A SECOND WARNING.
I hauled down the shawl from the masthead, carefully unbent, folded,
and gave it to Miss Jennings, who stood with Wilfrid watching the
Portuguese brig. We had hoisted in our boat, and the men were busy
about the decks coiling up after having trimmed sail.
‘Once more heading a fair course for the “Shark,”’ said I with a glance
at the compass. ‘This has been a neat morning’s work. A few incidents
of the kind should make out a lively voyage.’
‘Oh, but it’s dreadful to think of that poor man having been drowned!’
exclaimed Miss Jennings. ‘I was watching the boat before the gun was
fired. In an instant she vanished. She might have been a phantom. She
melted out upon the water as a snow-flake would. I pressed my eyes, for
I could not believe them at first.’
‘Horrible!’ exclaimed Wilfrid in a hollow, melancholy voice; ‘what
had that miserable creature done that we should take his life? Have
we insensibly--insensibly--courted some curse of heaven upon this
yacht? Who was the villain that did it?’ He wheeled round passionately:
‘Finn--Captain Finn, I say!’ he shouted.
The captain, who was giving directions to some men in the waist, came
aft.
‘Who was it that fired that shot, Finn?’ cried my cousin in his
headlong way, jerking his head as it were at Finn with the question,
whilst his arms and legs twitched and twisted as though to an electric
current.
‘A man named O’Connor, Sir Wilfrid,’ responded Finn.
‘Did he do it expressly, think you?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say that, your honour. The fellow’s a blunderhead.
I inquired if there was e’er a man for’ard as could load and sight a
cannon, and this chap stands up and says that he’d sarved for three
years in a privateer and was reckoned the deadest shot out of a crew of
ninety men.’
‘Call him aft,’ said Wilfrid. ‘If he aimed at that boat intentionally
it’s murder--call him aft!’
He took some impatient strides to and fro with a face that worked like
a ship in a seaway with the conflict of emotions within him, whilst
Finn going a little way forward, sung out for O’Connor. Meanwhile we
were rapidly widening the distance between us and the brig. I protest
it was with an honest feeling of relief that I watched her sliding into
a toy-like shape, with promise of nothing showing presently but some
radiant film of her topmost canvas in the silver azure that streaked by
a hand’s breadth, as it looked, the whole girdle of the horizon; for
one was never to know but that her people might send the red-capped man
adrift for us to pick up, or worry us in some other way.
Finn arrived, followed by the Irishman who had discharged the gun; his
immense black whiskers stood out thick, straight, inflexible as the
bristles of a chimney-sweep’s brush, contrasting very extraordinarily
with the bright apple-red of his cheeks and the blue, Hibernian,
seawardly eye that glimmered under a dense black thatch of brow. He
stood bolt upright soldier-fashion, with his arms straight up and
down by his side like pump-handles, and fixed an unwinking stare upon
whoever addressed him.
‘You fired that gun, Captain Finn says,’ exclaimed Wilfrid.
‘Oi did, your honour.’
‘What made you take aim at the boat?’
‘Your honour, by the holy eleven, I took aim at the brig. There’s
something wrong with the pace.’
‘Wrong with the piece. What d’ye mean?’
‘It was cast with a kink, sorr; it dhroops amidships and shoots as
Mister Crimp’s larboard oye peeps, your honour, though loike his oye it
manes well.’
‘Nonsense,’ I cried, ‘you must have covered the boat to hit it.’
‘By all that’s sacred then,’ cried the man, ‘I had the natest
observation of the brig’s maintopmasht as ever oye could bring the
muzzle of a pace to soight. The gun was cast with a kink, sorr.’
‘My belief is that you’re utterly ignorant of guns,’ cried Wilfrid.
‘The concussion was fierce enough to shake the yacht to pieces.’
‘’Twas your honour’s design to froighten ’em.’
‘But not to murder them, you dolt!’ shouted Wilfrid. ‘D’ye know I could
have you _hanged_ for this.’
