AT SEA
It was some time after three o'clock in the morning when Grace fell
asleep. The heave of the vessel had entirely conquered emotion. She
had had no smiles for me; the handkerchief she held to her mouth had
kept her lips sealed; but her eyes were never more beautiful than now
with their languishing expression of suffering, and I could not remove
my gaze from her face, so exceedingly sweet did she look as she lay
with the rich bronze of her hair glittering, as though gold-dusted, to
the lamplight, and her brow showing with an ivory gleam through the
tresses which shadowed it in charming disorder.
She fell asleep at last, breathing quietly, and I cannot tell how it
comforted me to find her able to sleep, for now I might hope it would
not take many hours of rest to qualify her as a sailor. In all this
time that I had been below refreshing her brow and attending to her,
and watching her as a picture of which my sight could never weary, the
breeze had freshened and the yacht was heeling to it, and taking the
wrinkled sides of the swell--that grew heavier as we widened the
offing--with the sheering, hissing sweep that one notices in a steam
launch. Grace lay on a lee-locker, and as the weather rolls of the
little _Spitfire_ were small there was no fear of my sweetheart
slipping off the couch. She rested very comfortably, and slept as
soundly as though in her own bed in times before she had known me,
before I had crossed her path to set her heart beating, to trouble her
slumbers, to give a new impulse to her life and to colour, with hues of
shadows and brightnesses what had been little more than the drab of
virgin monotony.
These poetical thoughts occurred to me as I stood gazing at her awhile
to make sure that she slept; then finding the need of refreshment, I
softly mixed myself a glass of soda and brandy, and lighting a pipe in
the companion-way, that the fumes of the tobacco might not taint the
cabin atmosphere, I stepped on to the deck.
And now I must tell you here that my little dandy yacht, the
_Spitfire_, was so brave, staunch, and stout a craft that, though I am
no lover of the sea in its angry moods, and especially have no relish
for such experiences as one is said to encounter, for instance, off
Cape Horn, yet such was my confidence in her seaworthiness, I should
have been quite willing to sail round the world in her, had the
necessity for so tedious an adventure have arisen. She had been built
as a smack, but was found too fast for trawling, and the owner offered
her as a bargain. I purchased and re-equipped her, little dreaming
that she was one day to win me a wife. I improved her cabin
accommodation, handsomely furnished her within, caused her to be
sheathed with yellow metal to the bends, and to be handsomely
embellished with gilt at the stern and quarters, according to the
gingerbread taste of twenty or thirty years ago. She had a fine, bold
spring or rise of deck forward, with abundance of beam, which warranted
her for stability; but her submerged lines were extraordinarily fine,
and I cannot recollect the name of a pleasure craft afloat at that time
which I should not have been willing to challenge, whether for a fifty
or a thousand mile race. She was rigged as a dandy, a term that no
reader, I hope, will want me to explain.
I stood, cigar in mouth, looking up at her canvas and round upon the
dark scene of ocean, whilst, the lid of the skylight being a little way
open, I was almost within arm's reach of my darling, whose lightest
call would reach my ear, or least movement take my eye. The stars were
dim away over the port quarter, and I could distinguish the outlines of
clouds hanging in dusky, vaporous bodies over the black mass of the
coast dotted with lights where Boulogne lay, with the Cape Gris Nez
lantern windily flashing on high from its shoulder of land that blended
in a dye of ink with the gloom of the horizon. There were little runs
of froth in the ripples of the water, with now and again a phosphoric
glancing that instinctively sent the eye to the dimness in the western
circle as though it were sheet lightning there which was being
reflected. Broad abeam was a large, gloomy collier "reaching" in for
Boulogne harbour: she showed a gaunt, ribbed, and heeling figure, with
her yards almost fore and aft, and not a hint of life aboard her in the
form of light or noise.
I felt sleepless--never so broad awake, despite this business now in
hand that had robbed me for days past of hour after hour of slumber, so
that I may safely say I had scarcely enjoyed six hours of solid sleep
in as many days. Caudel still grasped the tiller, and forward was one
of the men restlessly but noiselessly pacing the little forecastle.
The bleak hiss of the froth at the yacht's forefoot threw a shrewd
bleakness into the light pouring of the off-shore wind, and I buttoned
up my coat as I turned to Caudel, though excitement worked much too
hotly in my soul to suffer me to feel conscious of the cold.
"This breeze will do, Caudel, if it holds," said I, approaching him by
a stride or two that my voice should not disturb Grace.
