. To-morrow will bring us 
 help, I'm sure.' 
 
 But the agony of expectation I had endured, the reaction 
 follo\ying the horrible suspense caused by that ship's approach, 
 the bitter grief, the wild feelings excited by her blind, thunder- 
 ous rush past us, had done their work with me, and I could not 
 have answered the girl to have saved my life. 
 
 It was shortly before two in the morning, as I might guess by 
 he passage of the stars, that the wind slackened, shifted into 
 the south-west, and hung there a soft and pleasant breeze, with 
 a thinning away of the clouds, a brighter glory of starlight, a 
 more diamond-like edge to the curl of the moon now sailing 
 low, and a spreading out of the sea into a large, round s Tell, 
 the sleepy cradling of which was like a benediction to the senses 
 after the sharp, snarling curses of the surges which had been 
 racking our bones and bewildering our brains for hours. We 
 sat talking awhile, but my companion's voice was broken by 
 weariness, and presently she made no answer to some question 
 I put, ana on looking at her I saw that she had fallen asleep. I 
 supported her as before, but it was not long ere I was nodding 
 too. Her soft and regular respiration was an invitation to 
 slumber ; the rhythmic swing of the boat too was poppy-like in 
 its influence. Af y eyelids turned into lead, my chin sunk upon 
 my breast. 
 
 I was startled by a voice hailing me. It aroused me from a 
 nightmare, and I woke in a fright. It was daylight, so I must 
 have slept for an hour and a half. 
 
 'Boat ahoy I' 
 
 I started to the cry that came ringing harsh and loud close 
 aboard, and Miss Grant opened her eyes and sat erect, with an 
 exclamation of astonishment, and a lifting up of the hands as 
 though to fend off some phantasmal object. The sun was just 
 rising, and his first beam like a li nng lance of light came hurling 
 along the swelling surface of the waters, which brightened out 
 to the stretching of that magic wand of glory into dainty 
 turquoise even as you looked. 
 
 ' Boat ahoy, I sav ! ' 
 
 I turned, and then sprang to my feet with a shout of joy. 
 Close astern of us, within toss of a biscuit, lay a little fore-and-affc 
 schooner, with her canvas shaking to the light south-westerly 
 wind, into the very eye of which her jib-boom pointed. She was 
 a craft of some twenty-five tons, painted black, sitting low on 
 the water, a beautiful model to the eye, schooner-rigged as I 
 have said, her canvas old and grimy, and liberally patched, her 
 masts badly stayed, the standing ngging gray for want of tar.
 
 ilO MAROONED 
 
 A fellow in a red shirt and a blue cap, like a French Bmacksman%, 
 leaned with his bare amis upon the rail, staring at us with * 
 face of a dark yellow. Over the forecastle bulwarks were the 
 heads of four negroes attired in bright colours, and another 
 negro stood at the long slender tiller that swayed in his hand, 
 whilst he gazed at us with his mouth open behind the yellow- 
 faced man. All these details were swept upon my mind with 
 photographic swiftness and fidelity. 
 
 I cried out, ' For God's sake, take us on board. You shall be 
 handsomely repaid for any trouble we give you. We have out- 
 lived a terrible night, and are in the greatest distress, and must 
 perish if you do not receive us.' 
 
 ' Can yah manage to scull dah boat 'longside, d'yah tink ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes ! ' I cried, ' oh yes ! ' 
 
 I whipped out my knife, sprang forward deliriously, dragged 
 at the sea-anchor, hauled it streaming into the boat, severed 
 the ligatures, and seizing a paddle floundered aft with it, and 
 fell to sculling the boat towards the schooner. Once a horrible 
 swooning feeling seized me, and I was forced to pause to rally 
 my senses, on which the yellow man bawled out, 'Look out for 
 dis yeerie line,' and hove a coil of rope into the boat, which 
 Miss Grant caught, and we were dragged alongside. I thrust 
 my companion's parcel of letters and jewellery into my pocket, 
 and helped her up the side. But the moment we gained the 
 deck the brave and beautiful girl broke down. She hid her 
 face and sobbed bitterly. Her emotion was tonical as an obli- 
 gation upon me to bear up, otherwise I believe I should have 
 given way as weakly as any woman, so true it is that sudden 
 joys, like griefs, confound at first. I drew her gently to the side, 
 longing to soothe her with a lover's caress, though I started to 
 the mere fancy of such a thing, and half turned from her, for 
 now that we stood upon a vessel's deck again she seemed to 
 slip magically back to the old bearings she had aboard the Iron 
 Crown. It was the mere sensitiveness in my humour then, no 
 doubt, but I felt it as a sudden chill at my heart, that my lovely 
 associate on. the island, my patient, tender, heroic companion 
 of the boat, had changed into Miss Aurelia Grant merely, the 
 young lady whom I was escorting to Rio to oblige my cousin, 
 who woukf marry her on her arrival. 
 
 She looked at me through her tears, smiling. 
 
 'What would yah like done wid dis yeerie boat, sah?' ex- 
 claimed the yellow-faced man. 
 
 'Get her aboard, if you please,' said I, 'or take her in tow, or 
 cast her adrift. She's of no use to us now, thank God.' 
 
 'Them rugs is yourn, I reckon ?' said the man. 
 
 'Yes,' I answered; 'I shall be glad to have them. We may 
 need them here.' 
 
 He took a look at the boat, and then ran his eye along the little 
 schooner's deck in a sort of calculating way, and exclaimed, 
 "Tain't good enough to send do likes of her adrift. Dere's
 
 RESCUED 811 
 
 room yeerie, I guess. Hi I Toby, Hebenezer, Jupiter, lay aft, 
 you tree dam niggers^ and git dis boat inboards. Daddy, jump 
 tor dah luff-tackle ; jump, mah Hafrican. and stop scratching 
 your head. Quick an' lively's dah word all roun' now.' 
 
 He clapped his hands, and fell to cutting several queer capers, 
 as though striving to work himself up into a state of excite- 
 ment, perhaps with a notion of putting life into his niggers. 
 Indeed, he was the oddest figure that could be imagined. His 
 nose was that of the negro, and his mouth so twisted, whether 
 by disease or disaster, that the left-hand corner of it was on a 
 line with his right nostril, whilst the rest of it went up into his 
 cheek in the shape of the paring of a fin'ger-nnil. One eye was 
 iarger than the other, the dusk of them indicating African 
 blood. His beauty was further improved by a strange growth 
 of short black hair upon his chin, every fibre as wide apart as 
 the teeth of a comb, and as coarse as the bristles of a hog. 
 There was the negro twang in his voice, and he seemed in- 
 capable of speaking without hallooing. He wore, in addition 
 to the cap and shirt I have already named, a pair of dirty 
 duck trousers which ran flowing to his naked yellow feet ; but 
 grotesquely ugly as he was and the more so for the contrast 
 of his twisted, guinea-coloured face betwixt his old blue cap 
 and faded red shirt he could not have been more beautiful in 
 my sight then had he been one of those dewy, ambrosial, lovely 
 spirits who, in Paradise Lost, with flaming lances keep the devil 
 at a respectful distance from Adam and his wife asleep. 
 
 All was now bustle ; the negroes walloped about, tumbling 
 into the boat, bawling out like school-boys at play, making the 
 craft we had vacated splash to their tumblefication as though 
 they would capsize her. Suddenly the yellow-faced man, who 
 was looking at them over the rail, roared out, ' Hallo ! What 
 you do, hey, you black teeves ? What ! you steal my goods, 
 hein ! Tunder and flames 1 I gib you someting proper to eat, 
 my dickey-birds. Stop now ! ' with which he plumped right 
 into the boat, jumping as though he meant to go clean through 
 her. I looked to see what was the matter, and observed all 
 three negroes with their mouths full ; one with a lump of turtle 
 in his hand, another with a craw-fish, a third with a bunch of 
 bananas. Their greedy gobbling was like to choke them. 
 Apparently they meant to stow a good cargo away before they 
 could be stopped. The instant, however, the yellow-faced man 
 was in the boat he let drive with his head at the stomach of the 
 negro nearest him. who fell with a crash as if shot ; but the 
 other two showed fight, poising their heads in a butting posture 
 and awaiting the onset in that attitude, though they continued 
 to cram their mouths nevertheless. 
 
 ' Drop what yah're eating, you black teeves ob de world ! ' 
 shouted the yellow man, who wisely came to a pause on observ- 
 ing their hostile demeanour. 'Yah both hang for blasted 
 piruto when we gets to NJISSOO ! you see now 1 Yes, yah both
 
 312 MAROONED 
 
 swings for dis, high as de highest tree dere is. Yahll see now. 
 Drop it, I say.' 
 
 But by this time the fellows had nothing left to drop saving 
 some claws of a craw-fish, which promptly fell from the black 
 paws that held them, whilst the men looked up at me grinning 
 from ear to ear. Amidst the utmost confusion, the yellow-faced 
 man remaining till the last in the boat to guard our poor remain- 
 ing stock of provisions, the little craft's nose was got to the 
 gangway, the mock of the luff-tackle hooked on to the ringbolt 
 in the stem, and then all hands came aboard to hoist her in. 
 The fellow at the helm left it to help, and though my emotions 
 just then leaned very little to the side of merriment, I laughed 
 till I was breathless at the contortions of the blacks as they 
 
 ulled in company with the yellow man, every dusky throat 
 elivering a yell with each drag on its own account ; till all at 
 once, just as the bows of the boat were showing over the side, 
 crack ! the fall of the tackle parted, down tumbled the negroes 
 in a heap, with the yellow man on top of them, where they 
 spurred and kicked at one another like a lump of spiders in 
 the bottom of a glass, filling the air with execrations and shouts, 
 whilst they rolled over and over in an inextricable muddle or 
 black faces, cucumber shanks, red, yellow, and white headgear, 
 and shirts that threatened to become rags in a very little while 
 if the sport went on. 
 
 I looked for the boat and found her under water, floating with 
 just the line of her gunwales above the surface, and the rugs, 
 shawls, umbrellas, and the like quietly sinking past her in the 
 blue heave of the swell. The yellow man scrambled out of the 
 twisting group with his cap gone ; and now he proved himself 
 uglier than had been at all conjecturable whilst his head was 
 covered, for he was as bald as a turnip down to the semi-circle 
 where his wiry hair bushed out thick as the frill of a Persian 
 cat, and as coarse as cocoa-nut fibre. In fact his bald head showed 
 now like the top of an ostrich's egg stuck in the hair of a mat- 
 tress. He ran to look at the boat, and when he saw she was 
 under water he yelled out, ' Yah dingy villains ! Look at yah 
 work, yah black piggies ! ' and in a paroxysm of rage stooped his 
 head and went butt in afresh for the first negro at hand ; but 
 Ebenezer, as the black was called, was too sharp for him j he 
 sprang aside, and the yellow man drove head foremost against 
 the single old pump that stood before the mainmast. The blow 
 that he fetched himself would have lasted a white man for a 
 lifetime, but it appeared to cause the fellow no further incon- 
 venience than was to be remedied by a brief spell of rubbing. 
 I was getting tired of all this. 
 
 * Better get the block unhooked and let the boat go,' said TL 
 * What I want has floated out of her, and there's nothing left in 
 the locker that's worth the saving. Besides, I want to have a 
 talk with you. You'll lose nothing by shoving ahead.' 
 
 ' JUght yah are,' he answered. J Jump now, some black debbil,
 
 RESCUED 813 
 
 nd free de block. Way loft, way loft, Toby, and bring dot 
 tackle down.' 
 
 He looked about him for his cap, found it, put it on his head, 
 and came aft to where Miss Grant and I had seated ourselves 
 on some small raised contrivance just abaft the rudder-head. 
 
 * What's the name of this schooner ? ' said L 
 *Dah Orphan, sah,' he answered. 
 
 * Where are you bound to, may I ask ?' 
 
 4 We're out a wrecking,' lie answered. Then seeing I did not 
 understand, he added, 'Dah Orphans a wrecking craft dat 
 wisits dah islands 'way from Providence down to Inaguey and 
 dah Mona passage, to see what's to be got 'longshore.' 
 ~ I understood him now, for I had heard of such vessels. 
 
 4 You hail from Nassau, I suppose ? ' 
 
 4 Yaas,' he said, 'dat's my country,' inspecting first Miss 
 Grant and then myself with growing curiosity. 
 
 4 1 may take it you're captain here I ' 
 
 4 Dat's so, sah.' 
 
 4 Your name, pray?' said L 
 
 4 Capt'n Emilius Jeremiah Ducrow,' he answered, drawing 
 himself up, and speaking slowly and emphatically. 
 
 4 Well, Captain Ducrow,' said I, preserving my gravity with 
 an effort that was the harder for the demureness I noticed in 
 Miss Grant's face, ' before I tell you our story, let me thank you 
 from the very bottom of my heart and, of course, I speak for 
 this lady as for myself for your handsome and timely rescue of 
 us. God knows how it must have been with us both had succour 
 been delayed. I can afford to pay you for any services you 
 may render us, and I simply tell you this, that you may know 
 you and your little ship's company will not be losers by your 
 complying with any request I may make you.' 
 
 He kicked out with his heel as he scraped a bow at me and 
 said, ' I see yah a gent. I witness it troo dah accent of yah 
 language. Dere's nebber no mistakin' a gent. I mix in fust- 
 class company ashore myself, and could tell perlite breedin' 
 blindfold by de mere smell of him. Now den,' he roared, 
 suddenly turning and looking forward, ' get dat gangway 
 shipped. Tunder and slugs ! 'tain't dinner-time yet, yah bloom- 
 ing shark-fishes, and so I tells yah. Lay aft to dis helium, 
 Moses. Beg a tousand pardons, sah,' he continued, rounding 
 upon me with another scrape and a kick up behind, 'but 
 niggers is de most excrooshatin' people to manage. Dey works 
 'pon your temper more nor aching teef,' saying which he 
 extended his arms, drooping his yellow hands, whilst he turned 
 his head from the direction in which he seemed to point, with 
 his face puckered up into an expression of loathing which the 
 ' twist of his mouth rendered monstrously ugly and comical. 
 
