lERKELEY 
 
 NIVE!>iTY Of 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 I'tSf'-t-^^ 
 
 1 
 
A STRANGE ELOPEMENT 
 
^^ 
 
A 
 
 STRANGE ELOPEMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CLARK RUSSELL 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS BY IV H. OVEKEND 
 
 ilontion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1892 
 
 The RigJJ of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved 
 
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, 
 
 LONDON and BUNGAY. 
 
s Tr 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MR. GODFREY PELLEW I 
 
 II. 
 GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 26 
 
 III. 
 MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 48 
 
 IV. 
 
 MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 79 
 
 V. 
 
 I DELIVER THE LETTER . . II4 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 144 
 
 VII. 
 
 ONE MIDDLE WATCH I^I 
 
 VIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION 211 
 
 147 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "MY NAUSEA?" HE EXCLAIMED. " OH, YES, TOBACCO IS GOOD 
 
 FOR SEA-SICKNESS " 3^ 
 
 SHE SAT MOTIONLESS AS THOUGH IN A PROFOUND REVERIE . 45 
 
 HE TUCKED HIS DAUGHTER'S HAND UNDER HIS ARM AND FELL 
 
 TO PATROLLING THE DECK WITH HER SS 
 
 I THEREFORE FILLED MY PIPE AFRESH AND LINGERED AT 
 
 HIS SIDE 76 
 
 '^has he given you a reason, captain swift, for his 
 
 clinging to his cabin? '" s3 
 
 he then stepped to the door, elbowed his butler out 
 of the road, and asked— still choking — whether 
 i meant to go or not loi 
 
 she went to her cabin, the door-handle of which she 
 
 seemed to grope for as though she were blind . 1 24 
 
 "these are the lines you were admiring so much '^ . . 136 
 
 "i must insist, sir," he cried, "upon your ascertaining 
 who the person 15 who lies skulking in his cabin 
 below" 160 
 
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FORTUNATELY, MY HEIGHT ENABLED ME TO KEEP A GOOD 
 HOLD OF THE RAIL, BUT THAT CONFOUNDED CLOAK WAS 
 AS THOUGH I WERE CARRYING SEVERAL MEN ON MY 
 BACK 171 
 
 ME SHE NOW SCARCELY NOTICED 179 
 
 I WAS ASTOUNDED TO FIND HIM NOT ONLY GAGGED BUT 
 
 HELPLESSLY BOUND 
 
 189 
 
 "OH, BUT SIR CHARLES WILL THINK ME AN ACCOMPLICE, 
 
 SIR," SHE EXCLAIMED IN A BROKEN VOICE 21 7 
 
 AT DAYBREAK THERE WAS A RUSH ALOFT OF ALL HANDS . . 224 
 
 "MY WISHES ARE THAT WHEN THE WIND COMES YOU PRO- 
 CEED WITHOUT A moment's UNNECESSARY DELAY ON 
 ■ YOUR voyage" 231 
 
 THE SCHOONER HAD FALLEN IN WITH AN OPEN BOAT. CON- 
 TAINING FOUR PERSONS, ONE OF WHOM WAS A LADY . . 244 
 
A STRANGE ELOPEMENT 
 
 MR. GODFREY PELLEW 
 
 Having perfectly recovered my health after 
 a term of sick-leave that had run into many 
 months, I went on board the Light of Asia 
 at Plymouth. In this ship I had taken my 
 passage to Calcutta to rejoin my regiment. I 
 am writing of thirty years ago, when the road 
 to the East lay by way of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, and when a voyage to India signified 
 a residence of four, sometimes of five months 
 on board ship. 
 
 The Light of Asia was a large Blackwall 
 3£ ^ 
 
2 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 liner, as a certain class of vessels which sailed 
 from the Thames used to be called. She rose 
 to a burthen of about fifteen hundred tons, and 
 in those days she was reckoned a big ship. I 
 have the picture of her before me now as she 
 floated that September day on the silk-smooth 
 surface of Plymouth Sound, blue Peter lan- 
 guidly swaying at the fore, her house flag of 
 brilliant dyes clothing, as with a coat of fire, 
 the head of the royal mast at the main, and a 
 great brand-new crimson ensign drooping from 
 the gaff end, and streaking the water under the * 
 stern with a dash of red as though a soldier 
 had fallen overboard and was slowly settling 
 to the bottom. I am no sailor, yet I believe 
 had I commanded that ship I could not pre- 
 serve a clearer recollection of her. A broad 
 white band broken with black painted ports 
 ran along her side, and you looked for the 
 tompioned muzzles of guns, so frigate-like did 
 she float. The thick rigging of hemp rose 
 black and massive to the tops and cross-trees 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 3 
 
 and upon the yards lying square across ihe 
 masts, the sails were stowed white as sifted 
 snow, and they resembled sifted snow moulded 
 to the image of furled canvas by cunning 
 hands. The morning sunshine was on her and 
 the lambencies of the circular windows along 
 her sides trembled in prisms and stars in the 
 water that brimmed to a hand's breadth above 
 her yellow sheathing. 
 
 Several boats were congregated at the foot 
 of her gangway ladder ; her forecastle was rich 
 with the scarlet of the tunics of some three or 
 four scores of soldiers. Many people, ladies and 
 gentlemen, were in motion upon her poop deck, 
 some gazing at the boats over the side, some 
 taking farewell looks at the land through bin- 
 ocular glasses. The figures of sailors running 
 about could be seen in the open gangway, and 
 the delicate breathing of the morning air was 
 made vocal by the shrill whistling of a boat- 
 swain's pipe, though for what purpose that 
 music was played I cannot tell. A number of 
 
 v> 2 
 
4 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 the passengers had come round in the ship 
 from Gravesend, but others, like myself, 
 were joining her at Plymouth, and when I 
 mounted the gangway ladder, I found the 
 quarter-deck full of people. The bustle was 
 disordering to the spirits. It is hard enough 
 to take leave of one's native land for one's 
 self; but to witness the distress of departure in 
 others, the dejected countenance, the swim- 
 ming eyes, the clinging of hand to hand, to 
 hear the broken utterances of farewell, the 
 "God bless you, my darling," the ''Write soon 
 and often," the heart's grief in each syllable 
 taking new and piteous accentuation from the 
 lip quivering as it forms the words — these are 
 things to convert one's own personal emotion 
 into a real burden of wretchedness, and I was 
 glad to scramble as best I could through the 
 crowd, and through the boxes and bundles 
 which littered the deck into the comparative 
 repose of the saloon, or cuddy as it was then 
 called, in search of a steward who should 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 5 
 
 convey my bags below and show me where 
 my bedroom was. 
 
 All my baggage had been put aboard in the 
 London Docks, and so when I met with a 
 steward, there was no more for him to convey 
 to my berth than a small portmanteau and one 
 or two bundles. He was one of the under- 
 stewards, a young flat-faced man in a camlet 
 jacket, and a strawberry mark on his cheek. I 
 gave him my name, — Captain Swift — and he 
 at once seemed to know where my berth 
 was. 
 
 " Is the gentleman who is to share my cabin 
 on board ? " said I. 
 
 " He is, sir.'' 
 
 " Where did he join the vessel ? " 
 
 " In the Docks." 
 
 "He seems to wish to make a longer voyage 
 of it than need be. What sort of trentleman is 
 he — old or young ? And his calling, do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " He's young, sir. Can't tell you his calling, 
 
6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT 1 
 
 I'm sure. A gent, I take it; simply a gent. 
 He's no sailor, for he's kept his bed ever since 
 we hatiled out, and there he's still alying." 
 
 I was vexed to hear this, for the association 
 of a man chronically sea-sick as a bedroom 
 companion threatened a truly awful condition 
 of the voyage if I should be unable to exchange 
 my berth. 
 
 I had thus questioned the under-steward 
 whilst we stood at thjs head of the staircase 
 which conducted to the quarters I was to oc- 
 cupy ; and let me here explain the structure 
 of the after part of this ship, for it is the stage 
 on which was enacted the singular drama I 
 am going to tell you about, and it is desirable 
 for due appreciation of the performance that 
 the scenery should be very clearly submitted. 
 The saloon, then, of this ship consisted of a 
 long interior ; the deck or roof of it was called 
 the poop. A row of cabins went down on 
 either hand, and in the centre was a long table 
 with a cross table at the after end, the two 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 7 
 
 forming the shape of the letter T, and fixed 
 benches ran the leno^th of the table for the 
 people to sit upon at their meals. The huge 
 trunk of the mizzen-mast pierced the deck and 
 might have passed for a colossal column de- 
 signed wholly for the support of the roof of 
 this saloon. Everything was in good taste 
 with something of pomp in the decorations. 
 There were many mirrors ; the carpets were 
 rich ; the lamps were numerous and of brilliant 
 metal ; there was a handsome piano, and, fore 
 and aft, the place was abundantly sweetened 
 and lightened by the perishing beauties of 
 flowers. Close against the front of the saloon, 
 where the windows of it overlooked the main- 
 deck, w^as a large square hatchway down which 
 fell a flight of broad steps that conducted to a 
 row of cabins similar to those above them. 
 My berth was there — my half-berth as I may 
 call it, and thither I now followed the under- 
 steward anxious to establish myself speedily 
 that I might get on deck again and see 
 
8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 what sort of people I was to have as fellow 
 passengers. 
 
 The cabin I was shown into was somewhat 
 dark. This was partly due to my entering it 
 fresh from the bright light above. A degree 
 of gloom, however, absent in the other cabins, 
 was occasioned by the overhanging ledge of 
 the mizzen-channels, a wide platform project- 
 ing from the ship's side for spreading the 
 rigging of the mast. The cabin porthole 
 looked directly out from under this channel 
 which served to shade it from the light as 
 the peak of a cap protects the eyes. There 
 was nevertheless plenty of light to see by, and 
 I found myself in a small compartment fur- 
 nished in the usual seagoing fashion with a 
 couple of bunks or bedsteads, one on top of 
 the other, the top one close under the port- 
 hole, a contrivance of basin, glass and the like 
 in a corner for purposes of toilet, two small 
 fixed chests of drawers, and a small heap of 
 luggage marked with the letters G. P. I 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW -9 
 
 noticed a scent of tobacco, as though a pipe or 
 cigar had been recently extinguished. 
 
 In the lower bulk lay a young fellow dressed 
 in a suit of tweed with varnished shoes and 
 red silk socks. His hands were folded upon 
 his waistcoat and there was a flash of gems 
 upon them as he breathed. I could not very 
 clearly distinguish his face in the gloom of 
 the hole in w-hich he reposed, but what little 
 I saw instantly struck me as remarkable. It 
 was a revelation of manly beauty — a slow steal- 
 ing out, from the dimness, of physical lineaments 
 of wonderful grace and charm. To say this 
 Is perhaps to say all that I have it in my power 
 to communicate, for any effort of description 
 would impair in the reader the impression 
 which I desire to reflect from my own sense 
 and memory of this young man's beauty. This 
 much, however, I may say, that he differed 
 from the fashion that was at that period current 
 in the wearing of his hair. The whisker was 
 then almost universally worn ; but the cheek 
 
lo A STRANGE ELOPEMENT I 
 
 and chin of this young man were as smooth 
 as a woman's whilst his dark auburn moustache 
 was not so heavy but that it allowed his very- 
 perfectly formed mouth to be seen. Though 
 recumbent his stature was to be known by 
 the measurement of his bunk — that was six 
 feet, six inches — from whose bottom board 
 his feet rested at a distance of about half a 
 foot. 
 
 I stood looking at him for a little while, 
 scarce conscious of the incivility of such a stare 
 in the fascination I found in his appearance, 
 He eyed me in return with a clear, keen gaze 
 that gave the lie direct to the drowsy droop 
 of his eyelids. Sea-sick he certainly was not ; 
 nor did he discover the least appearance of 
 indisposition of any sort ; and I was astonished 
 to find him lying in the comparative gloom 
 of this cabin instead of being on deck where 
 the weak sweet breath of the morning air, 
 charged with the autumnal aromas of the land, 
 was to be tasted, and whence a noble spectacle 
 
i MR. GODFREY- PELLEVV 11 
 
 of English scenery was to be viewed ; the 
 sloping greenery of Mount Edgcumbe, the 
 little emerald-like gem of Drake's Island, the 
 pleasant slope of the Hoe, and the fifty details 
 of marine beauty betwixt the ship and the 
 shore in the shape of the line of battle ship 
 straining at her anchor with her three tiers of 
 batteries overhano;inor the smooth waters, the 
 dark-winged smack languidly seeking an offing, 
 a Symondite brig-of-war delicate as a carving 
 of tinted ivory. 
 
 The steward put my traps into my bunk 
 and was about to quit the cabin. 
 
 "When do we sail?" exclaimed the young 
 fellow in a soft and quiet voice. 
 
 " At noon, sir." 
 
 The young man looked at his watch. 
 
 " How many passengers have come on board 
 since we dropped anchor here ? " said he. 
 
 " I cannot tell, sir," answered the steward in 
 a tone of mingled respect and astonishment. 
 " I will inquire, sir." 
 
12 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 '' Do SO, and get me a list of the passengers 
 if you can," exclaimed the young fellow speak- 
 ing with some increase of energy, and in any- 
 thing but a sea-sick voice. 
 
 ''Very good, sir." Again the steward was 
 making as if to go when he suddenly paused 
 and said, *' Shall you lunch in the saloon, sir ? " 
 
 " No ; " replied the young fellow with a sud- 
 den drop in the note of his voice> the artificiality 
 of which was instantly distinguishable by my 
 ear. " I am not well, and here I shall stop. 
 Let me have my meals as before — the leg of 
 a chicken, a pint bottle of champagne — the 
 merest trifle will serve my turn until I feel 
 better. If I give trouble I hope there is no- 
 thing unusual in it. People are sometimes 
 squeamish at sea, arent they ? " 
 
 " Sometimes, sir," answered the man. He 
 paused, and finding the young fellow silent, 
 went out. 
 
 " I am to share your berth," said I, struck 
 by his talk to the steward as though my 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 13 
 
 presence were unheeded by him ; "I hope 
 I shall not inconvenience you ? " 
 
 '' No. It cannot be helped. I wished to 
 have a cabin to myself, but the ship is. full. 
 May I ask your name?" 
 
 " Swift — Captain Swift." I added the name 
 of my regiment and asked if he was in the 
 army. 
 
 " No." There was an energy in his no s 
 that to the ear corresponded to the beat of a 
 strong pulse to the finger. ''My name is 
 Pellew, Mr. Godfrey Pellew." 
 
 As he spoke I glanced at the initials upon 
 a portmanteau that lay close by. Was it be- 
 cause of his way of pronouncing the words 
 Godfrey Pellew ? Was it because of some 
 instinctive incommunicable reason, unintelli- 
 gible to myself perhaps, that I could not find 
 it in me to fit the name to the man who 
 pronounced it ? This much I recollect : I was 
 as certain at that moment that Godfrey Pellew 
 was not his name as that mine was Graham 
 
14 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 Swift. His large eye was resting full, keenly, 
 and intelligently upon me as I turned afresh to 
 view him ; but the lids drooped in a moment 
 and he suddenly averted his face whilst he 
 pocketed the watch which he had continued 
 to hold and toy with. 
 
 I was in no temper to express sympathy 
 with an indisposition which seemed to me en- 
 tirely feigned ; and however much my curiosity 
 was to be presently tickled, just now I was too 
 full of thoughts of the leave-taking I was fresh 
 from — of the beloved mother I had said good- 
 bye to, perhaps for ever — of the old country 
 which it might be my destiny never again to 
 behold — for my mind to feel actively interested 
 in this extraordinarily handsome and mysterious 
 cabin companion of mine. I briefly inquired 
 if I could be of any use to him ; there were 
 boats alongside ; had he letters to send, any 
 communication to make with the shore ? He 
 thanked me with a graceful smile which swiftly 
 faded as to a sudden emotion of despondency, 
 
MR. GODFRF.Y PELLEW 15 
 
 and there beine nothinof to detain me in the 
 cabin I sHghtly bowed to him and quitted the 
 berth. 
 
 I escaped the crowd on the main deck by 
 making for the poop through the companion 
 way. As I passed through the saloon I ob- 
 served a busy coming and going of people, 
 little knots in earnest conversation, doors 
 suddenly opening and closing with figures 
 of ladies and gentlemen at the table eagerly 
 scratching some final missive for the shore. 
 There was a good number of persons assem- 
 bled on the poop, a large proportion of them 
 friends of the passengers, and it was impossible 
 to tell who was and who was not going out 
 in the ship. It was about eleven o'clock ; we 
 were to sail, if the under-steward was to be 
 believed, at noon. The captain however was 
 not apparently on board and at present there 
 were no signs of the ship getting under way. 
 I lighted a cigar and planted myself right aft. 
 close against the deserted wheel, and with 
 
i6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT I 
 
 folded arms contemplated the picture of the 
 fabric that was to be my home for the next four 
 or five months. 
 
 I confess I had never felt lonelier. It was 
 not wholly the reactionary emotion of leave- 
 taking and the mere sense of being alone ; 
 there was in addition that deep and burdensome 
 feelinof of solitude that visits a man who is 
 
 o 
 
 solitary in a crowd. Whilst I stood in a 
 melancholy mood blowing a cloud of tobacco 
 smoke, and watching with dull interest the 
 various gestures and facial expressions of the 
 knots of people and surveying with languid 
 admiration the combined effect of this picture 
 of almond-white decks, of burnished glass 
 skylights, of sparkling brass-work, of the 
 soft and various hues of women's apparel, 
 of the scarlet of the soldiers' uniforms, blend- 
 ing with the striped shirts or rough blue jackets 
 of the seamen, the whole framed by the tall 
 line of the bulwarks from which ascended 
 the heavy black mass of the shrouds and gear, 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 17 
 
 carrying the eye upwards to the starry altitudes 
 of the trucks whose white buttons gleamed 
 against the misty blue as though they were 
 formed of frosted silver ; whilst, I say, my eyes 
 and thoughts were thus despondently busy, there 
 arose through the companion hatch, the yawn 
 of which immediately confronted me as I 
 stood abaft the wheel, the figure of a stout, 
 fiercely-whiskered military man, who on 
 putting his foot upon the deck turned to 
 extend his hand to a young lady who was 
 following him. 
 
 I seemed to know the gentleman by sight : 
 I had probably met him at a club ; some 
 fleeting view of him perhaps as he sat at 
 table or passed through a room had left upon 
 my mind the impression of his handsome, 
 striking, but haughty, fierce, and forbidding, 
 face. He was above six feet in height, erect 
 as a ramrod, with that sort of figure which 
 when witnessed in men of my calling makes 
 one think of the thunder of a charger's gallop, 
 
 c 
 
i8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 of the gleam of a brandished sabre, and of 
 some motionless confronting ranks of men, 
 massed into a hedge of gleaming blue steel. 
 His whiskers were white, and stood out 
 formidably from either cheek ; his large mous- 
 tache lay like a roll of cotton wool under 
 his nostrils, and either side of it went with 
 an angry curl that reached very nearly to 
 the ear. A fixed air of frowning was in 
 his eyes which were of the deadness of un- 
 polished jet, suggesting black blood not very 
 many generations back. The dark hue of 
 his cheek was made darker yet by the contrast 
 of his white hair. 
 
 It was easy to guess that the young lady 
 whom he handed through the companion-way 
 was his daughter. The subtlety of the 
 resemblance eludes description. Of the several 
 types of female beauty I have beheld in my 
 time and can recall there is none that I can 
 remember to compare this girl's with. It 
 was not the amazingly delicate complexion 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 19 
 
 of her skin, nor the dull bronze of her hair, 
 nor the liquid softness and fire of her large, 
 dark-brown eyes ; there was nothing in lip, 
 nose, or ear ; in form of face or grace of brow 
 that created for her that individuality of charm 
 and separate wonder of beauty which my sight, 
 on going to her, instantly witnessed. What 
 was it then ? The pen of a Hawthorne or 
 of a De Ouincey alone could expound the 
 mystery. 
 
 Never could one figure the melancholy of 
 resignation expressed in the same degree as one 
 found it in this girFs countenance, she always 
 seemed to be seeing something beyond the object 
 at which she directed her eyes. Her father, 
 for her father it was, addressed her, as he stood 
 a moment sending a sweeping look over the 
 people, then gave her his arm, and together 
 they went forward, where he was immediately 
 accosted, and was presently towering amid a 
 little group that gathered round him. 
 
 A sailorly-looking man with a sunburnt face, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 a naval peak to his cap, and dressed in a suit ol 
 serge came with a deep sea hirch to the bin- 
 nacle, behind which I was sitting on a grating 
 that formed a little deck abaft the wheel. I 
 guessed him to be one of the mates of the ship 
 and carelessly asked him at what hour we sailed. 
 
 "Very shortly, sir," he answered. "I'm 
 expecting the captain aboard every minute, and 
 the moment he arrives we shall get our anchor." 
 
 *' You have a great number of passengers ? " 
 
 " We are a full ship." 
 
 " Pray," said I, " can you tell me the name 
 of that tall gentleman yonder with the, white 
 whiskers — that man who stands there with the 
 charming young lady on his arm ? " 
 
 " Major - General Sir Charles Primrose, 
 K.C.B., and as much more of the alphabet going 
 to his name as would steady a big kite if they 
 were made a tail of," he replied with a laugh 
 in the light-blue eye he turned upon me. 
 
 The name was of course familiar to me, and I 
 could now recollect having read or heard that 
 
I MR. rxODFREV TELLEW 21 
 
 Sir Charles was about to proceed to India to take 
 command of a district whose name has escaped 
 my memory. I asked the mate if the young lady 
 who leaned upon the General's arm was his 
 daughter ; he answered, yes : she was Miss 
 Primrose, as it stood in the passengers' list. 
 
 ''Is Lady Primrose on board ? " I said. 
 
 He could not tell ; he believed not ; he 
 fancied that the General was a widower. 
 
 This m.ate, who turned out to be the chief 
 officer of the ship, Mr. John Freeman by name, 
 had very little information to give about the 
 passengers. Yet we contrived to find topics 
 enough to keep us leaning over the side some 
 ten minutes or quarter of an hour, during which 
 I spoke of my somewhat mysterious cabin- 
 fellow, Mr. Godfrey Pellew ; but he knew 
 nothino- of him ; he did not even seem conscious 
 that such a gentleman was aboard ; until sud- 
 denly starting and fetching a telescope from 
 the skylight and levelling it he exclaimed that 
 the captain was coming and hurried away. 
 
22 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 The name of the master of the ship was 
 Stagg — Captain Stagg — a man whose low 
 stature and bow legs caused him to present a 
 very insignificant figure spite of the careful 
 manner in which he wrapped himself up in a 
 cloth frock coat decorated with brass buttons, 
 so that he needed but a tall hat to resemble 
 a harbour master rather than a blue water 
 mariner ; his face however proclaimed his call- 
 ing ; his countenance was scored and furrowed 
 with long years of hard weather life, and you 
 seemed to trace the word "ocean" scrawled all 
 over it, as upon the trunk of a tree or the back 
 of an old seat you see a name rudely chiselled 
 by some wanton knife, repeated over and over 
 again. His head was singularly orbicular in 
 shape, his eyes were large and protruding, of a 
 dull and watery blue, his nose was twisted to 
 the left as from a blow, whilst his mouth had a 
 decided curl to the right as from perversity : and 
 between them these perfidious features com- 
 municated to his countenance an expression of 
 
I MR. GODFREY PELLEW 23 
 
 blunt and mirthful good - nature, which was 
 certainly foreign to the man's character. 
 
 He arrived on the poop, pulling off his cap 
 with many grotesque contortions to the ladies 
 and gentlemen, and a few minutes afterw^ards a 
 bell on the quarter-deck used for the sea-chimes 
 of the hours was violently and alarmingly rung 
 to the accompaniment of the shouts of mates 
 and midshipmen dispersed about the decks 
 ordering those who were not sailing to India to 
 immediately quit the ship. From the sternmost 
 extremity of the vessel I watched the process of 
 getting under way with interest. First of all 
 the windlass was manned ; a voice of storm 
 began a song, the burden of which was regularly 
 taken up by thirty or forty hurricane throats, for 
 in those days ships went liberally manned. 
 Strange was the effect of this wild sea chorus as 
 one listened to it whilst watching those who 
 were leaving and those who were remaining, 
 bidding one another farewell. The poop was 
 quickly thinned ; a few passengers stood at the 
 
24 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT i 
 
 rail waving handkerchiefs and kissing hands to 
 their friends as they entered the boats along- 
 side ; the General with his daughter upon his 
 arm stood at the break of the poop, gazing down 
 upon a scene of tears and distress upon the 
 quarter-deck with a face of wood. The Httle 
 captain, with his pumpkin-shaped head and pro- 
 truding eyes, as dim as jelly-fish, slided athwart 
 the deck on his rounded shanks with the 
 rhythmic action of the pendulum, now gazing 
 aloft, now sending a look forward at the fore- 
 castle, where stood the mate gazing at the cable 
 as it came in link by link, now directing his 
 glance around the scene of bay and out to sea 
 past the breakwater. A little wind was blowing ; 
 it blew direct from Plymouth town, and you 
 heard the sounds of the life ashore in it, the 
 noise of bells and the dim, thread-like hum of 
 distant locomotion. Weight enough was in the 
 air to tremble the water under the sun into a 
 giant surface of blinding stars and diamonds, 
 and, September as the month was, the land — 
 
I . MR. GODFREY PELLEW 25 
 
 the beautiful land of this most noble bay — 
 seemed to gather to itself a dye of tropic soft- 
 ness and richness from the sudden brushing of 
 the water into shuddering splendour. 
 