"Ay, sir, it is as pretty a little air as could be asked for."
"What light is that away out yonder?"
"The Varne, your honour."
"And where are you carrying the little ship to?" said I, looking at the
illuminated disc of compass card that swung in the short, brass
binnacle under his nose.
"Ye see the course, Mr. Barclay--west by nothe. That 'll fetch Beachy
Head for us, afterwards a small shift of the hellum 'll put the Channel
under our bows, keeping the British ports as we go along handy, so that
if your honour don't like the look of the bayrometer, why there's
always a harbour within a easy sail."
I was quite willing that Caudel should heave the English land into
sight. He had been bred in coasters, and knew his way about by the
mere swell of the mud, as the sailors say; whereas, put him in the
middle of the ocean, with nothing but his sextant to depend upon, and I
do not know that I should have felt very sure of him.
He coughed, and seemed to mumble to himself as he ground upon the piece
of tobacco in his cheek, then said, "And how's the young lady adoing,
sir?"
"The motion of the vessel rendered her somewhat uneasy, but she is now
sleeping."
I took a peep as I said this, to be certain, and saw her resting
stirless, and in the posture I had left her in. No skylight ever
framed a prettier picture of a sleeping girl. Her hair looked like
beaten gold in the illusive lamplight; and to my eye, coming from the
darkness of the sea and the great height of star-laden gloom, the
sleeping form in the tender radiance of the interior was for the moment
as startling as a vision, as something of unreal loveliness. I
returned to Caudel.
"Sorry to hear she don't feel well, sir," he exclaimed; "but this here
sea-sickness I'm told, soon passes."
"I want her to be well," said I. "I wish her to enjoy the run down
Channel. We must not go ashore if we can help it; or one special
object I have in my mind will be defeated."
"Shall I keep the yacht well out, then, sir? No need to draw in, if so
be--"
"No, no, sight the coast, Caudel, and give us a view of the scenery.
And now, whilst I have the chance, let me thank you heartily for the
service you have done me to-night. I should have been helpless without
you; and what other man of my crew--what other man of any sort, indeed,
could I have depended upon?"
"Oh, dorn't mention it, Mr. Barclay, sir; I beg and entreat that you
worn't mention it, sir," he replied, as though affected by my
condescension. "You're a gentleman, sir, begging your pardon, and that
means a man of honour, and when you told me how things stood, why,
putting all dooty on one side, if so be as there can be such a thing as
dooty in jobs which aren't shipshape and proper, why, I says, of
course, I was willing to be of use. Not that I myself have much
confidence in these here elopements, saving your presence. I've got a
grown-up darter myself in sarvice, and if when she gets married she
dorn't make a straight course for the meeting-house, why, then, I shall
have to talk to her as she's never yet been talked to. But in this
job"--he swung off from the tiller to expectorate over the rail--"what
the young lady's been and gone and done is what I should say to my
darter or any other young woman, the sarcumstances being the same, 'go
thou and dew likewise.'"
"You see, Caudel, there was no hope of getting her ladyship's consent."
"No, sir."
"Then, again, consider the cruelty of sending the young lady to a Roman
Catholic school for no fairer or kinder reasons than to remove her out
of my way, and to compel her, if possible, by ceaseless teasing and
exhortation, and God best knows what other devices, to change her
faith."
"I onderstand, sir, and I'm of opinion it was quite time that their
little game was stopped."
"Lady Amelia Roscoe is a Roman Catholic, and very bigoted. Ever since
she first took charge of Miss Bellassys she has been trying to convert
her, and by methods, I assure you, by no means uniformly kind."
"So you was asaying, sir."
It pleased me to be thus candid with this sailor. Possibly there was
in me a little disturbing sense of the need of justifying myself,
though I believe the most acidulated moralist could not have glanced
through the skylight without feeling that I heartily deserved
forgiveness.
"But supposing, Mr. Barclay, sir," continued Caudel, "that you'd ha'
changed your religion and become a Papist; would her ladyship still ha'
gone on objecting to ye?"
"Supposing! Yes, Caudel, she would have gone on objecting even then.
There are family feelings, family traditions, mixed up in her dislike
of me. You shall have the yarn before we go ashore. It is right that
you should know the whole truth. Until I make that young lady below my
wife, she is as much under your care as under mine. That was agreed on
between us, and that you know."
"That I _do_ know, and shall remember as much for her sake as for yourn
and for mine," answered the honest fellow, with a note of deep feeling
in his voice. "There's only one consideration, Mr. Barclay, that
worrits me. I onderstood you to say, sir, that your honour has a
cousin who's a clergyman that's willing to marry ye right away out of
hand."