 4 Well, now,' said I, 'I want to tell you our story, but before 
 I begin, I should be glad to know if there's anything to eat 
 aboard this little hooker,'
 
 314 MAROONED 
 
 * Oh yes, sah ; dcre's eating to be had middling coarse, jest 
 sailor's eating, sah ; not fit for dis lubberly lady,' bowing low to 
 Miss Grant, ' but dah best Capt'n Ducrow cai> perwide.' 
 
 'We have not had bite nor sup since last night,' said L 
 ' What can you give us ? ' 
 
 * Will yah hab it yeerie or in dah cabin ? ' he inquired. 
 
 ' Here, said I, making a shrewd guess at the temperature below. 
 
 He called to one of the negroes and told him to put a pot of 
 chocolate upon the fire, then to lay aft with a bit of cold salt 
 beef, ship's biscuits, plates, and the like; 'And bear a hand, 
 mah humming-bird,' he said, 'for 'tain't dinner-time yet, yah 
 know. Now, sah,' he continued, addressing me, assuming a tine 
 air of dignity in his manner, 'whilst dah wittles is making 
 ready I shall be glad ob yah story.' 
 
 I at once went to work and related our adventures, and on 
 coming to an end I asked him if he could give me news of the 
 Iron Croivn. 
 
 He answered no, he had not heard of the vessel, but that he 
 had learnt about a fortnight ago, though he could not recollect 
 the source whence he had received the intelligence, that a vessel 
 bound to Porto Rico had been spoken, and reported that she had 
 on board four men, whom she had found adrift in an open boat, 
 and that the fellows said they had gone in search of a man 
 and lost their ship in thick weather ; ' And I believe, sah,' said 
 Captain Ducrow, 'dat dah name of dah wessel dey gave was 
 dah Iron Crown; but I wont swear to it, for I ain't got no 
 memory worf speaking of, 'cept for poetry.' 
 
 Here he sent a languishing look at Miss Grant. 
 
 * For poetry ! ' I rapped out. ' Do you know,' I exclaimed, 
 turning to my companion, 'that this looks uncommonly like 
 as though poor old Gordon and his men had been picked up.' 
 
 ' I hope so,' she answered ; ' and it seems so indeed. It will 
 diminish by so much the horror of our memories of the ship. 
 And four men too, Mr. Musgra7e 1 That must mean that the 
 poor cabin-boy was recovered.' 
 
 ' Pray, captain,' said I, ' which is the nearest port hereabouts ; 
 xome civilized place of houses and ships, I mean, where we may 
 be able to put ourselves in the way of getting to Bio ? ' 
 
 He looked steadfastly around the horizon as though seeking 
 for information on the gleaming sea-line, and then gazing at 
 me with one eye shut full of thought, he exclaimed, 'Dere 'D be 
 nuffen nearer than Nassoo.' 
 
 ' And how far off will that be ? ' said I, ' in the shape of time, 
 I mean.' 
 
 ' Wellj maybe a week, maybe a month. Dere's no predicating 
 ob de winds. Perhaps yah know dein bootiful lines, Miss 
 
 Sometimes dah gale blow high, 
 
 Ho! an' somct'iiies dah breeze blow tauill ; 
 Sometimes it lree*)ti in a. sigh, 
 
 An' sometimes it blows in a squall. 
 
 But hn, my lu'i, and my tub.' Most often u!<en I pants to get at yah, doicn yetrit it 
 '
 
 RESCUED 31* 
 
 * Yon didn't happen to know dem werses p'r'aps, Miss t ' 
 
 Miss Grant answered no, smiling. 
 
 * Waal, I ask 'cause dey're mine. When sung to dah accom- 
 paniment ' 
 
 ' Beg your pai-don, Captain Ducrow,' said I, breaking in here, 
 ' but I want to settle some plan with you, for we're in a great 
 hurry to get to Rio, and if you'll help us to arrive there you 
 shall do so on your own terras. What do you advise now ? ' 
 
 This reference to his judgment flattered him. He drew 
 himself up, folded his arms, and cocked his eye thoughtfully at 
 the sky, with the air of a man who recognizes his opportunity, 
 jind means to make the most of it. 
 
 ' Tell yah what,' he suddenly exclaimed, ' take mah advice, and 
 let me bowl yah to Havanna. Dere's breezes to be trusted off 
 de Bahama Bank.' 
 
 'All right,' said L 'Havanna will suit very well. And now 
 to square the matter off whilst we're upon it what about the 
 passage money ? ' 
 
 Again he struck an attitude with another squint aloft, then 
 fell to counting upon his fingers, as it were, whilst his lips moved. 
 He uttered a few disconnected syllables. ' De grub-^lost time 
 yeerie nuffen p'r'aps 'longshore arter all ; ' then bringing his 
 eyes to me, and staring a little without speaking, he exclaimed, 
 ' Say fifty dollar apiece ? ' 
 
 ' You shall have it,' said T, pulling out my pocket-book, and 
 giving him a sight of some Bank of England noteu in it. 
 
 The negro now came along, bearing the meal that had been 
 ordered. A small carpenter s bench was brought from forward, 
 a piece of sailcloth spread over it, and Miss Grant and I fell 
 to. The beef proved a piece of corned buffalo hump, and 
 speaking for myself it ate with extraordinary relish after our 
 three weeks of turtle and craw-fish. Even out of the flinty 
 biscuit I could get enjoyment, whilst the chocolate was as well 
 made and as handsomely frothed as any I ever tasted ashore. 
 The light sparkling breeze, but with the fire of this torrid zone 
 in its breath, hung steadily, crisping the large rounds of the 
 darkly blue swell, and sending the little schooner cleaving 
 through it in an airy, undulating sliding that was like flying, so 
 buoyantly did the keen clipper keel mount the swelling hills, with 
 a soft lean on their summits from the hot blue gushing that woke 
 a note as of a fountain at the bow, and raised a sound alongside 
 as of the dim melody of musical glasses chiming afar. Captain 
 Ducrow stood by us whilst we breakfasted. I asked him to join 
 us ; but he said his own breakfast of tea, biscuit, and molasses 
 would be coming along shortly, and he'd rather wait. I then 
 asked him if he could tell me the name and situation of the island 
 we had been marooned upon. 
 
 ' Waal,' says he, ' I've been tinking hard 'pon dat berry que- 
 tion whilst yah've been feeding, but what island it can be passes 
 my apprehenshun, sah. 'Tain't Watling, dat's sartia ; 'tain' t Hum
 
 *1 MAROONED 
 
 nor Samana. Your resemblance ain't nuffin like him. Tain't 
 Guihaney, nor Planas, nor Cock us' (Caicos, I presume). He 
 added, with an air of desperation, * De debbil only knows what 
 island it is.' 
 
 I was nearly telling him that we had left the most of our 
 traps behind us, but on reflection I thought it was best to say 
 nothing about that. Wherever the island might be, it now 
 certainly lay out of our course. Time must be spent in seeking 
 and making it. and time grew doubly precious when I cast my 
 eye at the little companion-hatch, and reflected upon the sort 
 of accommodation that awaited us below, and how for that, if for 
 no other reason, we could not be in too great a hurry to end 
 this trip. Our baggage would of course have been serviceable 
 to us, but its recovery was not worth the delay of a deviation. 
 And then, again, I believe the mere notion of going to that 
 island afresh, lying off it, having it in view along with all its 
 melancholy, wretched associations of hopelessness and priva- 
 tions, would have grievously depressed Miss Grant, as it must 
 certainly have affected me, even into a superstitious dread that 
 the mere loom of it above the sea-line would prove prophetic of 
 further disasters to us. 
 
 When we had finished breakfast I asked Captain Ducrow 
 what sort of accommodation he could furnish the lady with 
 below. 
 
 * I can't praise him, I can't praise him,' he answered, with a 
 solemn shake of his head, to which the swinging of the tassel 
 of his cap imparted additional emphasis ; ' but yah shall see 
 him for yoursef, sah,' with which he led the way to the com- 
 panion, and down the three of us went. The small skylight lay 
 open, but it was a stifling little cabin for all that, about the 
 size of a North Sea smack^, with a tiny room bulkheaded out of 
 it, to which Captain Ducrow pointed, exclaiming, ' Dat's where 
 I lies, sah ; but it is dah duty of ebery gent to make room for 
 dah ladies,' here he scraped another convulsive bow at Miss 
 Grant, 'and if you will hab dah grace, ma'm, to hoccupy him 
 till we gets to Havanna, he'll be all de sweeter for me to use 
 again. Dat's it. I reckon, and so, mam'selle, he is werry moosh 
 at your sarvice. 
 
 'Ah, captain,' said I, 'I see now what a fine poet you are. 
 Upon my word, Miss Grant, there's no finished courtier could have 
 turned a neater speech.' 
 
 The fellow grinned so exceedingly with his twisted mouth 
 that you would have thought the emotion of delight must have 
 ended in the wringing of one side of his face clean off the other. 
 
 'It all comes ob mixing in fust-class company,' he said, in a 
 voice whose natural negro huskiness was thickened yet by excess 
 of gratification. ' 'Tain t all nature in this yeerie yearth. Nebber 
 knew a rale genteel man as didn't git his polishing from dah 
 elbows of dah fust-class crowd he shoyes in mongst. Yah may 
 take it for dah Lord's trull, sah '
 
 RESCUED 817 
 
 I interrupted him. 'Any cockroaches here, Captain Ducrow ?' 
 
 'Waal 2 yaas ; more'n one family, I'se afeered.' 
 
 'Nothing worse, I hope?' 
 
 'Nebber s nufiin worse where dere's cockroaches,' he said ; ' dah 
 cockroach eats up what's worse.' 
 
 'It's a pity,' said I to Miss Grant, 'that your hammock went 
 overboard. We could have made shift to swing^ it in this bit of 
 a room. However, you'll want a place to sleep in, and we can't 
 do better than accept Captain Ducrow's kind offer.' 
 
 So it was arranged that the skipper should clear out his traps, 
 leaving the bunk bare for the reception of a square of sailcloth, 
 which, with a roll of the same stuff for a pillow, would provide 
 my companion with a clean couch at all events. As for myself, 
 I told Ducrow that one of his lockers in the cabin would supply 
 me with as good a bed as I needed. On my asking? him where 
 he meant to sleep, he pointed to a hole in the cabin bulkhead 
 forward^ which I found to be a sort of bunk-place like to the 
 orifices in which the hardy smacksmen aboard a certain type of 
 vessels stretch their weary, sea-booted limbs when they turn in. 
 This being settled, we returned on deck, glad to escape from the 
 stifling little cabin. 
 
 The hours slipped by, the blue swell came running out of the 
 south-west, witn the fresh but burning breeze flashing off the 
 heads of the brimming brine into our patched and grimy spread 
 of cloths, under whose pressure the schooner swept along with 
 the subtlety of the shark, and with such a whipping of her ill- 
 stayed spars to every jump as made one look at times to see 
 them go overboard. They rigged up a sort of awning for us, 
 and under it Miss Grant and I sat throughout the greater part 
 of the day, talking much of the perils we had come through, of 
 our happy deliverance, of the honest prospect that had now 
 fairly opened upon us of our arriving safely at Rio, at no very 
 distant date either ; with frequent interruptions from Captain 
 Ducrow, who would entertain us with twenty odd remarks, 
 with accounts of his wrecking experiences, with inquiries into 
 our story, with several poetical quotations all of his own manu- 
 facture, as he protested, sometimes quitting his lofty air to let 
 fly at one of his negro seamen, or even to chase him. 
 
 But in this time I was sensible of a change both in myself 
 and in Miss Grant. There was a delicate suggestion of diffidence 
 in her which I could see her struggling against in every smile 
 she gave me, but which nevertheless remained as sensible to me 
 as the aroma of her breath, or the spirit that shone brilliant in 
 her eyes. Sometimes I'd think it the reflection of my own 
 bearing; a sort of reserve came upon me which I could not 
 control, though when I sought to interpret its impulse, I found 
 I could but understand it in part. There would be sensitiveness 
 too to increase suspicion. I fancied that now we were com- 
 paratively safe, thoughts of my cousin, sharpened by happy 
 conviction that she would soon be with him, caused her to recur
 
 818 MAROONED 
 
 to our intimacy perhaps to certain passages in our intimacy 
 with the resolution to once again clearly define herself to my 
 mind as Alexander's sweetheart, but as insensibly as her sweet- 
 ness and gratitude could contrive it, so that nothing of pain 
 might be caused me by this new posture in her, or rather this 
 return to an earlier manner. It was so reasonable, that I could 
 not but think I was right in thus thinking. Most honourably 
 cautious as I flatter myself I had been, glances, nay words, had 
 escaped me in the hurry of my feelings which she would now 
 recall. I remember once that afternoon, when her face was 
 turned away from me, whilst she shadowed her fair brow with 
 her hand as she gazed out to sea I remember, I say, looking at 
 her earnestly, my mind full of her, wondering what thoughts 
 were in her heart, striving with a kind of passion in me to 
 interpret her beauty into even^ the feeblest revelation that 
 might correspond with my imagination of her. She was slow 
 in looking round, and when she did so I grew immediately 
 conscious by her manner that she knew I had been watching 
 her. She let her eyes dwell on mine a moment with a softness 
 that was like an appeal ; then as her glance fell, her lips were 
 
 Earted by a smile I would have given all I was worth to know 
 ow to translate. I waited almost breathlessly for her to speak, 
 and still watching, I saw a tear drop from her cheek to her 
 hand. She rose suddenly and went to the rail, and stood there 
 a little with her back upon me, and when she returned it was 
 with some commonplace remark about the sultry glimmer of 
 the air at the junction of the sea and sky. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXHI 
 
 ABOARD THE * ORPHAN' 
 
 OlTR little schooner was named the Orphan. She had indeed 
 a forlorn and melancholy look, strongly suggestive of friend- 
 lessness, with a dampness besides, owing to her being repeatedly 
 pumped out, that gave her a tearful appearance. Her beautiful 
 lines would have made me imagine that she had been a yacht 
 in her day but for the homeliness of her fittings. She leaked 
 considerably, and the negro who acted as mate aboard her 
 told me her timber was so rotten forward that you could dig 
 cubes of dry-rot out of the knees and carlings as easily as you 
 cut a cheese. Her aspect of decayed gentility was quite moving 
 in its way. You witnessed the good blood in her, which per- 
 haps rendered her uncared-for condition the more affecting. 
 But she was an orphan that did not keep her woes to herself. 
 There was not a tree-nail in her but complained, not a fasten- 
 ing nor bulkhead but mingled its groans with the lamentations 
 which broke out from all parts of the little fabric. The very 
 creak of the rudder on its pintles had the note of the sniff of
 
 ABOARD THE 'ORPHAN' 819 
 
 A sobbing man ; and then, as one or another of the blacks was 
 repeatedly addressing himself to the gaunt old brake pump in 
 front of the mainmast, there was constantly a choking sound 
 of water in the air, with garglings of the bright stream as it 
 sluiced into the sea through the little holes in the scuppers, 
 which was perhaps the one and final condition needful to render 
 the lachrymose air of this ill-clothed, sun-blistered, neglected, 
 sieve-like Orphan completely effective. Whether such craft 
 are still afloat at the work to which this vessel was put, I do 
 not know. Perhaps the West Indian wrecking business is 
 already an old world story, but in my time a whole fleet of 
 small craft, sloops, cutters, schooners, and the like, were em- 
 ployed in the trade ; that is to say, in hunting the many islands 
 in these waters for wrecks of vessels, and for such commodities 
 as might have been washed ashore out of them. 
 