 Presently a number of figures raced aloft, 
 orders were sharply given and as sharply 
 re-echoed ; all three topsails were let fall at 
 once, and the white cloths flashed to the lower 
 vardarms as the clews were swiftly sheeted 
 home ; the hollow clanking of the windlass 
 pawls ceased as the great yards mounted shap- 
 ing the lustrous canvas into symmetric spaces 
 and clothing the lofty fabric with the grace 
 of white and spacious wings. A little later 
 and the long jibbooms of the Light of Asia 
 were pointing seawards, with the windlass 
 still clanking, the hoarse voices of men still 
 chorusing, fold after fold of sail falling and then 
 rising, passengers along the line of the bulwarks 
 passionately gesticulating good - byes, and a 
 crowd of boats with motioning people standing 
 erect in them slowly settling away astern. 
 
II 
 
 GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 
 
 I HAD a good opportunity on this first day of 
 sailing of observing the numerous company who 
 were proceeding to India. With the exception 
 of Mr. Godfrey Pellew, I beHeve that all the 
 passengers assembled at the luncheon table at 
 one o'clock on this, my first day at all events of 
 the voyage, at which hour the ship was well 
 clear of the Sound, standing for the central 
 Channel navigation under full breasts of canvas 
 from truck to waterway ; her decks, an extra- 
 ordinarily busy scene of sailors coiling away the 
 rigging and clearing up, and of soldiers passing 
 in and out of the galley with smoking kits and 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 27 
 
 Steaming puddings for the messes of the three 
 or four score men who formed the ship's cargo 
 of red-coats. 
 
 The water was wonderfully smooth, otherwise 
 the company might not have been numerous. 
 I observed the glittering swing trays, and their 
 scarcely perceptible oscillation indicated a 
 movement in the ship that could be trying only 
 to the imagination. Surely Mr. Pellew, who 
 smoked tobacco in his cabin and talked of chicken 
 and champagne — something light in short, when 
 trifles lighter than air are as heavy as thunder- 
 bolts to the really capsized stomach — could not 
 be so seriously inconvenienced by this soft 
 cradling and rhythmic sliding of the structure, 
 in whose movements you felt the whole life 
 coming into her out of her milky pinions, as to 
 be obliged to keep his cabin ! I ran my eye 
 over the company. It was an omnium-gat herum 
 — as typical a mixture of human beings as was 
 ever wafted from the British coast to remote 
 parts. Ten or twelve military men : a parson : 
 
28 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT li 
 
 a briQfade suro^eon : a naval lieutenant : a beef- 
 faced merchant captain named Whale, the 
 representative of a firm of ship-owners, sailing 
 to India to inquire into some matter of collision. 
 Needless to say it took me a few days to find 
 out these people's vocations. There were some 
 Civil Service young gentlemen ; and we were 
 " largely leavened by ladies, from Mrs. Colonel 
 Mowbray, an immensely stout woman, whose 
 high Roman nose and projecting under lip made 
 one think of a wall drinking fountain — spout 
 and cup : down — though I know not why down 
 — to a delicate young girl whose brilliant eyes 
 and wax-like fingers too surely indicated that 
 her embarkation in pursuit of health was all 
 too late. 
 
 My gaze however was chiefly attracted by 
 Miss Primrose. The General sat on the right 
 of the captain at the athwartship table at the 
 after end of the saloon, and his daughter's seat 
 was next him. Sir Charles darted searching 
 looks everywhere, with an occasional pause of 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 29 
 
 haughty and contemptuous inspection ; but his 
 daughter kept her eyes downwards bent. She 
 seldom raised them I observed even when 
 replying to words addressed to her by one or 
 two ladies who sat near. She lunched in her 
 hat, which being somewhat large and richly 
 plumed, overshadowed her face, sitting as she 
 did for the most part with her head bowed ; yet 
 enough was visible of her countenance to render 
 its expression of , melancholy memorable to me 
 even though my sight had gone to her then for 
 the first and last time. Nor was it melancholy 
 only : there was something of fear in it too, and 
 the combined effect seemed to my mind to 
 suggest a violent heart-wrench, the brutality of 
 which had coloured ancruish with the hiofhest 
 form of tragic amazement. 
 
 At this first lunch -aboard the Light of Asia 
 we were all very constrained, truly British in 
 our cautious regard and wary approaches. 
 Here and there you would hear a voice talk- 
 ing somewhat loftily and drawllngly, and 
 
30 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 occasionally a ''Yaas" and a "Good Ged " 
 would meet the ear, and there was a frequent 
 glitter of wine glasses raised to moustachioed 
 lips ; and a species of emotion termed by 
 newspaper reporters '' sensation " would be 
 noticeable amongst the ladies when reference 
 was made for instance to the Bay of Biscay 
 and to the weather off Agulhas. I eyed 
 General Primrose with some respect, for he 
 was a man who had risen by merit to distinc- 
 tion in his profession, and he had a high 
 character for courage and fortitude and adroit- 
 ness in passages of difficulty, though I had 
 also heard of him as an unpleasantly severe 
 disciplinarian and a person whose popularity 
 was wholly to be found amongst those who 
 had never been in any sort of way associated 
 with him. What was his motive, I remember 
 speculating, for withdrawing his melancholy 
 daughter from the green lands and pleasant 
 climate of England, to hold her in sight under 
 the bloom-destroying sun of India? He did 
 
11 GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 31 
 
 not look to be a gentleman who stood in need 
 of the ministrations of a daughter. A valet, 
 a man-servant, always standing at attention, a 
 passive object to be easily sworn at; a target 
 for a half-Wellington boot, something too large 
 to be missed by even an awkwardly flung 
 missile : this methought as I gazed at his stern, 
 haughty and forbidding face, with its eyes 
 which seemed to shower impassioned expletives 
 at every glance, was the species of attendant 
 he would require — he with his savagely curled 
 white moustache and sullen dye of cheek which 
 promptly sent the mind to years of inflaming 
 dishes, and to a liver disorganized by pro- 
 tracted periods of injudicious hospitality. Was 
 he taking out this girl to India to get her 
 married ? Surely her gift of most uncommon 
 beauty must render such a project as that the 
 easiest of all achievable things in England, 
 providing of course she held no opinions of 
 her own on the subject. And these specula- 
 tions, all swiftly entered upon and dismissed 
 
32 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT II 
 
 as I sat on this first day at sea at that table, 
 conducted me to another fancy : was her un- 
 dissembled expression of melancholy due to 
 love ? Had she made some grave, maidenly 
 blunder — from her father's point of view I 
 mean ? And was this voyage to India, and 
 was her residence in that country to be the 
 General's corrective for an untimely or an ill- 
 placed sentiment ? 
 
 But whilst I thus sat thinking, exchanging 
 now and again somewhat abstractedly a sen- 
 tence with the surgeon of the ship, who sat 
 next to me, the bulkheads on either hand 
 slightly creaked, and the ship leaned to a 
 sudden increase of wind and to the first of a 
 ' long light heave of swell rolling to the quarter 
 of the vessel out of the south-east. In fact I 
 supposed we had now opened the Channel past 
 Bolt Head and the respiration of the wide 
 breast of water bevond was to be felt. There 
 was some staring one at another and a general 
 pause in the conversation ; but the ship con- 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 33 
 
 tinned to roll, lightly indeed, yet in a manner 
 to cause one to look at one's wine glass to 
 see what was to become of it. Then one 
 lady stood up, then another ; Mrs. Colonel 
 Mowbray sailed balloon-like to her cabin and 
 in a few moments everybody was in motion 
 hastening on deck or withdrawing to his 
 berth. 
 
 Though by no means an old sailor — in 
 those days my age was eight-and-twenty and 
 I had rounded the Cape of Good Hope twice 
 in my passages to and from India — sea-sick- 
 ness never troubled me. My cigar-case was 
 empty and I went to my cabin to fill it from 
 my portmanteau. I use the words cabin and 
 berth indifferently ; but strictly the term be7^th 
 applies to a sleeping place on board ship, 
 whilst cabin sio^nifies the livino^ room. As I 
 made my w^ay to my berth I felt very sensibly 
 the inconvenience of sharing it with another ; 
 or perhaps I should say with such another as 
 Mr. Pellew threatened to be — a man who 
 
 D 
 
34 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT il 
 
 promised to be incessantly present whenever 
 I made my visits, and who must therefore rob 
 my half of the sea-bedroom of all charm of 
 privacy. I opened the door and found him 
 sitting in his bunk with his legs over the edge 
 smoking a cheroot. A tray containing the re- 
 mains of his luncheon and an empty bottle of 
 champagne stood on the deck. His posture 
 now fully disclosed him ; the sunshine lay 
 strong upon the sea on the port hand of the 
 vessel on which side our cabin was situated, 
 and the sheen flowing off the rich and tremb- 
 ling brilliancy of the water gushed to the large 
 open port-hole and rendered the interior as 
 light again as I had previously found it. 
 
 I stood for a few moments staring with real 
 wonder and admiration at the surprising beauty 
 of the young fellow's face — but a beauty as 
 masculine as any woman could wish to find 
 in the graces of a man — every feature virile 
 in its very essence. He smiled, and holding 
 up his cigar exclaimed, '' 1 am an inveterate 
 
"MY NAUSEA?" HE EXCLAIMED. " OH, YES, TOBACCO IS GOOD 
 FOR SEA-SICKNESS." 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 37 
 
 smoker and hope you will not object to the 
 smell of tobacco smoke in this cabin ? " 
 
 *' Not at all. I too am a hard smoker." I 
 opened my portmanteau and took out a box 
 of cigars. '' But I should have thought 
 that smoking would not suit your com- 
 plaint." 
 
 '* My nausea ? " he exclaimed eyeing me 
 gravely and keenly. " Oh, yes. Tobacco is 
 o-ood for sea-sickness. It has certain tonical 
 properties. It is also a sort of narcotic, they 
 say. Whatever is good for the nerves is 
 good for nausea." He continued to coolly 
 puff at his weed, meanwhile observing me 
 with a narrowness wholly w^anting in offence 
 though it made me very sensible of its curious 
 quality of penetration. 
 
 *'Pray," said I carelessly, but talking with 
 intention, " why do you not go on deck and 
 breathe the fresh air ? Surely for sea-sickness 
 there is a virtue in fresh air which must be 
 w^anting even in tobacco." 
 
38 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 " I am very well here," he answered. " Did 
 you lunch in the saloon ? " 
 
 '' I did." 
 
 *' Many present ? " 
 
 ''All, I should say, saving yourself." 
 
 "A large number of military men, no 
 doubt ? " 
 
 *' Yes, we muster fairly strong.". 
 
 " In fact," said he, "this is almost a troop 
 ship. The fellow who waits upon me here, 
 talks of there being a General on board." 
 
 "So there is," said I, " Major- General Sir 
 Charles Primrose — a big gun in his way — a 
 whole breast of medals no doubt, and with 
 record enough to furnish him with a page or 
 two in books which tell you who people with 
 titles are." 
 
 " Do you know him ? " he asked languidly. 
 
 " No, but I shall be presently making his 
 acquaintance perhaps." 
 
 " I dare say he is a very disagreeable 
 person. An objectionable old East Indian 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 39 
 
 officer surely tops the list of people one ought 
 to dislike. Such airs ! such prejudices ! such 
 despotism resulting from the habit of com- 
 manding not only black troops, but black 
 servants. And then," continued he, preserving 
 his languid voice, " the objectionable old East 
 Indian officer has a trick of shoutino" when he 
 converses. He will bawl^<9^^ mornz?ig to you 
 as though he were ordering a regiment of 
 Sepoys to charge. I believe I shall remain 
 very much out of sight. It is miserable to be 
 locked up with unpleasant people," he added, 
 talking with an affectation of " nerves " and 
 with a sleepy droop of his lids which only 
 served to sharpen the clear intelligent gaze of 
 his handsome eyes. 
 
 " But you will not surely w^iolly live in this 
 cabin ? " 
 
 ** No. I'll take the air from time to time, 
 but ril probably continue to eat here. There 
 is no shipboard law I presume to oblige a 
 passenger to take his meals at the cabin table } 
 
40 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 Many ladles on board ? " continued he, speaking 
 with a sHght drawl. 
 
 "A baker's dozen, I should say — perhaps 
 more." 
 
 '' I figure," said he — " a Lady Primrose, a 
 woman rendered as objectionable as her hus- 
 band by the airs and graces of Indian society." 
 
 " There is no Lady Primrose : at least there 
 is no Lady Primrose in this ship. There is a 
 Miss Primrose, a beautiful and interesting girl. 
 But why do you speak of the General as ob- 
 jectionable ? I have not called him so. Have 
 you met him ? " 
 
 He slightly yawned and answered whilst he 
 relighted his cigar: "Something in your 
 reference to him may have suggested the old 
 gentleman as objectionable. I really do not 
 know, Captain Swift, and I may honestly add 
 that I really do not care." 
 
 '' Well," said I, moving towards the door, " I 
 must hope to be able to coax you on deck later 
 on. 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 41 
 
 He smiled and rose out of his bunk to take 
 a book from the top of the little chest of 
 drawers which he had appropriated. He was 
 even taller than I had supposed him to be, a 
 magnificent figure of a man, and as he stood 
 for a moment there was the grace of a reposing 
 dancer In his posture. " Well now," thought 
 I as I walked out, " who the dickens Is this 
 noble creature I should like to know ? and 
 what Is his motive In going to India ? and what 
 can be his object In Imprisoning himself In a 
 dark cabin ? And he Is to be 7ny berth fellow 
 too ! I shall find out something about him by 
 and by no doubt. Is he a criminal flying from 
 his country ? A forger ? a homicide ? A 
 mystery there certainly Is. He is no more 
 sea-sick than I am ; he no more objects to the 
 society of old East India officers than other 
 people do. What is it then ? " And this 
 question, uttered to myself, landed me on the 
 poop. 
 
 The scene Into which I rose extinguished 
 
42 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 all thoughts of Mr. Pellew. The after part of 
 the ship was comparatively deserted, many of 
 the passengers being probably too upset by the 
 movements of the vessel 'to show themselves, 
 whilst others were busy in their berths with 
 the bestowal of the clothes and conveniences 
 they had brought with them. The breeze had 
 freshened, and the countenance of the wind- 
 ward sky had undergone one of those swift 
 changes which always impress me as a sort of 
 miracle. When I had gone below to lunch 
 the heavens were high and pure, with but a 
 film of cloud here and there, and the sun in 
 the south and west sparkled in the September 
 atmosphere with a silver mistiness. And now 
 that same face of heaven was sullen with rigid 
 cloud, a surface of corrugated vapour that was 
 already streaming past our mast-heads and 
 away over the lee-bow, with the sun now and 
 again flashing a single beam through a crevice 
 and smiting some frothing head of sea under 
 it into a dazzle of snow. The ship was swarm- 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 43 
 
 Ing along magnificently, some of her lighter 
 sails on high blo\ying out like bladders in the 
 grip of their gear, with the figures of reefers 
 aft and seamen forward trotting up the wide 
 spread of massive black shrouds to furl the 
 canvas ; her round bow and enormously thick 
 cutwater stormed through the hurl of the surge, 
 and often to her curtseyings the foam was 
 swept ahead of her to the distance of her 
 flying jibboom end when it would come rushing 
 past in a giddy boiling that made the eye which 
 Avatched it spin again. 
 
 This was, indeed, being at sea ! We had 
 sunk the land — No ! down upon the quarter in 
 the windy-haze you saw the phantasmal loom of 
 the English coast, but so ghost-like was it that 
 it eluded the gaze you directed that way ; it 
 revealed itself fitfully and was gone w^hen you 
 looked. Yet it was England ; the last glimpse 
 maybe we were to obtain of the old home, and 
 my spirits sank as I strained my eyes into the 
 horizon. 
 
44 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 I peered through the glass of the skyHght 
 and saw Miss Primrose seated at the table 
 almost directly beneath. An open book lay 
 before her, but it was easy to guess by her 
 slightly averted face that her eyes were not 
 fastened upon the page. She had removed 
 her hat, and I could now see that she added to 
 her other extraordinary charms an amazing 
 profusion, a wonderful luxuriance of dark gold 
 hair — to call it so, though it would puzzle a 
 greater artist in words than I to communi- 
 cate the exquisite hue of this girl's tresses. 
 She sat motionless as though in a profound 
 reverie, making nothing of the gathering 
 uneasiness of the ship's movements and en- 
 tirely heedless of those who passed her. 
 Indeed in the brief space during which I 
 watched a lady paused and addressed her, 
 then finding herself unanswered moved on 
 with a smile. 
 
 The mate standing at the rail which pro- 
 tected the overhanging ledge of the poop- 
 
II 
 
 GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 
 
 45 
 
 deck was sendiiiQf orders in a bull-like note 
 aloft and forward, and the ship was full of 
 
 SHE SAT MOTIONLESS AS THOUGH IX A PROFOUND REVERIE. 
 
 hurry. Indeed the weather was hardening 
 into what promised to be half a gale of wind, 
 
46 A STRANGE 'ELOPEMENT ii 
 
 and I stood watching; with interest the com- 
 plicated business of shortening sail. Many of 
 the poor Tommies were already hopelessly 
 sea-sick, leaning over the bulwark-rail, and a 
 few of them lay like logs in the lee scuppers, 
 rolling a little way to the left and then a little 
 way to the right with the heave of the deck. 
 Some who were more seasoned dragged with 
 the sailors at the ropes, and their uniforms com- 
 bining with the varied apparel of the Jacks 
 made so commonplace a shipboard matter as 
 that of manning the topsail halliards quite a 
 picturesque affair. But happily the wind blew 
 from a quarter to quickly thunder us out of the 
 Channel, and by five o'clock the ship with a 
 reef in each topsail w^as thrashing at some ten 
 or eleven miles in the hour through the 
 swelling waters, flinging the spray aft as far as 
 the gangway with a frequent large soft cloud 
 of spume blowing like a burst of steam off 
 her bow, a couple of men at the wheel, a 
 long race of boiling wake astern of her, and a 
 
II GENERAL AND MISS PRIMROSE 47 
 
 rigging vocal with orchestral notes that rose 
 at times into triumphal bursts amid which 
 the fanciful ear might catch the clear bugling 
 of some wild ocean melody. 
 
Ill 
 
 MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 
 
 From this hour I date a long term of 
 stormy weather. In fact for several days the 
 decks were unvisitable ; the rain swept in 
 sheets past the masts ; the scuppers sobbed 
 in the incessant downpour, and the wet gale 
 blew with an edge of ice in it. Most of the 
 passengers kept their cabins. Sir Charles was 
 amongst those who were prostrated, and of 
 his daughter I saw nothing. Often not more 
 than six or eight of us assembled at meal 
 times. Mr. Pellew remained below with the 
 others who were sea-sick ; yet he certainly 
 did not suffer. He ate well, was constantly 
 
Ill I\IY MYSTERIOUS CABIX-FELLOW 49 
 
 smoking, emptied his bottle of champagne 
 with rehsh, and was sufficiently easy to be 
 able to sprawl upon his back in his bunk and 
 to read novels of which he had a heap that 
 stood in a corner of the berth. He would 
 ask me in a voice of indifference what was 
 going forward on deck, but no more was 
 exchanged between us than common civility 
 exacted. 
 
 I liked the confinement of my berth so little 
 that after I quitted it of a morning my visits to 
 It were very few^ and far between ; and com- 
 monly when I turned in of a night, my friend 
 under me — for as you know I occupied the top 
 bunk — was either asleep or hinting by keeping 
 his eyes closed that he did not wish to con- 
 verse. While such weather as w^e were now 
 having continued It was not very likely that 
 inquiries would be made about my secret and 
 mysterious cabin passenger ; his representa- 
 tions of sea-sickness which would filter through 
 the steward who waited upon him to the ears 
 
50 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT III 
 
 of the captain, mates and passengers were 
 entirely reasonable and credible. But how 
 would it be later on, when the Madeira 
 parallels, say, gave us bright skies, and when 
 everybody must be supposed cured of his 
 nausea ? Yet after all what more could follow 
 than general astonishment at so extraordinary 
 a whim— conjectures which would presently 
 exhaust themselves, and a vast amount of 
 throbbing curiosity amongst the women, par- 
 ticularly if they should gather that he was the 
 handsome man and noble and commanding 
 figure I found him ? What could the captain 
 do ? Mr. Pellew had paid for his share of his 
 berth and had a right to live in it, and though 
 to be sure the Commander with some idea 
 of rooting the young fellow out of his cell 
 might insist that the privileges of a bedroom 
 did not comprise those of a parlour, it was 
 not to be imagined that he would trouble 
 himself over the behaviour of a man whom 
 he and his officers would straightway set 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 51 
 
 down as half-witted, or In the highest degree 
 eccentric. 
 
 I have said that during these days of storm 
 my cabin-fellow and I found little to say to 
 each other outside a few civil commonplaces. 
 At the same time I could not help noticing 
 that he watched me with the air of a man bent 
 upon solving a problem of human character by 
 the interpretation of aspect without reference 
 to speech. His gaze was keen and vivid ; I 
 had never encountered looks more penetrating. 
 Possibly I may have imagined his silent scrutiny 
 a shrewder inquest than it really was, because 
 of my powerlessness to fathom his motive for 
 giving himself this trouble with a perfect 
 stranger. I cannot feign that there was any 
 charm in my face to merit a degree of attention 
 that was sometimes almost impassioned despite 
 its furtiveness. My character was common- 
 place ; I was an off-hand, careless young 
 soldier, by no means burdened with brains, 
 and certainly to him I must have seemed 
 
 E 2 
 
52 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT III 
 
 perfectly colourless in intellect, and entirely 
 insipid. 
 
 Sometimes I fancied that he was meditating 
 an avowal, though by this time I had wholly 
 absolved him from the several black crimes my 
 early imagination had charged him with. He 
 had not the look of a man with a dark secret. 
 There was a high-born freedom in his face that 
 was like nature's own resentment of a doubt of 
 his honour, of his character, of his career. If 
 he meant then to take me into his confidence, 
 what had he to impart ? Once a dim suspicion 
 crossed my mind — vaguely and most illogically 
 I seemed to connect his perplexing self-immure- 
 ment with the melancholy and beautiful girl 
 whom I had not seen since I stood viewing her 
 through the cabin sky-light. Why ? I cannot 
 tell, unless it was because of his manner of 
 dwelling with a kind of careless disgust upon 
 the name of Sir Charles Primrose. But the 
 light suspicion, or imagination rather, vanished 
 in me as soon as it was formed. 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-P^ELLOW 53 
 
 The weather moderated on the morning of 
 the fifth day, and when I went on deck after 
 breakfast, I found the sun shining amongst 
 huge and swehing bodies of fleecy vapour, 
 which as their brows smote the luminary, 
 caught a glory that seemed intenser than that 
 of the orb himself, whilst there would flash 
 from the stately sailing masses many fan-shaped 
 radiations of blinding brilliance ; the sea of a 
 deep blue was still running high, and far as the 
 eye could reach the ocean was a rising and fall- 
 ing surface of violet surge and frothing heads. 
 It still blew a fresh breeze, but the wind was 
 almost directly aft, sail had been made and the 
 ship was going along on a level keel, soaring 
 and sinking with the majesty of an old line-of- 
 battle ship, with a regularity that rendered 
 walking easy. 
 
 A number of the passengers arrived ; soldiers 
 were sunning themselves forward, and the 
 decks were hospitable with colour and life. 
 Amongst those v/ho came on the poop after 
 
54 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iii 
 
 breakfast — though the lady had not been pres- 
 ent at the table — were Sir Charles and his 
 daughter. He looked somewhat haggard from 
 confinement and sickness, but his face I thought 
 had an unpleasantly hard expression ; there 
 was something frowning and even threatening 
 in his eyes which he darted here and there, re- 
 turning haughty distant bows to the salutation 
 of the captain and others as he tucked his 
 daughter's hand under his arm and fell to 
 patrolling the deck with her. I could not 
 gather that they conversed. She appeared to 
 look at nothing but the planks on which she 
 trod. 
 
 Old Captain Whale, the shipowner's repre- 
 sentative whom I have previously mentioned, 
 was leaning with me against the rail when they 
 arrived. 
 
 *' A stern-looking old gentleman ! " said he to 
 me ; " I shouldn't like to be one of his soldiers. 
 How many black chaps I wonder has he blown 
 from the mouths of cannons ? I know you to 
 
HE TUCKED HIS DAUGHTER S HAND UNDER HIS ARM AND FELL 
 TO PATROLLING THE DECK WITH HER. 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 57 
 
 be of his profession, sir. You'll excuse my 
 freedom." 
 
 "It is the traditional privilege of sailors to 
 dislike soldiers," said I, laughing. 
 
 '' Well, ^^ere you're right," he exclaimed with 
 a broad grin. " Not but that a soldier may 
 not be a very good sort of man too, but where 
 for instance would you find even an Admiral 
 who had covered himself with glory, annihilated 
 a fleet, occasioned what the newspapers would 
 call a new geographical distribution, saved the 
 throne, and lowered the income-tax, give him- 
 self the airs of that old gentleman yonder ? His 
 daughter don't look a very happy woman, does 
 she ? His cabin's next to mine and I heard 
 him rating her this morning." 
 
 '' Rating her. What did you hear ?" 
 
 '' I wouldn't hear. I didn't choose to 
 hear. The fact is, sir, I had no r?^/^/ to 
 hear. But the tone of his voice — it w^as like 
 listening to a wrangling bo'sun through a 
 bulkhead." 
 
58 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT III 
 
 *' How do you know that he was addressing 
 her ? " 
 
 ''Why," said he, "as I entered my cabin 
 she entered his. Tell you what," said he 
 sinking his voice, " there's a love yarn in 
 that job. That old gentleman's been and 
 broken his daughter's heart. Look at her 
 face, sir." 
 
