The Seafarers

CHAPTER X

THE GROWING TERROR

The sailor is, as all the world knows, a light-hearted, mercurial creature. Face to face with death in some form or other during every hour of his life-although, often, the mere presence of death is neither known nor suspected-he is only too elated and happy when momentarily without anything to cause him anxiety. Such was the case now with Captain Pooley, since his beautiful ship was rapidly picking up all the time she had lost by lack of wind and delays, 'and since,' as he jovially phrased it, 'all his new passengers were doing well.'

'First and foremost,' he said that evening, as he sat at the head of his table with Bella in the place of honour on his right hand, his wife on the left, and Mr. Fagg opposite to him, while his honest, sunburnt face gleamed rubicund beneath the inch of white under his hair which his cap had preserved from the sun, 'Bella's young man is all right. Then Bella's new plaything, the tiger, takes kindly to its lodgings-though you will have to sell it, my child, directly we get to Bombay, and distribute the money it fetches among the men. Then those wretched slaves-even they will eat and drink, won't they, Fagg?'

'Not much of that, sir,' the second mate answered, who was eating and drinking pretty well himself, however; 'they don't care to do much of either. They make a good deal of moaning up in that deck-cabin forward which you have given them. The woman, however, seems all right. I suppose the lieutenant has not been able to tell you much about the dhow yet, Miss Waldron?' he asked, bending forward a little as he addressed her.

'At present,' she replied, 'we have had little conversation. He says, however, that he sent me a telegram from Bombay, telling me not to start as the Briseus was coming down here. He only came-to an hour ago, however,' she went on, while a ravishing blush swept over her face, 'and we-we-have had so much to-'

'Spare her, Fagg,' said Pooley, with a laugh, and passing the claret at the same time. 'Spare her. Suppose you woke up one fine afternoon and found your sweetheart bending over you in your berth and whispering all sorts of endearing things in your ears, as well as kiss-'

'Uncle!' cried Bella, while Mrs. Pooley touched her husband's arm reprovingly with her forefinger, and Mr. Fagg hid his face behind the vase of brilliant Cape gooseberries on the table. 'Uncle!' Whereon the bluff, good-natured sailor desisted, and began to speculate on the blindness with which the rescued negroes were attacked, and on that attack being, as he imagined, a recent one. 'They capture these poor wretches inland,' he went on musingly, 'in the big lake region as often as not; but, as far as I have ever heard, blindness is not one of their afflictions. Moreover, these Arab owners and captains wouldn't buy blind slaves, either for selling farther north, or for using as sailors in their dhows. Therefore, I take it, this blindness must have come on them since they were shipped. That's strange, isn't it?' while, as he spoke, he rose, and went to his neat mahogany bookcase which was securely fastened to one of the saloon's bulkheads, and took down the two medical works he possessed-the one dealing with all general human complaints to which our flesh is heir, and the other with tropical diseases more especially. Yet neither under the heading of 'Eye,' nor 'Blindness,' nor 'Optics,' could he find aught that bore upon the subject; nor, in his book on tropical complaints, could he discover any information that might enlighten him as to why the four negroes should be so stricken.

He spoke again, however, after turning over the leaves of these erudite volumes a second time, saying: 'Fever, I know, sometimes produces blindness as an after-effect, yet-well, we have all seen these fellows, and there's no fever in them, I should say. Oh, deuce take this confusion of tongues!' he exclaimed irritably; 'if it did not exist we could find out so much from the sufferers themselves. Bella, our only hope is in you and your patient. If Lieutenant Bampfyld can't tell us something, we shall never know who these men and the woman are, where they came from, what is the matter with them, and to whom the dhow belonged. Can he speak anything but English, child?'

'He knows some Hindustani,' Bella replied; 'and, I think he said, some words of Swahili. He has taken up Eastern languages in the Service, which was one of the reasons for his being appointed to the Briseus. He may be some help. At least he can tell us how he came on board that horrid ship.'

As she spoke, eight-bells struck on deck, and, as the sound came through the skylight, both she and Mr. Fagg rose, the girl doing so because it was the hour at which she intended to visit Gilbert again, and the latter because it was time to relieve Stephen Charke, who would now come below to take his supper. For Bella had fixed this hour for paying her last evening visit to her future husband because she knew that the second mate would then descend, and she was never now desirous of being more in his company than necessary.

She therefore left the saloon before Fagg could have relieved Charke, and, going to the cabin in which Gilbert Bampfyld lay, pushed back the curtain that hung at the door and went in to him, while observing as she did so that he was awake and gazing upwards as he lay. And she saw that he smiled happily on perceiving her, and whispered the word 'Darling' as she advanced to his bedside.

'You are better, dearest,' she said, bending over him and putting her hand on his forehead, which was cool and moist. 'Much better. Aunt will come soon with fresh bandages for your poor head, and then you will have a good night's refreshing sleep. And to-morrow, perhaps, you will be able to tell us how you came to be in that hideous slaver. Oh, Bertie!'-for so she often called him-'what a mercy it was that we found you as we did. And what a miracle that we should have met thus. Home-keeping and narrow-minded people would say, if they read it all in a book, that such a thing was unnatural and impossible.'