 Havanna, according to Captain Ducrow, was within eight or 
 nine days' sail of us. The outlook of the run, if a run it was to 
 prove, was not a thing to trouble either Miss Grant or myself 
 at the first blush, coming as we did fresh to this little schooner 
 from the horrors and perils of an open boat at sea, and from 
 three weeks of hopelessness in an island prison. But it does 
 not take long for the novelty of rescue to wear out. Before 
 darkness closed upon that first day of our deliverance we had 
 ceased to marvel at our happy escape. We had grown used to 
 thinking of it, and though gratitude was always in our thoughts, 
 there was no longer the first passionate delight and astonish- 
 ment rising at moments to incredulity. 
 
 Hence when the evening settled down hot as iron that has 
 blackened out of its white lieat, along with a fining down of the 
 breeze to a mere sighing of air that threatened a dead calm 
 anon, Miss Grant's and my conversation naturally went to the 
 prospect before us, of the passage in this stifling, leaky, ill- 
 
 Erovisioned little schooner to Havanna, that yet lay some 
 undreds of miles distant. The small awning had been re- 
 moved ; the dark velvet of the heavens showed from sea-line to 
 sea-line fiery with stars. And the moon's reflection this night 
 lay brightly upon the sea. The heavy swell of the morning 
 had flattened ; but there was a light movement yet to which 
 the schooner kept time with her whip-like spars, every sail 
 swinging in and out regularly, with draughts of dewy air 
 scurrying cool to one's heated brows from these fannings. A 
 negro stood at the helm, and when the stern of the schooner 
 drooped to a hollow, the ebony figure melted out of sight into 
 the blackness of the water beyond, though with the rise of this 
 end of the craft he would stand out again in a sharp limning 
 against the silver ground of the luminaries. Captain Ducrow 
 had gone below to lie down, and we could hear him snoring in 
 the cabin, a sound as persuasive as the heat as an influence to 
 detain us on deck. The negro mate paced the gangway with 
 naked feet, soundless as the footfalls ox a cat, with an occasional
 
 820 MAROONED 
 
 halt to equirt a stream of tobacco-juice over the side. " At inter- 
 vals a black figure would come oozing out. as it were, from the 
 deep shadow forward to the pump, the clank, clank of which 
 was now a familiar sound in our ears, though I recognized it as 
 a threat to our repose when we should come to stretch our- 
 selves for a little rest ; and you saw the fiery water creeping, 
 dilating, fading upon the deck like sheets or wriggling glow- 
 worms, with sometimes a faint flash of the sea-glow upon the 
 swell of the jib, rounding to the roll of the little craft when 
 some sudden brimming of the swell broke into light against the 
 bows. 
 
 'I'm afraid,' said I, 'that this part of our experiences will be 
 pretty nearly as tedious as our island life.' 
 
 ' But we are safe,' she answered. 
 
 *I hope so,' said L 'though I could wish there was less need 
 for pumping. But I fear you will be horribly uncomfortable.' 
 
 * Oh, but after last night, Mr. Musgrave ! ' she exclaimed, in a 
 way as though she would tenderly rebuke me for the little show 
 of irritation and despondency in my manner just now, quite 
 perceptible to myself, though I would or could not cope with it. 
 You must not tnink of me at all of my comfort, I mean,' she 
 added, and then stopped suddenly, as though she wondered at 
 her own expression, immediately saying, however, ' The hardship 
 now is very trifling compared to what we have endured.' 
 
 'That's so indeed,' I exclaimed, ' but I shall be glad to exchange 
 this existence though, all the same. Buffalo beef and flinty 
 biscuit are not a fare upon which you can long thrive ; and then 
 what a bedroom that is down-stairs ! I dread the moment of 
 your going to it. Yet it is absolutely necessary you should sleep 
 under deck ; for observe how dark these planks are already 
 with dew/ 
 
 ' You will take more cheerful views to-morrow,' she exclaimed ; 
 1 you have suffered much in mind and body, and for your sake, 
 not for mine, indeed, I could wish the cabin a pleasant, airy one, 
 that you might be sure of a good long night's rest. Sleep is 
 what you need.' 
 
 *I am thinking,' said I, waiving this point, and continuing to 
 speak with a little irritation in me, due, as I should have known 
 by giving the thing a thought, to my fancy of her changed 
 attitude towards me, along with the peevish, secret, jealous dis- 
 like of the obligation of conveying her to my cousin, of losing 
 her then, of quitting her, consumed by a passion which I was 
 young enough, to imagine neither time nor distance could 
 possibly cool, * I am thinking,' said I, 'that if we were to come 
 across a good, comfortable, roomy craft, it would be as well for 
 us to transship ourselves without regard to her destination.' 
 
 ' I will do whatever you wish,' she said, simply. 
 
 ' Only,' said I, ' suppose she should be bound to a European 
 port!' 
 
 She seemed to be sunk in reflection.
 
 ABOARD THE ORPHAN' 821 
 
 'It would be rather a blow perhaps,' I continued, feeling a, 
 bit cynical as I progressed in this talk, ' to be borne off to 
 England or to France or to Spain even, or say North America ' 
 
 She interrupted me : * The ship might be going the other way : 
 she might be sailing to the East Indies perhaps, or to Australia. 
 
 * Oh, cried I, with a short laugh, 'in that case then of course 
 we should stop where we are. But suppose the vessel bound to 
 Europe, would you be willing to go on board her ? ' 
 
 ' If it were your wish yes.' 
 
 'But, Miss Grant, so grave a matter must not lie altogether 
 upon my shoulders. Remember your sailing to Europe again 
 would greatly prolong the term of your divorce from your 
 sweetheart.' 
 
 I could see her smiling softly in the moonlight, though she 
 hung her head. 'We may not sight a ship,' said she, presently. 
 
 ' But if we do.' said L ' shall we leave this crazy old hooker for 
 her?' 
 
 * Yes,' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' Without regard,' I said, striving to steady my voice, though 
 my heart just gave a flop that was like to choke me, ' to the port 
 she is bound to 1 ' 
 
 ' Oh yes,' she responded, with a note of archness in her voice ; 
 'the captain would not alter his course to oblige us, you know.' 
 
 ' It would only signify a little further delay, said 1, ' with the 
 comforts of civilization between, and that's what we both want 
 now. Of course on our arrival, be the place the Tagus or the 
 Thames, be it Boston or Marseilles, I should immediately go to 
 work to equip ourselves afresh for a second, and I hope a 
 successful, voyage to Rio.' 
 
 ' You are very kind,' she answered, a little above her breath, 
 whilst I could see her biting her lip to another smile. 
 
 Late as it was, and weaned as I was when I saw her to her 
 miserable little hole of a berth, I yet paced the deck for above 
 an hour afterwards in as odd, unreasonable a temper as ever 
 possessed me, full of the agitation of fifty wild thoughts all 
 rolling one to another in as lively a play as ever the sea showed 
 off a harbour, with the water shoaling in spouts to the sweep of 
 the wind one way, and a current seething into it the other. 
 The fact was, a resolution to keep Miss Grant by my side, no 
 matter what the name of the stars might be which looked down 
 upon us, had been growing and hardening in me, till I whipped 
 out with it in the suggestion that it would be good for us both 
 to transship ourselves at the first opportunity that offered, no 
 matter where the vessel we entered might be bound. I should 
 have guessed from her manner all day that such a proposal 
 must have instantly won an eager anxious No! from her 
 instead of which she had promptly assented, saying without 
 hesitation that she would do as I wished ; and she had made 
 nothing at all, as you have seen, of my remark touching the 
 destination of the ship we might exchange the schooner for. 
 
 Y
 
 322 MAHOONED 
 
 This was a sort of acquiescence, let me tell you, to excite me not 
 a little, when I came to turn it over during my solitary march 
 to and fro the lightly swaying deck, specially when I coupled 
 it with what I seemed to find in the memory of her downcast 
 eyes, her quiet smiles, and a something more significant than 
 either in her way, to use the old phrase, though I could not give 
 it a name. 
 
 This, to hark back to the image I have just employed, was 
 the intellectual gale that set my thoughts running in surges 
 one way ; and all would have been an easy rhythmic motion with 
 me, but for the strong adverse tide of fancy which came washing 
 into the run of feeling with consideration of my cousin's claims 
 upon me, my honour as a gentleman, my duty as a man. 
 Heaven save me ! in my temper I could have struck my foot 
 clean through the deck. I wanted her, I felt that I must 
 possess her, that I had a higher right to her than ever my cousin 
 could advance ; and yet the thought of the poor fellow stuck 
 in my throat, and I grew so mad with the bother of the whole 
 thing, that I'd gladly have given the darky who stood at the 
 helm half a sovereign for liberty to kick him fore-and-aft until 
 I was tired. After all, thought 1, it is for Miss Grant to decide 
 she must settle it. If she persists in making for Rio if, in 
 short, she'll have none of me, though mightily obliged, and all 
 that sort of thing and here my mood grew so outrageous that 
 it was an exquisite relief to me to see Ducrow's face, sallow 
 even to the starlight, fork up through the companion with a 
 Hallo, sah. Keepm' mighty late hours, ain't yah ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, go to the deuce ! ' I cried. ' Look here, man, hark to tliat 
 now, bad luck to you ! ' and as I spoke, the clank of the old 
 brake pump recommenced for the fiftieth time, it seemed to me, 
 that night. ' What's the good of going to sea in an old basket 1 ' 
 I shouted. 'Why, damme, _ Ducrow, don't you know that a 
 dollar's worth of oakum is all that's needed to keep your 
 abominable old pump from disturbing the sleep of the green 
 seamen who lie in shoals here under your keel as you jog 
 along in this weeping bucket ? ' 
 
 He stood staring at me from the companion, as though he 
 thought I had gone mad, and small blame to him for that ; then 
 approaching me cautiously, he exclaimed, 
 
 'Berry good job, sah, I'm a man of perlite feelings, odderwise 
 I might tomble into a passion, and say someting to wound yah 
 sensashuns.' 
 
 ' What d'ye mean 1 ' I cried, hoping he would fall into a passion, 
 as I felt the need of the relief of a row. 
 
 'Sah,' he exclaimed, drawing himself erect, 'a man what 
 keeps de select company I comingles wid ashore am slow in 
 shocking dah feelings pb folks. But what I should like to say 
 am mind I don't say it I merely intends dat what I should 
 like to say am, if yah ain't satisfied wid dis little hooker, I'm 
 worry mosh sorry indeed yah ebber came aboard her. .Pump !
 
 ABOARD THE 'ORPHAN* 323 
 
 continued the poor fellow in a broken voice as though he must 
 presently weep, ' whar's dah wessel what don't purnp ? Whar*8 
 dah man-ob-war sloop dat don't pump? Whars dan Indieman. 
 as glorious as sunlight wid gilt and windows wot don't pump f 
 Whar,' he continued, raising his voice, ' is de noblest frigate ob 
 dah King of Yengland wot don't pump? Whar ' and this he 
 delivered in a shriek 'is dah magnificentest line-ob-battle ship 
 wot was yebber launched wot don't pump ? ' 
 
 He plucked his cap from his head and flung it on deck, 
 grasped the bush of hair over either ear with his hands as 
 though he intended to tear out by the roots what nature had 
 left him in that way, and then, swaying to and fro in the 
 moonlight like a drunken man, he exclaimed in a blubbering 
 voice, ' An' you specks dah poor little Orphan to keep dah seas 
 widout pumping?' 
 
 Tush ! thought I, I'm acting like a fool ; and moved by the 
 way in which the poor creature had received my insulting 
 language, I strode over to him and clapped him on the back. 
 * It's all right,' said I ; ' I don't feel very well to-night. Pump 
 away as briskly as you please, my lad, I'll not complain again. 
 I have come through some infernal adventures, Captain Ducrow, 
 and though I sneer at your little craft in my ill-temper, I am 
 grateful to Heaven for the privilege of feeling her under my feet.' 
 
 He unclinched his dingy fingers out of his hair and let his 
 arms droop slowly, whilst he looked at me with his head on one 
 side, with a slow twisting up of his eye that was in inimitable 
 correspondence with the absurd cast of his mouth. 
 
 ' I see how it am, sah/^he exclaimed j 'yah feels a bit low.' 
 