 He wagged his purple countenance, fetched 
 a sigh which for depth and intensity might 
 have followed a long and thirsty pull at a bowl 
 of punch, and stepped down on to the quarter 
 deck. 
 
 I lingered a while covertly watching the 
 General and his daughter, and then went to 
 my cabin for a pipe and a pouch of tobacco. 
 Mr. Pellew was seated in my bunk with his 
 legs dangling over the edge of it, and, as I 
 entered, was intent upon what I thought to 
 be a coloured picture until a step took me close 
 enough to see that it was a map. He begged 
 my pardon for using my bunk, said that he was 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 59 
 
 unable to see In his own bedstead, and then 
 asked ine in an easy off-hand way if 1 under- 
 stood navigation. 
 
 " No," I responded, " I have no knowledge 
 whatever of it." 
 
 " I believe," said he, bending his eyes upon 
 the map, " that the marks which sailors make 
 upon their charts to signify the course their 
 ships have sailed along are called 'prickings.'" 
 
 '' I cannot tell you." 
 
 " Here is a little map that I have been prick- 
 ing," said he. *' Have you any idea of our 
 whereabouts to-day ? " 
 
 *' No," said I, ''but I recollect that our lati- 
 tude yesterday was so and so, and as our course 
 is about west-south-west and our average speed 
 since then will have been so and so, our latitude 
 this morning — or say our latitude at noon to- 
 day should be — " I calculated and then named 
 a figure. 
 
 "You are not so ignorant as you pretend." 
 
 " As knowing as the average schoolboy," said 
 
6o A STRANGE ELOPEMENT III 
 
 I with a shrug and a laugh and approaching the 
 bunk to take my pipe from a shelf. 
 
 " Then my ^ prickings ' will be pretty nearly 
 right," he exclaimed, handing me the map that 
 was a very clean tracing of the two Atlantics 
 from the mouth of the British Channel to a few 
 degrees south of Agulhas. 
 
 I glanced at the pencil marks upon it and 
 exclaimed " Yes. That will be about the 
 situation of our ship at noon to-day I should 
 think." 
 
 ** You have made this voyage before ?" said 
 he, taking the map from me and looking at it 
 whilst he spoke. 
 
 " Once only," said I. 
 
 " What land do we sight, can you tell me ? " 
 
 *' I do not remember that we sighted land 
 until we came to a halt in Simon's Bay, which, 
 as you may know, is close to Cape Town." 
 
 "No land at all ! I had no notion an Indian 
 voyage was all water. Yet,", continued he keep- 
 ing his eyes fixed upon the map and speaking 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 6i 
 
 with the air of one who talks only for the sake 
 of talking — and this was the first time that I 
 had noticed any such sociability in him — " the 
 navigation to the Cape should occasionally bring 
 the land tolerably close." 
 
 " Quite the contrary," said I. '' I cannot tell 
 you where the equated* is crossed ; but I know 
 that it is cut by these sailing keels deep In the 
 heart of the Atlantic. Then, I believe, a course 
 Is made to bring the island of Trinidad off the 
 starboard bow, after w^hich the helm is shifted 
 for the transverse stretch that brings the south- 
 east trade wind w^hlstllng to the edge of the 
 sharply braced-up sails." 
 
 "You are at no loss for sea terms," said he, 
 speaking as though his thoughts were elsewhere 
 whilst his eyes continued to muse upon the 
 map ; then abruptly folding and pocketing the 
 coloured sheet, he exclaimed, '' Shipwreck must 
 surely be a desperate business in a voyage of 
 this sort. Figure the vessel foundering some- 
 where in the neighbourhood of the equator ! 
 
62 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT III 
 
 Saving a little rock marked St. Paul there is no 
 land for hundreds of miles for the boat to make 
 for." 
 
 '' One's best chance must lie in being picked 
 up," said I. 
 
 "Ay," he exclaimed with a nod, " I suppose 
 that is so ; perhaps the 07ily chance ; and a 
 pretty sure one, don't you think ? There is 
 no ocean so crowded with shipping as the 
 Atlantic." 
 
 " Pretty sure or not," I exclaimed, '' I hope 
 we may not come to it. My two pet night- 
 mares are, fire ashore and an open boat at 
 sea. 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 I was astonished that he should choose to 
 confine himself to this cabin. His motive was 
 absolutely unconjecturable. It was ridiculous 
 in him to feign dislike of the passengers. He 
 had boarded the ship In the docks, and had, as 
 I might take it, never set eyes upon a single 
 being in the ship saving the man who waited 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 63 
 
 Upon him. Such a foregone conckision of dls- 
 Hke or apprehension as his behaviour suggested 
 was not to be entertained. I wondered that he 
 was not to be coaxed from his berth by the 
 Httle picture of ocean splendour that the port- 
 hole framed — a miniature that was warrant 
 enough of the glory of the wide canvas without ; 
 for through the thick but clear glass the blue, 
 glittering and foaming heights of brine showed 
 clearly with clouds of prismatic spray swept off 
 them by the rush of the clear gale, whilst to the 
 roll of the ship the noble ocean sky of flying 
 white vapours came and went, putting by its 
 coming and going a deep and a wild vitality 
 into that free, radiant and windy morning. 
 
 I quitted the cabin leisurely, conceiving from 
 a sudden inquiring look he fastened upon me 
 that he had some question to ask, but the 
 expression of his face was swiftly chased away 
 by another, and finding him mute I left him. 
 
 Shortly after twelve that day the wind mode- 
 rated, the sea subsided, studding sails were run 
 
64 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT I" 
 
 aloft, and the ship floated in beauty and tran- 
 quIlHty through as fair an afternoon as ever 
 waned over the sea ; the- soft brimming run of 
 the surge to her quarter, was as a caressful help 
 to her progress, and her three stately spires 
 swayed with a regularity as rhythmic as though 
 they were keeping time to some solemn music 
 audible only at the mastheads. The poop was 
 filled with passengers ; the temperature was 
 delightful ; the ladies sat here and there in 
 chairs reading or sewing ; some of the younger 
 fellows amongst us hung about them, and the 
 ''Yaases/' "By Geds," and ''By George's" 
 were doubly plentiful under the inspiriting 
 influence of the agreeable weather. Sir Charles 
 and Colonel Mowbray paced the deck together, 
 and so far as I could gather their talk seemed 
 to chiefly concern soldiers' rations. 
 
 I missed Miss Primrose till on havlnof occa- 
 sion to enter the saloon I saw her seated at the 
 extreme end of it on a little sofa near the piano, 
 with an open book on her lap, over which her 
 
Ill MV MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 65 
 
 beautiful face drooped as though she slept. I 
 would have given much for an excuse to address 
 her ; but no excuse could have been permissible 
 in the face of her manifest desire to be alone. 
 Once again the idea that had before occurred to 
 me half formed itself in my mind, spite of its 
 having then been a conjecture that had scarcely 
 entered my head before it was dismissed as 
 ridiculous. Was that melancholv and beautiful 
 girl yonder the answer to the conundrum sub- 
 mitted by Mr. Pellew's behaviour ? I could 
 only mentally shrug my shoulders, so to speak, 
 in response to this suspicion. What was it all 
 to me ? Be the affair what it might it was none 
 of mine. Indeed but for my being Mr. Pellew's 
 cabin associate, I should never have wasted an 
 instant's thought in speculating about him. 
 
 A fine night followed the lovely afternoon 
 that had shone over us ; a night of cloudless 
 sky rich with trembling stars more thickly 
 strewn than ever I had beheld, and many of 
 them shininof in orreens and reds, and of an icv 
 
 F 
 
66 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iii 
 
 whiteness of light that made one think of a sphn- 
 tered diamond, each fragment preserving the dye 
 its facet had sparkled with before the gem was 
 shattered. There was a young moon in the west, 
 but without power. The sea flowed in dark and 
 foamless lines, and the light breeze had just 
 enouo-h of weight to hold every sail motionless. 
 I sat somewhat late at the dinner table that 
 evening talking with a young officer with whose 
 family I was slightly acquainted. It was about 
 half-past seven when I stepped out of the saloon 
 into a recess formed by the cabin front and the 
 bulkhead of a projecting cabin on either side, 
 and lighted a cigar, for we made a kind of 
 smokine room of this recess, and here a few of 
 us would muster after meals, pipe or cigar in 
 mouth, and chat away an hour or so. The 
 time was what is termed at sea the second dog- 
 watch, when if the weather be fine and the ship 
 •deman^ds litde or no attention the crew are at 
 liberty to amuse themselves. They were doing 
 so now ; out of the gloom that shrouded the 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 67 
 
 forecastle came the strains of a concertina 
 accompanying the manly notes of a seaman 
 singing. The song was " Tom Bowling," and 
 the sailor's clear and powerful voice fell back 
 again upon the deck in a soft echo out of the 
 stirless concavities of the sails. Here and there 
 stood or lounged a group of the dusky figures 
 of soldiers talking in subdued accents, with an 
 occasional flash of a lucifer match lighting up 
 some whiskered face for a minute as it sucked 
 at a pipe, and glancing a faint illumination upon 
 the adjacent fellows, so that It was like peering 
 into a camera-obscura. 
 
 Colonel Mowbray joined us, a gentleman 
 whose propensity to argue speedily rendered 
 him a bore, and I quitted the little group to 
 stroll forward, with a notion of obtaining a 
 better hearing of the music and of overhearing 
 the conversation and jokes of the Jacks. As I 
 advanced, stepping along the deck on the lee 
 side, I noticed a couple of figures standing 
 against the galley or ship's kitchen, where their 
 
 F 2 
 
68 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iii 
 
 forms were so mingled with the deeper shade 
 of darkness cast by the deck erection as 
 to be indistino^uishable at a Httle distance. 
 I supposed them to be a couple of soldiers — 
 indeed I scarcely glanced at them — and was 
 pressing yet a little nearer to the forecastle front 
 w^hen I heard my name uttered. I stopped 
 and peered, and now being very close to the 
 two men I made out that one of them, standing 
 over six feet high, was swathed in a cloak of true 
 melodramatic build, the collar upturned, whilst a 
 large black wide-awake drawn low over his fore- 
 head disclosed the merest glimmer of his face. 
 The man at his side was a seaman, who, on my 
 pausing, passed round to the other side of the 
 deck by way of the long-boat and disappeared. 
 
 This tall, becloaked, obscure figure could be 
 nobody else than my cabin-fellow, Mn Godfrey 
 Pellew. 
 
 *' I am glad to see you on deck," said I, 
 '' your long confinement must certainly end in 
 punishing you." 
 
Ill .AIY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 69 
 
 " Why, no ; " he exclaimed, speaking in a 
 somewhat muffled voice, as though lifting his 
 lips above the edge of a shawl about his neck 
 to articulate ; " I have merely to open the port 
 to get all the air I require. How finely that 
 fellow sings. I know no melody that har- 
 monizes so perfectly wuth the thoughts which 
 come to one out of old ocean — when one is 
 upon it — as ' Tom Bowling.' There is some- 
 thino- in the tune that makes a man feel he 
 ouorht to be a sailor.*' 
 
 He paused, and I waited, not doubting he 
 would make some apologetic reference to his 
 stranore theatrical ofarb. But nothinsf of the 
 sort left his lips. He proceeded to talk of the 
 beautv of the niQ;ht, of the cloudlike faintness 
 of the sails sweeping through the liquid dusk, 
 in a manner and in a voice as thouo^h he was 
 absolutely insensible to the oddity of his 
 appearance and to the notions which his 
 mysterious behaviour must excite. Piqued by 
 his cool unconcern I could not help saying : 
 
70 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT in 
 
 "Why not join us aft, Mr. Pellew ? You 
 will find some of the men very good fellows. 
 They are not all General Primroses." 
 
 '' But why are you not aft, Captain Swift ? " 
 he rejoined, and I knew that he was smiling by 
 the tone of his voice. 
 
 " I came forward to listen to the fellow 
 singing." 
 
 " Own that you were bored." 
 
 This was so pat that I could find no better 
 answer to it than a laugh. 
 
 ''The lonor ^x\A short of it is," he ex- 
 claimed abruptly and with energy, "I do not 
 choose to mingle with the cabin passengers. 
 All the society I may happen to require I shall 
 be able to find in the forward part of the ship." 
 He added with a note of haughtiness, " I trust 
 that my taste or desires are sufficient to 
 satisfy you as reasons for my choosing to hold 
 aloof." 
 
 I was about to answer, when the figure of 
 a man who, as Mr. Pellew spoke, had been 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 71 
 
 approaching us from the direction of the poop, 
 came to a halt immediately abreast of us with 
 a suggestion of surprise in his manner of stop- 
 ping. It was the chief mate, Mr. Freeman. 
 He peered close Into my face and exclaimed, 
 '' Oh, It is you, Captain Swift," and immedi- 
 ately added, " Pray, who is your friend ? I be- 
 lieve I have not before met the gentleman." 
 
 " I am Mr. Godfrey Pellew," exclaimed my 
 tall companion. " And who are you ? " 
 
 " I am Mr. Freeman, chief officer of the 
 Light of Asia^ sir," rejoined the other In a 
 rough sea voice of dignity and irritation. He 
 seemed to reflect, then added In a changed 
 tone, " I must apologize to you, sir. You are, 
 of course, a cabin passenger ? I did not 
 instantly recollect the name." 
 
 " Mr. Pellew and I share a berth between 
 us," said I. 
 
 The dusky hand of the mate rose to the 
 peak of his cap. " I truly beg your pardon," 
 he began. 
 
72 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ill 
 
 " No need whatever," interrupted Mr. Pellew, 
 in a voice whose note of hio^h breedinsf was 
 
 o o 
 
 sweetened by the cordiaHty he infused into it. 
 '' Not having before seen me why should not 
 you have imagined me a stowaway ? The 
 fact is, Mr. Freeman, I have kept my cabin 
 partly because I have been sea-sick, and partly 
 because I have no desire to join the company 
 in the saloon. My amiable fellow-passenger, 
 Captain Swift, is astonished that I should not 
 haunt the decks as the rest do, and no doubt con- 
 siders me in consequence as decidedly wanting^ 
 
 '' No, no," said I. 
 
 " But surely, Mr. Freeman," he continued, 
 ''passengers are privileged to keep their cabins 
 if theychoose ? " 
 
 *' Certainly," exclaimed the mate. 
 
 "There is nothing in the Shipping Acts, I 
 believe, to compel a passenger to eat at the 
 saloon table ? " 
 
 *' Not a syllable," replied the mate with a 
 laugh. 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIX-FELLOW 73 
 
 *' And," continued ]\Ir. Pellew, '' though I 
 know the master of a ship is Invested, and 
 very properly Invested, by the law with the 
 most absolute, the most despotic powers, he 
 cannot, even if he would, compel a passenger 
 to mix with his fellows." 
 
 '' A passenger has the right to do what he 
 likes, sir," answered the mate, " subject of 
 course to the rules which provide for the safety 
 of a ship and for the security of the lives of 
 the people on board of her."' 
 
 '• There is no menace to a vessel's safety in 
 a passenger keeping his berth," said ]\Ir. Pellew. 
 
 " None whatever," answered ^Ir. Freeman 
 heartily. " But still, sir, you know, as a 
 matter of health — and then a^rain the Vovaee 
 to India is a long one, and dull enough, heaven 
 knows, even at its liveliest." 
 
 '' But how much duller may it be made," 
 exclaimed ^Ir. Pellew. " bv the socIetY of 
 insipid or stupid or argumentative or quarrel- 
 some people ? ' 
 
74 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iii 
 
 The mate could not stay to converse ; he 
 saluted again with another polite flourish of his 
 hand to his cap, and disappeared in the 
 obscurity forward on the errand that had 
 brought him from the poop. 
 
 Through the illuminated windows of the 
 cuddy front we could witness dimly the shapes 
 of people seated or in motion ; but we stood, 
 too far forward to discern faces. The 
 brightness of those windows rendered pro- 
 founder by contrast the gloom of the deck 
 overhead, and I could only tell that there were 
 jDeople up there approaching the rail and then 
 marching aft again in the regular sea patrol by 
 hearing their voices coming and going. Eight- 
 bells were struck ; the clear chimes swept past 
 the ear and died out in faint music upon the 
 starry distance over the side ; the strains of the 
 concertina ceased, there was the bustle of a 
 change of watch, of a man going aft to relieve 
 the wheel, of the soldiers descending to their 
 quarters in the 'tween decks. 
 
Ill MY MYSTERIOUS CABIN-FELLOW 77 
 
 Mr. Pellevv lighted another cigar, but showed 
 no disposition to quit the spot where I had 
 found him. The mystery of his conduct made 
 him better society to my mind than the people 
 in the saloon of whom to be sure. I had scarce 
 as yet made the acquaintance of more than half 
 a dozen. I therefore filled my pipe afresh and 
 lingered at his side w^Ith some hope of courting 
 him into a sentence, however evasive, which 
 should sharpen or satisfy the suspicion that was 
 now a mere vexation for its vao^ueness ; but so 
 often as I directed the conversation to the 
 passengers, so often indeed as I uttered any 
 remark that was not of an absolutely impersonal 
 character, the tendency of which threatened to 
 swerve us in the smallest deo-ree from conver- 
 satlon more or less idle and commonplace, his 
 pause, his silence, was the completest hint of 
 recoil, and once or twice of quiet resentment ; 
 and then he would q-q on talkinor of such stuff 
 as the duties of a merchant mate, the worth of 
 such a cargo as the Light of Asia carried, the 
 
78 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iii 
 
 height of the topmost sail, the main-royal, from 
 the deck on which we stood. Once I asked 
 him how long he proposed to remain in India, 
 and he answered by calling my attention to the 
 flight of a shooting star, which on its vanish- 
 ing, left behind it a long wake or scoring of 
 floating silver dust, that lingered for some 
 moments. Half an hour of this sort of thing 
 sufficed me, and emptying my pipe I left him 
 stationed like a sentry by the side of the galley 
 and strolled aft into the saloon. 
 
IV 
 
 MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 
 
 For some days nothing happened in any way 
 worth mentioning. At this distance of time I 
 cannot be sure of dates ; but I beheve we had 
 been somewhere about a fortnight from Eng- 
 land when, happening to be on the poop in the 
 afternoon I was accosted by the captain as I 
 stood alone leaning over the ship's quarter 
 engaged in an occupation I was never weary of 
 — I mean watching the exquisite configurations 
 of the snow-white foam as it slidecl over the 
 dark-blue surface into the ship's wake in glitter- 
 ing bells careering round the edge of gleaming 
 eddies or gyrating in shapes of stars and the 
 
8o A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 tendrils of plants, or seething past In cloudy 
 masses of a cream-like softness. I had had very 
 little to say to Captain Stagg. I do not know 
 that he was much liked by any of the pas- 
 sengers. He was convulsive enough In his 
 bows, effusive enough in his sea courtesies to 
 the nobs amongst us : to Sir Charles and his 
 daughter, to Colonel and Mrs. Mowbray and 
 the like ; but there was tyranny in his handling 
 of his men. I used to find something brutal in 
 the coarse flinor of his voice whenever he had 
 occasion to let fly an order at his crew, and he 
 was rough and gruff and insolent in his bearing 
 to his officers — that is to say, when the poop 
 was thin and he thought himself unwatched ; 
 otherwise when there was no lack of spectators 
 he would uncouthly request the chief mate to 
 ''be so good as to get so and so done,'' or 
 address the second mate with a ''Pray, Mr, 
 Masters, zualk foriuard, dfcT The midship- 
 men hated and feared him, trembled when he 
 arrived on deck, and watched him as though he 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 8i 
 
 carried a weapon which he might at any 
 moment draw upon them. 
 
 Well, as I told you, he accosted me one after- 
 noon as I stood gazing down upon the swirling 
 wash of foam alono^side. 
 
 *' Busy, Captain Swift ? " 
 
 '' Nothing whatever to do ; '' said I, turning 
 upon him. 
 
 " I should like three words with you,' said 
 he. 
 
 " As many as you please." 
 
 " You share your cabin with a gentleman 
 named Pellew ? " 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " I have been leaving a card upon him this 
 afternoon in the sea-sense of visits," said he 
 with a erin which seemed to twist his mouth 
 right into his cheek whilst his nose appeared to 
 edge more directly the other way; " he is a 
 very fine gentleman,, quite a splendid man, I 
 declare. Odd he should have been my pas- 
 senger all this while and that I should never 
 
82 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 have seen bim before. But he Is perfectly 
 well ? " 
 
 *' In health you mean ? Yes, I should say 
 he's perfectly well." 
 
 " Has he given you a reason for his clinging 
 to his cabin — for his never putting in an appear- 
 ance on deck or in the cuddy ? " 
 
 " No, nor have I troubled myself to ask him 
 for a reason." 
 
 " He told me plainly," said he, " that he dis- 
 likes society, that if the accommodation of the 
 ship had permitted he would have hired two 
 berths, one to serve him as a sitting-room the 
 other as a bed-room, so that he could always be 
 entirely alone if he chose." 
 
 *' I suppose," said I, "in your time you have 
 sailed with passengers whose tastes were a little 
 odd and perplexing ? " 
 
 " In my time I have sailed with many queer 
 people and seen many strange things," he 
 answered, driving his hands deep into his 
 breeches pockets and bestowing a singular leer 
 
HAS HE GIVEN- YOU A REASON, CAPTAIN^ SWIFT, FOR HIS 
 CLINGING TO HIS CABIN?" 
 
 G 2 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 85 
 
 of self-complacency upon me. " In the 
 Australian trade there's some sort of sociability 
 to be found ; but amongst Anglo-Indians, 
 'specially gents who are in your profession — and 
 perhaps I shouldn't say that either, for upon 
 my word, I lay it mostly to the account of the 
 ladies — there's a deal of — what shall I call it ? 
 Lord ! how easily may a man's good sense be 
 stumped by the w^ant of a word ! Well, I mean 
 this : that to satisfy the outwards, I won't say 
 the homewards, folks in this trade a ship ought 
 to be made up of separate living and sleeping- 
 rooms like a hotel ; there should be no communi- 
 cation unless desired ; no public table save for 
 those who choose to sit at it." 
 
 " You exactly express Mr. Pellew's motive 
 for holding aloof, so far as I can gather it," 
 said I. 
 
 '• How do vou and him oret on ? " said he with 
 a small forecastle lapse in his speech. 
 
 "Very w^ell indeed." 
 
 " Find him perfectly straight-headed ? " 
 
86 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iV 
 
 " You need only meet his eye to know that." 
 
 " Does he talk In his sleep ? " 
 
 '' He rests as peacefully as a dog-tired sailor/' 
 I replied. 
 
 " Then he's quiet enough though he'll snore 
 If he's after that pattern," said he with a nod 
 and a grin. " Well, sir, I thought I'd ask you 
 about him. Certainly he's a very fine gentle- 
 man. He's not a nobleman d'ye think shipped 
 under a false name ? " 
 
 " I can answer nothing, for I know nothing," 
 I responded. 
 
 " Not that he need be a nobleman to be fine 
 looking either,"' said he spitting into the sea ; 
 '' I only want to satisfy my mind that all's right 
 with him," and he touched his forehead. 
 
 " You may make your mind perfectly easy on 
 that score." 
 
 He reflected a little with his eyes fixed upon 
 the horizon and then said, '' If you can induce 
 him to show himself on deck by day I shall be 
 glad. He needn't eat in the cabin ; he needn't 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 87 
 
 speak to any one ; I'll give the passengers a hint, 
 they're people of manners, and I warrant him 
 he sha'n't be stared at. But his keeping below, 
 only coming up when it's dark, and so fine a 
 gentleman as he is too — why, ye see, Captain 
 Swift, it'll lead to talk, and by and by to a little 
 uneasiness. The people '11 think that he's gone 
 and done something wrong, and dursen't show 
 himself in consequence. Let him make his 
 appearance — on the quarter-deck if he likes ; 
 he can easily keep clear of the poop all the 
 same as if he was a steerage passenger." and 
 thus speaking he rolled over to the binnacle to 
 examine the compass and resume his station to 
 windward of the wheel. 
 
 I have said that this conversation occurred 
 durinor an afternoon when we had been about ten 
 days out from England. It left no impression 
 upon my mind. I had long foreseen that the at- 
 tention of the captain would be provoked by Mr. 
 Pellew's curious behaviour, and whilst the issue 
 was uncertain, that is to say whilst I could only 
 
88 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 Speculate on the attitude Captain Stagg would 
 adopt — whether he would leave Mr. Pellew to 
 tranquilly enjoy his cabin, or by the exercise of 
 his authority oblige him to conform to the 
 routine of shipboard life ; whilst this issue was 
 uncertain, I say, I'd feel an interest that was 
 sometimes almost lively in the matter. But 
 now as it seemed it was a settled affair. If/ 
 could coax Mr. Pellew into showing himself on 
 deck by day, so much the better ; if not then 
 there was nothing to be done ; Mr. Pellew was 
 evidently wathin his rights ; the captain might 
 remonstrate or advise but he could not com- 
 mand, and the passengers must talk as they 
 choose and think as they pleased. 
 
 It happened on this day whilst waiting In the 
 saloon with others for the ladies to arrive to 
 dinner that a cabin door immediately opposite 
 where I stood was opened and Miss Primrose 
 stepped out. It was her berth : this I had not 
 before known — indeed I had imagined that she 
 slept next to her father's cabin that was on the 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 89 
 
 Starboard side of the ship, well aft. Her maid 
 held the door open whilst she passed out : and 
 continued to hold it open for a sufficient space of 
 time to enable me to obtain not only a view of 
 the interior of the compartment, but a sight of 
 a thick rope called a shroud which almost per- 
 pendicularly ruled the large circular glass of the 
 porthole. 
 