‘It was but a haythen Portuguay, sorr,’ answered the fellow, preserving
his ramrod-like posture and his unwinking stare.
‘Tell him to go forward, Finn; tell him to go forward,’ cried Wilfrid,
‘and see that he never has any more to do with that gun on any account
whatever, d’ye understand?’
The seaman knuckled his forehead and wheeled round, but methought I
could just catch a glimpse past his whisker of a sudden protrusion of
the cheek as though he was signalling with his tongue to a brother Jack
who was flemish-coiling a rope not very far from where he was standing.
The luncheon bell rang and we went below. At table we could talk of
nothing but the unhappy Portuguese whom our round-shot had sent to the
bottom. Muffin’s face of respectful horror was a feature of the time
which I recall more vividly than even the disaster itself. This man,
though he was in attendance on Wilfrid as a valet, regularly stood
behind his master’s chair at meals. It was Wilfrid’s whim to have him
at hand. He did not offer to wait unless it was to procure anything my
cousin might require when the stewards were busy with Miss Jennings
and myself, or one or both of them absent. His air of deferential
consternation was exceedingly fine as he listened to our talk about the
annihilated boat and the foundered foreigner--‘Who,’ said I, with a
glance at his yellow visage, the shocked expression of which he tried
to smother by twisting his lips into a sort of shape that might pass
as a faint obsequious simper and by keeping his eyelids lowered, ‘let
us trust was cut in halves, for then his extinction would be painless;
for after all, drowning, though it is reckoned an agreeable death
after consciousness has fled, is mortal agony, I take it, whilst the
sensation of suffocation remains.’
Muffin’s left leg fell away with an exceedingly nervous crooking of
it in the trouser, and he turned up his eyes an instant to the upper
deck with so sickly a roll, that spite of myself I burst into a laugh,
though I swiftly recovered myself.
‘It is strange, Charles,’ exclaimed my cousin in a raven-like note,
‘that a ghastly incident of this kind should sit so lightly on your
mind, considering that you have quitted the sea for years and have led
a far more effeminate life ashore than I who have been roughing it on
the ocean when very likely you were lounging with a bored face in an
opera stall or dozing over a cigar in some capacious club arm-chair.
Had you been chasing slavers or pitching cannon shot into African
villages down to the present moment, I could almost understand your
indifference to a business that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my
days.’
‘Nonsense!’ I exclaimed, ‘it was a bad job I admit, but a pure
accident, not more tragical than had the boat capsized and drowned the
man. There would be nothing in a twenty-fold uglier mishap to haunt
you. But I’ll tell you what, though,’ I continued, talking on to avert
the sentimental argument which I saw strong in Wilfrid’s face, ‘the
incident of this morning points a very useful moral.’
‘What moral?’ he demanded.
‘Why, that we must not be in too great a hurry to speak every sail we
sight.’
‘Finn knows my wishes; we must hear all we can about the “Shark,”’
cried Wilfrid warmly.
‘The very vessel that we neglect to speak,’ exclaimed Miss Jennings
softly--she had spoken but little, and it was easy to see through the
transparency of her unaffected manner that the tragic affair of the
morning had made a very deep impression on her--‘might prove the one
ship of all we pass that could most usefully direct us.’
‘Two to one!’ said I, giving her a bow and smiling to the look of
coy reproach in her charming eyes; ‘of course, Miss Jennings, I have
no more to say. At least,’ I added, turning to Wilfrid, ‘on the head
of speaking passing ships, though the moral I find in this forenoon
trouble is not exhausted.’
‘Well?’ said he a little imperiously, leaning towards me on one elbow
with his nails at his lips and the spirit of restlessness quick as the
blood in his veins in every lineament.
‘Well,’ said I, echoing him, ‘my suggestion is that your Long Tom’s
murderous mission should be peremptorily cut short by your ordering
Finn to strike the noisy old barker at once down into the hold, where
he’ll be a deuced deal more useful as ballast than as a forecastle toy
for the illustration of Irish humour.’