 * Worn out without being sleepy,' said L 
 
 * Sorter hankering to be soothed, preehaps?' 
 
 'Yes,' I answered, 'but your cockroaches won't help me there.' 
 
 * Tell yah what will though,' said he. 
 'What?' I asked. 
 
 4 A little poetry,' he answered. ' If yah 11 sit down I'll gib 
 yah as pretty a half-hour ob sentiment as ebber yah could buy 
 for hard money in dis yeerie airth.' 
 
 * Much obliged,' I answered. ' Since I've been talking to you 
 I've grown a bit sleepy. After all, that pump may be more 
 soothing as you call it than I had supposed. Can you find me 
 anything to serve as a pillow ? ' 
 
 He picked up his cap reflectively and presently said, ' I hab 
 it,' and stepping to a raised contrivance abaft the rudder-head, 
 he produced an ensign rolled up. ' Derej' said he, ' dere's dah 
 British colours to lie on. I'll warrant it agin all dreaming, 
 onless it be a wision ob do Income Tax.' 
 
 I took the roll of bunting, and wishing him good-night went 
 below, and stretched myself upon a locker. A slush lamp swung 
 from a blackened beam. It looked like a cofiee-pot with the 
 spout vomiting forth a lump of wick burning in a dim flame 
 that blackened into a line of smoke, which went writhing and
 
 3Ci MAROONED 
 
 f* 
 
 quivering to the upper deck, whence, spreading, it loaded the 
 atmosphere of this interior with the flavour of hot fat. The 
 beams were lined with cockroaches, wriggling and heaving in 
 dusky lengths, with a frequent skirr of one of the abominable 
 creatures swinging past my ear or dropping upon my face. 
 It was roastingly hot, and I reared to find Miss Grant suffocated 
 in the morning, if indeed the sun should find me still alive, 
 .after such a course of air as I was now booked to breathe. But 
 miserable as it was below I durst not lie on deck. The dew 
 was like rain, and the light breeze was wet with it. Further 
 exposure, moreover, following on top of what we had already 
 suffered in the boat, would nave been sheer madness, seeing 
 that we had managed to come off with our health, which might 
 receive lasting injury from another night spent unsheltered in 
 the warm, moist, fever-breeding atmosphere of these parallels. 
 
 I had thought the Iron Crown as noisy a ship as was ever 
 built, but compared with the creaking or this scnooner, as she 
 rose buoyant to the dark heave of the swell, floating down into 
 the hollow for another slide upwards, the straining sounds 
 inside of the brig were as the soft singing of a woman to the 
 clatter of a watchman's rattle. But I was dog-tired, as they 
 say at sea, and my cheek could not have pressed the ensign 
 ten minutes before I was sound asleep. 
 
 It was a night's rest to refresh me, and though, when I woke 
 up and rolled off the locker, my back ached from the hardness 
 or my couch, I felt a new man, hearty, hungry, and even cheer- 
 ful. But it was sickening though to go on deck and find a dead 
 calm, the sea molten glass, scarce stirred by a delicate undula- 
 tion, the sun an intolerable flame of fire four hours high, with 
 the heavens half full of his white dazzle, and the rest of it hot, 
 silver azure, down to the opalescent edge of the water. In the 
 far east was a dot of lighta sail ; and some four points past it 
 to starboard a streak of greenish colour swimming a finger's- 
 width above the horizon, and winding like a small sea-snake in 
 the hot air. It was some Cay, the name of which I have for- 
 gotten. There was nothing besides it and the sail in sight, not 
 a pinion of cloud to give us hope of so much as a catspaw. 
 
 Miss Grant was on deck when I arrived there. She had slept 
 not very well she told me ; but she had managed to obtain 
 rest enough to refresh her spite of the oven-like sultriness in 
 which she lay. She was awake when the day broke, and rose 
 soon after the light had filled the cabin. 
 
 'You were sleeping heavily as I passed,' she said, 'and in 
 spite of being covered with cockroaches.' 
 
 ' Would you think me querulous and ill-tempered now,' said I, 
 looking at her, ' after such a night as we have passed, for advising 
 our transshipment at the earliest possible opportunity?' 
 
 'Did I not say, Mr. Musgrave,' she answered, with a demure- 
 ness that was full of archness, ' that I am willing to do exactly 
 as you please?'
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN* 3^5 
 
 I sent a glance deep into her eyes, but the riddle went the 
 whole length of my sight and beyond it. Does she guess that 
 I love her? I thought; and can I suppose that she is even a 
 little bit fond of me in the right sort of way, I mean ? But here 
 Ducrovv stumped up to ask us where we would breakfast. 
 
 Our first day in the open boat had been a dead calm, as you 
 know, but this was deader yet as it seemed to me, perhaps 
 because of my impatience, that would grow to a torment when 
 hour after hour passed, and the spot of light that signified the 
 sail still hung stirless in the same quarter, with the streak of 
 green past it flickering like a blowing pennon on top of the 
 white gleam that trembled betwixt the blue of the sea and the 
 blue of the sky, and never a shadow of air from sunrise to sun- 
 down to dye a fathom's space of the fiery, breathless surface. 
 There was no comfort to be got out of the schooner at all, saving 
 the news that there was plenty of fresh water aboard. The 
 pump clanked steadily at regular periods throughout the long 
 hours. Now and again would come a brief bit of diversion in 
 the shape of a quarrel between two negroes, and in Captain 
 Ducrow s airs and talk there was much to laugh at ; but the 
 calm was in all things and over all things, flattening down the 
 spirits to its own monotonous level, with the heat so great besides 
 that it prohibited one the ease pi venting one's self by eager 
 exercise ; though again and again I'd halt start from my seat 
 with a longing of my temper to exhale itself in a spell of swift, 
 passionate pacing from the taffrail to as far forward as I could 
 have got. On the other hand, Miss Grant was reserved, quiet, 
 thoughtful ; always gentle and kind ' f welcoming my lightest 
 speech with a smile ; humouring my little fits of petulance, and 
 making the best of our situation by recurrence to the misery 
 from which we had been delivered^ But her gaze no longer 
 met mine with the old brilliant, intrepid steadfastness. There 
 was, methought, a suggestion of coyness about it that showed 
 somewhat oddly when I contrasted it with the dignified sweet- 
 ness and fearless candour of her earlier bearing. It chilled her 
 manner, to my fancy, as something foreign to her nature, and 
 complicated the conundrum for me yet, for there were times 
 when a look from her, a gesture, a smile, would convey notions 
 that set my heart off at a rapid trot, and then the surface would 
 thinly ice again, and leave me as bewildered as a man who 
 struggles to hunt out another's meaning in a book, the pages of 
 which have been wrongly stitched. 
 
 WELL, we had three days of this sort of thingthree day 
 and three nights of it ; and then on the morning of the fourth a 
 breeze of wind darkened and roughened the western ocean, and
 
 328 MAROONED 
 
 presently the little schooner was again" tinder way, off her 
 course by some three and a half points, but sweeping through 
 it gaily nevertheless, showing herself as rejoiced at her release 
 as if a human heart beat in her, with sharp clips of her sheering 
 stem at the frothing surges melting to her bow, and a saucy 
 whisking of crystals to the wind, and much coquettish prancing 
 and whipping of her ill-conditioned spars, all as though the 
 little crazy beauty should say, ' I have started on a dance ; the 
 fiddles have struck up ; hark to their strains in the rigging ! no 
 white foam-finger along my path shall detain me ; every offered 
 kiss of the blue billow will be repulsed.' Ducrow slapped his 
 thighs and urged her on, bursting into thick laughter at times 
 in his glee, and pointing with a veil of applause to the sparking 
 out of the flying-fish, as though, like an overgrown child, he 
 tasted a kind of victory in the flight of the beautiful little 
 creatures from the winged and buoyant and floating rushes of 
 his leaking, trembling, pump-sodden, worn-out old Orplum. 
 
 This day, shortly after noon, a small brig passed us. When I 
 first sighted the squares of her canvas I took her to be a big 
 ship, for she showed a sky-sail on the main, which threw her up 
 tall and spire-like as she came blowing up, radiant as cotton 
 could make her, over the blue edge. I had not said a word to 
 Ducrow about our intention of leaving his schooner if a chance 
 came, but I thought I would do so now, specially as yonder 
 craft promised the opportunity I had fallen half crazy in yearn- 
 ing for duringour time of stagnation. But first I spoke to 
 Miss Grant. We were sitting under the little awning aft, 
 whence we had a good view of the distant sail as it slowly 
 enlarged. 
 
 'If that ship there wil] receive us,' said I, 'shall we exchange 
 this schooner for her ? ' 
 
 ^You must think me very capricious, Mr. Musgrave,' she 
 answered ; ' have I not again and again answered yes to such 
 another question as that ? When my mind is made up, I do not 
 quickly change it indeed without excellent reason.' 
 
 ' But I want you to reflect. I wish you to think for yourself, 
 and of yourself wholly. Be that fellow^ destination what it 
 will, he is bound to sail as straight for it as the wind will let 
 him. He is heading about east. Now that is a direction exactly 
 contrary to your wishes.' 
 
 ' My wishes ! ' 
 
 ' I mean that his bowsprit points to any other quarter of the 
 world than where Rio lies.' 
 
 She looked at me an instant with an expression in her eyes 
 which showed her mind to be full, though I was too blind to 
 make out a shadow of wiiat was there too sensitive perhaps I 
 should say, for to be over sensitive is to be worse than blind 
 sometimes; and then after a little pause, she said quietly, 
 'Once more, Mr. Musgrave, I'm quite willing to leave the 
 schooner.'
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN* 327 
 
 * Captain Ducrow 1 ' I sung out. 
 
 ' Hillo, sah ! ' he answered from the rail, where he was stand- 
 ing with his arm round a backstay, watching with a grin the 
 flash of his little ship through the small ridges which whitened 
 into cream along the dirty green of the vessel's sheathing. 
 
 'Step this way, will you 1 ' said L 
 
 He sprang to the deck and approached. 
 
 4 We want you to speak that vessel/ said I, pointing. ' In a 
 word, we wish you to stop her so that we can go aboard of her, 
 as we find your accommodation scarcely all that we require, at 
 least under these burning heights ; otherwise, we're both of us 
 quite in love with your charming little vessel, whilst we highly 
 >alue you for your good breeding, and thank you excessively 
 for the attention you have paid us.' 
 
 This bit of troweling I deemed necessary that the rest might 
 be easy, but his surprise mastered his gratification, and with a 
 sort of grin in his twisted mouth, whilst his eyes on the other 
 hand stared their amazement, he cried, 'Yah want to leave 
 dah Orphan, hein 1 'commodation not good ? But I know dah 
 reason. De calm's disgusted yah. Yah was werry mosh satisfied 
 afore de wind fell.' 
 
 ' Come, captain,' said I, ' it shall be all the same to you. See 
 here ? ' I pulled out my pocket-book and produced a bank-note 
 for twenty pounds. 'There,' said I. slapping it, 'place us aboard 
 yonder craft, and this is yours. Oi course, if she's bound to some 
 outlandish place we shan t quit you ; but put us within hailing 
 distance, will you signal to speak her ; and if she will receive 
 us, and her destination be some port convenient to ourselves, 
 you shall have this money the same as though you had landed 
 us at Havanna.' 
 
 He eyed the note greedily as I folded it up and returned it to 
 the pocket-book, following that too till it was hidden, and tlien 
 said, 'All right, sail. Yah 11 miss de Orphan dere's nulfen 
 afloat but den ob course if dah lady hain't comfortable ' He 
 suddenly roared out, ' Hi, Moses ! you black teef, lay aft, mah 
 bird ob Paradise, an* hoist dat ensign half-mast high. Dat '11 
 make 'em reckon we've got someting on our minds.' 
 
 The negro came shambling along with the ensign that I had 
 slept on, and a very tattered symbol of Britannias mercantile 
 sovereignty floated slowly aloft, and then blew out when 
 within a dozen feet of the topmast-head. The stranger, how- 
 ever, appeared to take no notice of this. There was no telescope 
 aboard us, but she was near enough now to enable me to 
 distinguish her with the naked eye. She showed no colour, nor 
 indeed exhibited any disposition to shift her helm to bear down 
 to us. Ducrow luffed till our canvas was shaking fore and aft, 
 so that nothing could have been more expressive of our desire 
 to speak than the posture of the schooner, almost at a stand, 
 plunging to the short sea that she had now brought almost 
 right ahead, with every dingy balsamed cloth on her trembling,
 
 828 MAROONED 
 
 and the half-masted ensign streaming like a flame aloft, and 
 giving deep emphasis to every hint discoverable in the schooner's 
 attitude. As the stranger drew out she showed herself a brig, 
 a smaller vessel than the Iron Croion, though large enough to 
 have stowed the Orphan between her rails. She was under 
 all plain sail, with the weather-clew of the mainsail up, and she 
 glided past with graceful courtesyings upon the swell, a streak 
 of gold gleaming at her forefoot to the light of her bows, with 
 a yeasty, trembling hurrying along it like a ball of white wool 
 there, which unwound itself as she thrust it forwards. But 
 though she did not alter her course by so much as a quarter of 
 a point, our own wind-jamming brought her close enough 
 aboard to enable us to see her people clearly. A couple of 
 figures were pacing the poop under the snow-white awning. 
 There was a group of heads forwards, and a sailor in the fore- 
 topmast-rigging swinging out with his face towards the schooner 
 watching us. What her nationality was I do not know. I 
 fancied I could trace something of a Yankee paternity in the 
 colour of her cloths and the hoist of her topsails ; but be this as 
 it may, had we been some green old water-logged hulk, hoary 
 with barnacles, we could scarce have won less notice. Nothing 
 imaginable could be more provoking than the sight of those 
 two figures on the poop, coolly stumping to and iro with our 
 half-mast ensign fair in their view, and our little ship all in the 
 wind, piteous to the eye with the trembling solicitude her 
 shivering canvas gave to her mute appeal. 
 