 This shroud was clothed with what at sea is 
 termed " chafmg gear" — mats, split bamboos, 
 tarred canvas and the like. In the case of this 
 particular shroud the chafing gear that protected 
 it from the fret of ropes was formed of some 
 thickly-knitted heavily-tarred material to which 
 I am unable to give a name, but w^hich made 
 me instantly recognize it as one that descended 
 to a dead-eye in the mizzen-channel the ledge 
 of which as I have before written overhung the 
 porthole that belonged to the cabin shared by Mr. 
 Pellew and me. I knew this because one day 
 when idly over-hanging the side, and looking 
 down upon the mizzen-channel, I had amused 
 
90 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT IV 
 
 myself by localizing the exact situation of our 
 berth, and I made out that our cabin window 
 was close against the iron fastening or chain 
 plate as it is termed, one end of which was 
 bolted to the ship's side, whilst to the other end 
 that penetrated the edge of the channel was 
 secured the dead-eye through which were rove 
 the lanyards that fastened the shroud which 
 ruled the window of Miss Primrose's berth. 
 
 Now all this which has taken me some time 
 to write simply signified a discovery to which 
 as you may suppose I attached no possible 
 significance at the time : namely that Miss 
 Primrose's berth was exactly over Mr. Pellew's 
 and mine : that the two portholes were direcdy 
 in a vertical line, so that but for the interposi- 
 tion of the wide shelf of the mizzen-channel a 
 man — say a tall man ; such a figure as Mr. 
 Pellew's for example — could, by standing on 
 the rim of the lower port, grasp the edge of the 
 upper one. 
 
 I had also time to observe whilst the maid 
 
iv MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 91 
 
 held the door open that only one of the two 
 bunks under the porthole was furnished with 
 bedding, whence It was clear that the girl 
 slept alone. This privilege had doubtless been 
 secured by an early application from the General 
 for accommodation, possibly at an Increase In 
 the rate of fares. He might have a reason ot 
 his own for desiring an unshared berth for his 
 daughter. The Intimacy of successive nights 
 of companionship must tempt her into a degree 
 of communicativeness w^hlch Sir Charles would 
 find inconvenient, for he might easily guess 
 that the lady to whom she disclosed her secret 
 — and a sad and most melancholy secret un- 
 doubtedly was hers if there be any virtue In 
 female beauty to express feelings of secret and 
 consuming wretchedness — w^ould have some 
 confidential f"rlend on board to whom to Impart 
 it, and so the truth would thread Its way from 
 ear to ear in whispers. 
 
 But the bustle of dinner, the oblloration 
 of listening and replying, speedily drove 
 
92 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT IV 
 
 all thoughts of Miss Primrose out of my 
 head. 
 
 I withdrew to my berth that night shortly 
 after ten o'clock. The wind on deck was wet 
 with driving drizzle ; and in the saloon there 
 was nothinor better to do than to watch Sir 
 Charles, Colonel Mowbray, and two others 
 playing at whist, and to listen to the chatter 
 of four or five of the passengers assembled at 
 the other end of the table. I expected, as 
 usual, to find Mr. Pellew in his bunk, asleep, 
 or at least suggesting by his posture and air 
 the now familiar indisposition to talk at that 
 hour of the niorht. Instead he was seated in 
 a Madeira chair, smoking a cheroot, and read- 
 ing a novel by the light of a bracket-lamp 
 affixed to the bulkhead. The moment I en- 
 tered he closed the volume, looked at his 
 watch, and exclaimed, " I did not know it was 
 so late. Are you going to turn in ? " 
 
 " Yes," I answered ; " there is nothing to be 
 done above. The night is wet and dirty, and 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 93 
 
 it is SO confoundedly dull In the saloon that I 
 am beginning to think your manner of making 
 a voyage Is, after all, the best theory for living 
 out one's passage of life on board ship." 
 
 He looked at me earnestly. I seemed to 
 find on a sudden a new meaning in his face, 
 an expression of emotional resolution, which I 
 had never before found in him. 
 
 " I hope you are not sleepy," said he; ''I 
 should enjoy a chat with you." , 
 
 " I am sleepy merely for the want of a chat," 
 I answered. 
 
 He handed me his cigar-case and I lighted 
 a cheroot. Needless to say that smoking was 
 not permitted below. Nevertheless he was 
 seldom without a cigar in his mouth, and 
 wrongly or rightly we now smoked. 
 
 '' I received a visit from the captain to-day," 
 said he, crossing his legs and settling himself 
 in his chair in the manner of one who Intends 
 that the sitting he has entered upon shall not 
 be hastily ended. "He was my second visitor. 
 
94 .A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 Did I tell you that the doctor of the ship 
 honoured me with a call three days ago ? " 
 
 *' No. He found you quite well, 1 hope ? " 
 
 " I did not ask him for an opinion. What is 
 the captain's name ? " 
 " Stagg." 
 
 "It should be Bear. Surely he is too rough 
 and unpolished an animal for the civilities and 
 elegances and hospitality of an East Indiaman's 
 saloon, full of ladies and gentlemen, some of 
 them high and mighty, I dare say." 
 
 " He told me this afternoon that he had paid 
 you a visit." 
 
 " How^ did he describe me ?" 
 
 " He was all admiration ; but he is very 
 anxious that I should get you on deck. He 
 fears that the passengers will presently begin 
 to talk about the mxysterious passenger below 
 and that their notions as to your motives will 
 create an uneasy feeling amongst them." 
 
 He thoughtfully stroked his moustache whilst 
 he fixed his eyes upon the ash of his cigar, 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 95 
 
 and for some moments, which may have run 
 into a minute or two, there was silence between 
 us. Speaking softly, but with abruptness, 
 
 *' Captain Swift," said he, "may I communi- 
 cate my secret to you ? " 
 
 *' That must be entirely for you to decide," 
 I answered. 
 
 '* You will be — you must be — the only living 
 creature in the ship who has knowledge of it. 
 No ! " he paused as if he would correct himself, 
 then continued with energy, yet preserving his 
 wary softness of voice, " One other must know 
 it : it will be you two only. That I may trust 
 an English officer and a gentleman up to the 
 hilt I need not say. What I am anxious to 
 tell you must be your secret." 
 
 *' It will be strange," said I, "if I have not 
 already guessed it." 
 
 He viewed me inquiringly. 
 
 " I will ask the question : answer or not, as 
 you please : does your secret concern Miss 
 Primrose ? " 
 
96 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 He Started and stared at me, his fine eyes 
 glowing with astonishment and alarm. " Good 
 heavens!" he cried faintly, ''is it known that 
 I am on board ? " 
 
 He was about to put twenty other questions. 
 I interrupted him : " Of course it is known that 
 you are on board. How on earth could it be 
 otherwise ? Here are you waited on every 
 day by one of the stewards ; then you tell me 
 the doctor visited vou, and then -" 
 
 " No, no," he exclaimed with a change of 
 countenance, "you misunderstand me. Yet 
 how is it possible you should comprehend my 
 meaning since you know nothing whatever of 
 my story ? But — Miss Primrose ! What," he 
 exclaimed fixing his keen and burning gaze 
 upon me, "caused you to associate her with 
 my secret ? " 
 
 " For the life of me I could not tell you," 
 I answered. "The melancholy and beauty of 
 her face interested me, I suppose, and then I 
 dare say, whilst thinking over some reason to 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 97 
 
 account for your keeping In hiding, it might 
 have dimly occurred to me that Miss Primrose 
 was one reason, at all events, for your stopping 
 below here." 
 
 '' Have you suggested this to any one ?" 
 
 ** To no one." 
 
 " Well, Captain Swift," he exclaimed, wich a 
 glance round, as though fearful of the very 
 walls of the cabin, '' I may frankly tell you 
 that you have anticipated the point of the 
 story I intend to relate. In three words I 
 may say that Miss Primrose and I are be- 
 trothed, and that, unknown to her father, and 
 even, at this moment, unknown to herself, I 
 am accompanying her to India. ' 
 
 I composed myself to listen, and perhaps not 
 without some small emotion of disappointment, 
 for In truth I had expected a larger, a more 
 gallant and dramatic disclosure, something to 
 lift the Impassioned commonplace of love for 
 which I was prepared to a heroic height. 
 
 '* First of all," he proceeded, " I must tell 
 
 H 
 
98 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 vou that my name is not Godfrey Pellew. 
 These sounds I assume for the purpose of the 
 voyage. My real name Is Charles Wortley 
 Cunningham. My father, who died four years 
 ago, was Sir Stuart Wortley Cunningham, 
 
 knight, for many years Governor of " and 
 
 he named one of the West India Islands. 
 
 He paused as though awaiting some ex- 
 clamation of surprise ; but I sat quietly listen- 
 ing, nor did I think proper to tell him that 
 even in this little article of his confession I had 
 been ahead of him, since from the moment 
 when he had first pronounced the name of 
 Pellew I had instinctively suspected it false. 
 
 *' Eight months ago," he continued, " I met 
 Miss Primrose at a dance at Bath. She and 
 her father were then in lodgings in Pulteney 
 Street. I fell in love with her, and with her 
 father's full consent we became engaged. He 
 exactly knew my expectations ; that I am an 
 only son, that on the death of my mother I 
 inherit an estate in Suftblk and fifteen hundred 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 99 
 
 a year, that my antecedents are as unimpeach- 
 able as his own, though it would be impossible 
 for any man to have a higher opinion of his 
 descent than Sir Charles Primrose. He seemed 
 perfectly satisfied — you must know the General 
 is a widower. The marriage was fixed to take 
 place on the 14th of last month. The General 
 returned with his daughter to London — his 
 house was in Hanover Square ; I followed, and 
 day after day Geraldine — Miss Primrose, I mean 
 — and I were together. But Sir Charles was a 
 man desperately hard to get on with. His tem- 
 per is incredibly bad, his vanity enormous, and 
 his capacity of insulting people whom he dis- 
 likes or who venture to oppose his quite com- 
 monplace view of things — for he is a very stupid 
 man, the stupidest man I know, though pro- 
 fessionally distinguished — his talent of affront, 
 I say, is so exceptional that I used to wonder 
 he had ever been spared to see his present years 
 — that he had not been shot out of or kicked 
 out of or cudgelled out of existence long ago. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 " Well, I was dining at his house ; he and 
 his daughter and two or three others were 
 present at the table. We o-ot upon the subject 
 of politics. The General of course is a red-hot 
 Tory. The shape of his head illustrates his 
 political views. An assertion was made : I 
 opposed it, but without the least temper. Sir 
 Charles thundered some mortifying, almost in- 
 sulting expression at me. It was not in flesh 
 and blood to keep silent and I rejoined. And 
 how did that argument end ? He told me to 
 leave the house ! He sprang from his chair 
 black in the face with rage, and choked out an 
 order to his butler to see me to the door ! I 
 was really so astonished — the thing was so in- 
 credible — that for some moments I merely 
 stared at him. He then stepped to the door, 
 elbowed his butler out of the road and asked — 
 still choking — whether I meant to go or not. 
 I now lost all self-control ; but for his daughter 
 being present, I believe I should have flogged 
 the fellow round his own inhospitable table. 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 103 
 
 I was too mad with temper to know what I 
 said." 
 
 He resumed his seat breathinof fast and 
 seemed at a loss as though his mind had been 
 hurried away from its subject by the angry tide 
 of memory. Then rising afresh he stole to the 
 door and looked out into the passage betwixt 
 the cabins. He was cool when he returned to 
 his seat and exclaimed with a smile that he 
 hoped he had not greatly raised his voice 
 whilst speaking. 
 
 " I do not think so." 
 
 *'Well," continued Mr. Cunningham, as I 
 must now call him, addressing me in soft but 
 firm accents with the flush eone out of his 
 cheeks, his eyes cold again, and his features as 
 composed and resolved as ever they had shown 
 at any time within these ten days, 'you will 
 suppose after this that so far as General Sir 
 Charles Primrose was concerned, my engage- 
 ment to his daughter was at an end. I sent him 
 a letter of humble apology. I was a contempt- 
 
I04 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT IV 
 
 ible rascal to abase myself so ! but I wrote for 
 Geraldine's sake, and the letter was returned to 
 me in halves with the seal unbroken. I called — 
 perfect fool that I was— : " he bit his lip to the 
 memory of some insult which he could not find 
 it in him to communicate. '' Geraldine wrote 
 to me ; I was to forgive her father ; he had 
 suffered from sunstroke in India; there were 
 times when he was not responsible for his be- 
 haviour. But she wrote as if with a broken 
 heart, and though she prayed me to have 
 patience, to continue to love her, to preserve 
 my faith in her devotion, yet there was a tone 
 of hopelessness in her letter impossible to miss. 
 The reply I addressed to her came back to me 
 torn with the seal unbroken as in the case of 
 my letter to her father. I then found out that 
 she had been sent into the country, but in what 
 part she was I could not discover ; till one day 
 I received a note from her saying that her 
 father was under orders for India ; that he was 
 sailing on such and such a day and that she 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 105 
 
 was to accompany him. She would have 
 written to me every day — every hour she said, 
 but she was so closely watched that she could not 
 take a pen in her hand without being challenged ; 
 it would have been equally impossible for her to 
 receive a reply from me, and the letter that she 
 was now sending, which in fact I was reading, 
 she feared might never reach my hands, though 
 she had heavily bribed a housemaid to steal 
 with it to the post. ' He glanced at his 
 watch. " I fear now that I have gone far 
 enough and that I am beginning to bore you," 
 said he. 
 
 '' Not at all. I am exceedinQ^lv interested. 
 Besides, I have seen enough of Sir Charles to 
 know exactly how to sympathize with you." 
 
 "Well, to make an end. I adored i\Iiss 
 Primrose, and had not the least intention of 
 losing her; but I stood the chance of losing her 
 if she sailed to India and left me behind in Eng- 
 land. Knowing the date on which they w^ere 
 to start, I looked through the shipping lists and 
 
io6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 found this vessel named for that day. To make 
 sure of them I called at the office of the owners 
 and ascertained that cabins had been taken for 
 Sir Charles Primrose, Miss Primrose, and her 
 maid. I at once booked a passage for myself, 
 but found the ship was so full that I must be 
 content to share a berth. I gave my name as 
 Godfrey Pellew, and joined the ship in the dusk 
 of the evening at the East India Docks. The 
 General and his daughter, I ascertained, came 
 on board at Gravesend." 
 
 Finding him silent I exclaimed — hardly In- 
 deed knowing what else to say — " You have 
 embarked on a queer adventure." 
 
 ** Miss Primrose and I are together," said he 
 with a flash in his eyes. 
 
 " But," said I, lighting the stump of my cigar, 
 " what do you hope that India will do for you ? 
 The General will proceed to his station or dis- 
 trict. He will of course carry his daughter 
 with him. If you follow, your presence will be 
 quickly discovered — and what then ?" 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 107 
 
 He merely smiled, eying me steadfastly and 
 knowingly. 
 
 ''The climate of India," said I, "does not 
 improve the temper. Mere dislike in the cool 
 latitude of London may easily become con- 
 suming hate in a country of curry and mos- 
 quitoes." 
 
 *' Miss Prim_rose and I are together," he re- 
 peated. 
 
 *'Yes, you are certainly in the same ship," 
 said I. 
 
 ** Well," said he, with an air that made me 
 see he had no intention to submit his pro- 
 gramme to me, " I hope I have fully satisfied 
 you as to my motives for keeping in hiding 
 here ? " 
 
 '' Fully." 
 
 '' And now will you do me a favour ? It will 
 indeed be an act of singular kindness." 
 
 " I shall be most happy to oblige you." 
 
 " To this moment Miss Primrose doesn't 
 know that I'm on board. I have no means of 
 
io8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 communicatins: with her. I dare not trust the 
 fellow who waits upon me — no, though I should 
 tip him ten pounds for every letter he delivers 
 to her. The first letter ! — the first intimation ! 
 consider the tact such a delivery must require 
 to guard against astonishment and alarm be- 
 traying her. Will yoii. hand her a note from 
 me r 
 
 *' You must know I have not yet had the 
 pleasure of making her acquaintance." 
 
 *' But on board ship there is no ceremony. 
 One addresses whom one pleases. I beg you 
 to understand that having obtained this very 
 great favour at your hands, I shall not dream of 
 ao-aln troubling you. I am only now desirous 
 that she should be told that I am on board." 
 
 *' I shall be very happy to give your letter to 
 
 her." 
 
 He rose and grasped me by the hand, thank- 
 ing me warmly. 
 
 But though, after a swift debate in my mind, 
 I had consented to serve him — my disposition 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM 109 
 
 to oblige, or, In other words, my good-nature, 
 scarcely suffering me to consider seriously 
 how far I should be discreet in bearing any, the 
 most insignificant part in this questionable ship- 
 board drama upon which the curtain was about 
 to rise — I was also secretly resolved that the 
 first step I took in it should be my last. 
 Indeed, as I sat musing over his story whilst 
 he continued to address me, I could hardly 
 persuade myself that he had given me the 
 whole truth. It seemed incredible that Sir 
 Charles should have acted with the unspeak- 
 able insolence, the brutal inhospitality, that Mr. 
 Cunningham had described. And yet, to be 
 sure, quarrels of a very violent sort, often of a 
 very frightful sort, had originated in arguments. 
 Even the worthy old Vicar of Wakefield was, 
 as we all know, quite ready to sacrifice the 
 happiness of his son George and Miss Arabella 
 Wilmot to his opinions on the subject of mono- 
 gamy. 
 
 Until hard upon midnight, I think it was, did 
 
no A STRANGE ELOPEMENT iv 
 
 we sit talking in that cabin. Our quarters were 
 sunk deep in the ship, and never a sound pene- 
 trated to us from the deck. No other noises 
 broke the stilhiess than the sobbing and yearn- 
 ing wash of water along the ship's side, the 
 creaking of the cargo in the hold, and the 
 straining of bulkheads and the lighter fittings 
 as the vessel rolled. People were sleeping on 
 either hand of us and opposite, but saving now 
 and again when angry recollections forced a 
 note of vehemence into Mr. Cunningham's 
 articulation, his speech had been low and soft, 
 with a melody of its own that was like singing, 
 and that rendered Avhat was affecting in his 
 references singularly plaintive and pathetic, 
 whilst it enriched even to nobility every utter- 
 ance of scorn, or contempt, or indignation. 
 There was no cause to fear then that a syllable 
 of our talk had been overheard. 
 
 The longer I conversed with him the more I 
 found myself charmed by his beauty and indi- 
 viduality. There was never anything striking 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINGHAM iii 
 
 in what he said, yet his most trivial expression 
 was made memorable by his manner, his 
 grace, his dignity, by his speaking eyes, by 
 the twenty physical charms my recollection 
 carries. All reserve was now gone ; he asked 
 me question after question about Miss Primrose 
 — what I thought of her — how she looked — if 
 she appeared well — if she associated with the 
 other passengers — her father's treatment of 
 her so far as I could judge, and so on, and 
 so on. 
 
 It was whilst endeavouring to deal with this 
 lover-like fusillade that cocking my thumb up 
 at the ceilinof of the cabin I said : " Bv the 
 way I should have told you that you and Miss 
 Primrose are separated by a few planks only." 
 
 He looked upwards and exclaimed in a low 
 voice : '' Do vou mean that her cabin is over- 
 head there ? " 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Do you know for certain ? " he cried, send- 
 ing a glance at the porthole as he spoke, whilst 
 
112 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT IV 
 
 his face took an odd expression of mingled 
 enthusiasm and Incredulity. 
 
 " For certain,"' I replied, and I repeated to 
 him the observation I had made of her cabin 
 that afternoon. 
 
 He bit upon his underlip, was silent for some 
 moments and his countenance lost its glow. 
 
 " You say she is the only occupant of the 
 cabin ? " said he. '* Where does her maid 
 sleep ? " 
 
 " I do not know. Somewhere down here I 
 fancy* Once in the saloon I saw her arrive by 
 the steps which conduct to these parts." 
 
 He slightly smiled, and again glanced at the 
 porthole. I looked at his square shoulders and 
 involuntarily laughed, immediately adding (that 
 he might know w/iy I laughed) : " You will 
 never be able to squeeze through that hole." 
 
 *' No," he answered.. " Nor is it to be en- 
 larged unfortunately." 
 
 " But even were you slim enough to crawl 
 through it," said I, " you could not communi- 
 
IV MR. CHARLES WORTLEY CUNNINX-HAM 113 
 
 cate with the cabin window above. Consider 
 the wide spread of channel platform ; and whilst 
 you were clinging to one of the iron bars which 
 hold it to the ship's side a spray might come 
 and wash you away as Dibdin's song says of 
 some poor Jack."' I ended the sentence with 
 an irrepressible yawn. 
 
 " I believe you are right," said he, looking at 
 his watch, and we forthwith '' turned in." 
 
V 
 
 I DELIVER THE LETTER 
 
 Mr. Cunningham had risen and finished his 
 letter before I awoke next morning. The 
 writing of it — in a physical sense I mean — must 
 have been hard work ; for during the night it 
 had come on to blow a strong breeze of wind 
 off the beam, and a snappish sea, with a touch 
 of fierceness sometimes in its frequent hurls, was 
 chareine in bursts of thunder to the side of the 
 ship on which our cabin was situated and blind- 
 ing the porthole with smothering heaps of glit- 
 tering green brine that eclipsed the light in the 
 berth and gave one nothing to look at but the 
 dim twinkle of the wet circle of glass. But the 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 115 
 
 letter was written, and when I was dressed I 
 put it in my pocket, bothered however by 
 having to call him Cunningham when the name 
 of Pellew was the familiar one. 
 
 " Indeed," said I, "I wish you had not given 
 me your real name. If I have occasion to 
 speak of you my memory may play me a trick 
 and I shall be calling you Cunningham, when 
 everybody who has heard of you at all under- 
 stands that you are Pellew." 
 
 " Pray be on your guard," he exclaimed. 
 
 Unpleasant as the weather was there was a 
 full attendance of the passengers at breakfast. 
 Miss Primrose occupied her usual place next 
 her father and my eyes were incessantly going 
 towards her as I worked away with my knife 
 and fork pondering how I should approach her 
 and conjecturing the reception she would give 
 the intelligence of her sweetheart being in the 
 ship. Was she of an hysterical nature ? Sup- 
 pose she should shriek out, behave extrava- 
 gantly or faint away when I broke the news to 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 her or when she opened the letter and read the 
 truth for herself! The situation in that case 
 would be an exceedingly disagreeable one for 
 me. General Primrose was by no means a 
 gentleman whom one would wish to quar- 
 rel with — at least on board ship, where one 
 would be forced into incessant sight of or con- 
 tact with him. Here were we no more than 
 eleven days out ; there might be four months of 
 sailing before the pilot should board us off the 
 Sandheads ; and those four months must be 
 rendered the most unpleasant of any in my life 
 should it come to the knowledge of General Prim- 
 rose and of Captain Stagg that Mr. Cunningham 
 alias Pellew was on board, and that I was acting 
 as a go-between for him and Miss Primrose. 
 
 I was nervous and made but a poor break- 
 fast and was found so thoughtful and incommu- 
 nicative that my neighbours at table gave up 
 addressing me. But I had given my word to 
 Mr. Cunningham, and the promise must be 
 kept. There was no change in the demeanour 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 117 
 
 of Miss Primrose. As she was when I had 
 first noticed her, so did she still appear : the 
 same unheeding girl, her eyes downwards bent 
 with nun-Hke persistency, faintly smiling and 
 scarcely looking up if accosted, and answering 
 so far as I might judge barely above her breath, 
 and in the briefest sentences, as though articu- 
 lation were a distress and a moment's diver- 
 gence from the current of her thoughts a pain 
 and a perplexity to her. 
 
 I eyed her father somewhat strenuously and 
 believed 1 could find in his countenance all 
 necessarv confirmation of Mr. Cunnino^ham's 
 story. His expression was unpleasantly fierce. 
 No doubt his heavy eyebrows, the angry curl 
 of his m.oustache, the tiger-like tension of his 
 whiskers heightened the formidableness of his 
 looks ; but it was quite possible to separate him 
 from that aspect of haughty, impassioned aus- 
 terity with which nature had clothed him — to 
 distinoruish in short the difference between char- 
 
 o 
 
 acter and hair, between a sluggish liver and 
 
ii8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 thick eyebrows, between wire-like whiskers and 
 a highly excitable temperament. 
 
 Once the ship's doctor at my side asked 
 me how my cabin-fellow Mr. Pellew did and 
 whether he had not some reason much more 
 extraordinary than any he had chosen to give 
 for lying hidden ; and once he asked me in a 
 bantering tone — for in my time there was 
 always something of the wag and often of the 
 tipsy wag in the typical ship's doctor — if I had 
 lost my heart to Miss Primrose since I seemed 
 unable to remove my eyes from her ; but my 
 short answers rendered sullen by uneasiness 
 silenced him. 
 
 1 went out on to the quarterdeck when I had 
 breakfasted and found a very uninviting scene 
 of ship and ocean. The decks were dark with 
 wet ; as the vessel rolled to windward the froth 
 of the green seas rushing at us from out the 
 haze of the near horizon glanced ghastly and 
 melancholy above the tall rail of the bulwark ; 
 there was a dreary shrill whistling of the wet 
 
I DELIVER THE LETTER 119 
 
 wind in the iron-taut weather shrouds, and in 
 the slack damp-blackened rigging curved to lee- 
 ward by the rush of the blast. Yet the ship 
 under comparatively small canvas was sailing 
 nobly, shouldering off the blows of the olive- 
 coloured surge with volcanic shocks of her bow 
 as she plunged, and flinging the sea into boiling 
 froth to right and left of her as she went, so 
 that from aloft the path of her keel must have 
 resembled the sweeping career of the foaming 
 foot of the waterspout. 
 