‘No!’ shouted Wilfrid, fetching the table a whack with his fist:
‘so say no more about it, Charles. Strange that _you_, who should
possess the subtlest and strongest of any kind of human sympathy for
and with me--I mean the sympathy of blood--should so absolutely fail
to appreciate my determination and to accept my purpose! That girl
there,’ pointing with his long arm to Miss Laura, ‘can read my heart
and, of her sweetness, justify and approve all she finds there. But
_you_, my dear Charles’--he softened his voice though he continued
speaking with warmth nevertheless--‘_you_, my own first cousin, _you_
to whom my honour should be hardly less dear than your own--_you_ would
have me abandon this pursuit--forego every detail of my carefully
prepared programme--blink with a cynical laziness at my own and my
infant’s degradation and turn to the law--to the law forsooth!--for the
appeasement or extinction of every just yearning and of every consuming
desire of my manhood. No, by G--!’ he roared, ‘fate may be against me,
but even _her_ iron hand can be forced by a heart goaded as mine has
been and is.’
He rose from the table and without another word went to his cabin.
We had been for some time alone--I mean that Muffin and the stewards
had left us. When my cousin was gone I looked at Miss Jennings.
‘Forgive me, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed with a little blush and
speaking with an enchanting diffidence, ‘but I fear--indeed I am sure,
that any, even the lightest, suggestion that runs counter to Wilfrid’s
wishes irritates him. And,’ she added almost in a whisper, ‘I think it
is dangerous to irritate him.’
‘I have no wish to irritate him, believe me, Miss Jennings,’ said I.
‘I desire to be of some practical help, and my recommendations have
no other motive. But I give you my word if this sort of thing goes
on I shall grow selfish, nay, alarmed if you like. I certainly never
anticipated these melodramatic displays, these tragic rebukes, when I
accepted his offer of the voyage. Pray consider: if Wilf, poor fellow,
should grow worse, if his actions should result in exhibiting him as
irresponsible, what’s to be done? Heaven forbid that I should say a
word to alarm you--’ she shook her head with a smile: I was a little
abashed but proceeded nevertheless--‘we are not upon dry land here.
The ocean is as full of the unexpected as it is of fish. Finn is a
plain steady man with brains enough, but then he is not in command in
the sense that a captain is in command when we speak of a ship whose
skipper is lord paramount. He will obey as Wilfrid orders, and I say,
Miss Jennings, with all submission to your engaging, to your beautiful
desires as a sister, that if Wilfrid’s humour is going to gain on him
at the rate at which I seem to find it growing, it will be my business,
as I am certain it will be my duty for everybody’s sake as well as for
yours and his own, so to contrive this unparalleled pursuit as to end
it swiftly.’
She was silent--a little awed, I think, by my emphatic manner, perhaps
by a certain note of sternness, for I had been irritated, besides being
nervous; and then, again, my distaste for the trip worked very strongly
in me whilst I was talking to her.
We were a somewhat gloomy ship for the rest of the day. I noticed
that the seamen wore tolerably grave faces at their several jobs,
and it was easy to gather that, now they had had time to digest the
incident of the morning, it was as little to their taste as it was
to ours aft. Indeed it was impossible to tell what kind of omen they
might manufacture out of so tragic an affair. Sailors were very much
more superstitious in those days than they are now; the steam fiend
has wonderfully cleared the atmosphere of the forecastle, and the
sea-goblin has long since made his final dive from the topgallant-rail
to keep company with the mermaid in her secret bower of coral in a
realm fathoms deep beneath the ocean ooze. O’Connor tried very hard to
look as if he felt that on the whole he almost deserved to be hanged
for his blundersome extermination of the Portugee heathen; at least
this seemed his air when, as he sat stitching on a sail in the waist,
he suspected a quarterdeck gaze to be directed at him. But it is hard
for a man with merry blue eyes and cheeks veritably grinning with
ruddiness in the embrace of a huge hearty pair of carefully doctored
whiskers to look contrite. The Irishman did his best, but I laughed to
see how the instant he forgot his part nature jovially broke out in him
again.