Their first meeting, their joy at discovering that they had come together again in this marvellous manner; their rapture when, a few hours before, Gilbert Bampfyld had emerged from his stupor and unconsciousness, has not been forgotten, although the description of it has been omitted. Omitted for the simple reason that most of us have been, or are, lovers; most of us have known in our time, or know now-and those are the happy ones! – the sweet, unutterable joy with which such meetings are welcomed. Who does not remember the sudden, quickened beat of the heart at some period of their existence, as they met again the one they loved the best of all in this world; the creature upon whom their thoughts were for ever dwelling, and from whom those thoughts, however wandering they had heretofore been, were, at last, never more to roam! Picture to yourself, therefore, what rhapsody was Bella's when, forgetting everything else but that she held her lover to her heart, she wept over his salvation from an awful, swift, impending death; picture also to yourself the delirious joy which coursed through Gilbert's now unclouded mind, as he found himself in her arms-with her-close to her. Picture this, and no further description is needed of their meeting in that cool, darkened cabin of the old ship. Imagine for yourself what your own ecstasy would have been in such or kindred circumstances, and you possess the knowledge of what theirs was.

'Darling,' he said again now, as she held to his lips a cooling drink that she had brought into the cabin with her, 'darling, I can tell you in half-a-dozen sentences or less-'

'No,' she said. 'No; not now. To-morrow, when you have slept-'

'Yes, now. Why, dearest, I am well! I could take the middle watch to-night if necessary, or-or-do anything that a sailor may be called on to do. And as for finding me in that dhow, why, it's the simplest thing on earth-or the waters. Listen. The Briseus, as you would have learnt by that telegram I sent you if you had ever received it, was suddenly ordered to join the Cape Squadron-dhow-catching. And I can tell you we were not so very long before the game began, since by the time we were abreast of Kilwy-which is the southern limit of the legal slave trade-we fell in with twelve dhows, one of them being our friend from which I was rescued by your people. And you may depend we were after them like lightning, while beginning to ply them with shell and shot from our little gun forward. They scattered, of course, though some got hit and lay disabled on the water, while I went off in the whaler with her crew to attack one that seemed badly knocked about. The one in which I was when found by you.'

'The horror!' exclaimed Bella, with a pretty shudder.

'No, no; don't call her that, because, after all, I owe my life to her.'

'Well, the angel!' exclaimed Bella now, with sudden change.

'Though I don't altogether know that the captain meant to save me-'

'The wretch! I'm glad he's dead.'

Gilbert laughed at these variations in Bella's mental temperature. Then he continued.

'They are artful-incredibly artful-in these dhows. They will let our pinnaces or whalers or any other of the ship's boats come alongside, then, all of a sudden, they cut their lee halliards, and down comes their great sail over us, enveloping the boat and all in it, just as if it was in a net or a bag.'

'Ah!' gasped Bella.

'And that's not all. When you are caught like that, they have another pleasing little way of firing at you from above through the canvas, so that you are being shot down while, all the time, you have no chance of escape.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Bella. 'To think of it! Ah, the wretches.'

'They do, Bella. Fortunately, however, this one couldn't do it, being disabled, and she had, therefore, come up to the wind with hardly any way on her. This was all right for us, as I meant to board, so as we came alongside each other we hooked on to her anchor cable, which was hanging pretty low down, and we should have got on board, too, only at that moment the dhow gave a lurch which sent the whaler half-seas under, and I got a blow on the head which knocked me insensible-'

'Oh, Gilbert! That wound on your head!'

'I suppose so. At any rate, I knew no more about it; and I don't know anything further, now, since I was insensible till I woke up here this morning and found you bending over me. However, I'm all right now, or soon shall be.'

'But how did you come into the dhow you were found in?' Bella asked, while pouring out, directly afterwards, one question after another. 'And when did it happen-yesterday, or a week ago? And where was the whaler, and the sailors, and the Briseus? And why did they all desert you? What a nice kind of a captain yours must be, to be sure!'

'My opinion is now,' said Gilbert, 'that the dhow you found me in, rescued me-picked me up. And I expect our captain-he is a rattling good skipper, Bella, all the same-heard I was drowned and thinks I've missed my muster. My cousin Jack will imagine for a month or so-till we get in to Bombay-that he is the future Lord D'Abernon,' and he laughed as he thought of how soon Cousin Jack would be undeceived.

'But the dhow we found you in-how did she escape, and why didn't the Briseus capture her?'

'Some must have got off in the confusion since it was only an hour from dark. I'm certain to be reported lost when the ship goes into either Zanzibar or Aden, and- What's that?' he exclaimed, breaking off suddenly. 'Surely that's your uncle's voice!'

He recognised it because Captain Pooley had been in to see him after he recovered his consciousness and had congratulated him on doing so, as well as on being practically restored, while saying also that he was delighted at being the means of rescuing him out of the sinking slaver.