 My prospects as a messenger of love looked 
 exceedingly meagre and contemptible in the 
 face of this weather, which of course m^ust con- 
 fine all the passengers to the saloon and pro- 
 vide me with the slenderest of all chances of 
 finding Miss Primrose alone. And yet strangely 
 enough some while after eleven o'clock it so 
 fell out that on descending from the poop, 
 where I had been trudging in a pea-coat with a 
 young officer, and taking a peep into the long 
 interior through the window I saw Miss Prim- 
 
I20 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT V 
 
 rose seated at the foremost end of the table — 
 that is to say the end the most remote from 
 where her father's cabin was and from her 
 place at meals — writing as I might suppose in 
 a diary. A few ladies were at the aftermost 
 part of the saloon reading, sewing and talking. 
 The rest of the people were either on the poop 
 — for the rain had now ceased though it still 
 blew a fresh breeze of wind — or in their 
 cabins. 
 
 "This," thought I, "must be my chance," 
 and being resolved to make an end of a busi- 
 ness that grew more and more distasteful to me 
 in proportion as I delayed it, I walked in. No 
 purpose was to be served by any sort of am- 
 biguity in my first address. There was an item 
 of intelligence to impart, and the place— the 
 opportunity — my own desire to get quit of my 
 errand — rendered it certain that the sooner the 
 news was communicated the better. I ap- 
 proached and placed myself on her right that 
 I mipfht conceal her from the view of the ladies 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 121 
 
 in the after part of the saloon ; yet It was 
 necessary to start with some conventional 
 commonplace. 
 
 " I have the pleasure of addressing Miss 
 Primrose ? " 
 
 She started and raised her pen from the 
 book in which she was writing, whilst she lifted 
 her eyes to my face with a slight expression of 
 surprise in her countenance. 
 
 " I have a cabin companion," said I speaking 
 low but swiftly. "You may have heard him 
 spoken of as the mysterious passenger. He 
 has asked me to give you this. The hand- 
 writing will tell you who he is," and so speak- 
 ing I put the letter down upon the table before 
 her. 
 
 She glanced at her name that was written in 
 a bold hand upon the envelope ; Instantly a 
 burning blush covered her face and as much of 
 the neck as was revealed by the collar of her 
 dress ; but almost as quickly as one could look 
 the scarlet glow was replaced by a pallor that 
 
122 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 seemed the deadlier for the contrast of the hue 
 that had preceded it. I beHeved that my fears 
 were to be reahzed — that she would shriek out 
 and then faint ! Never had I imagined that 
 the workings of the human heart could have 
 found such visible, such poignant expression in 
 flesh and blood as I witnessed in her. I felt 
 that I had no right to look — my gaze was an 
 impiety, a profanity, an audacious peering into 
 a sacred mystery the sheltering curtain of which 
 had been ruthlessly rent. Yet I dared not 
 leave her side until, to use the expressive old 
 word, she had recollected herself, for there were 
 shrewd female eyes in the neighbourhood and 
 on the alert, and the interposition of my form 
 alone protected her from their gaze. She 
 breathed with such difficulty that every instant 
 I feared some outbreak of hysteria in her ; there 
 was hardness and wildness in her eyes as she 
 turned them from the letter to me and from me 
 to the letter again. 
 
 All this might have occupied two or three 
 
SHE WENT TO HER CABIN THE DOOR-HANDLE OF WHICH SHE 
 SEEMED TO GROPE FOR AS THOUGH SHE WERE BLIND. 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 125 
 
 minutes at the outside. Suddenly she sh'pped 
 the letter into her pocket, rose with a little 
 stagger in her manner of erecting her figure, 
 and picking up her book sought to address me; 
 her lips moved inarticulately, she faintly bowed, 
 and trembling from head to foot went to her 
 cabin the door-handle of which she seemed to 
 grope for as though she were blind, and then 
 not a little to my relief she disappeared. 
 
 I was as much agitated by sympathy as by 
 the character of the delicate and distasteful 
 mission, and was sensible that my heart beat 
 faster than usual as I sent a hasty glance at the 
 ladies to remark if they appeared to have ob- 
 served Miss Primrose's sudden withdrawal ; 
 but they were reading, gossiping, sewing as 
 before, and I stepped out again on to the 
 quarter-deck to soothe my fluttered nerves with 
 a cigar and to reinforce by several powerful 
 vows my resolution to take no further part in 
 this business, unless indeed it were to convey 
 to Mr. Cunningham the girl's answer to his 
 
126 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT V 
 
 letter should she write to him, simply because 
 I quite understood if she asked me to do so I 
 should be unable to withstand the entreaty of 
 her sweetness and her sorrow. 
 
 I went some paces forward that I might 
 obtain a view of the poop and perceived Sir 
 Charles and Colonel Mowbray marching up 
 and down it. Had he seen me accost his 
 daughter ? The foremost saloon skylight was 
 almost immediately over that part of the table 
 at which she had been seated ; and if the 
 General looked down then he must have seen 
 us. I waited until his return walk brought him 
 to the forward extremity of the deck ; but he 
 continued hot in altercation or in conversation 
 that resembled it. I won no more regard from 
 him than did the mainmast or the pump. Now 
 I knew he was a sort of man who would have 
 stared very hard at me, very hard and very 
 fiercely at me had his glance, lighting upon 
 the skylight, penetrated to me and his daughter ; 
 and this I say because she had held herself 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 127 
 
 markedly aloof from all us males, so that had 
 he seen us together he would have been struck 
 and paused perhaps to observe us. That he 
 did not stare at me, that he took no notice 
 whatever of me was assurance enough that he 
 had seen nothing, and I returned to the shelter 
 of the recess to finish my cigar. 
 
 Miss Primrose did not appear at tiffin, the 
 bell for which was rung at one o'clock. The 
 General on taking his seat missed her from his 
 side, rose and walked with ramrod-like erect- 
 ness to her berth. He returned in a few 
 minutes, and I heard him In response to an 
 Inquiry from Mrs. Mowbray exclaim In his 
 hard voice of command that " ]\IIss Primrose 
 was suffering from a headache.'' That was all, 
 and he at once fell to his soup. When lunch 
 was ended I went below for my pipe and to- 
 bacco — how enormous is one's consumption of 
 tobacco at sea ! but what else can one do but 
 smoke ? — and to inform Mr. Cunnlno-ham that 
 I had given his letter to Miss Primrose. I 
 
128 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 found him stalking about the cabin with the air 
 of a lunatic in a padded cell. 
 
 "At last!" he cried as I entered. "Gra- 
 cious powers ! how long the time has been. 
 What have you to tell me ? " 
 
 " She has your letter," I answered. 
 
 " My dear fellow ! " he exclaimed grasping 
 my hand with a squeeze that left the finger- 
 ends bloodless, "how can I thank you suffi- 
 ciently ? " And then came a whole broadside 
 of questions. What did she say ? How had I 
 introduced the matter ? Did she immediately 
 recognize his handwriting ? Having satisfied 
 him on these and a score or two of other points 
 I said : 
 
 " You will of course expect an answer from 
 her ? Now who is to deliver it ? " 
 
 " You, you ! " he cried ; " you, my dear 
 friend, for a friend indeed you have proved to 
 her and to me." 
 
 "Well now, Mr. Cunningham," said I, "I 
 will do this : if she asks me to give you a letter 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 129 
 
 I will bring It to you ; but that done — no more, If 
 you please. I am not of the profession that is 
 distinguished for cowardice ; but all the same I 
 have no desire, no Intention Indeed to run foul 
 of General Primrose with whom I must neces- 
 sarily be locked up In this ship for the next 
 three or four months. The voyage will inevit- 
 ably be dull ; it mustn't be tragical." 
 
 *' Enable me this once," he cried, ''to receive 
 a reply from her, and I shall not again dream 
 of troubling you." 
 
 Well, I saw no more of Miss Primrose that 
 afternoon until the dinner hour came round, 
 and it was in the moment of my wondering 
 whether she would show herself, that the door 
 of her cabin opened and she stepped forth. 
 Her eyes sought me ; they rested on my face 
 for an instant only. How am I to convey the 
 expression of them ? Was It delight ? Was it 
 gratitude ? P'^or the first time since I had 
 beheld her, a smile lay In the soft depth of her 
 gaze like a light there ; a delicate smile too 
 
 K 
 
I30 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT ^ v 
 
 eave a new character of sweetness to her 
 beauty as her glance for a heart-beat or two 
 met mine. You would have supposed her 
 visited and possessed by a new spirit. There 
 was an elasticity in her movements, a life in her 
 manner of looking, a suggestion of freedom, 
 of liberty operating in her as an impulse in her 
 whole bearing and especially in the carriage of 
 her head, as she went round the table to her 
 chair and seated herself. 
 
 "No headache now," thought I, ''and no 
 heartache either seemingly ! " I watched the 
 General as he took his place. Without turning 
 his head he seemed to take a view of her out 
 of the corners of his eyes, sending his black 
 and searching gaze over the angry white curl 
 of the moustache upon his cheek sheerly to her 
 profile, as though his vision were a corkscrew 
 laterally directed. He addressed her and she 
 responded. He was clearly surprised by the 
 change in her, and I observed that he pricked 
 his ear whilst she replied to the sympathetic 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 131 
 
 questions and congratulations of the people at 
 her end of the table. Indeed, there was a 
 clear rincr in her voice as she answered that 
 the headache was much better — that it had 
 been wholly due she believed to the motion of 
 the ship ; in a word, responding at length and 
 fixing her eyes upon those she addressed with 
 lineerino:" smiles which warranted them of the 
 heart. 
 
 " Well now," thought I to myself, '' what 
 will this remarkable change in her be attributed 
 to ?" It was a sort of comedy in its way, not 
 without a quality of humour sufficiently defined 
 to bring the performance perilously close to the 
 kind of pathos w^e look for in tragedy. I, who 
 of all that company alone stood behind the 
 scenes, I, who knew more and saw more than 
 General Primrose himself, watched this strange 
 little shipboard play with an interest that would 
 have been impossible had the rest of us been 
 in the secret. Sir Charles spoke little ; during 
 the intervals of the meal he was incessantly 
 
 K 2 
 
132 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 pulling out his whiskers or curling his mous- 
 tache, occasionally glancing askant at his 
 daughter. Puzzled indeed he was as were 
 others too for the matter of that. The ship's 
 doctor, whose eyes at meal times were inces- 
 santly travelling over the company, whispered 
 to me to observe the improvement in Miss 
 Primrose's spirits. 
 
 ''Were this ship a hotel ashore, you know, 
 Swift," said he, with the tone and speech of 
 familiarity that I disliked in him, " one would 
 suppose Miss Primrose had received a bit of 
 good news — an offer of marriage from a noble- 
 man, or a letter from a firm of solicitors 
 announcing a legacy of a few cool thousands. 
 But what can happen at sea to improve the 
 animal spirits ? The cause then must be 
 physical. It may be a mere matter of nerves, 
 some abrupt effect of oxygenation of blood. 
 The fact is, Swift, we are wonderfully and fear- 
 fully made. The wonderfulness of it I don't mind, 
 but the fearfulness of it I strongly object to." 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 133 
 
 I suffered him to talk himself out, and wlien 
 dinner was over stepped as usual into the 
 recess under the forward part of the poop, 
 where I was joined by two or three fellows, 
 and there we stood talking and smoking. The 
 weather had improved ; there were a few lean 
 stars sliding betwixt the squares of the rigging, 
 and the half-moon floated dim and moist over 
 our waving mast-heads, with a weak silver 
 ring around her. 
 
 " How deuced sick a fellow gets of hearing 
 that hissing noise of water alongside," ex- 
 claimed one of my companions, Lieutenant 
 Elphinstone. " I'd rather be a private in the 
 Army than an admiral in the Navy." 
 
 '' There must be a sort of music in that 
 melancholy noise for some ears," said another 
 young officer. '' Burton, did you observe — 
 Elphinstone you knaaw can't see — the change 
 in a certain young party who don't sit forty 
 miles off from the General ? " 
 
 ''Good Ged, yes," rejoined Burton, who 
 
134 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 wore an eye-glass. "What d'ye want to make 
 out, Cobb ? That she's got a fresh stock of 
 spirits in through her cabin port-hole out of 
 what Smithers would call the demmed music of 
 the waters ?" 
 
 '' Order, order," whispered Elphinstone, and 
 following the direction of his eye as he looked 
 into the saloon through a window I saw Miss 
 Primrose approaching. 
 
 There was nobody in sight saving the 
 stewards who were stripping the tables. The 
 clear light of the lamps streamed through the 
 windows on to the quarter-deck, and plainly 
 disclosed us to any one within. I imagined 
 that the girl on seeing me would pause, as a 
 hint for me to approach, making sure that I 
 should Interpret her object In seeking me ; and 
 with the velocity of thought I figured her 
 embarrassment, her change of countenance, 
 the conflict of emotions in her eyes, as she 
 tremblingly handed me her reply to her sweet- 
 heart's note. Greatly to my astonishment she 
 
''THESE ARE THE LINES YOU WERE ADMIRING SO MUCH 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 137 
 
 Stepped through the door on to the open deck, 
 her head uncovered and her luxuriant hair 
 trembHng in the lamphght in dull gold to the 
 shrewd draughty sweep of the wind in the 
 recess, and said : 
 
 " I thought I should find you here, Captain 
 Swift. These are the lines you were admiring 
 so much," and so saying, she put a letter into 
 my hand, and with a sweet smile and easy 
 bow re-entered the saloon, giving me no time 
 indeed to act any part even if astonishment 
 had not rendered an instant assumption im- 
 possible. 
 
 My companions' surprise, though proceeding 
 from a different cause, equalled mine. They 
 had never before seen me speak to this girl — 
 this daughter of General Sir Charles Primrose, 
 whom we addressed as " Sir," and viewed 
 from afar with emotions of awe ; they had 
 believed, as I knew in fact, that she held her- 
 self almost as much apart so to speak as my 
 mysterious, and to them utterly unknown, 
 
138 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v. 
 
 fellow passenger ; and now they had beheld 
 her smiling sweetly upon me, handing me some 
 verses, or some sentences of prose copied by 
 her own hand, suggesting indeed a degree of 
 positive intimacy by her careless manner of 
 coming out without her hat, and by her swift 
 but sweetly managed retreat, as though she 
 had been scared by the sight of them, and 
 would have stayed had they been away. 
 
 " By Ged then ! " said young Elphinstone, 
 " it's altogether a doocid deal too killing, d'ye 
 knaaw. How on earth have you managed it, 
 Swift ? Into what holes and corners have you 
 been getting that no fellow has had a sight of 
 you and her together ? " 
 
 " I say, Swift," drawled Burton, " what is 
 It, poetry ? Read it out like a good fellow. 
 Hane me if I shouldn't like to know what she 
 admires in verse." 
 
 I threw my unfinished cigar overboard and 
 stepped below to get rid of them, though I 
 might well believe that my absence would only 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 139 
 
 improve their opportunity to indulge their 
 astonishment in conjectures and opinions. 
 And the fellows talked with such a mess-room 
 drawl, in voices so heedless of those who 
 might be near, that, thought I to myself, as I 
 m.ade my way to ■Mr. Cunningham's berth, 
 nothing more is needed to exquisitely compli- 
 cate this sino^ular sea-sfoinof drama than the 
 over-hearing of those young fellows' conversa- 
 tion by Sir Charles or by some one who should 
 repeat what he hears to him. 
 
 Mr, Cunningham sat in his Madeira arm- 
 chair smoking a cigar as usual, with a bottle of 
 champagne on the deck at his side. I extended 
 the letter and he sprang to receive it. 
 
 " A million thanks," he cried, and his hand 
 trembled with eagerness as without another 
 word he opened the envelope and stepped 
 close to the bracket lamp to read. 
 
 It was a letter of four or five sheets, crossed 
 and recrossed, and so absorbed was he by it, 
 smiling all the while, sometimes nodding, and 
 
Uo A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 once pausing with a sigh that resembled a 
 groan, to press It to his Hps, that he suffered 
 me to depart without making the least sign 
 or removing his eyes from the thickly scrawled 
 page. 
 
 I returned an hour later, having spent most 
 of the time between in reading a magazine 
 that I had found upon a sofa in the saloon. 
 Mr. Cunningham was clothed in his theatrical 
 cloak ; the shawl about his neck rose to his 
 nostrils, and his soft felt wideawake was pulled 
 down over his eyebrows so that there was 
 nothing more to see of him than his nose. He 
 freed his mouth to speak, and exclaimed, *' I 
 have not thanked you nearly enough for your 
 kindness." 
 
 " Indeed you have," said I. " Pray say no 
 more about it. The rest you will be able to 
 manage, and I heartily hope you will make a 
 good ending of this romantic business." 
 
 " When did she give you the letter ? " he 
 asked, " and how did she contrive to do so ? " 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 141 
 
 I told him very honestly all that had passed 
 and added that I was astonished by her cool- 
 ness and self-possession. 
 
 *•' Ay ! " he exclaimed, "love will make won- 
 derful heroines of girls ! What courage ! 
 what invention ! How much better under the 
 circumstances the boldness that amazed you 
 than the reluctant approach ! And yet there 
 is not a timider creature than my sweet girl. 
 Indeed, I have grieved that she cannot com- 
 mand more resolution ; she would then be 
 able to hold her father in check, have some- 
 thing of her way with him, even in spite of 
 the endevilment of the old coxcomb — " He 
 broke off, and looking down himself, exclaimed 
 in a changed voice, " Are there many people 
 in the saloon ? " 
 
 -A few." 
 
 "Is the General amono^st them?" 
 
 '' No.'" 
 
 " I am QToincr on deck," said he, " to breathe 
 the air." 
 
142 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT v 
 
 ''There are a few men, I believe," said I, 
 "hanging about the entrance to the cabin." 
 
 "No matter," he answered, "let them look 
 and let them think. There's little enough 
 to see. Will you accompany me ? " 
 
 " No," I said, " I may join you later on. 
 I presume you'll station yourself at the galley 
 as before. But if I am seen to pass through 
 the saloon with you, I shall be pestered with 
 questions, and I have made up my mind not 
 to know anything, not more for your sake than 
 for my own. There are many young fellows 
 on board who are loose talkers and noisy in 
 their chaff Their badinage may prove dan- 
 gerous ; their references to you may tempt the 
 General into inquiries — and you will forgive 
 me for saying — that I must positively meddle 
 no further with your affairs." 
 
 " Not meddle ! " he cried in a cordial voice 
 whilst his fine eyes shone with the grateful 
 and cheerful smile that was else concealed by 
 his shawl and hat. " Do not speak of yourself 
 
V I DELIVER THE LETTER 143 
 
 as a meddler. You have acted the part of 
 a true friend. But you are right. We must 
 not be seen together."' 
 
 He opened the door and passed out. I 
 followed in about ten minutes, and walked to 
 the recess and found it vacant. The few people 
 in the saloon were assembled in the after-part, 
 and as the hatch through which Mr. Cunning- 
 ham had passed lay well in the fore-part of 
 the interior it was as likely as not that he 
 had not been noticed. As I paused in the 
 recess with my eye at the window the General, 
 Colonel Mowbray, and two others came to 
 the table and seated themselves for a rubber. 
 
VI 
 
 THE genp:ral questions me 
 
 When I went to my cabin on the night of 
 this same day that I have been writing about 
 I found a boathook in my bunk. A pole eight 
 feet long with a spike and an iron hook at the 
 end of it is an odd thing to find in one's bed. 
 I picked it up and was about to put it In the 
 passage outside where the steward would find 
 it and remove it when Mr. Cunningham, whom 
 I had found in bed and who I thought was 
 asleep, called out : 
 
 " Pray let that boathook remain. It has 
 cost me some trouble to smuggle it here." 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS :\1E 145 
 
 '' I found it in my bed," said L 
 
 " I heartily apologize," he exclaimed ; " I 
 thought I had put it in the corner with my 
 bundle of sticks and umbrella." 
 
 It was not my business to inquire his motive 
 in adding a boathook to the slender stock of 
 cabin furniture ; but one thing I guessed : that 
 there must be some one on board — probably 
 one of the crew — who was willing to serve 
 him ; because the boathook belonged to one 
 of the quarter-boats ; and the four quarter- 
 boats swung from davits over the edge of the 
 poop ; so that as Mr. Cunningham was not 
 likely to have shown himself upon the poop 
 some one must have sneaked aft and abstracted 
 the boathook for him. , 
 
 But it was not lono^ before I discovered the 
 use he designed the boathook for. It was 
 next day indeed, during the afternoon, that on 
 entering the berth I found him standing at 
 the open porthole with his watch in one hand 
 and the boathook in the other. The wind 
 
146 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 was off the beam on the side of our cabin 
 and the heel of the hull rose the window above 
 the sea line so that you saw nothing but the 
 piebald sky through it. It had been a day 
 of quiet weather ; and the ship was sliding 
 pleasantly at some eight knots in the hour 
 over the wide Atlantic heave that was scarred 
 into lines of small billows by the brushing of 
 the wind. Scarcely guessing what he would be 
 at, yet judging that he wished to be private 
 I was about to withdraw. 
 
 '' No, no, pray remain," he said, '' I have 
 no secrets from you. What time do you make 
 it?" 
 
 I looked at my watch and gave him the 
 hour — that is the time by the clock in the 
 saloon. 
 
 '' Quite right," said he, and pocketing his 
 watch he stood gazing intently through the 
 porthole. 
 
 I watched him with curiosity, not in the 
 least knowing what to expect. On a sudden 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 147 
 
 he Uttered an exclamation and quickly thrust- 
 ing the boathook through the porthole, he 
 carefully but dexterously hauled in a length of 
 thin line at the extremity of which was a letter, 
 folded very small, weighted by a piece of stuff 
 which I afterwards discovered to be a lump 
 of holystone. He removed the letter, thrice 
 pulled the string or length of twine as a signal, 
 and the attached piece of stone lying in the 
 port was jerked out and drawn upwards past 
 the rim of the mizzen channel. 
 
 I guessed by the flush in his face and the 
 sparkle in his eye that the letter was the first 
 of these strategic communications. He shot 
 a glance of triumph at me and eagerly read 
 the missive. 
 
 ''What think you of my idea of an ocean 
 post-offlce ? " said he, folding up the letter and 
 stowing it away in his pocket as carefully as 
 though It had been a thousand pound Bank 
 of Eno^land note. 
 
 "Why," said I, who had viewed this ma- 
 
 L 2 
 
148 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 ncEuvre with no little astonishment, " I think 
 the device a very ingenious one. It must tax 
 the young lady's cleverness however so to cast 
 her weighted letter through the porthole as to 
 insure it falling over the edge of that platform 
 up there." 
 
 *' She manages it nevertheless," said he. 
 "That platform provides us with the very 
 shelter we desire. The stone passes swiftly 
 through the window — too swiftly for the detec- 
 tion of any eye that may be looking over the 
 side ; and it might dangle for hours and for 
 days under that channel without being seen 
 from any part of the ship's bulwarks." 
 
 My desire to share as little as possible in 
 this strange, romantic business held me reti- 
 cent, otherwise my curiosity was active enough 
 to have tempted me into several inquiries. 
 As I made my way on to the deck again I 
 found myself smiling as I wondered what Sir 
 Charles's sensations would be had he been an 
 unobserved spectator of this boathook-and- 
 
VI 
 
 THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 149 
 
 catch-letter proceeding. Miss Primrose was 
 manifestly a very resolved young lady. There 
 was real audacity in her conduct now. Who 
 would suspect so much of heroic will lay hid- 
 den in such a perfectly feminine, such an 
 adorably feminine aspect of modesty, sweetness, 
 melancholy, timidity as one and all of us pas- 
 sengers witnessed in her ? That piece of 
 holystone ! She must have obtained it by 
 some strategy — feigned an Interest in the stuff 
 and asked to look at a piece of it on hearing 
 that the sailors whitened the decks by scrub- 
 bing the planks with the stone. "And what 
 will the issue be?" I remember thinking. 
 "Will all this sincerity of passion end in 
 forcing the hand of the General ? Is he a 
 man to be coaxed into compliance by such 
 secret conspiracies, such dark, underhand de- 
 vices as he has compelled this couple to be 
 guilty of?" One had only to think of his 
 face to say " A^^ / " to that fancy with the 
 utmost emphasis. 
 
I50 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 And now there went by a week with nothing 
 in it that deserves chronichng. We penetrated 
 the warm and sparkHng parallels, caught the 
 strong breath of the north-east trade wind in 
 the overhanging wings of studding sails, and 
 the noble ship drove along day and night, 
 night and day, veining the sea astern of her 
 with a wake of liquid pearl and smiting the 
 blue billows with her coppered forefoot into 
 yeast that was made radiant at intervals by the 
 gossamer-like gleam of flying-fish. Once or 
 twice after dark during this week I had spied 
 the shadow of Mr. Cunningham looming tall 
 in the obscurity to leeward of the galley and 
 had joined him for a talk of ten minutes or so ; 
 but my anxiety not to be implicated in any 
 measures his love might suggest to him ren- 
 dered me very wary and brief in these ap- 
 proaches. One night indeed I found him so 
 busily occupied in conversing with two or three 
 sailors that he remained unconscious of my 
 presence ; he seemed to look towards me, yet 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ^lE 151 
 
 went on addressing the men with energy 
 though in a very subdued voice ; on w^hich I 
 strolled aft again wondering what on earth he 
 could find In a mere chat with two or three 
 commonplace Jacks to so deeply engage and 
 interest him. I never again offered to join 
 him on deck. 
 