 'Dem's no sailors,' cried Ducrow, 'dey's what's call scow- 
 bankers. Moses, mah honey, yah may haul down dah ensign, 
 Ebenezer, my lub, up helium an' fill on de little beauty agin, 
 Dere '11 be more ships passing presently,' he added, addressing 
 me. Then clapping his hands together, he yelled at the top of 
 his pipes, 'Tail on to dah troat halliards, mah sweet and 
 pleasant livelies ; gib dah Orphan a chance, boys. Look at 
 dah set ob dat sail Whar's de gal whose gwine to dance wid 
 de heel ob her boot wore down ? ' saying which he flung himself 
 excitedly upon the tackle in question, roaring out in thick 
 negro accents 
 
 Wah're dah dandy ship an' dah dandy crew. 
 
 (Choru* of black throatt putting behind hirn) 
 Hi, Bah I ho, Bah! slap 'im up cheearlyl 
 We am dah boys who's dah lady's only joys, 
 
 (Chorvt of black throatt pulling) 
 An' dah gals dey lab ns dearhly. 
 
 (Full Chorus) 
 
 An' it's yo hi ho ! dah breeze him do Wow, 
 
 An' dah tack will come taut wid dah jigger ! 
 
 An* dah ship she roll along 
 
 To u lubberly a song 
 
 AM was ebber sweetly sung by niggec.*
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN* 2fr 
 
 The job of sail-setting being ended, Ducrow looked at me to 1 
 see what I thought of nis song manifestly a composition of 
 his own, sung to an air that had an odd touch of African wild- 
 ness in it, at least to my fancy, as it floated ventrally through 
 the enormous mouths and blubber lips of the chorusing niggers. 
 But I was too keenly disappointed and mortified by the cool 
 behaviour of the brig to heed him. 
 
 Our chance, however, was presently to come, though we had 
 to wait for it a little while longer. It was the sixth day of our 
 being on board the schooner Orphan. Long spells of dead 
 calms, of light head-winds, and small baffling breezes had re- 
 sulted, spite of the subtle _ quality of sneaking through it pos- 
 sessed by the little craft, in our discovering that Havanna still 
 lay a fair week's sail away from us, even supposing a prosperous 
 wind every day, and an average run of a hundred miles in the 
 twenty-four hours. At wide intervals a sail would show remote 
 and faint upon the horizon, often vanishing magically, like a 
 wreath of mist devoured by the sun. Life even on board a 
 large West Indiaman in these waters, the most roasting liquid 
 tract on the face of the world, is unendurable enough even with 
 a wide spread of snow-white awnings to cool the deck, with 
 shadow from the forecastle to the tatfrail ; great cabin-windows 
 wide open, the heels of windsails penetrating every aperture, 
 with a constant sluicing of the planks to keep them cooL But 
 think of a small red-hot schooner, that in moments of a breath- 
 less calm, when the sun stood almost overhead, tingled with 
 sounds as though she was actually frying ! the cockroaches 
 multiplying day by day, the cabin atmosphere growing more 
 and more difficult to breathe every time one entered it, no 
 shelter save a strip of awning aft, nothing better to eat than 
 salt meat and ship's biscuit, nor to drink than cold water, of 
 which, though the stock was plentiful, the quality was by no 
 means good, and which was certainly not to be rendered more 
 palatable by the one jar of fiery rum that Ducrow kept secret 
 in his lazarette, never producing it without taking a dark and 
 suspicious view of the little skylight, or going on tiptoe to the 
 companion to make sure that no man of his crew was peering 
 down. 
 
 But there was bound to come an end some day or other to 
 these faint gaspings of catspaws ; to the intolerable brassy 
 dazzle of the noontide heavens, to the putrefying calms of the 
 night, with dim configurations of phosphorus and graveyard 
 glowings of ghostly fires, making one think with the poet that 
 the very deep was rotting. 
 
 It was the morning of the sixth day of our rescue from the 
 perils of the open boat. All night long the weather had been 
 breathless, but with the rising of the sun there had come a small 
 breeze of wind, a little to the eastward of south, which as the 
 morning advanced freshened, and the schooner was sliding 
 through it once again, heading saucily along her course, -with
 
 HOO MAROONED 
 
 Ducrow strutting the decks in high spirits, a couple of negroes 
 repairing a sail forward, another at the tiller, a fourth perspir- 
 ing at the old pump. 
 
 Suddenly Ducrow bawled out, ' Sail ho ! ' pointing ahead. 
 
 I looked languidly in the direction he indicated, not rising 
 even, so sick was I of this cry of ' sail ho ! ' heretofore as barren 
 to my purpose as a parrot's meaningless croak of the words. I 
 was conversing with Miss Grant at the time, and turned to her 
 afresh, proceeding in what I was saying without giving the 
 vessel ahead another thought. Time passed ; presently Ducrow 
 said, 'Dat fellow's a big 'un what's coming 'long dah. We 
 mustn't hab de go-by given us dis time, if it's to be helped, sah. 
 Must make more fuss, odderwise dere's no chance ob getting 
 compassionated.' So saying, he went to the little locker, took 
 put the ensign, and bent it, Jack down, to the halliards, and ran 
 it half-mast high, belaying it slackly that it might blow out 
 with a good visible curve. This done, he bawled to his men to 
 shorten saiL 
 
 ' Down jib,, mah blackbirds ! down wid both tawpsails ! jump, 
 mah blacks, jump ! Hurrah now fo' de ship. Up maintack, lot 
 go mainpeak-halliards. Now den, Hebenezer, you black teef, 
 down helium, and trow us right up into de wind up into de 
 wind up into de wind, I says,' walloping about in a most 
 extraordinary manner as he bawled these orders, and springing 
 from the deck on his naked feet as though the planks were too 
 hot and well they might be ! to suffer him to stand upon 
 them. Thus all in a moment, so to say, the little schooner was 
 brought to a halt; her mainsail 'scandalized.' her masts half 
 denuded of canvas, her bowsprit pointing to the wind, the few 
 cloths she showed shivering to the breeze with such a symbol 
 of human distress flying aloft as richly coloured and most 
 admirably rounded off the picture of misery which the posture 
 of the vessel now submitted. 
 
 The stranger was heading dead for us, as though she must run 
 us down indeed, so immediately were we lying athwart her 
 hawse. She came steadily along, with her yards braced forward, 
 a vessel apparently of six hundred tons, painted black, standing 
 high out of water, a foretopmast-stunsail set, her royal yards 
 close to the trucks, with a glimpse to be had of large black 
 tops under the curve of her topsails. I went with Miss Grant 
 to the side to watch the stranger. My heart beat fast with 
 expectation, vet I struggled hard with my impulse of hope, 
 dreading in tlie mood I then was the effect of a second disap- 
 pointment. Suddenly the vessel took in her foretopmast-stun- 
 sail, then a spot of colour floated aloft past the shining round 
 of her courses to the gaff end. It blew out, and I muttered just 
 above my breath, ' Thank God ! ' as I recognized the English 
 flag. 
 
 'He means to speak us, at all events,' I cried. 'Pray Heaven 
 he will show mercy, and take us off this schooner. Why, if he
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN* 831 
 
 were bound on a search for the Xor'-West passage I'd go with 
 
 w 
 
 him. 
 
 ' I dare say,' Miss Grant exclaimed, in a musing soi-t of way, 
 *that the captain of that ship will wonder at our wish to leave 
 the schooner when we are within a week's sail of Ilavanna.' 
 
 'Yes, 5 said I, looking at her, whilst she kept her face averted 
 by continuing to gaze at the approaching vessel ; ' but we are 
 not bound to Havanna, you know. Rio is the place we started 
 for: and besides, are we within a week's sail of Ilavanna? 
 Perhaps to-morrow may introduce a succession of calms that 
 shall last a month, during all which time we are to lie here in 
 this bescorched schooner, with our lovely countenances slowly 
 roasting into a rich brown under yonder heavenly furnace 1 
 Eh, Miss Grant ? Never mind about that skipper there wonder- 
 ing. Better Van Diemen's Land in a ship like yon, as they'd say 
 in the north, than Havanna with Eio close on its heels in this 
 little frying-pan.' 
 
 She turned just to glance at me, with a gleam like a smile in 
 the look she shot through the dark fringes that drooped again 
 as she resumed her attitude of watching the coming ship. 
 'Twas not often that I got a view of her mind ; but by her 
 manner then, it seemed to me it was her intention to let me 
 know she had obtained a very accurate sight of mine. Be it 
 so, thought I ; but if that craft there will receive us, we'll board 
 her all the same. 
 
 She was a handsome picture as she drew close, becalming the 
 blue under her lee into a tremorless mirror, in which the re- 
 flection of her swelling canvas sank in cream, but lustrous as 
 silver too. She had so keen a stem that she clove the rippling 
 surface with scarce the disturbance of a flash of froth in the 
 wrinkles which broke from her brows, and which went away 
 astern of her in lines of light when her shadow was off them, 
 and when they streamed fair to the sun. She was heading as 
 if to run us down, but on a sudden her main-topsail was braced 
 aback, with a falling off of her head that gave us a view of her 
 decks, with two white quarter-boats swinging at the weather 
 davits ; a couple of men standing at the poop-rail clothed in 
 white, with broad straw hats ; oeyond them the flutter of 
 woman's apparel, as I thought ; several sailors on the top 
 gallant-forecastle, their whole shapes plain through the low open 
 rail that protected this part of the craft. As she came floating 
 alongside within easy talking distance, she seemed to tower 
 above us like a line-of-battle ship. One of the two men dressed 
 in white approached the mizzen-rigging to hail us. I now saw a 
 woman standing near the skylight, and at that moment another 
 woman came up through the little companion-hatch and joined 
 her. 
 
 Ducrow sprang upon the bulwarks, and pulling off his cap ho 
 wildly flourished it. whilst he vociferated, 'Ho, dah ship ahoy ! ' 
 
 'Hallo 1 ' responded the man standing at the mizzen-rigging.
 
 332 MAROONED 
 
 *What ship am dat?' bawled Ducrow, but with a fine air of 
 importance in his manner, as though this were a ceremony to 
 yield him dignity, and therefore to be made as much or as 
 possible. I secretly bestowed a sea-blessing or two upon his 
 bald head in my impatience ; but it would not do to interrupt 
 him 
 
 'The Bristol Trader? came back the answer, 'of and for 
 Bristol from Havanna, five days out. And what schooner's 
 that?' 
 
 'Dah Orphan ob Nassoo, bound to Havanna, but percasti- 
 nated by calms and head winds. We hab someting pertikler 
 to communicate, and will send a boat.' 
 
 ' Ay,' cried the other - } ' but can't you tell us what's the matter 
 with you without sending a boat ? You have your ensign Jack 
 down : what is wrong ? Bear a hand, for time s precious.' 
 
 On hearing this, and fearing that Ducrow would muddle this 
 opportunity away for us with his negro dandyfications and fine 
 airs and words, I sprang on to the rail beside him, and with a 
 thrust of my elbow tumbled him inboard. 
 
 * Ship ahoy I ' I shouted, 
 r 'Hallo!' 
 
 *The case is this. This lady.' pointing to Miss Grant, *and 
 myself sailed as passengers from the Downs in June last 
 aboard the brig Iron Grown. There was a mutiny. The mate 
 was killed, the captain disappeared, and the brig was headed 
 for Cuba. One of the Bahama Cays was made, and this lady 
 and I were marooned on it. A boat came ashore, we left the 
 island in her. and were picked up by this schooner, and we 
 desire to exchange her for your ship, if you will receive us as 
 passengers.' 
 
 The man in white flourished his hand. ' Come aboard,' he 
 exclaimed ; * I dare say we can arrange.' 
 
 'Over wid dah boat, over wid dah boat, mah darkies,' 
 screamed Ducrow. * Hurrah now, bullies, no stopping now to 
 shave, if yah please ; 'taint dinner-time yet, so no loafing.' 
 
 The schooner carried a boat on chocks amidships : as leaky, 
 sun-blistered, paint-denuded a fabric as the mother whose child 
 she was. The gangway was unshipped, the three negroes and 
 Ducrow yelling and bawling all together, and stamping with 
 their naked feet till the thrashing of the decks sounded like 
 twenty or thirty people clapping their hands, ran the boat to 
 the gangway, and launched her smack-fashion. The excitement 
 of one negro, however, carried him overboard with her. He fell 
 plump, but his black head instantly shot up alongside like a 
 sweep's brush out of a chimney-pot, and in a trice he was in the 
 boat, combing the wet out of his breeches and grinning into 
 Ducrow's face, who shook his fist at him as ' dah clumsiest son 
 ob a hog wid a sow for a grandmudder as was ebber to be met 
 'pon dan high seas.' 
 
 A second negro then jumped into the boat, into which tbt
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN* 3:53 
 
 water was beginning to drain in twenty places, so that I saw 
 if we did not bear a hand we should be awash before we had 
 half measured the distance between the schooner and the ship. 
 The negroes threw the oars over, and splashed me alongside the 
 Bristol Trader as though rowing for a wager, with a dollar for 
 the man who should catch the most ' crabs.' I sprang into the 
 main-chains, and in a minute stood upon the ship's poop. 
 
 The captain, as the man who had hailed us proved to be, was 
 an intelligent-looking, weather-darkened, iron-haired fellow of 
 some forty^-five years, thin, smooth-faced, with a gray, seawardly 
 eye, kind in its expression. I raised my hat, he did the same. 
 I repeated my story, now relating it circumstantially. The two 
 wo'men drew near as I talked, and he interrupted me once to 
 introduce me to one of them as his wife, to the other as a friend 
 of hers, who was going home in his ship as a passenger. My 
 romantic story seemed quite to the taste of these ladies, who 
 frequently broke out into exclamations of astonishment, whilst 
 they sent glances full of curiosity at Miss Grant, who had with- 
 drawn to the shelter of the awning on the schooner's quarter- 
 deck, and sat there watching us, too far off for her beauty to 
 be evident, though one might have guessed her charms even 
 at that distance by the delicate light of her face under her 
 broad hat. 
 