'Yes,' Bella replied, 'that's uncle's voice; and the other is that of Mr. Charke, the first mate.'

'Listen! What is it he is saying?'

It was perfectly easy to hear what he was saying, since both master and mate were conversing in the saloon, to which Charke had descended. And the words which reached their ears, as they fell from the latter's lips, were: 'Oh, no doubt about it whatever, sir; not the least. The negress is now as blind as the negroes themselves. She cannot see her way along the deck, nor any of the signs we have made before her eyes.'

CHAPTER XI

THE TERROR INCREASES

The southerly wind did not hold as it should have done considering the time of year, and the consequence was that the Emperor of the Moon was by no means making such a passage as was to be expected of her. Indeed, by the time that the second day had passed since the rescue of Gilbert from the slaver, and when the evening was at hand, she was almost motionless on the water, while such sails as were still left standing hung as listlessly as though they were suspended in a back room. Now, this was disheartening to all on board-that is to say, to all except one person-as is generally the case when such things happen. The master was grieved because he looked upon the delay as an absolute waste of valuable time, while as for Bella and Gilbert-well, it is scarcely necessary to write down here what they were looking forward to at the end of their journey, or what visions haunted the mind of the latter concerning the Cathedral in Bombay and a ceremony of marriage being performed at the altar-rails by the Bishop. Yet, all-passengers, master, officers and men-had to swallow their disappointment as best they might, and to recognise the fact that Bombay was still over three thousand miles away and not likely to be reached for very many days.

The one person who was, however, resigned to the affliction of delay was Stephen Charke, in whose brain there still lingered a wild and chimerical idea that there might yet be sent by Fate some extraordinary piece of good fortune which would, even at the last moment, sever Gilbert and Bella, with the subsequent result of bringing him and her together.

It has been said that he was a dreamer, and never had he been so more than now, since, sleeping and waking, he still mused on the possibility of some extraordinary set of circumstances arising which should force the girl into his arms. Yet, he had to own to himself that nothing was more unlikely than that any such circumstances could by any possibility arise. If anything visited these seas, this stupendous ocean, at this period of the year, it was most likely to be a flat calm such as that which they were now experiencing, instead of storms; and, even if storms should come, of what avail would they be to separate Gilbert Bampfyld and Bella Waldron?

'I am a fool,' he would mutter to himself, as he smoked his pipe in either the solitude of his own cabin or on the deck at night, 'a fool. A madman! One has only to observe how they love each other, how they never leave each other's side, to see that nothing could ever bring her to me. Even though she and I were cast on some deserted shore, even though I saved her from forty thousand threatened deaths-even though Bampfyld himself were dead and buried, she would never give herself to me. I am,' he would repeat again, 'a fool.' And this acknowledgment would, for a time, operate wholesomely on him-a man whose mind was not altogether that of a visionary and whose heart was not, by nature, a perverted or warped one-and he would resolve that, henceforth, he would think no more of this girl for whom his love was so fierce and, to him, so disturbing. He made resolutions, therefore, and kept them-until the next time that he saw the lovers together, smiling, talking, happy in each other-'billing and cooing,' as he called it, with a smothered curse.

They were on deck together, now, on the evening of the second day of calm as Stephen went up to take the first watch, since Gilbert had refused to remain a prisoner in the cabin allotted to him for more than twenty-four hours, and Pooley was also there, Fagg being below finishing his supper. Mrs. Pooley sat on the poop in a deck-chair engaged in some needlework she had constantly on hand, and, forward, the men were engaged in smoking and telling yarns, while the general idleness which pervades the forecastle when a ship is becalmed prevailed everywhere. One man was reading a short story to his mates out of a country paper six months old, another had a sewing-machine between his legs with which he was mending his and his comrades, clothes, a third was teasing and playing with 'Bengalee,' the tiger cub, which was growing-or seemed to be growing-fast. At present, however, it was safe to let it loose since it had no more strength than a large-sized cat, and teeth not much bigger than those domestic animals possess. Generally, the creature followed Bella about wherever she went, rolling down the companion ladder after her like a striped ball when she went below, or lying on the edge of her dress when she sat on deck; but at night it was shut up in a locker forward and looked after by the sailors. The hour for its temporary retirement had not, however, yet arrived, wherefore it was still gambolling about amongst the men.

Altogether, the vessel presented a peaceful scene as she lay 'idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean,' while, from forward, there came the droning voice of the sailor who was reading the storiette to his mates, interrupted only by the laughter of the others at the cub's leaps and growls; and, from the after part of the ship, the talk of the 'quarter-deck' people arose.

'Come,' said Pooley now, addressing Charke, 'come, let us go and look at those unfortunate niggers. The Lord knows what is to become of them. The woman, you say, never rises from the floor of the cabin, but only lies there and moans. It is the strangest thing I ever heard of in my life. I wish, Mr. Bampfyld,' turning to that gentleman as he passed with Bella, 'that you could give us some information about that dhow we found you in.'