Crimp had charge that afternoon, and when I arrived on deck with a
cigar in my mouth, leaving Miss Jennings and her maid hanging together
over a hat whose feather in some way or other had gone wrong, I asked
the mate what was his opinion of the accident of the morning.
‘Ain’t got any opinion about it at all,’ he answered.
‘It was an accident, let us believe,’ said I.
‘Pure hignorance more like,’ he answered. ‘That there O’Connor’s
regularly ate up with pride. He’s all bounce. Says he’s descended from
kings and if he had his rights he’d be at the head o’ Ulster or some
such place as that ’stead of an able seaman. _He_ know anything ’bout
firing off cannons!’ making a horrible face and going to the side to
spit.
‘Did they understand what you said aboard the brig when you talked to
them from the boat?’
‘Ne’er a word.’
‘Was the red-capped man hurt?’
‘Dazed. Eyes pretty nigh out on’s cheeks. He was too full o’ salt water
to curse, I allow, so when we hauled him into the boat he fell on his
knees and prayed. A bloomin’ poor job; a measly mean business! Knocking
of a boat to pieces an’ drownding of a man. What’s the good o’ that
there gun? Only fit to kick up a plaguey shindy. Next time it may bust
and then, stand by! for I once see an explosion.’
‘Is there anything wrong with the piece as O’Connor suggests!’ said I,
much enjoying the old chap’s sourness, which I may say was not a little
in harmony with my mood that afternoon.
‘Couldn’t tell if ye offered me all ye was worth. My business ain’t
guns. I shipped to do my bit and my bit I’ll _do_, but the line’s
chalked a mighty long way this side o’ hordnance.’
I walked on to the forecastle to inspect the gun for myself. O’Connor
watched me with the whole round of his face, broad and purple as the
rising moon. The gun was of an elderly fashion, but it looked a very
substantial weapon, with a murderous grin in the gape of it and a long
slim throat that warranted a venomous delivery. The kink the Irishman
spoke of was altogether in his eye.
I returned to the quarterdeck, relighted my cigar, stowed myself
comfortably away in the chair I had at an earlier hour procured for
Miss Jennings, and pulling from my pocket a little handy edition of
one of Walter Scott’s novels, was speedily transported leagues away
from the ocean by the spells of that delightful wizard. Thus passed
the afternoon. Miss Jennings remained below, and Wilfrid lay hid in
his cabin. It was very pleasant weather. The sky was a clear blue
from line to line, with just a group of faint bronze-browed clouds of
a dim cream at the horizon looming in the azure air far away down in
the north-west. The wind was cool though salt, a pleasant breeze from
the east with a trifle of northing in it, and very steadily the yacht
travelled quietly over the plain of twinkling waters, cradled by a
soft western heaving. She made no stir forwards saving now and again
a sound as of the pressure of a light foot upon tinderish brushwood;
every sail that would draw was packed on her, to her triangular lower
studdingsail, the reflection of which waved in the tremulous blue like
a sheet of quicksilver, fluctuating as it drained downwards.
Still it was dull work. I would often break away from Scott to send
a glance at the skylight where I could just get a peep at the ruddy
glow of Miss Laura’s hair, as she sat at the table with her maid near
her, and heartily wished she would join me. Crimp’s company was like
pickles, a very little of it went a long way. Had etiquette permitted I
should have been glad to go amongst the men and yarn with them, for I
could not doubt there was a store of amusing experiences lying behind
some of the rugged hairy countenances scattered about the decks. Indeed
no summons ever greeted my ear more cheerfully than the first dinner
bell; for whether one has an appetite or not, sitting down to a meal on
board ship is something to do.
Nothing that need make a part of this story happened that night.