 * But you were bound to Rio,' said the captain, 
 
 * Yes,' I answered. 
 
 'You may easily get to Rio from Havanna,' he continued. 
 'That schooner should carry you to Havanna in a week. It 
 seems a pity to travel all the way home again, when your port 
 is comparatively at hand. We could provision you too with a 
 few articles to render the run more tolerable.' 
 
 ' No,' said I warmly, ' there is nothing in food and drink to 
 render that schooner tolerable. Her cabin creeps with cock- 
 roaches, the atmosphere can scarce be respired for the heat and 
 smell or it. The lady and I have talked the matter over, and 
 we are earnest in our wish to return to England. Why, see 
 here, sir ; you'll be able to land us at Bristol before we could 
 hope to reach Rio ; even suppose yonder schooner should convey 
 us to Havanna in a week s time, which I gravely question 
 when I recall the spells of weather which have nearly murdered 
 us. Of course,' I went on, seeing him look a bit reflective, 'we 
 should ask you to receive us as passengers, that is to say, as people 
 who will be glad to defray all charges for acorn inodating us.' 
 
 'Oh,' he said, in a tone of indifference, 'that matter can be 
 hereafter settled. As a mere question of humanity it would be 
 my duty to receive you. You have no luggage, you say ? ' 
 
 'None.' 
 
 * Well, sir, the lady can come along at once.' He looked over 
 the side. ' Hi, you Jumbos 1 shove off now, and bring the lady 
 aboard.' 
 
 I hailed the schooner : ' Miss Grant, the negroes will fetch you.
 
 334 MAROONED 
 
 Ducrow, come you along with the lady that you may receiva 
 your motiey.' 
 
 Ten minutes later I had assisted Miss Grant over the side, 
 and escorted her on to the poop. She bowed with stately grace 
 to the two women, who courtesied to her as though she were a 
 
 Erincess. The captain, whose name by the way was Foljambe, 
 eld a trifle aloof at sight of her, eyeing her with a mixture of 
 astonishment and admiration. Perhaps now, with a couple of 
 her own sex at hand to contrast her by, helped by such defini- 
 tion as her fine figure would obtain from the white and roomy 
 deck, the clean brass-work, the sparkling skylights, the snowy 
 awning, with the wheel in the sunshine past it, at which stood 
 the smartly-dressed figure of an English sailor carelessly lean- 
 ing upon the spokes, watching us under the spread of a great 
 Cuban hat perhaps now, in the swift glance I threw at her, 
 I could see in a manner scarce to be managed before, how 
 little her beauty had suffered from the trials we had come 
 through, from exposure to the high sun, from the many bitter 
 anxieties which had clouded her mind. The glow of the tropics 
 was in her cheek, and seemed to clarify the brightness ana to 
 enrich the loveliness of her full, dark, speaking eyes ; the very 
 neglect of apparel enforced by privation appeared as a grace in 
 her, as the dishevelment of her soft brown lustrous hair gave a 
 character of romance to the dignified sweetness of her counten- 
 ance. 1 could not wonder that Mrs. Foljambe and her friend 
 stared, nor that the captain should have fallen back a step 
 to her approach, as though veritably startled by her beauty, 
 as I had been indeed when I first met her. 
 
 Captain Ducrow came up to me, cap in hand. His strut was 
 incomparable. I heard tne half-smothered laughter of men 
 forward as he bowed first to the captain's wife, then to her 
 friend, then to the captain, bringing his cap to his heart, and 
 slowly bending his body, till I thought he had a mind to double 
 himself up after the manner of stage contortionists. 
 
 'Berry sorry to lose yah, Massa Musgrave,' he said to me, 
 'and berry much sorrier still to say good-bye to dis most 
 boptiful lady, which,' he added, with an emotional grunt in his 
 voice, ' I may nebber, nebber see agin in dis yeerie earth ' He 
 was proceeding, but I could see that Captain Foljambe was 
 impatient. So I cut him short by handing him the bank-note, 
 and then shook him warmly by the hand, thanking him with 
 the sort of sincerity that a man who had gone through what I 
 had could hardly miss of, for his rescue of us and his subsequent 
 kindness. Miss Grant also gave him her hand, addressing a 
 few words of gratitude; but my gravity vanished when the 
 poor fellow suddenly plumped down on one knee and lifted 
 her fingers to the side of his face where his mouth was. 
 
 'Now then, skipper,' cried Captain Foljambe, 'away with ye, 
 my lad. This is a breeze to make the most of, so please don't 
 keep me waiting.'
 
 WE QUIT THE 'ORPHAN' 335 
 
 Gor bless yah ! Gorramighty in hebben bless yah both, an* 
 make yah happy,' cried the poor fellow, backing to the gang- 
 way as though from the presence of royalty, and speaking with 
 so much emotion that I looked to see him blubber. * May dah 
 good Lord look down 'pon dis ship, and send yah ten-knot 
 breezes all dah way ;' and arrived at the gangway, he dropped 
 over the side, and was pulled to his little schooner. 
 
 'Get your topsail-yard swung, Mr. Murphy,' exclaimed the 
 captain, addressing the mate, who was the other of the two 
 men I had noticed clothed in white, and who had been standing 
 quietly on the lee-side of the poop, waiting for this business 
 to end. 
 
 The sailors sprang to the braces ; the great yards came slowly 
 round, the sails, silk-white to the sunshine, swelled out to the 
 blue breeze, and the Bristol Trader was heading along on her 
 course again. Meanwhile the two negroes had splashed Ducrow 
 aboard his little schooner in hot haste, to save themselves the 
 job of baling the boat, as I suspected ; but I gathered what the 
 hurry was about, when the poor yellow-faced fellow, who had 
 drawn his cap down over his ears in his excitement, floundered 
 as though pursued by a bull to the signal-halliards, hauled down 
 the ensign with frantic gesticulations, bent it on afresh with the 
 Jack right-side up, and then sent it aloft again, yelling to one 
 of his negroes to lay aft in a voice that was distinctly audible, 
 though the distance between the vessels was being magically 
 widened, considering the lightness of the breeze. The negro 
 seized one length of the halliards, Ducrow the other, and between 
 them they dipped the flag, that is to say, they lowered it as a 
 token of farewell hoisting it anew, and then lowering it not 
 once, not five times, but over and over and over again ; the 
 whole dusky crowd of them howling a good-bye at us every 
 time the flag rose to the masthead, until the schooner had 
 slipped so far astern that their voices could no longer be 
 caught, whilst the flag itself had dwindled into a mere red spot. 
 
 It was the last I saw of the little craft ere I turned to accept 
 Captain Foljambe's invitation to step below. I behold her now 
 again with my mind's eye, heaving to the long ocean swell, with 
 a tremor of light in her black side, as she lifts it wet from the 
 brine, slowly paying off with her jib rounding, her main-peak 
 hoisting, a aingy white topsail slowly creeping to the masthead, 
 the Lihputiamzed figures of her crew making a very toy of the 
 little fabric indeed as she heads slowly into the mighty loneli- 
 ness of the ocean past her bows, with the glare of the sun in 
 the sky over her going down like a wall of dazzling brass to the 
 sifting into it of the whitish blue of the heavens trembling upon 
 the remote western confines. Ah, there are no memories BO 
 dream-like as those one carries away from the ocean.
 
 3S3 MAKOONED 
 
 CHAPTER^ XXXV 
 HOMB 
 
 THE Bristol Trader was one of the most comfortable ships of 
 her class that ever I was aboard of. Her cabins were tall and 
 roomy, her decks spacious, her port-holes large, her hatchways 
 big enough to serve for an emigrant ship. After our experiences 
 on the island, in the open boat, and on the schooner, it was like 
 arriving at some cheerful, hospitable inn, with the welcome of a 
 blazing fire, a hot supper, and a warm bed, after hours of blind 
 groping over miles of snow-clad moors, to find one's self in such 
 a ship as this. One needs to be marooned to appreciate comforts 
 made cheap by homeliness and familiarity. ^ We had been 
 absolutely destitute aboard the schooner, without the com- 
 monest and meanest conveniences no hairbrush, no towels, 
 soap, sheets, and what not ; nay, there had not been even a look- 
 ing-glass, and neither Miss Grant nor I had the least idea of the 
 sort of faces we submitted until we had been conducted to our 
 cabins by Captain Foljambe and his wife. I borrowed a razor 
 from the captain, and shaved myself for the first time since I 
 had left the island, and I protest the sensation was as though 
 nature had clothed me in a new skin. It is the commonplaces 
 of life which make themselves heard of in maritime disasters. 
 The captain was good enough to lend me a clean shirt and 
 collar, with other articles of underclothing, all which sat very 
 comfortably upon me, as we were pretty nearly of the same 
 build. He tola me that his wife was taking care of Miss Grant, 
 that she (namely, Mrs. Foljambe), together with her friend Mrs. 
 Tweed, had between them a plentiful stock of clothing, so that 
 my companion could be at once made comfortable, and kept so 
 until our arrival at Bristol. -** 
 
 He was a man that improved on acquaintance, shrewd, 
 respectful, sailorly in a sort of careless manner that was a grace 
 in its way, well spoken, with something of the manners of a 
 well-bred gentleman, roughened^ without being coarsened by 
 the usage of the ocean. He sat in my bunk whilst I dressed, 
 and asked me many questions about the Iron Croum, and our 
 life on the island. He could give me no news of the brig, did 
 not seem to know of her name even, but he told me that whilst 
 at Havanna he had heard of a vessel which had fallen in with 
 a boat containing four men, that had gone adrift during thick 
 ; weather from the craft that owned it ; and this coming on top 
 of DucroVs narration, confirmed my belief that Gordon and 
 the others had been saved ; for which I was heartily thankful 
 indeed. 
 
 1 It was long past the dinner-hour, but neither Miss Grant nor 
 I bad broken our fast since the morning.
 
 HOME 337 
 
 On my telling Captain Foljambe this, he immediately gave 
 orders to his steward to prepare a meal for us in the cabin, and 
 by the time I had finished civilizing myself with the razor, 
 hairbrush, and the skipper's linen, the meal awaited us : cold 
 roast chicken, fine white biscuits, ham. several plates of fruit with 
 the sweetness of the tropic soil still in their flavour and fresh- 
 ness, a decanter of brandy, a monkey of cold water why, Heaven 
 bless us ! after poor DucroVs brine-toughened buffalo meat and 
 his caulkers of water warm from the scuttle-butts, this was 
 such a princely regale that the recollection of it bids fair to 
 outlast the memory of many a sumptuous banquet that I had 
 ^before and have since sat down to. The afternoon sunshine 
 "flashed azure off the water through the open ports, and filled 
 the interior with a soft golden haze that floated cool to every 
 sense in me after our days and nights of the Orphan's cabin, 
 upon the atmosphere freshened by the gushings of air from the 
 white canvas tubes of the windsails, whilst the eye was soothed 
 by the violet shadow cast by the awning down upon the open 
 skylights, in whose gaping casements the hot breeze hummed 
 as though it echoed the burden of the island insect chorus. 
 
 I was conversing with the captain's wife and Mrs. Tweed, 
 two very homely, unaffected ladies, brimful of kindness ana 
 sympathy, when Miss Grant arrived. I had never seen her 
 beauty look so rich. The peculiar complexion of the atmosphere 
 in the cabin just then may have helped her, but methought 
 there was the glory of the newly-blown flower in her as she 
 stood a moment after coming out of her cabin, instantly smiling 
 as our gaze met. I brought her to the table, and we seated 
 ourselves. There was a West Indian plant, bearing a star- 
 shaped flower lovely as the lily, but inodorous, trained against 
 the nandsomely-framed trunk of the mizzen-mast, sloping abaft 
 the table from the deck to tha cabin. The captain cut one of 
 these flowers and presented it with a sailorly bow to Miss 
 Grant, who thanked him, and put it in her bosom. 
 
 'This sort of thing,' said I, almost jealous to think that the 
 hand of a stranger should have touched a stem that was to find 
 so sacred a resting-place, ' makes one feel alive again. I fancy 
 I must have been dead for a month, perhaps a little longer. 
 Everything strikes me with an astonishment that is preposter- 
 ously unnatural. This damagk table-cloth ; how white it is ! 
 this crystal tumbler I never before knew glass to sparkle so ! 
 and yonder roast chicken I upon my word, I thought there had 
 been an end of hens.' 
 
 The captain laughed. *I have been shipwrecked, sir/ he 
 exclaimed. ' I've known the time when the hairy face of a sea- 
 man, all knobs and warts, has set me weeping as though I was 
 taking my last view of the only man left in the world besides 
 
 ^How very odd!' exclaimed Mrs. Foljambe. Tve never 
 heard yon say that before, William. 1 ,
 
 3.-JS MAROONED 
 
 'My dear,' said he, 'had it been the last woman perhaps I 
 shouldn't have cried.' 
 
 ' Because I dare say you'd have taken care it shouldn't have 
 been your last view of her,' observed Mrs. Tweed, dryly. This 
 lady was a widow. 
 
 'Now, Miss Grant,' said I, working away at the roast fowl and 
 ham, and immensely enjoying Captain Foljambe's excellent old 
 brandy, 'shall we ask our kind friend here to shift his helm 
 and give chase to the schooner, that we may overhaul and board 
 her afresh, and make our way to Havanna in her ? ' 
 
 ' If you will return to her, I will,' she answered. 
 
 'That means no.' said Captain Foljambe. 'No for all hands. 
 Bad look-out to shift the helm now, Miss Grant. It blows a 
 pretty six-knot breeze.' 
 
 ' Hurrah ! ' cried I. ' Why, with this clipper keel under us we 
 shall be heaving Bristol into sight whilst the little Orphan is 
 still dodging the ghost of a catspaw in waters not yet hull down. 
 No, no, it was a voyage not to be pursued. A twenty-five-ton 
 boat, Mrs. Foljambe ! her one pump going day and night ! all the 
 plagues of Egypt rolled into one, in the shape of cockroaches 1 
 Think of that, Mrs. Tweed.' 
 