 From Miss Primrose I would reofularlv re- 
 ceive a faint smile or a sllo^ht bow when she 
 arrived at meal times or if she ascended to 
 the poop deck when I was there ; but these 
 courtesies were absolutely without any further 
 significance than to the general eye they were 
 intended to express. I do not doubt that Mr. 
 Cunningham had carefully advised her In his 
 boathook-and-porthole-correspondence ; that he 
 had repeated my strongly-expressed wish that 
 my name should not In any way be mixed up 
 in his romantic undertaking ; so that her cold 
 and colourless deportment would be due to his 
 written admonitions. Yet so inconsistent is 
 the mind that whilst on the one hand I was 
 
152 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 sincerely rejoiced that she should favour me 
 with as wide a berth as she gave the rest of 
 us men, on the other my vanity was piqued 
 by what I considered a sort of ingratitude in 
 her. I would sometimes think that I merited 
 something more than a bow that was only 
 reclaimed from stiffness by its elegance ; that 
 in short some glow of feeling should illumi- 
 nate the beautiful eyes she directed at me, 
 that something of warmth, of cordiality should 
 colour the smile which she occasionally bestowed 
 upon me. Yet it was very well as it was, 
 as my good sense would note when I observed 
 the manner in which I was watched by Burton 
 and young Elphinstone and others of the 
 young jokers who swelled our military com- 
 pany aft. I well knew, not by seeing only 
 but by hearing also, that the news of '' those 
 lines Swift admires so much, you knaaw," 
 having been copied by Miss Primrose and 
 given to me had gone the rounds ; and many 
 a thirsty glance did I detect if Miss Primrose 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 153 
 
 came on deck when I was there, or on any 
 other occasion of our exchanmnof a bow. 
 
 I was one morning smoking a cigar to lee- 
 ward of the wheel, which I need hardly say — 
 though to be sure this Is the age of steamboats 
 and "amidship steering-gear" — was fixed at 
 the after-end of the poop-deck with nothing 
 behind It and the taffrall save a wide spread of 
 sand- white grating. It was a clear, brilliant 
 morning, the sun soaring with a growing fierce- 
 ness of sting In its bite ; but the coolness of 
 the fresh ocean breeze was in the violet shadow- 
 under the long stretch of snow-white awning. 
 It was shortly after breakfast ; a few people 
 lounged here and there, but this part of the 
 ship was comparatively deserted. From the 
 main-deck resounded the sharply-uttered orders 
 of a non-commissioned officer drilling a number 
 of the soldiers. The mate In charge of the 
 ship paced a little space of the poop near the 
 weather ladder. 
 
 I was gazing with admiration at the gleam- 
 
154 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 ing canvas of a vessel rendered toylike by 
 distance when the companion way suddenly 
 framed the formidable countenance of Sir 
 Charles Primrose. As he arose, I expected 
 to see his daughter behind him, instead of 
 which there appeared the grotesque figure of 
 Captain Stagg. Without the pause of an in- 
 stant as for reflection, the General accom- 
 panied by the little skipper marched right up 
 to me. 
 
 " Good morning," he exclaimed in his loud 
 emphatic voice of command. 
 
 " Good morning, sir," I answered. 
 
 *' I should like a word with you, Captain 
 Swift." 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 He cast a look at the man at the wheel who 
 was close by. " Pray step a little this way," 
 said he, and the three of us — and I saw that 
 Stagg was to be of our party — moved to a 
 vacant part of the deck. *' I understand," 
 began the General standing in his towering, 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 155 
 
 erect way and looking at me over his stiff high 
 cravat, " that you share a cabin with a gentle- 
 man named Pellew ? " 
 
 *'* Mr. Godfrey Pellew, Sir Charles," broke 
 in Captain Stagg : "that's what he's down as 
 in the Passengers' List." 
 
 " Now, sir," continued the General, " I want 
 you to tell me if you have any reason to sup- 
 pose that Pellew is not'' — he thundered out 
 this word not — "your fellow passenger's real 
 name." 
 
 There was nothing for it but to equivocate. 
 1 deplored the obligation, but ]\Ir. Cunning- 
 ham had pledged me to secrecy and my answer 
 therefore must protect him. 
 
 " Is there any reason to doubt that his name 
 is Pellew ? " I exclaimed addressing Captain 
 
 Stagg. 
 
 " Sir Charles believes the gentleman to be 
 somebody else," responded the skipper. 
 
 " I have reason to suspect that his name is 
 Cunningham," exclaimed the General. " As 
 
156 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 his cabin-fellow you will often have conversed 
 with him, some remark will have excited your 
 suspicion. You will have observed the initials 
 on his linen for instance." 
 
 " This really concerns you more than me, 
 Captain Stagg," said I. 
 
 "If the safety of the ship isn't threatened 
 by the gentleman's conduct I can't possibly 
 make it concern me that I can see," rejoined 
 Captain Stagg. " As I have explained to Sir 
 Charles, the master of a ship has got nothing 
 to do with the nairies of his passengers. Have 
 they paid their fares ? Do they conduct them^ 
 selves properly ? If the master of a ship is 
 answered 'yes ' to the like of such questions, 
 then," he added with an emphatic nod at me, 
 " I don't see how he can interfere when it 
 comes to the matter of the company of one 
 passenger not being agreeable to the taste 
 of another." 
 
 Sir Charles listened with a frown, keeping 
 his eyes fastened with their habitual expression 
 
vi THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ML 157 
 
 of fierceness upon the round face and distorted 
 features of the skipper. He waited for him to 
 cease, then addressed me. 
 
 " Captain Stagg has described your fellow 
 passenger. The description leaves me in no 
 doubt. His name is Cunningham. Yet I 
 wish to be perfectly satisfied. Will you 
 describe him to me ? " 
 
 " I don't know how better to put him before 
 you, sir," said I, "than by saying that without 
 exception he is the handsomest young fellow I 
 ever saw In my life." The General made an 
 angry gesture. "He is perfectly well-bred, he 
 is rather taller than you I should say, a mag- 
 nificently built man — " I paused as though at a 
 loss to say more. 
 
 " Why does not he show himself ? " de- 
 manded the General. 
 
 " Did not he explain his motive to you, Cap- 
 tain ? " said I. 
 
 " Oh, yes," rumbled Stagg in a voice of ill- 
 temper. " He said he wanted to keep himself 
 
158 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT VI 
 
 to himself, had no taste for company, least of 
 all for soldiers. His name may be Cunning- 
 ham or his name may be Pellew for all I 
 know ; but unless you're certain of your man, 
 Sir Charles, my own notion is he's a nobleman, 
 some real Lord with a fine title, travelling for 
 his entertainment, and wishful to remain un- 
 known." 
 
 '' Is that your opinion ? " asked the General 
 turning upon me with dignity though with a 
 face full of irritability. 
 
 '* Really, sir, he has not interested me so 
 much as to cause me to speculate about him. 
 I seldom visit my berth in the daytime, there- 
 fore, we meet rarely ; and at night he is 
 commonly in bed and asleep when I go to my 
 cabin. He is in the habit of coming on deck 
 after dusk and is usually I think to be found on 
 the main-deck yonder. You may easily satisfy 
 your doubts, sir, by walking forward any night 
 when he is on deck and looking at him." 
 
 He bent his gimlet-like eye upon me, and I 
 
I MUST INSIST, SIR," HE CRIED, "'UPON YOUR ASCERTAINING 
 WHO THE PERSON IS WHO LIES SKULKING IN HIS CABIN 
 13 1 LOW." 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME i6i 
 
 seemed to feel It pierce my very conscience. 
 Passion then mastered him, and he whipped 
 round in a very undignified manner upon 
 StaQ^or. 
 
 "I must insist, sir," he cried, "upon your 
 ascertaining who the person is who Hes skulk- 
 ing in his cabin below." 
 
 " What am I to do ? " cried Captain Stagg. 
 " The road to his cabin's all plain sailing, Sir 
 Charles. Why not call upon him yourself ? " 
 
 **Sir," thundered the General, heedless of 
 the presence of the people on the deck, who 
 though they feigned not to look were listening 
 to every word he said, " you are commander 
 of this ship and responsible for her safety. 
 There is a man skulking below. Who is he ? 
 You do not know. Sir, it is your duty to 
 know. I have a right to demand in my own 
 name and in that of my fellow-passengers," 
 and here he swept the deck with his eyes, 
 '' that you produce this secret person, who, for 
 all you can tell us to the contrary, may be an 
 
i62 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 escaped felon — a — a — murderer, sir,— an— an 
 — Incendiary, sir," he continued, stammering 
 with temper, " a fellow whose design may be 
 to make a hole in your ship and sink her for 
 some purpose of horrible revenge. You tell 
 me you cannot interfere with him ? " He 
 directed his fiery eye at a group of soldiers 
 who were watching us on the forecastle ; but 
 whatever suggestion came to him from them 
 was quickly dismissed as a notion too prepos- 
 terous even for his illogical and groping mood 
 of wrath to entertain. " Send a company of 
 sailors In command of one of your officers to 
 his cabin, and If he still declines to come on 
 deck, have him dragged up." 
 
 " Sir," exclaimed Stagg warmly, his face 
 all awork with the conflict of sensations excited 
 by the General's fierceness, by his own strug- 
 gles to maintain an air of respectfulness, by 
 his disgust at being thus shouted at in the 
 hearing of the passengers and the man at the 
 wheel, " I know my duty as commander of 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 163 
 
 this ship, and I know, sir, that that duty don't 
 include the dragging of gentlemen, who have 
 paid their passage-money, out of their cabins 
 by a company of sailors in charge of a mate. 
 There are soldiers aboard, sir, and you're a 
 general ; and if you like to take it upon your- 
 self to order a file of them red-coats to bring 
 Mr. Pellew on deck ao^ainst his will, whv, Sir 
 Charles, you may do it if you like ; but if 
 Mr. Pellew comes to me and makes a 
 grievance of the force displayed, then my 
 duty will be to protect him as a passenger and 
 to request the officer in command of those 
 troops to clap the fellows who went below in 
 irons so as to keep them out of mischief for 
 the future. And if the officer refused to do it 
 / should have to do It." 
 
 The General without a word marched to 
 the companion hatch and went below. 
 
 *' Did any man ever hear the like of such a 
 thing ? " cried Stagg, talking loudly with a 
 mingled air of consternation and passion, and 
 
 M 2 
 
i64 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 intending his words as much for the ears of 
 the others on the poop as for mine, " that a 
 high-bred gentleman hke Sir Charles should 
 dictate to me aboard my own ship — a soldier, 
 too, ignorant of nautical duties ! — that because 
 he's got some notion the gentleman isn't the 
 gentleman he calls himself /';;2 to send som.e 
 of my sailors below to have him dragged up 
 as if — as if^ — '' 
 
 But my identification with this curious busi- 
 ness was already much too marked for my taste 
 as it was, so I left him to splutter out the rest 
 of his rage to the people at whom he was 
 looking, and stepped below on to the quarter- 
 deck. 
 
 Such exaggeration of resentment, such 
 public and undignified disclosure of exces- 
 sive temper, could only signify that the 
 General had plumbed the mystery of Mr. 
 '' Pellevv," and that the suspicion amounting to 
 detection had set his heart on fire and his 
 brain at its wits' ends. What was he now to 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 165 
 
 do ? Would he lock his daughter up ? 
 No — he dared not venture that. The know- 
 ledge that she was imprisoned by him would 
 determine the passengers to render his life 
 a burthen, and that, let me assure you, spite 
 of his distinguished mllltar}^ position and 
 forbidding countenance, they would one and 
 all have been very easily able to contrive 
 through the ceaseless and countless oppor- 
 tunities of shipboard association. 
 
 It soon got wind that he had been In a 
 passion on the poop, and the reason of It 
 as a piece of news in going from mouth to 
 mouth, was laughably exaggerated. In fact 
 a young officer came to me and asked me 
 with a grave face to settle the matter as It 
 involved a bet of a couple of guineas. 
 
 *'Was It not you. Swift, and not the queer 
 chap who shares your berth, whom the General 
 quarrelled with for falling in love with his 
 daughter ? " 
 
 This same young fellow, however, gave me 
 
166 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT VI 
 
 one item of intelligence ; that Miss Primrose 
 was no longer to sleep alone. 
 
 '' Who is to be her companion, do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " Her maid," said he. '' I met a couple of 
 stewards lugging a mattress up from below, 
 and asked them what was the matter, and 
 they told me it was Miss Primrose's maid's 
 bedding, and that the woman was going 
 to sleep with her mistress for the future. 
 Next thing'll be a sentry with a loaded musket 
 outside her door, I suppose." 
 
 All this time the weather was wonderfully 
 fine, the breeze strong and steady on the 
 quarter, and the ship averaging some two 
 hundred and eighty miles in the twenty-four 
 hours. I went to rest late on this night of 
 the day on which Sir Charles had questioned 
 me. A eame of chess, of which I was, and 
 still am a great lover, had detained me at 
 the saloon table beyond my usual hour ; we, 
 however, who occupied the after-part of the 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 167 
 
 ship were much Indulged ; the lamps for 
 Instance were never extinguished until the 
 last of us had withdrawn ; and up to the 
 hour of midnight the steward was permitted 
 to serve us with refreshments. But midnight 
 was the limit ; after that hour the ship floated on 
 the calm sea or fled through the w^Indy night In 
 darkness, and the pop and gush of the soda- 
 water bottle ceased, unless, perhaps, down In 
 my obscure part of the ship a dim explosion 
 gave the listeners to know that one of the 
 *''afficers" was making himself happy with 
 a secret If not a final " nightcap." 
 
 It was some little time before tw^elve o'clock 
 when I got to my cabin ; but Mr. Cunningham 
 w^as not In his bunk. I concluded that he 
 was still haunting that black part of the 
 deck which was to leeward of the galley, 
 and undressed myself The atmosphere was 
 hot despite the open porthole — the cabin Indeed 
 being to leeward ; nor though the ear found 
 the sound grateful, was there any refreshment 
 
i68 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 for the flesh In the cool, fountain-Hke seething 
 of the foam expiring along the ship's side, 
 or twistino^ into an arrow-like wake of snow. 
 I put my face into the porthole to cool my 
 heated cheeks, and on a sudden caught a 
 noise as of the shuffling of feet upon the 
 channel or platform outside. I supposed 
 that some sailor had jumped into the chains 
 to clear away a rope. Still, the prolonged 
 absence of Mr. Cunninorham renderinor me 
 
 o o 
 
 suspicious in a vague sort of way, I continued 
 to listen, scarce knowing what next I might 
 hear ; but if ever any sound again came from 
 the mizzen channel it was whelmed by the 
 hiss of the rushing brine. 
 
 In about twenty minutes' time the door 
 opened and Mr. Cunningham stepped in 
 draped as usual in his immense coat and 
 slouched brigand-like hat. He flung the 
 weighty garment from him with an air of 
 loathing as though half dead with the heat, 
 and observing me to be awake, he exclaimed, 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 169 
 
 whilst he flourished a handkerchief over his 
 face : 
 
 '' Such a masquerade becomes unbearable 
 in a dog-day atmosphere of this sort." 
 
 " You appear to have been exerting yourself," 
 said I. 
 
 " And so I have," he answered ; " I have 
 been risking my life indeed." 
 
 He produced a bottle of champagne from 
 a chest of drawers, and after offering me a 
 drauorht of it swallowed a tumblerful of the 
 
 wine. 
 
 '' I was within an ace of going overboard," 
 said he, applying his handkerchief to his 
 moustache and sinking into his Madeira 
 chair. *' I must not again attempt such a 
 feat in that infernal cloak." 
 
 " What have you been doing ? " 
 
 " I received no letter to-day and wished to 
 know the reason of Miss Primrose's silence, so 
 I got Into what I think you call the main-chains, 
 where the rigging comes together thickly, and 
 
I70 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 where the shadow Is so deep that I defy any 
 one who Is not keeping a bright lookout on the 
 poop, to observe a figure cautiously creeping 
 over the side. I wished to make my way to 
 that platform," said he, pointing In the direc- 
 tion of the mizzen-channel, '' and I succeeded In 
 doing so, though I can't conceive now how I 
 managed It, for the beading along the side — do 
 you call It beading ? but no matter — did not cer- 
 tainly project an Inch, and I could find no other 
 support for my toes. Fortunately, my height 
 enabled me to keep a good hold of the rail, but 
 that confounded cloak was as though I were 
 carrying several men on my back." 
 
 •' You might very easily have gone over- 
 board," said I. 
 
 " I very nearly did go overboard," he replied. 
 " I believe I shall not make a second attempt 
 of the same sort," said he, laughing softly, 
 and toying with his cigar case as though 
 debatlno- whether he should light a cheroot 
 or not. 
 
■ FORTUNATELY, MY HEIGHT ENABLED ME TO KEEP A GOOD HOLD 
 OF THE RAIL, BUT THAT CONFOUNDED CLOAK WAS AS THOUGH 
 I WERE CARRYING SEVERAL MEN ON MY BACK." 
 
I 
 
 VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 173 
 
 " Then it must have been you that I heard 
 just now ? "' 
 
 " Quite hkely," he answered. 
 
 *' I suppose you now know that Miss Prim- 
 rose's maid shares her berth with her ? " 
 
 " Yes, I now know that. Still my adventure 
 was perfectly successful. Miss Primrose, you 
 see, sleeps as you do on the top shelf, and her 
 maid lies in the under bunk. A whispered con* 
 versation blends harmoniously with the hiss of 
 the foam. And then we had reason to suppose 
 that the maid was asleep." 
 
 He now lighted a cheroot and sat gazing at 
 me thoughtfully. 
 
 *' Have you heard," said I, " that the General 
 questioned me about you this morning ? " 
 
 "No. Who is to o^ive me the news but 
 you ? My time outside just now was all too 
 brief to obtain information of that sort." 
 
 "He questioned me angrily ; as good as 
 ordered the commander of the ship to send a 
 number of sailors here to hoist you on deck. 
 
174 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 He knows who you are. He called you Cun- 
 ningham. His putting the maid to sleep with 
 her mistress proves he has found you out." 
 
 ^' I hope he was not very rude," he exclaimed, 
 unemotionally, with a demeanour of coolness 
 indeed that astonished me as I had imagined 
 the news would irritate or alarm him. 
 
 " His temper made his speech objectionable," 
 said I. ''Now that he knows you are on 
 board I presume you will show yourself on 
 deck ? " 
 
 " No," he replied. " I am very comfortable 
 here — as snug and lonely as a maggot in its 
 nut. The General w^ould not permit Miss 
 Primrose and me to be together. I must there- 
 fore keep away from the poop, or endure the 
 misery of fearing that her health suffered from 
 confinement to her cabin — for her father would 
 certainly insist upon her remaining below. After 
 to-day all the passengers will be as busy with 
 talk as a rookery." 
 
 " Though the General, ' said I, "humanely 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 17 
 
 suggested that you should be dragged on to 
 the deck I am bound to say on behalf of Cap- 
 tain Stagg whom we both dislike, that he spoke 
 up very spunkily, told Sir Charles " — and here I 
 gave him the substance of what the skipper had 
 said. 
 
 '•' I am not to be dragged out of this cabin/' 
 said he smiling. "For any sort of violence 
 done me in that way Captain Stagg would have 
 to pay handsomely in a court of justice ; and he 
 knows it. I take it/' said he, stroking down 
 his moustache and admiring the ash of his 
 cigar, '' that the law of the land is extended to 
 the ocean. I have paid for this cabin or for a 
 share of it. I\Iy portion is as much mine to 
 hold and enjoy as if it were a lodging hired by 
 the week or month ashore. There is no imaofin- 
 able excuse that Captain Stagg could invent for 
 having me dragged out of it. In fact I should 
 like to reason the matter with him, and if to- 
 morrow you will ask him to step down and look 
 in upon me I shall feel obliged." 
 
176 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 Our conversation continued in this strain for 
 some time. I could gather no hint from him 
 as to his intentions. He certainly did not appear 
 in the least degree disconcerted by the General's 
 discovery of his being in the ship — for as you 
 have seen Sir Charles's suspicion practically 
 amounted to discovery ; and yet it seemed to 
 me that the one effect of this detection must 
 be to render his prospects as a lover entirely 
 hopeless : for now the General's existence 
 would be one of restless vigilance. Whilst the 
 three of them kept the sea there woiild indeed 
 be the safety of the illimitable horizon ; there 
 were no post-chaises, no railway stations over 
 the side ; and the General would be sen- 
 sible of the security provided to his wishes 
 by a full-rigged sailing-ship in the middle of 
 the Atlantic Ocean. But when the three of 
 them reached India ! Then it would be that 
 Sir Charles, knowing Mr. Cunningham to be at 
 Miss Primrose's heels, would go to work to 
 wither and extinguish my cabin-fellow's hopes. 
 
VI THE GENERAL QUESTIONS ME 177 
 
 What he would do who could conjecture ? 
 What he cozcld do is not hard to suppose. He 
 was a man of passions which were to be easily 
 inflamed into the exercise of a tyranny that 
 should be nothing short of brutal ; and hence I 
 could not but think that now Mr. Cunningham 
 was known to be on board, the sooner he relin- 
 quished his pursuit of Miss Primrose, the more 
 promptly he should request Captain Stagg to 
 transfer him to the first homeward-bound ship 
 the Light of Asia might fall in with, the saner 
 he would prove himself 
 
 A few days passed. I will not detain you 
 with an account of the small talk of those hours, 
 nor with a description of what I took notice of 
 in the behaviour, severally, of the General, of 
 his daughter, and of Mr. Cunningham who was 
 suffered to remain unmolested below. But this 
 much I may set down : that though we were all 
 of us aware that Miss Primrose was under no 
 restraint and that though in the day-time her 
 father kept his eye upon her, w^hilst at night she 
 
 N 
 
178 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vi 
 
 was watched only by her maid, if indeed the 
 mere sleeping of the woman in Miss Primrose's 
 berth could be interpreted into any sort of sen- 
 tinelling ; we did not fail to notice that the girl 
 was slowly withdrawing herself from the society 
 of the saloon and the deck. Most of her meals 
 were taken to her cabin where she was waited 
 upon by her maid. This we knew to be of her 
 own ordering because again and again Sir 
 Charles finding her absent from her place when 
 he took his seat would go to her berth and 
 return with a face dark with mortification and 
 annoyance. Also she seldom visited the deck. 
 Me she now scarcely noticed. Interpreted by 
 what followed I later recognized what was al- 
 most incivility in her as a maiden's strategy, but 
 at the time her cold and withholding demeanour 
 vexed me as an expression of ingratitude, and 
 perhaps in a small degree it diminished my 
 sympathy. 
 
f^y'f: 
 
 ME SHE NOW SCARCELY NOTICEDo 
 
VII 
 
 ONE MIDDLE WATCH 
 
 By the date at which this story has now ar- 
 rived we had been a day less than a month out 
 from the Thames ; but the equator was still 
 under our bow. Indeed I have some recollec- 
 tion of our latitude at noon on this day being 
 40' or 45' north. Throughout the morning and 
 throuo-hout the afternoon the burnished heave 
 
 o 
 
 of the sea was faintly tarnished by catspaws 
 only, delicate breathings of air that rapidly ex- 
 pired in their sportive flights, leaving our lofty 
 canvas sulkily and breathlessly swaying as the 
 tall fabric lightly rolled on the light wide blue 
 undulations. 
 
i82 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 Yet the heat was not so excessive as we had 
 found It further north. The pitch no longer lay 
 soft as putty in the seams of the deck and the 
 vision could penetrate to the sea-line without 
 being sickened by the serpentine waving of it 
 in the dim blue haze which rose in steam from 
 the smoking rail and sides of the ship and which 
 everywhere created an atmosphere that caused 
 whatever the eye rested on to revolve : so that 
 the long jibbooms and the very mastheads of 
 the vessel seemed to twist round and round as 
 though they were Archimedean screws slowly 
 rotated. 
 
 The moon rose very late and it was a dark 
 but clear night when I left the deck to kill half- 
 an-hour in the saloon over a glass of cold grog, 
 and in a chat with such men as I might find 
 there. On entering my cabin at half-past ten 
 or thereabouts I found Mr. Cunningham in bed. 
 He lay with his face to the ship's side but his 
 regular breathing assured me that he was sleep- 
 ing. The cabin porthole was wide open, but 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 183 
 
 not a breath of air seemed to penetrate the 
 aperture. There was something almost oppres- 
 sive in the strange hush outside. At intervals 
 one heard a sob of water or a dim plash and a 
 weak noise of gurgling that made one think of 
 a person drowning alongside. The light sway- 
 ing of the ship was illustrated by the slow small 
 slide of the stars in the velvet disc of the port- 
 hole. Now and then I would be sensible of a 
 light jar or shock as from the "kick" of the 
 wheel as it is called. 
 
 I got into bed after extinguishing the 
 bracket-lamp and lay perhaps for half-an-hour 
 or so wide awake, listening as an Irishman 
 might say to the deep impressive stillness upon 
 the ocean and wondering how long this sort of 
 weather was going to last, and at what date we 
 might expect to enter the river Hooghley. 
 
 I was awakened by something that irritated 
 my face and putting my hand mto a bag 
 at the end of my bunk I pulled out a box of 
 lucifers, struck a light and discovered that my 
 
l84 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 visitor was a cockroach. The match swiftly- 
 burned out, and suspecting that there ml.ght 
 be others of the disgusting creatures crawHng 
 upon my bedclothes I hopped from my bunk 
 and lighted the lamp. As I did this a sound 
 floating in through the porthole caught my ear. 
 I listened. The noise had resembled the dip of 
 an oar ; but I might be quite sure it could be 
 nothing of the sort ; nothing more than some 
 instant murmur of water along^side, some note 
 of eddying resembling the stroke of an oar. 
 