Wilfrid was reserved, but his behaviour and the little he said
were collected enough to make one wonder at the lengths he would
occasionally go the other way. He brought a large diary from his cabin,
and sat writing in it up to a short while before going to bed. I cannot
imagine what he had to put down, unless, indeed, he were posting up the
book from some old date. It found him occupation, however, and he was a
good deal in labour too throughout, I thought, often biting the feather
of his pen, casting his eyes up, plunging his fingers into his hair and
frowning upon the page, and comporting himself, in a word, as though he
were composing an epic poem. I played at beggar-my-neighbour with Miss
Jennings, showed her some tricks at cards, and she told my fortune.
She said she could read my future by looking at my hand, and I feel
the clasp of her fingers still, and smell the perfume of her hair and
behold the brightness of it, and see her poring upon my palm, talking
low that Wilfrid should not be disturbed, tracing the lines with a rosy
finger-nail with an occasional lift of her eyes to mine, the violet
of them dark as hazel and brilliant in the oil flames--it might have
happened an hour ago, so keen is this particular memory.
It was as peaceful an ocean night as any man could imagine of the
weather up in the seas which our yacht was still stemming; moonless,
for the planet rose late now, but spacious and radiant with stars.
There was the phantasm of a craft when I went on deck about a mile
on the bow of us, in the spangled dusk looking like ice, so fine and
delicate was the white of her canvas; but no notice was taken of her.
Finn trudged over to the gloom to leeward when I rose up through the
hatch, possibly mistaking me for my cousin, and manifestly anxious to
shirk the job of having anything to do with the stranger. I watched her
pass--a mere wraith of a ship she looked, sliding her three stately
spires that seemed to melt upon the eye as you watched them under the
red tremble and green and diamond-like sparkling of the luminaries
which looked down upon her. By the time she had faded out like a little
puff of steam in the dumb shadow astern, my pipe was smoked out, and I
went below and to bed, scarce having exchanged three words with Finn,
and musing much on my fortune that Miss Laura had read in my hand--that
my ‘line of life’ was very long, that in middle life I should meet with
a woman who would fascinate me, but that, nevertheless, I should die as
I had lived, a bachelor.
Next morning Wilfrid did not appear at the breakfast-table. Muffin
informed me that his master had passed a very bad night, had not
closed his eyes, indeed, and for hour after hour had paced the cabin,
sometimes going on deck.
‘Is he ill, do you think?’ I inquired.
‘Not exactly ill, sir,’ he answered in his sleekest manner, with the
now familiar crock of one knee and his arms hanging straight up and
down.
‘What then?’ I demanded, perceiving that the fellow had more to say,
though his very humble and obsequious respectfulness would not suffer
him to express much at a time.
‘I fear, sir,’ he exclaimed, looking down, ‘that yesterday’s ’orrid
tragedy has preyed upon his nerves, which, as you are of course aweer,
sir, is uncommonly delicate.’
I thought this probable, and, as the man was going to his master’s
cabin with a cup of tea from the breakfast-table, I told him to give
Sir Wilfrid my love and to say that I should be glad to look in and
sit with him. He returned to tell me my cousin thanked me, but that he
would be leaving his berth presently, and would then join me in a pipe
on deck.
There was a fresh breeze blowing, and the yacht was plunging through
it in a snowstorm, rising buoyant to the bow surge with a broad dazzle
of racing water over the lee-rail, and a smother of white roaring in a
cataract from under her counter. There was wind in the misty shining
of the sun and in the spaces of dim blue between the driving clouds.
The ocean was gay with tints, flying cloud-shadows of slate, broad
tracts of hurrying blue rich and gloriously fresh, with a ceaseless
flashing of the heads of the dissolving billows, dashes of lustrous
yellow to the touch of the sun that you would see sweeping a rusty
ball of copper through a mass of smoke-like vapour, and then leaping
out, moist and rayless, into some speeding lagoon of clear heaven. The
horizon throbbed to the walls of the dimness that circled the line all
the way round, and my first glance was for a ship; but all was bare
ocean. From time to time the fellow on the topgallant-yard ogled the
slope over either bow in a way that made me imagine some sort of hope
of the ‘Shark’ heaving into view had come to the sailors out of this
rushing morning. I waited for Miss Jennings, thinking she would arrive
on deck; but, after stumping to and fro for a half-hour or thereabouts,
and passing the skylight, I saw her and Wilfrid in close conversation
standing almost directly beneath, he gesticulating with great energy,
but speaking in a subdued voice, and she watching him with a troubled
face. Passing the skylight again, a little later on, I caught sight of
Wilfrid’s figure marching up and down with irregular, broken strides,
whilst the girl, leaning with her hand upon the back of a chair,
continued to gaze at him, with now and again a little movement of the
arm which suggested that she was endeavouring to reassure or to reason
with him.