 ' Shocking, sir,' she cried, ' the horrid creatures ! But there 
 are none here, thank goodness.' 
 
 ' Here and there one,' said the captain. 
 
 And so we went on, chatting and eating, then mounted on 
 deck, I with a big Havanna cigar in my mouth, so joyous in 
 spirits that it might have needed but a band of music to have 
 started me off dancing for the rest of the day. What words 
 have I to describe the delight that filled me, as I looked at the 
 sparkling blue sea, sloping between the awning-stanchions to 
 the heavens, which were reddening all round to the westering of 
 the luminary, and at the swelling folds of the courses, which, 
 past the edge of our canvas shelter, rose in stately cloud upon 
 cloud, every cloth silently doing its work, rounding marble-like 
 to leeward, the shadows of the rigging lying in delicate curves 
 in each still, snow-like heart, and the tinkle of water cwiftly 
 shorn at the stem faintly sweeping a bell- like note through the 
 steady breezing of the wind I The ocean looked boundless from 
 the height of the poop-deck, and the way before us was yet a long 
 road. But my heart beat the more gladly for the very thought 
 of it when I turned to look at AureHa Grant, and reflected that 
 she was still by my side ; that for many a week we should be to- 
 gether ; that, in short, I had by this manoeuvre indefinitely post- 
 poned the hour of our separation. Was I dishonourable 1 Was I 
 disloyal ? Was I unfaithful to my trust ? Maybe, maybe. How 
 you would have acted in my case I cannot telL Fallibility must 
 tail somewhere, says the old moralist. And I was in love. 
 
 But you have made one eventful voyage with me, and I am 
 as little desirous possibly as you that you should undertake a 
 second uneventful one uneventful, I mean, in respect of inci-
 
 HOME 839 
 
 dent, for we were a smart ship, and the crew hearty and honest^ 
 die captain a wise disciplinarian, and his two mates plain, 
 sturdy, steady-going seamen. Yet though uneventful in the 
 sense of gales of wind, collisions, lee-shores, leaks, mutinies, and 
 the rest of the list of maritime perils, i'or me it was marked by 
 a passage that rendered it more stirring than all the experi- 
 ences we had gone through boiled down into one could have 
 proved. I have spoken of a quality of reserve in Miss Grant's 
 manner when aboard the schooner, of my own sensitiveness to 
 it, and how between us there had come a something that seemed 
 to hold us a bit apart ; but this had made way before we left 
 the little vessel for the old frankness, the warmth, the sweet 
 and fearless cordiality of her bearing towards me when on the 
 island. Yet we had not been twenty -four hours in the Bristol 
 Trader when I noticed that her behaviour was once more 
 charged with a chilly and uncomfortable element of reserve. 
 Then she even grew timorous at times, shunning my gaze, 
 though sometimes I'd catch her unawares watching me with an 
 expression of wistful ness that lay sad in her eyes, like a shadow 
 of melancholy there. I very well knew she had guessed that 
 my proposal to sail home was merely that I might possess her 
 society for some weeks or perhaps months longer, and I would 
 fancy that in thinking over this she had come to resent it, as 
 though she was now clearly seeing that my duty lay in pro- 
 ceeding with her in the schooner to Havanna, whence, as Cap- 
 tain Foljambe was constantly saying and I certainly did not 
 like him the better for this confounded trick of iteration we 
 would have met a ship to transport us to Rio without delay. 
 
 All this secret worrying in me over what might be in her 
 thoughts resulted in cooling my manner too, though my love for 
 her increased as my demeanour became inexpressive ; and some- 
 times it would happen that we were together only at meal-times, 
 by which I mean that I would go and sulkily post myself in some 
 corner with a book, which I would read upside down, wh^st she 
 paced the deck with the captain's wife or Mrs. Tweed, or remain 
 below in the cabin. I was forever seeking to interpret her, but 
 never could find the hints I sought. Wh^n vf ith her I would 
 constantly talk of Alexander and of the plans I had formed : 
 for instance, we should arrive at Bristol ; we should then proceed 
 to London, where she would take up her abode at the hotel she 
 occupied before she ^eft England, whilst I made all necessary 
 preparations for a second attempt to carry her to her sweetheart. 
 But I took notice whilst I thus talked that she had very little to 
 say to it all. She'd thank me and tell me I was too good, and 
 protest that it was not likely she would put me to the trouble 
 of escorting her again ; that most probably on her arrival in 
 London she would write the story of our adventures to Rio, and 
 wait for my cousin to fetch her most probably ; indeed, she 
 would add with a sigh, she had not made up her mind. There 
 was plenty of time to think the matter over, and meanwhile I 
 
 Z2
 
 S10 MAROONED 
 
 was not to dream that she would again subject me to the risk 
 of undergoing perhaps worse adventures than those which we 
 had happily come safe through. This and the like she would say. 
 but always with a sort of air of indifference, as though she talked 
 to a person whose programme she did not regard as a very sincere 
 one, and as though in consequence she could take no interest 
 in it. 
 
 There came a day, however, when feeling grew too strong for 
 me. Conscience had wrestled hard with inclination, but to no 
 purpose. Often, whilst tossing in my bunk at night, whilst 
 seated alone on the deck by day, I would ask myself if I had 
 not acted dishonourably in falling in love with this woman, and 
 whether I should not be rendering my sin heinous beyond 
 forgiveness by proposing to her. But it was like putting some 
 insoluble riddle to my heart. I gave it up. Had Alexander 
 been my brother instead of my cousin it would have been all 
 the same. I was head over ears in love with Aurelia Grant, 
 and I made up my mind to marry her if she would have me. 
 And there came a time, as I have said, when patience gave way, 
 when passion grew too powerful for restraint, ana when I 
 determined to put the matter boldly to her and see what she 
 had to say to it. 
 
 The ship was then on the equatorial verge of the Bay of 
 Biscay, so you will gather that I did not make up my mind in 
 a hurry. Our clipper had made a noble run through the trades, 
 with fine weather and pleasant breezes to follow, and now on 
 this day at noon we found ourselves under all plain sail on the 
 port tack, bowlines triced out, a light breeze off the bow, and 
 the vessel sliding quietly through it over the long undulations 
 of the Atlantic swell, flowing with pulse-like regularity from 
 the westward. When the dusk settled down, the half moon 
 shone in the sky. Her light lay soft and white upon our high- 
 reaching canvas, and filled the shadow between the rails with 
 a silver tint, through which the forms of the seamen moved in 
 dark outlines. The awning was furled, and the poop-deck lay 
 almond-white to the stars, with many quicksilver-like ripplings 
 of radiance in the polished brass-work, and the man at the 
 helm rising with the lift of the stern against a faintness like 
 the after-glow on the sea-line there, his shape sharply wrought 
 upon it, and the circle and spokes of the wheel keen as though 
 he and it were an etching in India ink. 
 
 I came on deck after an hour spent alone in my cabin, and 
 stood a little at the head of the ladder that led to the poop, 
 trying to persuade myself that I lingered to admire this fair 
 ocean night-picture ; but I found my eyes quickly going from 
 it in search of Miss Grant. I saw her in a moment standing 
 in the dark shade flung on the deck by the reflection of the 
 mizzen-mast. She was talking to Mrs. Foljambe and Mr. 
 Murphy, the chief mate. I put on the lightest air I could 
 summon, and approached the group in an easy saunter.
 
 HOME 841 
 
 'Pleasant weather this for the close of October, Mrs. 
 Foljambe,' said I ; ' it won't be quite so nice a little higher up.' 
 
 'There's no climate after all, Mr. Musgrave, that beats the 
 English,' said Mrs. Foljambe. 
 
 'Well, madam,' said I, ' I might agree with you if I were a 
 slug or a water-rat.' 
 
 'You must go to the west of Ireland for a fine climate/ quoth 
 Mr. Murphy. 
 
 ' Too much steam,' said Mrs. Foljambe. ' I once stayed a week 
 at Ballyvaghan, and it was like looking at natural scenery 
 through the smoke from a bowl of hot punch.' 
 
 'You should have thried Ballaghaderreen, ma'm,' said Mr. 
 Murphy. 
 
 ' Say Ballydehob at once, now,' answered Mrs. Foljambe ; 
 'and I am sure a hob the poor creatures who live there must 
 find it a hob with a steaming kettle on it.' 
 
 'Well,' said I, ' this evening is a fine one, but it is a bit chilly 
 for all that. What say you to a stroll, Miss Grant ? ' 
 
 She assented, and we left Mrs. Foljambe and Mr. Murphy 
 arguing on the climate of Ireland. 
 
 'Will you take my arm ? ' said I. ' This long heave is gentle, 
 but it doesn't help to steady one.' 
 
 She did as I asked. I thought I felt a little tremor in her 
 fingers ; she was silent and pensive, looking away from me 
 towards the ocean ; but this had been her demeanour of late, 
 and was therefore not new in her. 
 
 ' This is the Bay of Biscay,' said I ; ' not many more days novr 
 before us.' 
 
 'I shall be glad when the voyage is ended,' she answered : 
 *the Foljambes are very kind, everything is nice here, but I 
 am weary weary weary of the sea, Mr. Musgrave.' 
 
 ' You had need be ; it has used you very ill, and something 
 of this weariness of the ocean you are extending.' 
 
 ' Extending ! I don't understand you.' 
 
 ' Well now, to be plain, Miss Grant, you have had enough of 
 my company.' 
 
 'You don't think so,' she answered quietly; 'why do you 
 say so then ? ' 
 
 * I say so because I think so, and I think so because the fancy 
 has been forced upon me by your manner. Since we have been 
 in this ship you have ceased to be what you were,' 
 
 What was I?' 
 
 'Warm, cordial, frank, making our association to me so sweet 
 an intimacy, that though I was clamorous to leave the island, 
 I now vow to Heaven I would be glad to go on suffering a life- 
 long imprisonment in it to preserve what I have lost in you.' 
 
 'You have lost nothing,' sne exclaimed, speaking in a subdued 
 voice, that did not however conceal her agitation ; 'if you have 
 noticed any change in me, it is but the reflection of your own 
 manner.'
 
 342 MAROONED 
 
 'My manner I It should be warm, not cold; it should b 
 bright, not gloomy, if love be the hot and radiant emotion the 
 poets tell us it is. Aurelia ' 
 
 She fixed her dark eyes upon me as I pronounced her name, 
 and halted, looking at me intently, but for a few seconds only, 
 then her gaze fell, and she resumed her walk, still holding my 
 arm. 
 
 'Aurelia,' I said gently, *you heard what I have said you 
 know now that I love you.' 
 
 'I have known it a long while,' she answered, still looking 
 down, but speaking with composure, though I have little doubt 
 I should have felt her heart in her finger-tips had I brought 
 them to my lips 
 
 'You say I have no sympathy j but I am quicker to see than 
 you quicker to recognize. 
 
 Her meaning was as clear as the sound of a belL We were to 
 leeward, forward as far as the deck extended ; the sheet of the 
 great main course curved like a dusky wing betwixt us and 
 the moonlight on the water, and we stood in this dusk, concealed 
 from the others, obscured from all eyes in the fore-end, though 
 clearly visible to each other. It was my turn now to halt. I 
 let fall her hand from my arm, then clasped it and the other as 
 well. She stood passive. I drew her to me till her face was 
 close to mine, and kissed her forehead. She released her hands 
 with a manner of tender agitation, and went to the rail and 
 looked over, and I heard her draw her breath in a sob. 
 
 I stepped to her side, and said, ' If I have grieved you, forgive 
 me. The time had come when I could not help speaking. I 
 have loved you from the hour I first saw you. It has been a 
 hard fight. I have endeavoured to do my duty, will still 
 attempt it if you command me, but your beauty ana sweetness 
 have conquered my resolution of silence.' 
 
 She wept silently. 
 
 'See now how I have vexed you,' said I. 
 
 She shook her head. ' No. I am happy/ she answered, in a 
 voice so low that I had to bend my ear to catch the words. 
 'I am indeed happy in knowing that you love me. It is as 
 it should be. It is it is as lie would as he might desire it. 
 Poor boy. But but ' 
 
 She raised her head, and the next instant her face was hidden 
 on my shoulder, my arms around her, and her heart beating 
 against mine. 
 
 And thus it was that we managed to round off in true poetical 
 style our most eventful experiences as a marooned couple. 
 That this was a right and proper ending I will not affirm, but 
 that we could help it I do most vehemently deny. And, after 
 all, if you will but gravely consider the matter, you will see it 
 was scarce possible but that two people thrown together as 
 Aurelia and I were should fall in love, to the exclusion of all
 
 HOME .^3 
 
 promptings of loyalty and conscience on the one hand, and of 
 all impulses of an earlier passion on the other. Nor was this 
 all. The character of our intimacy demanded our union. In- 
 deed, Aurelia did not scruple to tell me afterwards I mean 
 when she was my wife that even had her love been made to 
 falter by thoughts of my cousin's claims upon her, and by the 
 memory of their vows and betrothal, the recollection ot the 
 island must have sufficed to rally her into accepting me as 
 destined by fate or old ocean, which is the same thing, to be her 
 husband. But why enlarge upon this? It would have been 
 easy to shift the helm of this yarn towards the close of it, and 
 submit myself as having cut a highly virtuous figure. But then 
 is it highly virtuous to lieave one's emotional obligations over- 
 b"bard? to confront a pure and ennobling passion with a 
 countenance acidulated by some bolus of conscience that is, 
 strictly speaking, neither here nor there, though it works very 
 uncomfortably in the moral system, without leaving one much 
 the better for it ? 
 