 I examined my bed and had the satisfaction 
 of observing a short line of cockroaches crawl- 
 ing in good processional order off the sheet 
 under which I had lain : they made for the 
 side of the bunk to the interstice in which 
 they lodged in the day. The matter was 
 trifling, yet the disgust the sight of the noisome 
 pests excited rendered me in a moment very 
 broad awake. I glanced at Mr. Cunningham's 
 bunk : it was empty. His clothes were re- 
 moved from the pegs on which he commonly 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 185 
 
 hung them. I looked to see if there were any 
 cockroaches in his bed, conceiving that he 
 mio-ht have been driven by the vermin on to 
 the deck. No : his bed was free from cock- 
 roaches. 
 
 I had not found it excessively hot when I 
 first came below ; but now whether because of 
 the cockroaches, or because of the glow of the 
 freshly-kindled lamp, or, which was no doubt 
 the case, because whilst I slept there had 
 happened a sensible increase in the tempera- 
 ture, I found the atmosphere overpowering. 
 "Mr. Cunningham is on deck," thought I, 
 " ril join him." Indeed I seemed to pant for 
 the wide freshness of the ocean night, for the 
 dew of it and the ice-like brilHancy of the 
 stars, and for the sweet draughts of air which 
 came and went as the folds of the canvas swung 
 large and pallid over the glimmering decks. 
 
 I partially clothed myself, thrust my naked 
 feet into a pair of slippers, clapped a light 
 straw hat on my head, and put a cigar into my 
 
i86 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 pocket, and turning down the lamp, went out 
 softly with that regard for the sleep of others 
 which operates as a sort of instinct in one on 
 board ship. I groped my way to the foot of 
 the stairs which led to the saloon. This 
 interior was in darkness, but the starlight 
 touched the windows which overlooked the 
 quarter-deck and it lay in a faint sheen 
 upon the skylights, and I passed very easily 
 out through the door. Had the ship been 
 deserted the decks could not have been stiller. 
 There was no moon to make a reflection, and 
 nothing visible stirred. I thought to hear the 
 dull hum of voices, and went a little way forward 
 expecting to behold the shadowy outline of Mr. 
 Cunningham's tall figure. A couple of sailors 
 seated Lascar fashion against the galley were 
 snoring at the top of their pipes. Others I 
 might, no doubt, have found coiled away in 
 secret nooks ready to spring to their feet to the 
 first sharp summons from the poop, for on such 
 a breathless ni^ht as this was, with a cloudless 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 187 
 
 heaven of stars going from sea-line to sea-line, 
 the watch on deck were to be excused for 
 napping. 
 
 I turned to look aft and was somewhat sur- 
 prised to find nobody in motion upon the poop : 
 iox there at least one thought to find that cease- 
 less vigilance w^hich is and indeed must be the 
 pulse, the marrow, the seminal principle of the 
 vocation of the sea. Mounting the ladder on 
 the port side of the ship I made a few steps 
 aft still without catching sight of the officer of 
 the watch, though the figure of the man at the 
 wheel grasping the spokes at the extremity of 
 the deck was to be seen rising and falling 
 against the stars over the taffrail. Then my 
 eye going to the huddle of thick ropes — 
 shrouds and backstays complicated by the 
 interlacing of ratlines — which formed the sup- 
 port of the mainmast and which descended a 
 little w^ay abaft the point at which the for- 
 ward end of the poop terminated, I spied the 
 figure of a man. 
 
i88 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 " That will be the mate who has charge 
 of the deck," thought I and crossed over to 
 him. He stood stirless as though blasted by 
 lightning. I was struck by his posture. 
 
 " Is that you, Mr. Masters ? " I inquired. 
 
 He returned no answer. For the moment I 
 believed him lifeless ; but even as I so thought 
 I seemed to observe a sort of wriggle in the 
 whole man, and now drawing close to him and 
 peering narrowly I was astounded to find him 
 not only gagged but helplessly bound by turn 
 upon turn of rope and securely fastened to the 
 rail of the deck ! 
 
 I immediately went to work to liberate him. 
 No fly revolved by a spider in its web was 
 ever more hopelessly imprisoned than was 
 this second mate. Fathom after fathom of 
 rope had gone to the securing of him, and it 
 was like unreeling cotton to remove the innu- 
 merable turns that swathed him from his neck 
 to his heels. The manner in which he had 
 been gagged too, showed the hand of an artist. 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 191 
 
 The contrivance was so framed as to sit clear 
 of his nostrils, yet to fill his mouth and paralyze 
 the motion of his tongue. He leaned against 
 the rail for some minutes speechless after I 
 had released him, and guessing his condition 1 
 bawled over the edge of the poop for some men 
 to come to me, and three or four seamen ap- 
 proached hurrying out of the darkness forward. 
 
 I swifdy explained the state in which I had 
 found the second mate and bade them chafe 
 his limbs : which they forthwith did, under- 
 standing me with the prompt intelligence of 
 sailors, yet marvelHng greatly as they rubbed, 
 as I might know by their manner of staring 
 around. 
 
 "I am all right now, men, I am all right 
 now," exclaimed Mr. Masters, and he made 
 as though he would break from them, but 
 staggered and leaned afresh against the rail 
 with a manner of exhaustion, and feebly cried 
 to me, ''Will you call the captain, sir? I 
 am not able to walk yet." 
 
192 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 I hastened below into the saloon too aston- 
 ished and I may say alarmed to use my eyes as 
 I ran ; for let me tell you it was no small shock 
 to one like myself, a passenger, to come on 
 deck in the blackness of the night and find 
 the officer of the watch, to whose keeping were 
 entrusted the lives of all on board the ship, 
 inhumanly bound and gagged, stirless and 
 helpless and voiceless, and nothing at hand to 
 explain the w^hy and the how and the where- 
 fore of the wild piece of business. I knocked 
 smartly on the door of the captain's cabin and 
 before I could repeat the summons the handle 
 was turned and the figure of the square 
 little man appeared. 
 
 " What is it ? What is it ? " The dim 
 light that burnt in his cabin scarcely revealed 
 me to him as he stood staring. 
 
 " Something is wrong on deck, Captain 
 Stagg. I found your second mate gagged 
 and bound to the rail and have only just 
 released him. He asked me to call you." 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 193 
 
 He waited to hear no more, but with 
 a strange, half-smothered exclamation that 
 sounded like the growl of a dreaming mastiff 
 he made a plunge for his small-clothes, and was 
 immediately following me on deck, struggling 
 into his coat as he ran. The second mate 
 leaned against the rail where I had left him ;• 
 the little knot of men lingered near, but they 
 had ceased to chafe his limbs. 
 
 "What is it?" cried Stagg, marching in an 
 impetuous deep-sea roll up to him, and speak- 
 ing in a voice harsh, almost brutal with excite- 
 ment, expectation, and temper. 
 
 '' This was it, sir," answered the second mate 
 in weak tones : " Five bells had just gone 
 when Mr. Pellew, the tall gentleman that 
 shares Captain Swift's cabin, came on to the 
 poop. He stepped up to me and we got into 
 conversation. Presently he asked me if some 
 shadow that he pretended to see out upon the 
 water was a ship, and whilst 1 was leaning over 
 the rail to look I was gagged, half-throttled, 
 
 o 
 
194 • A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 and thrown on my back. There were three of 
 them in the job. Mr. Pellew was one. His 
 strength was like a giant's. The others were 
 two of our men, but it was too dark to make 
 them out. They bound me from head to foot 
 and then set me up against the rail here, and 
 I was just able to notice — for the suddenness 
 of the attack had taken half my mind out of 
 my head — that they went to the after port 
 quarter-boat and lowered her, but all so quietly 
 that I shouldn't have known what they were 
 about if I hadn't had a sight of their figures as 
 they worked. I can tell you no more, sir, nor 
 do I know how long ago it is since it hap- 
 pened," he added in a voice that expressed the 
 bewilderment of his poor wits. 
 
 Captain Stagg listened ; there was a pause ; 
 I believe that rage and amazement had for a 
 few moments deprived him of the power of 
 utterance, but he now let fly with the hurricane 
 note of a bull. 
 
 "Call all hands! Turn up all hands! 
 
VII 
 
 ONE MIDDLE WATCH 195 
 
 Where's the bo'sun ? Lively now ! My boat 
 o-one ! " He rushed to the davits at which the 
 boat had hung, I following. True enough the 
 black irons curved naked to the stars with the 
 tackles (by which the boat was hoisted and 
 lowered) overhauled and hanging down to the 
 water's edge. The night was still very dark 
 though clear and richly spangled with stars ; 
 but the tardy moon would be rising shortly, 
 and even as I swept with my sight the ebony 
 rim of the sea, clear cut against the fainter dusk 
 of the sky and the low wheeling luminaries, 
 I thought I could discern the weak lunar dawn 
 in the east, a dim reddish suffusion in that 
 quarter. There was not a breath of air, and 
 the ship floated upon a surface of oil. Even 
 as the captain stood looking over the side, his 
 hard breathing sounding like the panting of a 
 wounded man, the shrill alarum of the boat- 
 swain's whistle pierced the silence, followed by 
 the tempestuous roar of " All hands." 
 
 At the wheel stood a motionless figure, 
 
 o 2 
 
196 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 gripping the spokes. The captain rounded 
 upon him. 
 
 " How long is it," he shouted, "since this 
 boat was stolen ? " 
 
 '' 'Bout half an hour, sir," answered the man 
 slowly and sullenly. 
 
 " Were you at the wheel when she was 
 lowered ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered the man in the same 
 sullen note. 
 
 ''And were you at the wheel," roared the 
 captain, '' when the second officer was secured 
 and gagged ? " 
 
 ''Yes," responded the fellow. 
 
 " And you stood there looking on — made no 
 sign — didn't call for help! Mutiny, mutiny!" 
 thundered Captain Stagg, and he rolled for- 
 ward shouting alternately " Mutiny ! Where's 
 the bo'sun ? Mutiny, I say! Send the bo'sun 
 here." 
 
 " Here I am, sir," shouted a voice on the 
 quarter-deck. 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 197 
 
 " Aft with you with a couple of men and 
 seize that man at the wheel, and clap him in 
 irons until I can attend to him," cried the cap- 
 tain. "Where are the midshipmen of the watch ?" 
 
 A boy's voice responded. 
 
 '' Muster all hands. See who it is that's 
 missing." 
 
 And now began a scene of excitement, of 
 hurry, of disorder which my pen is almost 
 powerless to do justice to. To the shrill notes 
 of the boatswain's pipe, and to the cries which 
 accompanied it, the soldiers had come tumbling 
 up from their quarters, and the decks were full 
 of people who got into one another's way, and 
 who called questions one to another in alarmed 
 voices, with the squeaky voices of midshipmen 
 threading the hubbub, whilst the shouts of the 
 captain swept past the ear like blasts from a 
 blunderbuss. Had an alarm of fire been raised, 
 had a whole gale of wind suddenly swept down 
 upon the ship, had some submarine convulsion 
 happened under her and started a butt-end and 
 
198 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 set her leaking ; in short, had there occurred 
 any tremendous incident or tragic disaster such 
 as it is the business and the habit of a seaman 
 to expect and encounter, I beHeve Captain 
 Stagg — cordially as I disliked the fellow — 
 would have been a man to meet it coolly ; his 
 orders would have been given with composure, 
 and there would have been discipline and 
 calmness in the ship. But the piratic seizure 
 of one of his boats — the absconding of two 
 of his sailors — the clear confederacy of the 
 fellow who had been at the helm — above all 
 the enormous indignity, the cruel treatment to 
 which his second officer had been subjected — 
 here were conditions of this midnight business 
 to drive him mad ; and literally mad he seemed 
 to be as he ran about bellowing here and there, 
 roarinof to the boatswain to tell him who were 
 the missing men, to the chief mate to ascertain 
 if the boat was in sight, and so on. 
 
 The confusion was in a very little while 
 prodigiously heightened by the arrival of most 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 199 
 
 of the passengers, who came in an elbowing 
 half-dressed throng through the companion- 
 way, most of them — ladies and gentlemen — 
 calling out to know what had happened before 
 they had fairly thrust their noses through the 
 hatch. Colonel Mowbray spying me as I 
 stood near the davits at which the stolen boat 
 had hung, rushed to me to learn what was 
 wrong with the ship. The scene at this instant 
 is not to be described. Amid the darkness 
 that almost blotted out the fore-part of the 
 vessel I could perceive the half-clad figures of 
 the passengers coming together in groups, 
 dissolving, and then reforming as they sped 
 about the decks, questioning one another, and 
 hunting for the captain, for the mates, for any- 
 body able to answer their inquiries. I was 
 telling Colonel Mowbray what had happened, 
 when General Primrose's hard commanding 
 voice echoed in the companion-way ; his tall, 
 soldierly figure emerged, and he immediately 
 began to cry out : 
 
200 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 '' Is Miss Primrose here on deck ? Has any 
 one seen Miss Primrose ? She is not in her 
 cabin and she is not in the saloon ; " and by 
 the starhght I saw him raise his hand to the 
 side of his mouth the better to direct his short, 
 passionate, almost despairful cry of '' Geraldine ! 
 Geraldine ! Are you here ? " 
 
 '' By heaven, then ! " cried I to the Colonel 
 as the truth rushed in upon my brain in a 
 manner to stagger my wits, " I see it all 
 now! It is an elopement! My cabin-fellow 
 and Miss Primrose have run away — they have 
 stolen this boat here and are out somewhere 
 upon that black sea. What madness ! Sheer 
 suicide ! And how on earth are they to be 
 recovered ? ' 
 
 All the people had assembled on the fore- 
 part of the poop where the captain was, and 
 twenty of them seemed talking at once so great 
 was the hubbub. The General's voice rose 
 strong ; and equally strong were the ocean 
 accents of Captain Stagg. I stood alone — no 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 201 
 
 one near me save the helmsman, and with the 
 utmost effort of my vision I swept the great 
 plain of liquid dusk stretching with the vague- 
 ness of a midnight thunder-cloud to its star- 
 determined horizon : but there w^as nothing to 
 be seen, no glint of phosphorus to indicate the 
 dip of an oar, no minute, ink-like spot in the 
 vapourish obscurity to signify the boat. *' What 
 madness ! " I repeated again and again to my- 
 self. '' Unless we pick them up what will be 
 their fate ? " 
 
 I moved towards the crowd at the break of 
 the poop to hear what was said. The moon 
 was then rising ; a distorted shape of dull red 
 light ; weak, lean and lonely in the immeasur- 
 able distance, and the cold, wide universe of 
 starry solitude in whose heart our ship lay 
 motionless grew colder and wider to every 
 sense in one through the sheer contrasting 
 effect of the confused notes of talk echoing 
 along the* vessel's decks. But by this time it 
 had been oruessed, indeed it was now known, 
 
202 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 that the gentleman who had shared my cabin 
 had eloped from the ship with Miss Primrose 
 in the stolen quarter-boat in company with two 
 sailors. The crew had been mustered and all 
 hands had answered saving the absent men. 
 Some one shouted out my name and a few 
 steps carried me into the crowd — for a crowd 
 we formed. 
 
 " I am here," I exclaimed. 
 
 The General and Captain Stagg came thrust- 
 ing to where I stood. 
 
 ''What can you tell me about my daughter, 
 Captain Swift ? " said Sir Charles. 
 
 '' Nothing, sir," I answered. " The man 
 who called himself Pellew was asleep when I 
 went to my cabin. When I awoke three- 
 quarters of an hour ago his bunk was empty. 
 I came on deck to breathe the air imagining 
 nothing, suspecting nothing, on my word of 
 honour, as a gentleman and an officer, and 
 found the second mate gagged and tied to 
 the rail." 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 203 
 
 There was sincerity in my voice and my 
 words carried conviction. No need to see my 
 face to guess how thoroughly shocked and 
 startled I was. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me, sir," roared the 
 captain, " that you, sleeping in the same cabin 
 with the rascal who has stolen my boat, had 
 no notion of what was going forward ? " 
 
 Maddened by this coarsely-delivered, most 
 brutally affronting suspicion, I approached 
 him by a single stride and looking down at 
 his face where it palely glimmered betwixt his 
 square shoulders I said between my teeth : 
 
 '' Captain Stagg, if you repeat that question 
 I will flog you round the deck with the first 
 piece of rope that I can get hold of," and un- 
 consciously I lifted my hands in readiness to 
 take him by the throat had he opened his 
 lips. 
 
 He fell back a step dismayed, confounded, 
 utterly at a loss. The dead silence that had 
 settled down upon us was broken by several 
 
204 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vil 
 
 Strong expressions of sympathy with me from 
 Burton, Elphinstone, and one or two others, 
 and some one said loudly, " By Ged, then. It 
 wasn't to be borne." But though all this takes 
 some time to describe, it had begun, it had 
 ended in the space of a few ticks of a clock. 
 Anything that Stagg may have made up his 
 mind to say or do as a reply to me was arrested 
 or extinguished by Sir Charles crying out : 
 " What start have they had ? " 
 
 '' Something within half an hour, sir," 
 answered the still enfeebled voice of the 
 second mate from the other side of the 
 crowd . 
 
 " They are to be pursued and taken," cried 
 the General. '' Let the boats be lowered at 
 once : there are three, and they can steer in 
 three separate directions. Colonel Mowbray, 
 a non-commissioned officer and three men with 
 loaded muskets will go In each boat in case 
 resistance should be offered. Let this be done 
 now quickly." 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 205 
 
 '' There's no sfood in sendlnof boats after 
 what's not to be seen, Sir Charles," exclaimed 
 Captain Stagg in a growling stubborn voice. 
 " Mr. Freeman," he shouted, pretty sure that 
 the chief mate would be within hearing of him, 
 " get lanterns lighted and hung over the side 
 that the men who've run away with my boat 
 may know where the ship lies in case they 
 chanee their minds and wish to return." 
 
 "We are wasting valuable time," cried the 
 General passionately; "I demand that you 
 order the boats to be lowered, sir. My 
 daughter must be recovered — my daughter 
 must be recovered ! " he repeated, and the 
 plaintiveness that his advanced years, his 
 grief, his sense of disgrace put into the cry 
 rendered it affecting beyond expression. 
 
 " Sir Charles, there's no good to come of 
 lowering the boats," exclaimed Stagg ; " look 
 how dark it is ! The moon don't give any 
 light. There's nothing to see. In what direc- 
 tion are the coxswains to steer then ? The 
 
2o6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 runaways pull three oars, and if the lady 
 chooses to row there'll be four. That's one 
 less than the other boats can pull ; and then 
 see what a start they've had." 
 
 " I don't care about that, sir," roared the 
 General. "What! You tell me you mean 
 to keep the boats idly hanging at the ends 
 of those irons whilst my daughter is still 
 within reach there — or there — or there ! " he 
 added, wildly pointing to port, and then to 
 starboard, and then over the stern. '"You 
 tell me there is nothing to be done when we 
 have soldiers and sailors willing to give chase 
 — when the sea is as smooth as a pond — when 
 each boat can hold a crew strong enough to 
 frequently relieve each other at the oars, and 
 when the male fugitives count but two sea- 
 men and a person who is not a sailor, and 
 unable perhaps to row. My God ! " he cried, 
 violently stamping his foot, " what precious 
 time we are wasting." 
 
 '* Sir Charles," I exclaimed, " if the captain 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 207 
 
 will lower a boat I will volunteer for her to 
 serve in any capacity in which I may be 
 useful. Amongst us officers we should easily 
 muster a crew, and I will guarantee that we 
 capture the runaways if we only get a sight 
 of them." 
 
 " I thank you, Captain Swift," said the 
 General. 
 
 ''Who will join me?" I shouted. 
 
 There was a chorus of " I will, I will, I 
 will." 
 
 " No man touches my boats without my 
 leave," bawled Captain Stagg. '' One's as 
 good as lost, and the seeking of her may 
 lose me another. Gentlemen, all, only con- 
 sider for yourselves. Land's sake, gents, cast 
 your eyes over the rail and ask yourselves 
 where you're agoing to steer, and how far you 
 mean to row, and what'll be your chance of 
 recovering this ship if you should lose sight 
 of her, and drift too distant for lamps and 
 rockets to catch your eye ? " 
 
2o8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 " But what is to be done ? " said the General. 
 "Is it to be endured that my daughter shall 
 be suffered to remain in an open boat all night, 
 with the chance of perishing if stormy weather 
 follows, when she may still be within reach ? 
 They may have put off without provisions or 
 water, and what are to be her sufferings if 
 they are not followed and recovered ? " 
 
 " What can I do, sir ? " answered Stagg in 
 a note of mingled shouting and groaning. " I 
 can't make the wind to blow ; and without 
 wind this ship won't move : and if she could 
 be made to move, into what quarter of the 
 horizon am I to follow the boat ? Let a breeze 
 come along and I shall know what to do. 
 You don't suppose — the gentlemen don't sup- 
 pose — that I'm going to lose a boat and two 
 men for the want of lookinof for them ? It'll 
 be davbreak within three hours of the time 
 they started ; and in three hours how far will 
 they have got ? Shall we call it twelve mile ? 
 Twelve mile off is to be seen from our mast- 
 
VII ONE MIDDLE WATCH 209 
 
 head, and so I tell ye, Sir Charles ; and you 
 leave me alone to have a bright look out at 
 the masthead all ready for the sun to rise. 
 But to send the other three boats in chase ! 
 And in chase of what ? Something that isn't 
 to be seen ? That would be a lubberly trick. 
 Doubt me, and I'll call all hands aft and you 
 shall hear what my mates and crew have to 
 say to it ; all of them sailor men — not sol- 
 diers ! " He wiped his face and went to the 
 rail to spit. 
 
 " I am afraid — I'm afraid there is but too 
 much truth in what he says," exclaimed Colonel 
 Mowbray uttering the words timidly. 
 
 The General in silence stood towering 
 amongst us — motionless, gazing in the direction 
 of the little trickle of reddish wake that floated 
 under the moon on the flawless indigo of the sea. 
 
 '' The boat ought certainly to be pursued," 
 said a subaltern with a lisp. 
 
 *' Fm quite willing to do anything," said 
 another. 
 
 P 
 
2IO A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vii 
 
 " Three boats," said I, " should provide three 
 chances to one ; yet there is this to be said — 
 should a breeze spring up, one or another of 
 the boats might stand to lose the ship." 
 
 *' The boat is sure to be in sight at dawn," 
 exclaimed Colonel Mowbray. 
 
 The General walked right aft and stood 
 alone there, near the wheel, gazing seawards. 
 
VIII 
 
 Co^xLUSIO.N 
 
 The passengers now began to melt away, 
 not to return to their beds, but to clothe them- 
 selves. The captain came from the rail and 
 approached me close, then wheeled off on seeing 
 who I was. Lanterns sparkled in the fore and 
 mizzen rigging, and in their faint illumination 
 the figures of soldiers and sailors on the main- 
 deck and in the waist came and went. The 
 mate with a night glass at his eye incessantly 
 searched the horizon, crossing from side to side 
 to do so. The calm was absolutely breathless — 
 a clock calm it is called at sea : not the faintest 
 stir in the atmosphere, though a faint long- 
 
 p 2 
 
212 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 drawn swell, the systole and diastole of 
 old ocean's sleeping heart, delicately swayed 
 the buttons of our trucks under the sparkling 
 stars whose brilliance found no eclipse in the 
 wan light of the moon. 
 
 Suddenly there was the explosion of a rocket 
 with a long shearing hiss of it as it shot 
 betwixt our masts and broke into a little cloud 
 of light on high. This was the first of half-a- 
 dozen that followed in rapid succession. 
 Evidently Stagg's forlorn hope was that the 
 two absconding sailors would be alarmed by 
 reflection into a change of mind and row the 
 pair of lovers back again to the ship. Nothing 
 however to my fancy, to my recollection of Mr. 
 Cunningham's determined character, to every 
 thought of the devotion of the girl who had 
 embarked on this most unheard of, this most 
 astonishing adventure, could seem more im- 
 probable. In strength Mr. Cunningham was 
 a match for any two men ; in a passion he 
 might prove himself the equal of even three, 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 213 
 
 and should the two sailors desire to return, it 
 would assuredly go hard with them if they 
 attempted to give effect to their resolution. 
 
 The General continued to stand alone near 
 the wheel. No one offered to approach him. 
 I can see with my mind's eye at this moment 
 his stately military figure, stirless as a statue 
 savinor a slow motion of his head as he eazed 
 round upon the sea. I felt a hearty disgust of 
 myself when I reflected upon the part 1 had 
 taken in ^Ir. Cunningham's love affair. Never 
 did I regret anything so much as my having 
 served him and i\Iiss Primrose as a messenger. 
 The General was a man whose character and 
 qualities were little to my taste ; yet I own that 
 it affected me deeply to witness him standing 
 alone at the extremity of the deck searching 
 with his eyes the cold black surface of the 
 waters — to recall his professional distinction — 
 to remember his achievements — to reflect upon 
 the valour, the judgment, the loyalty that had 
 gone to the creation of his long career ; and 
 
214 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 then to think of the shame and sorrow that 
 had come upon him. 
 