I got alongside of Finn and fell into a yarn with him. One thing led to
another, and Lady Monson’s name was mentioned.
‘Was she a pleasant lady?’ said I.
‘Ay, to look at, your honour. Up to the hammer. A little too much
of her, some folks might think, but such eyes, sir! such teeth! and
talk of _figures_!’ and here he delivered a low prolonged whistle of
admiration.
‘She was a tolerably amiable lady, I suppose?’ said I carelessly.
‘Well, sir, if you’ll forgive me for saying of it, that’s just what
she _wasn’t_,’ he replied. ‘She was one of them parties as can be very
glad and very sorry for themselves and for nobody else. She steered Sir
Wilfrid as I might this here “Bride.” She needed but to set her course,
and the craft answered the shift of helm right away off. Ye never saw
her, sir?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, she hadn’t somehow the appearance of what I tarm a marrying
woman. She looked to be one of them splendid females as can’t abide
husbands for the reason that, being made up of wanity, nothing
satisfies ’em but the sort of admiration that sweethearts feels. I took
notice once that, she being seated in a cheer, as it might be there,’
said he, indicating a part of the deck with a nod of his long head,
‘Sir Wilfrid draws up alongside of her to see if she were comfortable
and if he could run on any errand for her; she scarcely gave him a look
as she answered short as though his merely being near fretted her. But
a minute arter up steps a gent from the cabin, the Honourable Mr. Lacy,
and dawdles up to her, pulling at his bit of a whisker and showing of
his teeth over a long puking of “Haw! haws!” and “Yaases:” and then
see the change in her ladyship! Gor bless my heart and soul, your
honour, ’twarn’t the same woman. She hadn’t smiles enough for this here
honourable. Her voice was like curds and whey. She managed the colour
in her cheeks, too, somehow, and bloomed out upon the poor little dandy
when a minute afore her face to her husband was as blank as a custard.
No, Mr. Monson, sir, her ladyship wasn’t a marrying woman. She was one
of them ladies meant by natur to sit in a gilt cheer in the heart of
a crowd of young men all a-bowing to and a-worshipping of her; very
different from her sister, sir. That little lady down below there I
allow’ll have the true makings of an English wife and an English mother
in her, for all she’s an Australian.’
‘I suppose, then, you were not very much surprised when you heard of
Lady Monson’s elopement?’
‘No more surprised, your honour, than a man can be when a thing that
he’s been expecting has happened. But she’s not going to stick to the
colonel. If his honour don’t overhaul the “Shark” and separate ’em,
she’ll be separating herself long afore the time it ’ud occupy the
schooner to sail round the world. Lord love ’ee, sir; if I were to
hear of her heeloping with some African king, atop of an elephant, it
wouldn’t surprise me. When a woman like her allows a chap to cut her
cable he must be a wiser man than e’er a prophet of them all that’s
writ about who’s going to tell you where the hull’ll strand or bring
up.’
As he delivered himself of these words Sir Wilfrid showed in the hatch
handing Miss Jennings up the ladder, and my companion started away on
a lonely quarterdeck walk. The girl looked very grave and worried; my
cousin, gaunt and haggard, with a fire in his weak, protruding eyes
that was like the light of fever or of famine. He grasped my hand and
held it whilst he sent a look round. I spoke lightly of the fine breeze
and the yacht’s pace and the good runs we should be making if this
weather held, finding something in his instant’s assumption of a hearty
demeanour, a sort of strained liveliness far more affecting than his
melancholy, that was like a request to me not to venture upon any sort
of personal inquiries. He called to Finn to know the speed, then said,
‘Charles, give Laura your arm, will you? There’s too much wind to sit.
