A LONG VOYAGE
It was a dreary and monotonous time. After the sun had gone down, red
and sullen, through the haze, and when the ship left a long track of
phosphorescent light sparkling behind it, Mr. Chantrey would pace up and
down the deck, as he had often walked to and fro in the churchyard paths
in the starlight. He had many things to think of. For his wife his hope
was strengthening; a dim star shone before him in the future. Her brain
was gradually regaining clearness, and her mind strength. Something of
the old buoyancy and elasticity was returning to her, for she would play
sometimes with her child merrily, and her laugh was like music to him.
But how would it be in the hour of temptation, which must come? She said
her craving for stimulants was passing away; but how would she bear
being again able to procure them? He would watch over her and guard her
as long as he lived, but what would become of her if he should die?
This last question was becoming every day more and more urgent. The
exhausting oppressive heat and the protracted voyage were sapping his
strength, and he knew it. The fresh sweet sea-breezes on which he had
reckoned had failed him, and he was consciously nearer death than when
he left England. He longed eagerly for life and health, that he might
see his wife and child in happier circumstances before he died. To leave
them thus seemed intolerable to him. What was he to do with his boy? He
could not leave him in the care of a mother not yet delivered from the
bondage of such a fatal sin. Yet to separate him harshly from her would
almost certainly doom her to continue in it. If life might be spared to
him only a few years longer, he would probably see her once more a
fitting guardian for their child. The growing hope for her, the dim
dread for himself--these two held alternate sway over him as he paced to
and fro under the southern skies.
Captain Scott, his friend, urged upon him that there was one remedy open
to him, and only one on board the ship. The long stress and strain upon
his physical as well as his mental health had weakened him until his
strength was slowly ebbing away; his heart beat feebly, and his whole
system had fallen under a nervous depression. Now was the time when, as
a medicine, the alcohol, which was poison and death to his wife, would
prove restoration to him. Could he but keep up his vital powers until
the voyage was ended, all would be well with him. His life might be
prolonged for those few years he so ardently desired. He could still
watch over his wife, and protect his child during boyhood, and die in
peace--young perhaps, but having accomplished what he had set his mind
upon. But Sophy? How could she bear this unexpected temptation? He did
not suppose he could effectually conceal it from her, for of late she
had clung to him like a child, following him about humbly and meekly,
with a touching dependence upon him, striving to catch his eye and to
smile faintly when he looked at her, as a child might do who was seeking
to win forgiveness. She was very feeble and delicate still, her appetite
was as dainty as his own, and the heat oppressed her almost as much as
himself. Yet that which might save him would certainly destroy her.
Day after day the debate with Captain Scott was resumed. But there was
no real debate in his own mind. He would gladly take the remedy if he
could do so with safety to his wife, but not for a thousand lives would
he endanger her soul. Not for the certainty of prolonging his own years
would he take from her the merest chance of overcoming her sin. To do it
for an uncertainty was impossible.
There was hope for him still, if the vessel could but get past these
sultry seas into a cooler climate. One good fresh sea-breeze would do
him more good than any stimulant, and they were slowly gliding to
latitudes where they might meet them at any hour. Once out of the
tropics, and around the Cape of Good Hope, there would be no fear of
exhausting heat in the air they breathed. All his languor would be gone
and the rest of the voyage would bring health and vigor to his fevered
frame. Only let them double the Cape, and a new life in a new world lay
before them.
His brain felt confused and delirious at times, but he knew it so well
that he grew used to sit down silently in the bow of the ship, and let
the dizzy dreams pass over him, careful not to alarm his wife or Ann
Holland. Cool visions of the pleasant English home he had quitted for
ever; the shadows and the calm of his church, where the sunshine slanted
in through narrow windows made green with ivy-leaves; the rustling of
leaves in the elm-trees on his lawn in the soft low wind of a summer's
evening; the deep grassy glades of thick woods, where he had loved to
walk; the murmuring and tinkling of hidden brooks--all these flitted
across his clouded mind as he sat speechless, with his throbbing head
resting upon his hands. Often his wife crouched beside him, herself
silent, thinking sadly how he was brooding over all the wrong and injury
she had done him, yet fearing in her humiliation to ask him if it were
so. Her repentance was very deep and real, her love for him very true.
Yet she dreaded the hour when she must face temptation again. She could
not even bear to think of it.
But shortly after they had passed the southern tropic, as they neared
the Cape, the climate changed suddenly, with so swift an alteration that
from sultry heat of a torrid summer they plunged almost directly into
the biting cold of winter. As they doubled the Cape a strong north-west
gale met them, with icy cold in its blast. The ropes were frozen, and
the sails grew stiff with hoar-frost. Rough seas rolled about them,
tossing the vessel like a toy upon their waves. The change was too
sudden and too great. All the passengers were ill, and David Chantrey
lay down in his low, narrow berth, knowing well that no hope was left to
him.