"We must get the consent of the aunt first."
"_There_ it is!" cried he, smiting the head of the tiller with his
clenched fist, "suppose she dorn't consent?"
"We have taken this step," said I softly, always afraid of disturbing
my sweetheart, "to _force_ her to consent. D'ye think she can refuse,
man, after she hears of this elopement--this midnight rope-ladder
business--and the days we hope to spend together on this little
_Spitfire_?"
"Still, Mr. Barclay, supposing she do, sir? You'll forgive me for
saying of it; but supposing she _do_, sir?"
"No good in supposing, Caudel," said I, suppressing a little movement
of irritation; "no good in obstructing one's path by suppositions stuck
up like so many fences to stop one from advancing. Our first business
is to get to Penzance."
By his motions, and the uneasy shifting of his posture, he discovered
himself ill at ease, but his respectfulness would not allow him to
persevere with his inquiries.
"Caudel," said I, "you may ask me any questions you please. The more
you show yourself really anxious on behalf of Miss Bellassys, the more
shall I honour you. Don't fear. I shall never interpret your concern
for her into a doubt of me. If Lady Amelia absolutely refuses her
sanction, what then remains but to place Miss Bellassys with my sister
and wait till she comes of age?"
So speaking, and now considering that I had said enough, I threw the
end of my cigar overboard and went below.
It was daylight shortly before six, but the grey of the dawn brightened
into sunrise before Grace awoke. Throughout the hours she had slept
without a stir. From time to time I had dozed, chin on breast,
opposite to where she lay. The wind had freshened, and the yacht was
lying well down to it, swarming along, taking buoyantly the little sea
that had risen, and filling the breeze, that was musical with the
harmonies of the taut rigging, with the swift noise of spinning and
seething water. The square of heavens showing in the skylight overhead
wore a hard, marble, windy look, but the pearl-coloured streaks of
vapour floated high and motionless, and I was yachtsman enough to
gather from what I saw that there was nothing more in all this than a
fresh Channel morning, and a sweep of southerly wind that was driving
the _Spitfire_ along her course some eight or nine miles in the hour.
As the misty pink flash of the upper limb of the rising sun struck the
skylight, and made a very prison of the little cabin, with its mirrors
and silver lamp, and glass and brass ornamentation, Grace opened her
eyes. She opened them straight upon me, and, whilst I might have
counted ten, she continued to stare as though she were in a trance;
then the blood flooded her pale cheeks, her eyes grew brilliant with
astonishment, and she sat erect, bringing her hands to her temples as
though she struggled to recollect her wits. However, it was not long
before she rallied, though for some few moments her face remained empty
of intelligence.
"Why, Grace, my darling," I cried, "do not you know where you are?"
"Yes, now I do," she answered, "but I thought I had gone mad when I
first awoke and looked around me."
"You have slept soundly, but then you are a child," said I.
"Whereabouts are we, Herbert?"
"I cannot tell for sure," I answered, "out of sight of land anyway.
But where you are, Grace, you ought to know. Now, don't sigh. We are
not here to be miserable."
A few caresses, and then her timid glances began to show like the old
looks in her. I asked her if the movement of the yacht rendered her
uneasy, and after a pause, during which she considered with a grave
face, she answered no: she felt better, she must try to stand--and so
saying she stood up on the swaying deck, and, smiling with her fine
eyes fastened upon my face, poised her figure in a floating way full of
a grace far above dancing, to my fancy. Her gaze went to a mirror, and
I easily interpreted her thoughts, though, for my part, I found her
beauty improved by her roughened hair.
"There is your cabin," said I; "the door is behind those curtains.
Take a peep, and tell me if it pleases you?"
There were flowers in it to sweeten the atmosphere, and every
imaginable convenience that it was possible for a male imagination to
hit upon in its efforts in a direction of this sort. She praised the
little berth, and closed the door with a smile at me that made me
conjecture I should not hear much more from her about our imprudence,
the impropriety of our conduct, what mam'selle would think, and what
the school girls would say.
Though she was but a child, as I would tell her, I too was but a boy
for the matter of that, and her smile and the look she had given me,
and her praise of the little berth I had fitted up for her made me feel
so boyishly joyous that, like a boy as I was, though above six feet
tall, I fell a whistling out of my high spirits, and then kissed the
feather in her hat, and her gloves, which lay upon the table,
afterwards springing, in a couple of bounds, on deck, where I stood
roaring out for Bobby Allett.