 We arrived at Bristol on the 6th of November, after above 
 four months of much livelier experiences than I should again 
 care to undergo on any account whatever, and proceeded to 
 London, where before the month was out we were married. 
 The wedding, as will be supposed, was a very quiet one, so quiet 
 indeed that there was nobody but ourselves present ; I mean 
 nobody in any way concerned in it. Privacy of this kind is a 
 happiness that attends the nuptials of those only who are 
 without relations; that is to say, when the marriage is an 
 honest one, done in the light of day. and not what one may call 
 a window-and-ladder match. Aurelia was as good as alone in 
 the world, and for the matter of that so was I ; so we drove one 
 morning to church and returned man and wife, and I remember 
 saying to my blushing beauty as we stepped arm-in-arm from 
 the sacred building, that if all marooning experiments had 
 ended as ours did, the punishment must long before have become 
 so fashionable that there would be no uninhabited islands left ; 
 the most sterile rock would be occupied by some languishing 
 couple, and it might come to skippers being handsomely re- 
 warded for reporting so much even as the creation of a volcanic 
 spot of earth. 
 
 But before I was married I wrote a letter to my cousin, 
 Alexander Fraser. It was a very long letter indeed. I gave 
 him the full relation of our adventures, and do not know that 
 I spared him the most trifling detail, so anxious was I to submit 
 the whole picture to him, that there might be wanting no 
 incident which, omitted, I might have regretted as helpful to 
 the general apology of the missive. I told him that of course 
 I expected he would resent my conduct at first, that he would 
 consider I had taken a mean advantage of the trust he confided 
 in me, but that when he came to think the matter carefully 
 over, he would understand that nothing else than what had
 
 344 MAROONED 
 
 happened was possible. I touched very delicately upon Aurelia'a 
 and my enforced intimacy of association on the island : deli- 
 cately, I say, but I indicated it too, for therein, methought, lay 
 the very handsomest excuse any man could seek or expect for 
 what I had done. Whatever occurred to me to say in self- 
 extenuation, I said j but though I took great pains, wrote in 
 a subdued strain, with plentiful appeals to his sailorly instincts 
 as a man to judge me kindly, to believe that I had embarked 
 most honestly, that for weeks and weeks I had never thought 
 of the girl but as his sweetheart, that even after we had quitted 
 the island I was still for conveying Aurelia to Rio, though I 
 was loving her passionately then, and abhorred the thought of 
 
 Earting with her I say, that though I did my best in this 
 jtter, I felt at every word which dropped from my pen that it 
 was like rubbing a cat the wrong way, as uncomfortable to the 
 stroking hand as to the creature thus dealt with. Perhaps I 
 said too much ; then it would occur to me that I had not said 
 enough : and sometimes I thought it would have been best to 
 say nothing at all, and leave him to conclude that the Iron 
 Grown had foundered, and we with her. 
 
 Well, a few months after I had dispatched this epistle this 
 great bundle of manuscript I should call it, for it ran into many 
 sheets during all which time not a syllable reached me from 
 Rio, I received a letter from Captain Fpljambe, in which he 
 gave me two items of news, both of great interest to me. 
 
 The first concerned the Iron Croivn. It seems that this vessel 
 had been found derelict at sea, about a hundred leagues west- 
 ward of the island of Cuba. She was fallen in with by a French 
 barque, whose people on boarding^ her discovered a couple of 
 auger-holes in her bows, one of which had been plugged, whilst 
 the leakage of the other had been, strangely enough, stopped by 
 a fish that lay jammed in the orifice, just leaving room enough 
 for a small draining of brine, scarce as much as would have 
 raised a foot of water in her hold in a fortnight. On entering 
 the cabin they found the ceiling, stanchions, and a portion of 
 the forward bulkheads scorched, with other signs of afire having 
 been kindled, manifestly for the purpose of destroying her. 
 There were traces of blood upon her quarter-deck and waist, 
 whether hitman or not could not be told. Aloft she was a 
 complete wreck ; most of her sails in rags z her main-topmast 
 gone, her fore-topgallant-mast hanging by its gear, and about 
 ten feet of her starboard bulwarks smashed level to the covering 
 board. Her name was plain upon the stern, and she was un- 
 questionably the brig in which we had sailed. She had appar- 
 ently encountered a violent storm, but whether before or after 
 her abandonment was not to be guessed. There was nothing to 
 be done with her, and as she would prove a formidable obstruc- 
 tion to drive into in the dark, the Frenchmen knocked the 
 plug out, cleared away the fish, and left her to drown. Nothing 
 was known of her crev , and I may as well say here, that though
 
 HOME 345 
 
 I continued long afterwards to make inquiries, I never got to 
 hjar of them, and therefore remain to this hour ignorant of 
 the manner in which Broadwater had met his end whether he 
 was murdered, or perished by his own act. 
 
 Foljambe's second item of news was to this effect. During his 
 outward run to Havanna, when somewhat to the southward of 
 the Great Bahama Bank, he sighted a little schooner, which, on 
 his nearing her, proved to be the Orphan. Ducrow, standing at 
 the rail, recognized the Bristol Trader, and yelled in his demon- 
 strative fashion to be permitted to step on board, that he might 
 make inquiries after myself and the lady. There was very little 
 wind at the time, and Foljambe told him he was at liberty to come, 
 but that he was not going to back his topsail-yard to oblige him. 
 On this the schooner's boat was thrown over the side, Ducrow 
 and two blacks jumped into her. and in hot haste and shouting 
 loudly swept the little leaking fabric to the main-chains of the 
 ship, over which Ducrow floundered, smirking, flourishing his 
 tasselled cap, and bowing as of old with many contortions. The 
 main purport of his visit was, that I might be told through 
 Captain Foljambe that he had found out the island on which we 
 haa been marooned, and had carried off not only our luggage, 
 but the Spanish negro whom we had left there. The fellow, he 
 said, was now aboard the schooner, and he pointed to a black 
 who stood surveying the ship from the schooner's forecastle. 
 He told Captain Foljambe that he did not know there was a 
 roan on the island and indeed I had said nothing about the 
 poor runaway, as I supposed that he desired to lie in hiding for 
 the rest of his life in that ocean retreat. Ducrow and one of 
 his darkies Moses went ashore, and after a short search found 
 the open hatch in the sand. They peered in the evening was 
 then gathering and Ducrow. being afraid to go first, told the 
 negro to lead the way, giving him a Kick to help him to a proper 
 posture of resolution. Moses plumped down, and Ducrow was 
 in the act of following him, when he heard the negro yelling, 
 'De debbil, de debbil ! here's de debbil himshef, here's de debbil 
 himshef ! oh Lord ! ' followed by sounds of wrestling and hard 
 breathing, whereupon Ducrow instantly took to his heels, but 
 before he could reach his boat he was tripped up by some one 
 who pursued him, the man in chase falling over him heavily. This 
 fellow proved to be the Spanish negro. Ducrow, jumping up, 
 concluded that his end was arrived, and whipped out with a long 
 knife, intending, as he told Captain Foljamoe. to sell his life at 
 the highest price he could get for it. Then followed a parley. 
 The negro could only speak Spanish. Luckily for Ducrow, he 
 knew a few words in that tongue, enough with gesticulations to 
 let the negro understand that he meant him no harm. Ebenezer, 
 the mate of the schooner, was in the boat. This black had been 
 a Cuban slave, and was able to converse with the other, who was 
 speedily tranquillized by his pacific assurances. When he was 
 told that he would be a free man under the British flag, and that
 
 346 MAKOONED 
 
 J *~ 
 
 whilst that bunting continued to fly o%'er his head he need not 
 fear of being recaptured, he told Ducrovv' that he would be willing 
 to enter as a sailor with him. In short, he had had enough of the 
 island, though I believe he had not lived alone upon it above a 
 fortnight. He said it was haunted. One evening he saw the 
 ghost of a black man come out of the sea and pass into the 
 forest and vanish, and he declared it was the spectre of the dead 
 negro who had been with him in the boat when they drifted to 
 the island. It ended, Ducrow told Captain Foljambe, in their 
 clearing the underground rooms, not only of our luggage, but of 
 everything else in it the chairs, table, pots and pans, muskets, 
 and so forth. This was good booty to Ducrow, who made a 
 division of it amongst the men, the Spanish negro being very 
 well satisfied with his share. Ducrow sent many flattering 
 messages to Aurelia and myself, and particularly begged the 
 captain to compliment me in his name on my taste in shirts, 
 and to inform me that he had never worn anything choicer in 
 the way of linen. 1 confess we both begrudged the rogues the 
 apparel they had come by. I know that Aurelia's and my out- 
 fit had cost me a round sum of money, and that she had left 
 enough dresses and other clothing behind her to have furnished 
 her with a trousseau. 
 
 It was eighteen months before I heard from Rio, by which 
 time I had arrived at the conclusion that either my cousin 
 Alexander was dead, or that he hated me too violently to put 
 pen to paper. Aurelia believed that death was the reason of 
 Ids silence. He had died, she believed, of grief, and I was 
 heartily glad, for my own sake as much as for my wife's, when 
 one morning I received a letter from him : for I may as well 
 say her notion that he had died of a broken heart was the 
 cause of many fits of melancholy in her, which rendered me a 
 little peevish with jealousy ; so that had Alexander not written, 
 there might by and by have come some little unhappiness into 
 xny married life. 
 
 He began by saying that he had made up his mind not to 
 write to me at all. He had hated me consumedly for months 
 after reading my letter, and would have been pleased to kill 
 me, only that the voyage home was too tedious and expensive 
 an undertaking for so twopenny an issue. News of the Iron 
 Crown, having been found abandoned and in a wrecked con- 
 dition had reached him before he got my letter, and he con- 
 cluded that Aurelia and I were at the bottom of the sea He 
 had written home to the owners of the brig for information, 
 but his inquiries remained unanswered. His getting my letter, 
 he said, was like receiving a missive from the other world, and 
 he swore that before he was one-third through it he heartily 
 wished that it had come from the other world, and from the 
 deepest and most fiery part of it too, for to that place did his 
 temper consign me at every full-stop he came to. Of Aurelia 
 he desired to say nothing. Women were seat into the world
 
 HOME r,47 
 
 to make fools of men, and not even old age hindered the most 
 of them from struggling on in fulfilment of this mission. But 
 a woman could sometimes make as great a fool of a man by 
 marrying him as by jilting him. For many months he had 
 been wondering which of us two meaning himself and me 
 was the more deserving of compassion, but now he was no 
 longer in doubt, and he could only hope I was happy, he was 
 sure. Aurelia was a beautiful woman, and he had been very 
 much in love with her ; but after all beauty is but skin deep. 
 And then, again, people's feelings change wonderfully. Time 
 converts the loveliest face into a mask, and often into a very 
 t*gly one ; and how swift is the flight of time ! We clasp a 
 beautiful creature to our heart, and when she lifts her face 
 from our bosom, lo ! we find the angel of Time has been with 
 her, and 'tis all pucker and rheum, crows'-feet, sausage-curls, 
 and the deuce knows what besides! As to the durability of 
 sentiment Stop ! he'd give me a yarn. He was at a funeral 
 last year. A young wife had died, and the husband was incon- 
 solable. His grief at the grave-side was terrible to witness. 
 His friends had to grasp him by the arms and coat-tails to 
 hinder him from precipitating himself into the yawning chasm 
 when the coffin was lowered into it. He wept, he howled, he 
 tore his hair, he shook his fists at the sky, and asked with 
 streaming eyes what he had done to deserve this dreadful 
 affliction. This emotion was sincere down to the very heels of 
 it. 'Four months later,' added my cousin, *I received an 
 invitation to his wedding ! ' 
 
 ' And now,' continued the letter, ' since I have made tip my 
 mind to write, I may as well give you and Mrs. Musgrave all 
 the news. Will you ask your wife if she remembers Isabella 
 Eadcliffe ? ^ No doubt she does. Mr. Badclifie and Mr. Grant 
 were, I believe, friends, but a coolness sprang up between them 
 some time before the latter left Rio. Though Isabella has not 
 the good fortune to have Spanish blood in her, being indeed 
 purely English, and eminently gifted^with her countrywoman's 
 noblest quality the grand characteristic of the entirely British 
 lass I mean loyalty, Dick ; she is exceedingly beautiful, never- 
 theless. Her eyes are violet, richly fringed, her hair auburn, 
 rarest of tints ; there is nothing majestic and stately about her ; 
 she is merely^ lovable, plump, fragrant, sweet to see and to 
 hearken to, with so exquisite a contralto voice that everybody 
 calls it a fortune to her. Her papa is dead, and his will appoints 
 that the sum of eight thousand pounds is to be settled upon her 
 when she marries, providing that she does so with her mother's 
 consent, presuming of course the mother to be living. The 
 mother is living, and / have her consent, and perhaps some of 
 these days I may have the pleasure of introducing the prettiest 
 woman that was ever seen in South America to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Musgrave. Happily she^ resides at Rio, so I shall not be obliged 
 to ask any relative to bring her to me. Be good enough, when
 
 548 MAKOONED 
 
 you next write, to let me know what I owe you for Mra 
 Musgrave's outfit, and for the hire of the cabins of the ship 
 you embarked in. Convey my kind regards to your wife, and 
 believe me, my dear Dick, 
 
 'Yours very truly, 
 
 'ALEX. FEASER.' 
 
 Poor Aleo ! 
 
 Yet this letter magically cleared our home atmosphere. There 
 were no more melancholy references to my cousin's broken 
 heart. I have drunk many a bottle with Alec since, and he is 
 godfather to my second boy, and Aurelia is godmother to his 
 third girL 
 
 So passes the procession of life across the stage of the world. 
 I had advanced but a few steps, so to speak, on the boards when 
 this experience I have written about befell me. My wife and I 
 were young, our hearts had a strong beat, the sun was yet in 
 the eastern heavens, his light very glorious, and the land fair 
 and gay with flowers ; and now I am hobbling off within a few 
 paces of the dark wing whose shadow, when the actor has 
 entered it, shrouds him for ever from the gaze of the company 
 that sit watching the show. But the western radiance still 
 lingers, the dusk has not yet fallen, and my wife and I, though 
 our clasped hands tremble with the infirmities of age, still walk 
 in sunshine, finding cheerfulness in the lingering lustre, though 
 we know it to be waning fast. 
 
 SHZ JOTD
 
 HERNBEGlONALLIBRARYFAaLITY