 Indeed there was something so extraordinarily 
 audacious in the act of the lovers that though 
 the empty davits yawned before me, though 
 the lanterns still shone over the ship's side, 
 though there were eyes at many parts of the 
 rails and bulwarks on the look-out, I could 
 scarcely yet credit the occurrence as an actuality. 
 Who in all one's life had ever heard of such a 
 thing as a young fellow eloping with a girl out 
 of a ship in an open boat and taking his chance 
 with his sweetheart at his side in the lonely 
 heart of a thousand leagues of Atlantic water ? 
 I might suppose that he had heavily bribed the 
 seamen who accompanied him. One could easily 
 understand the scheme now : a programme that 
 involved three sailors, one of whom should be 
 at the helm by the rotation of the '' tricks " on 
 the night agreed upon for the carrying out of 
 the plot. Had they victualled and watered the 
 boat before going away in her? If so this 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 215 
 
 must have been secretly and darkly done on 
 the previous nights : though how it had been 
 accomplished without detection I cannot imagine. 
 But what amazed me most was the subtle still- 
 ness, the sneaking breathless artfulness they had 
 exhibited in lowerins: the boat, eettinof the eirl 
 into her, unhooking the blocks of the tackles 
 and shoving off without a soul on board saving 
 the fellow at the wheel, and the gagged and 
 helpless second mate, hearing anything or 
 having the least suspicion of what was 
 going forward. To be sure I had seemed 
 to hear the distant dip of a solitary oar and I 
 might now be certain that the noise had been 
 no fancy of mine. But was it possible that the 
 boat was lowered so quietly as to be unheard 
 by the rows of sleepers on that side of the ship 
 all whose portholes would be wide open on so 
 sultry a night ? 
 
 But so it was ; the boat was gone ; the 
 young couple were missing ; two of the sailors 
 had not answered to their names, and yonder 
 
2i6 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viil 
 
 Stood the father, motionlessly gazing with God 
 knows what passions and griefs surging in 
 him, his tall figure blotting out a score or two 
 of stars twinkling dimly in the distant dusk. 
 
 I was but partially clothed as you know and 
 made my way below to complete my toilet in 
 readiness for daylight when it should come. In 
 passing through the saloon, I perceived the 
 figure of a woman seated at the table with her 
 face buried in her hands. She was sobbing 
 
 o 
 
 bitterly. A couple of the lamps had been 
 lighted and there was plenty of illumination to 
 see by, but the interior was empty of all save 
 that weeping form. I paused when abreast of 
 her, and wondering who she was and therefore 
 unable to imagine the cause of her distress, I 
 asked gently if I could be of use to her. She 
 lifted her head. She was Miss Primrose's 
 maid. 
 
 '' There is no reason for all this unhappi- 
 ness," said I ; '' the sea is delightfully calm, 
 the weather delightfully fine, and your mis- 
 
VIII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 217 
 
 tress will be restored to the ship I hope and 
 believe during the morning." 
 
 " Oh, but Sir Charles will think me an 
 
 "OH, BUT SIR CHARLES WILL THINK ME AN ACCOMPLICE, SIR, 
 SHE EXCLAIMED IN A BROKEN VOICE. 
 
 accomplice, sir," she exclaimed in a broken 
 
 voice. 
 
 ''If you have the truth on your side you will 
 be easily able to convince him," said I. 
 
2i8 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vill 
 
 " I can assure you, sir, I had no notion that 
 my young lady meant to take so mad a step," 
 she exclaimed, talking eagerly as though glad 
 of an opportunity to disburthen her mind. " I 
 sleep very soundly, and that's where it is, sir. 
 When I went to bed my young lady was un- 
 dressed and sleeping as I believed. She had 
 not dined at the table. She asked for some 
 sandwiches and wine at eight, and then told me 
 to go on deck and take the air, and to return 
 at half-past nine to help her to undress, but 
 some time before that hour I came to the cabin 
 to fetch a shawl to protect me from the dew, 
 and when I entered I found Miss Primrose 
 with her arm in the porthole. I thought 
 nothing of it, but now since I've heard that 
 the gentleman slept in the cabin underneath us, 
 I believe she was communicating with him 
 through that window, though I do not 
 know how she did it. When I came back at 
 half-past nine I found she had undressed her- 
 self and was then getting into bed, and at ten 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 219 
 
 o'clock, sir, as I have said, she seemed to be 
 asleep, and then I went to bed myself, and 
 until I was woke up by the noise on deck and 
 by Sir Charles knocking at the door to ask if 
 his daughter was there, I knew no more of 
 what had happened than the babe unborn." 
 She burst into tears again and continued to 
 repeat '* I know I shall be thought an accom- 
 plice. I know it will be said that I was paid 
 money to take no notice — which will be a most 
 dreadful falsehood," and the poor creature 
 rocked herself in her wretchedness. 
 
 I addressed a few words of comfort to her 
 and passed on. Her story was undoubtedly 
 true and it explained away a difficulty ; for it 
 had puzzled me to understand how Miss Prim- 
 rose had contrived to dress herself and quit her 
 cabin without disturbing her maid. As I looked 
 at Mr. Cunningham's baggage which stood near 
 his chest of drawers in a corner of the cabin I 
 wondered if the man would ever turn up again 
 to claim them, whether we should ever again 
 
220 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 hear of him and his sweetheart, or supposing 
 them to come off with their Hves, what sort of 
 adventures would befall them before they 
 reached England. What, I thought to myself, 
 as I looked through the open port into the 
 black profound of breathless sea and sky as 
 they showed in that tube of window — what will 
 be the girl's thoughts as she sits in the boat 
 somewhere out yonder in the deep solitude of 
 this immensity of water and under that heaven 
 of stars ? Is there any magic in the passion of 
 love to reconcile her to such a situation ? Will 
 she not by this time be glad to exchange the 
 bliss of sitting by her lover's side in an open 
 boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean for the 
 comfort of her berth, for the hospitable light 
 and life of the saloon, for the safety of this stout 
 tall ship, the Light of Asia ? 
 
 I returned on deck, and as I stepped on to 
 the quarter-deck on my road to the poop I was 
 in time to hear the chief officer standing at the 
 rail overhead call out: "A reward of ten 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 221 
 
 guineas will be given to the first man, soldier or 
 sailor, it matters not, who sights the boat." 
 
 There were many dusky figures flitting 
 about on the poop. I looked around for the 
 General, and presently spied his tall shape 
 pacing, alone, a few feet of the deck near the 
 wheel. I joined a group formed of Colonel 
 Mowbray and other officers and some ladies 
 and stood with them talkino^ over the strange 
 incidents of the night, the prospects of the 
 recovery of the boat, the insane audacity of the 
 elopement. One must have thought that the 
 daw^n never would come, so indescribably slow 
 was the passage of those dark hours. I pur- 
 posely raised my voice that Sir Charles might 
 know I w^as on deck and question me if he 
 chose ; but he held aloof, he had nothing to 
 say ; once somebody joined him but he speedily 
 shook him off 
 
 The calm was as preternatural for oppressive 
 stillness, for the enormousness of the hush 
 rising out of its heart and subduing every sense 
 
222 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 till one felt the influence of it as a sort of com- 
 mand upon the spirits — the calm I say was 
 almost as beyond nature as the horrific snake- 
 breeding stagnation described in the Ancient 
 Ma7nner. Shortly before daybreak I found 
 the dusky figure of the second mate standing 
 near me and asked him how he did. 
 
 " I'm all right again now, sir, thank you." 
 
 *' Shall we recover the runaways, think 
 you r 
 
 '* I believe not," he answered in a low voice. 
 
 '* Even if the boat should be in siijht when 
 the sun rises is the captain going to send in 
 chase ? " 
 
 " He'll not do it unless some wind comes to 
 enable him to hold his boats in view, and there's 
 no hint that I can find in the sky of any wind 
 for the next twenty-four hours, if it comes 
 then!' 
 
 " The two sailors must have been handsomely 
 bribed to fall in with so desperate a scheme ? " 
 
 '' Ay, sir, big promises and some ready money 
 
AT DAYBREAK THERE WAS A RUSH ALOFT OF ALL HANDS. 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 225 
 
 on top of them weren't wanting, I dare say. 
 Unfortunately, Mr. Pellew, as he called himself, 
 has got hold of two of the worst men In the 
 ship, fellows, so the bo'sun was saying, whose 
 characters would the least bear looking Into. 
 It Is that which makes the situation of the lady 
 bad, and her father's to be pitied if we don't 
 pick 'em up. 'Twill be a heart-breaking job for 
 him, so stern as he is and so proud too and not 
 liked well enough to be condoled with, d'ye see?" 
 As he spoke a dim, most elusive sheen of 
 green, like a delicate mist upon which the 
 reflection of a coloured glass is cast was visible 
 upon the rim of the eastern sea. It was the 
 first of the daybreak and to the instant glimpse 
 of it there was a rush aloft ; a dance of all 
 hands up the shrouds, with soldiers slowly and 
 warily crawling up the rigging, holding on very 
 tighdy, and often pausing to look up. Every 
 mast bore its burthen of starers like clusters of 
 bees settled upon the yards, when with the 
 velocity of the tropic daybreak the sun sprang 
 
 Q 
 
226 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vill 
 
 off the sea line and flashed up the whole scene 
 of sea and sky into a day splendent and bound- 
 less. Perched on the main royal yard at an 
 elevation of I know not how many feet above 
 the deck was the figure of the chief mate, with 
 a telescope at his eye ; and on high, on the 
 fore-royal yard, with his head on a level with 
 the truck, stood the figure of the second mate, 
 also with a telescope at his eye ; and with the 
 slow deliberate motion of the merchant sailor, 
 the two worthy fellows swept the ocean with 
 their glasses. We down on the poop all stood 
 staring up, breathless, agitated, hearkening for 
 the first cry that should announce the visibility 
 of a minute speck upon the horizon. But all 
 remained silent aloft. The very ship seemed 
 to participate in the emotion of the time, to 
 hush the stir of her canvas, to arrest the swaying 
 of her mastheads. 
 
 " Mainroyal yard there ! " shouted the cap- 
 tain. " Do you see anything of the boat, Mr. 
 Freeman ? " 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 227 
 
 " Nothing, sir," came back the answer, clear 
 but small as it fell from that spirelike altitude. 
 
 " She 77iust be within range of the telescope," 
 I heard the captain say, talking at Sir Charles 
 though addressing the passengers generally. 
 " but the lenses aren't powerful enough to 
 reveal her." 
 
 "Has she been picked up by some passing 
 vessel, do you think ? " somebody inquired. 
 
 " Nothing with sails could have passed her,"' 
 answered the captain, " and steam we should 
 have seen or heard. The lookout that's been 
 kept has been bright enough." 
 
 The General approached the square little 
 man, whose insult of the night I could not 
 forgive. I was startled by the haggardness and 
 hollowness of his — that is to say Sir Charles's — 
 face ; it was difficult to believe that passion and 
 emotion could work so violent a change in a 
 resolved and mature nature in so short a time. 
 His complexion was of a greenish tinge ; the 
 pallor would have been ashen in a fair man, but 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vill 
 
 It showed sickly, ghastly, Indeed, In Its hue on 
 his almost chocolate coloured cheek. His black 
 eyes were restless and full of the fire of temper ; 
 but there was a new expression of fierceness In 
 his face ; It almost amounted to ferocity as he 
 looked down upon Stagg. This was a man to 
 pity In the dark when one could imagine him 
 only, and Invent whatever feelings and sensa- 
 tions one chose for him In his affliction ; but In 
 the daytime sympathy was shot dead by his 
 burning level glance. I confess as I looked at 
 him when he approached Stagg that I ceased to 
 feel sorry for him. 
 
 A number of the passengers were standing 
 near ; they could not miss what he said, nor did 
 he address Stagg as though he were sensible of 
 the presence of other listeners. 
 
 '' The boat Is not In sight, then ? " 
 
 " No, Sir Charles. But, as I have said, 
 
 that'll be the fault of the telescope. She's 
 
 bound to be this side of the horizon from half 
 
 that way up, ay, from a quarter that way up," 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 
 
 229 
 
 said the Captain, indicating the mainmast with 
 his elbow. 
 
 " But she is not in sight," repeated the General 
 with vehemence, " no matter whether she ought 
 or ought not to be so." 
 
 " No, she's not in sight." 
 
 " And what do you mean to do ? " 
 
 " What ca7i I do, sir ? " exclaimed the Captain, 
 sending a gaze of despair that was made comical 
 by the twist of his nose and mouth, over the 
 burnished blue sea in whose eastern quarter the 
 sun's reflection flamed as though we were afloat 
 on an ocean of quicksilver. 
 
 " When wind comes," said the General, pro- 
 nouncing his words as though he found difficulty 
 in preventing his teeth from meeting, " you will 
 proceed on your voyage. The ship is not to be 
 detained a minute on 7ny account." 
 
 " I want my boat," said Stagg, with a coun- 
 tenance of gloomy astonishment, "and I want 
 my two men." 
 
 " So far as my wishes are concerned," con- 
 
230 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT vill 
 
 tinned the General, " you will not waste an 
 instant in search when wind comes. The 
 voyage already threatens to be unusually long. 
 Your boat is of small consequence compared to 
 the loss of time you must incur in perhaps fruit- 
 lessly seeking her." 
 
 I glanced at the faces of the people who were 
 listening. The general expression was one of 
 disgust and dismay. 
 
 " But it's not a question only of the boat, Sir 
 Charles," cried Captain Stagg ; " there are four 
 human beings adrift in her, and one — " The 
 General saw what was coming and scowled him 
 into silence. 
 
 " My wishes are that when the wind comes 
 you proceed without a moment^s unnecessary 
 delay on your voyage," he exclaimed, letting 
 each word drop from his lips as though it were 
 of lead, and then without a look at us, without 
 a glance at the sea, with a face of wood, he 
 marched to the companion and disappeared. 
 
 Colonel Mowbray, a mild-mannered gentle- 
 
" MY WISHES ARE THAT WHEN THE WIND COMES YOU PROCEED 
 WITHOUT A moment's UNNECESSARY DELAY ON YOUR VOYAGE." 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 233 
 
 manly little man, who had stood at my side 
 surveying the General whilst he talked with 
 looks of horror, turned to me and said : "' He's 
 not accountable. He must not be held to mean 
 what he says. Captain Stagg," he exclaimed, 
 advancing to the skipper, " you will not of course 
 dream of relinquishing your resolution to search 
 for the boat ? " 
 
 "Only let there come wind!" cried Stagg. 
 " Not that it wouldn't serve the four of them 
 rieht to leave them to their fate. What ! to 
 steal my boat," he roared, clenching his fist, 
 •' and gag and frap my second mate as though 
 he were the remains of a tawps'l in a gale of 
 wind ! " 
 
 Well, one saw clearly enough that, General 
 or no General, the skipper meant to recover his 
 boat if he could come at her ; but for the rest 
 of the day we could all of us talk of little more 
 than Sir Charles's inhuman language, the horribly 
 unnatural resolution he had formed — during 
 those hours of darkness in which he had stood 
 
234 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 watching the sea — to obhge (if he could) the 
 captain to leave his daughter, not to mention 
 the others, to the dreadful doom — as it seemed 
 to us all — into which she had been courted 
 by her lover ; and a deal of talk was also 
 expended in wondering what was going to 
 happen should the boat be picked up and the 
 lovers brought aboard again. But in truth there 
 was nothing to be done ; we could only go on 
 surmising, with a vague sort of fancy of any 
 hour giving us a sight of the boat. For action 
 was impossible ; all that day and all the follow- 
 ing night the ship lay lifeless ; there was not a 
 whisper of air in the wide and blazing circle 
 round, and throughout the hours of darkness 
 the hush, the death-like repose was even 
 supremer than on the previous night. 
 
 Sir Charles came and went as heretofore ; he 
 took his place at the table, ate with his customary 
 appetite, and was noticeable for no other change 
 whatever that I could witness in him — beyond 
 the sickly hue and sudden ageing of his face — 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 235 
 
 than an increase in his reserve. He seldom 
 spoke, and when on deck he walked alone, but 
 we all of us noticed that if he glanced seawards 
 the act appeared involuntary. There was no 
 suggestion of searching in his gaze, no hint that 
 his mind was out upon that broad breast of 
 waters. 
 
 The lovers had eloped on a Wednesday night, 
 and it was not until the following Friday after- 
 noon at about three o'clock that the water in 
 the south-west was darkened by the brushing 
 of a merry breeze of wind, which, flashing into 
 the full breasts of the ship's canvas, heeled her 
 like a schooner in a yacht match, and once 
 more her metalled forefoot drove shearing in 
 snow through the wrinkled and frothing leagues 
 of brine. Calculations as to the boat's where- 
 abouts, supposing her to be still afloat, had been 
 carefully entered into by Stagg and his mates. It 
 was known that the lovers and the two men had 
 gone away without providing themselves with 
 mast or sail ; which simply signified that they 
 
236 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 counted wholly upon the luck of being picked up 
 by a passing ship. The captain therefore allowed 
 the boat a progress of about two miles in the hour 
 from the moment of her starting ; and the space 
 of ocean to be swept comprised an area whose 
 semi-diameter starting at the point where the ship 
 had lain becalmed terminated a league or two 
 beyond the distance it was assumed the boat 
 had attained. Men whose eyes were sharp 
 were stationed at the mastheads, and the ship 
 rushed along on a wild wide hunt. The interest 
 was so profound, the excitement so great, the 
 desire to rescue Miss Primrose at least from the 
 horribly perilous situation her love had hurried 
 her into was so consuming that the passengers 
 could scarcely be tempted from the deck even 
 by the ringing of the dinner bell, whilst a gleam 
 of daylight lived in the west. Until the night 
 came down dark we were overhanging the rail 
 intently staring, uttering ejaculations as one 
 or another of us imagined we saw something 
 black in the distance, some of the younger offi- 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 237 
 
 cers creeping up the mizzen rigging, whilst Bur- 
 ton managed to get as high as the cross-trees, 
 where he stood surveying the sea through an 
 eyeglass. The ladies were incessantly asking 
 if there was anything in sight, and I grew 
 weary at last of poising a telescope for them to 
 look through, so satisfied were they that they 
 had keener eyes than any of us men, and that 
 they would be the first to see the boat if they knew 
 how to look through a telescope without help. 
 
 But we stared in vain. Nothing hove into 
 view this side of sunset. The captain shortened 
 sail after dark and ordered lanterns to be shown 
 and rockets to be fired, not unwisely suspecting 
 that if the four were still afloat they would by 
 this time have had enough of their open boat 
 and endeavour to make for the ship should she 
 drive with her lamps and her fireworks into the 
 sphere of their horizon. But though we jogged 
 slowly through the night, with penetrating eyes 
 searching the dusk, and lanterns bravely burn- 
 ing along the rail, nothing showed, and when 
 
238 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 the grey dawn broke with a dirty scud — like 
 smoke blowing up off the rim of the south-west 
 horizon, and a long tumble of frothing sea cross- 
 ing a strong northerly swell that had risen sud- 
 denly in the night, the ocean brimmed bare to 
 the slope of the sky. 
 
 Yet for three successive days did Stagg per- 
 severe. Over and over again the braces were 
 manned, the course shifted and the ship's keel 
 driven along a new line of quest. Sir Charles's 
 demeanour had hardened into utter impenetra- 
 bility. One explored his countenance in vain 
 for the vaguest hint of what was passing in his 
 mind. He asked no questions — took visibly 
 no interest whatever in the manoeuvring of the 
 ship, came and went, ate and drank, and seemed 
 to find a gloomy and perhaps savage satisfac- 
 tion in exhibiting himself as a triumph of insen- 
 sibility. 
 
 I happened to be in the saloon on the last 
 day of the hunt. The General was seated alone 
 on a sofa near his cabin with spectacles on nose, 
 
viil CONCLUSION 239 
 
 reading" a book. There was a strone sailing- 
 wind blowing — a fair wind for our voyage, but 
 foul for the line of hunt we were just then 
 steering along, and the vessel was breaking the 
 seas angrily as she leaned from the wind with 
 her yards almost fore and aft. The Captain 
 came below and seeing Sir Charles, stood look- 
 ing at him with an air of irresolution for a 
 moment or two ; then stepping up to him 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " General, I fear we must give up the search.'' 
 
 Sir Charles seemed not to hear. Indeed he 
 did not raise his eyes, as though unconscious of 
 the presence of the man who stood in front 
 of him. Stagg was nettled. 
 
 ''The boat's not to be found. Sir Charles," 
 he exclaimed in a harsh voice, "and as we've 
 sighted nothing that could have fallen in with 
 her, and as there's been likewise some stiff seas 
 running, it looks uncommonly like as though 
 she's foundered." 
 
 " What is it you want to tell me ? " said Sir 
 
240 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viil 
 
 Charles, frowning as he gazed at the skipper over 
 the tops of his spectacles. 
 
 *' Why that we must give up seeking and 
 proceed on our voyage." 
 
 " I told you to do so at the first opportunity 
 the wind offered," thundered the General. 
 
 The skipper with a single pause of disgust 
 and astonishment — and salt-hardened as the 
 fellow's soul was, I believe he was as much 
 shocked as I and two or three others^ who at 
 the other end of the saloon had listened to this 
 brief conversation — the little skipper, I say, 
 rounded upon his heels and ran on deck. His 
 voice swept through the hum of the wind in a 
 roar that was swiftly re-echoed and in a few 
 minutes the decks were filled with sailors busy 
 in bracing the yards for the ship to come to Ker 
 course for the voyage to India. 
 
 And here terminated the extraordinary inci- 
 dent I have endeavoured to relate, so far as my 
 association with it goes. Upon the subsequent 
 
VIII 
 
 CONCLUSION 241 
 
 behaviour of the General, upon Captain Stagg's 
 very tardy apology to me, upon what was said, 
 and no doubt thought by the passengers, I 
 mieht enlaro^e. But let me hasten rather to 
 the issue of this curious ocean experience of us 
 passengers aboard the Light of Asia. 
 
 I had been in India two years when a brother 
 officer, who had not long joined, asked me if I 
 had come from England in the same ship that- 
 had broucrht out Sir Charles Primrose. 
 
 I answered yes. 
 
 " Then," said he, '' you were in the ship when 
 his daughter eloped with a young fellow named 
 Cunningham in an open boat ? " 
 
 "All this," said I, " is no news to me."' 
 
 "I had heard," said he, "that you were in 
 the Light of Asia. Did you ever hear the 
 sequel of the elopement ? " 
 
 "I should think," said I, "that the story of 
 that sequel must be sought for at the bottom of 
 
 the sea." 
 
 " Oh dear no," he exclaimed, " wait a minute ; 
 
 R 
 
242 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 I have the full particulars of it in my room." 
 He went away and returned after a little with a 
 cutting from an Indian newspaper — the Times 
 of India, I believe it was. It is long ago since 
 I read it and my memory is not what it was ; 
 but to the best of my recollection it was to this 
 effect : 
 
 " At such and such a date/' making the period 
 some months from the day of the elopement, 
 ** a large American ship, named the Consta^ice 
 Warwick, arrived at the port of New York, and 
 her master, a person named Ephraim Kerr, 
 related the following, probably in the form of a 
 deposition, but such as it was it speedily found 
 its way into the newspapers. Captain Kerr, 
 during the homeward voyage from Madagascar, 
 when something to the north of the Cape of 
 Good Hope on the Atlantic side, fell in with a 
 large three-masted schooner with colours flying, 
 ' To Speak.' The topsail was laid to the mast 
 and the schooner ranged alongside within hail- 
 ing distance. Her Captain, standing in the 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 245 
 
 mizzen rigging, Informed Captain Kerr that 
 when In latitude 2°N, he had fallen In with an 
 open boat containing four persons, one of whom 
 was a lady. The schooner was bound to a 
 Western Australian port ; the people she had 
 rescued wanted to return to England ; would 
 the Constance Wariuick receive them ? Captain 
 Kerr replied that his ship .was bound to New 
 York, and that If the four persons were willing 
 to be carried to that city, he would be glad 
 to take them on board. On this a boat con- 
 taining a lady and gentleman and two sailors, 
 rowed by a couple of the schooner's men, 
 and steered by the master of the schooner, 
 • put off and came alongside the Constance 
 Warwick y 
 
 Needless to say that the lady and gentle- 
 man were Mr. Cunningham and Miss Prim- 
 rose, and the others the two seamen who 
 had formed part of the crew of the Light 
 of Asia. 
 
 "The master of the schooner took Captain 
 
246 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 Kerr aside and told him that the lady and 
 gentleman and sailors had explained their situa- 
 tion thus ; that they belonged to an East India- 
 g;nan bound to Calcutta, that having been 
 tempted by the sight of a wreck to explore 
 her they, on a calm still day, with the permission 
 of the captain of the Indiaman, who considered 
 two seamen crew enough for the boat, started 
 for the wreck, but a change of weather happen- 
 ing very suddenly they lost the ship. This was 
 their story. The master of the schooner told 
 Captain Kerr that he didn't believe it. First, 
 the boat was found fairly victualled, and this 
 certainly did not suggest that the party had 
 started on a holiday jaunt for an hour or two. 
 Next, it was not to be supposed that the boat 
 would have been despatched without an officer 
 in charo^e of her. However, be the truth what 
 it might, they had stuck to this story, and as it 
 was no business of the master of the schooner, 
 he had made, outside a few questions, no very 
 particular inquiries. 
 
VIII CONCLUSION 247 
 
 *' The Constance Wariuick proceeded on her 
 voyage to New York, and during the run one 
 of the sailors, whilst muddled with rum, gave 
 the whole story to a number of the American 
 Jacks as they were seated, during their watch 
 below, in the forecastle. This was repeated to 
 the mate ; the mate communicated it to Captain 
 Kerr, who, on asking Mr. Cunningham if the 
 narrative were true, was assured that it was 
 absolutely so." 
 
 Thus it was that the story found its way into 
 print. It was republished in the English news- 
 papers and copied by the Indian journals. But 
 locomotion, whether by sea or land, was as we 
 all know sluggish in those days, and hence the 
 length of time that elapsed before I, who was 
 then in India, got the news of the sequel of the 
 incident as related by the Captain of the Con- 
 stance Warwick at New York. 
 
 When many years after I returned to England 
 I made inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Cunning- 
 ham, but never could Q^et to hear more than that 
 
248 A STRANGE ELOPEMENT viii 
 
 after the death of old Mrs. Cunningham, her 
 son had let or sold the property he inherited 
 and settled with his wife somewhere in the South 
 of France. 
 
 THE END 
 
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