She looks a little pale, but a few turns will give roses to her cheeks.
My head aches, and I must keep below out of this air till I am better.’
Miss Jennings took my arm, for there would happen a frequent lee swing
with a rise of the bow and a long slanting rush to the whole weight of
the cloths till you could have spooned up the white water over the side
with your hand that rendered walking difficult and fatiguing; very soon
I placed chairs under the weather bulwarks, snugging her with rugs and
shawls, and in the comparative calm of that shelter we were able to
converse.
‘Wilfrid looks very ill this morning,’ said I.
‘He has had another warning,’ she answered.
‘The deuce he has. When?’
‘Last night.’
‘What sort of a warning is it this time?’
‘Precisely the same as the first one,’ she replied.
‘I am grieved but not surprised,’ said I. ‘I very much fear he is
going from bad to worse. I still hold with the views I expressed last
evening. A time may, nay, a time must come, when you yourself, Miss
Jennings, ardent as is your sisterly desire, will look to me for some
resolution that shall preserve us and himself too from the schemes of
a growing distemper.’ She was silent. ‘Did he tell you,’ I continued,
‘the nature of the warning?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘In confidence? If so, of course----’
‘No,’ she interrupted, ‘he came from his cabin after breakfast when
you had gone on deck, and I saw at once that something was very wrong
with him. I was determined to get at the truth and questioned him
persistently, and then he told me all.’
‘_All!_’ exclaimed I, opening my eyes, for the word seemed to indicate
some very large matter lying behind his confession.
‘What he has seen,’ she said, ‘for two nights running has been a
mysterious writing upon his cabin wall.’
‘Humph!’ said I.
‘Do you remember, Mr. Monson, that he told us of a dream in which he
had seen a boat with a sort of sign-board in it on which was inscribed
the word Monday in letters of flame? Well, he sees the same sort of
fiery scrawl now in his cabin.’
‘What is the nature of the message?’
‘He says that the words are, “RETURN TO BABY!”’
‘He has dreamt this,’ said I, ‘or it is some wretched trick of the
sight or brains; but I would rather believe it a dream.’
‘It is an illusion of some kind, no doubt,’ she exclaimed, ‘but it
is strange that it should occur, be the cause what it will, on two
successive nights, and much about the same time. No wonder the poor
fellow is depressed this morning. It is not only that he fears this
warning as signifying that something is seriously wrong with baby,
and that it is a mysterious command to him to return to her at once;
he dreads that it may occur again to-night and to-morrow night,
continuously, indeed, until it actually drives him mad by obliging
him to make up his mind either to neglect his child or to abandon his
pursuit of his wife.’
‘The long and short of it is, Miss Jennings,’ said I, ‘that when it
comes to one’s being thrown with a man whose mind is a misfit that’s
apt to shift like an ill-stowed cargo to any breeze of wind that heels
the craft over, one must “stand by,” as sailors say, for troublesome
half-hours and bewilderingly unexpected confrontments.’
But there was no use in my telling her the wish was strong in my mind
that if it was to be Wilfrid’s unhappy destiny to grow worse, then the
sooner he acted in such a way as to force all hands to see that it
would be at his own as well as at our peril to leave him at large and
to suffer him to preserve control over the movements of the yacht, and
by consequence the lives and fortunes of those who sailed in her, the
better; for I protest that even in the thick of my talk with the girl,
I never sent a glance at the white roll of spinning waters twisting
and roaring away alongside without a sense of the absurdity of the
whole business, the aimlessness of the pursuit, the futility of it as
a project of revenge, its profound idleness as a scheme of recovering
Lady Monson, guessing, as anyone could from my cousin’s talk and from
what Laura Jennings had let fall, that if Wilfrid _should_ succeed in
regaining his wife, he wouldn’t know what in the world to do with her!