A seaman named Job Crew was at the helm. Two others named Jim Foster
and Dick Files were washing down the decks. I asked Crew where Caudel
was, and he told me he had gone below to shave. I bawled again for
Bobby Allett, and after a moment or two he rose through the forecastle
hatch. He was a youth of about fifteen, who had been shipped by Caudel
to serve as steward or cabin boy and to make himself generally useful
besides. As he approached, I eyed him with some misgiving, though I
had found nothing to object to in him before; but the presence of my
sweetheart in the cabin had, I suppose, tempered my taste to a quality
of lover-like fastidiousness, and this boy, Bobby, to my mind, looked
very dirty.
"Do you mean to wait upon me in those clothes?" said I.
"They're the best I have, master," he answered, staring at me with a
pair of round eyes out of a dingy skin, that was certainly not
clarified by the number of freckles and pimples which decorated it.
"You can look smarter than that if you like," said I to him. "I want
breakfast right away off. And let Foster drop his bucket and go to
work to boil and cook. But tell Captain Caudel also that before you
lay aft you must clean yourself, polish your face, brush your hair and
shoes, and if you haven't got a clean shirt you must borrow one."
The boy went forward.
"Pity," said I, thinking aloud rather than talking, as I stepped to the
binnacle to mark the yacht's course, "that Caudel should have shipped
such a dingy-skinned chap as that fellow for cabin use."
"It's all along of his own doing, sir," said Job Crew.
"How? You mean he won't wash himself?"
"No, sir; it's along of smoking."
"Smoking?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir. I know his father--he's a waterman. His father told me
that that there boy Bobby saved up, and then laid out all he'd got upon
a meerschaum pipe _for_ to colour it. He kep' all on a smoking, day
arter day, and night arter night. But his father says to me, it was no
go, sir; 'stead of his colouring the pipe, the pipe coloured him, and
is weins have run nothen but tobacco juice ever since."
I burst into a laugh, and went to the rail to take a look round. We
might have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so boundless did
the spreading waters look; not a blob or film of coast on any hand of
us broke the flawless sweep of the green circle of Channel waters.
There was a steady breeze off the port beam, and the yacht, with every
cloth which she carried on her, was driving through it as though she
were in tow of a steamboat. The scene was full of life. On one bow
was an English smack, as gaudy in the misty brilliance of the sunshine
as an acquatic parrot, with her red mainsail and brown mizzen, and
white foresail topping, aslant, the gloomy black hull from whose sides
would break from time to time a sullen, white flash, like a leap of
fire from a cannon's mouth, as the swing of the sea swerved the black,
wet timbers to the morning lustre. On the other bow was a little
barque with a milk-white hull, the French tri-colour trembling at her
gaff-end, and her canvas looking like shot silk, with the play of the
shadows in the bright and polished concavities. Past her a big French
lugger was hobbling clumsily over the short seas, and farther off
still, a tall, black steamboat, brig-rigged, her portholes glittering
as though the whole length of her was studded with brilliants, was
clumsily thrusting through it. Against the hard, blue marble of the
sky the horizon stood firm, making one think of the rim of a green
lens, broken in places by a leaning sail--a shadowy pear-like shaft.
The Channel throbbed in glory under the sun; the full spirit of the sea
was in the morning; and the wide and spreading surface of waters gave
as keen an oceanic significance to the inspiration of the moment, as
though the eye that centred the scene gazed from the heart of a South
Pacific solitude.
I stood leaning over the bulwarks humming an air. Never had my heart
beaten with so exquisite a sense of gladness and of happiness, as now
possessed it. I was disturbed in a reverie of love, in which was
mingled the life and beauty of the scene I surveyed, by the arrival of
Caudel. He was varnished with soap, and blue with recent shaving, but
there was no trace of the sleepless hours I had forced him to pass in
the little sea-blue eyes which glittered under his somewhat ragged,
thatched brow. He was a man of about fifty years of age; his dark hair
was here and there of an iron-grey, and a roll of short-cut whiskers
met in a bit of a beard upon the bone in his throat. He carried a true
salt-water air in his somewhat bowed legs, in his slow motions, and in
his trick of letting his arms hang up and down as though they were
pump-handles. His theory of dress was, that what kept out the cold
also kept out the heat, and so he never varied his attire, which was
composed of a thick double-breasted waistcoat, a long pilot-cloth coat,
a Scotch cap, very roomy pilot-cloth trousers, a worsted cravat, and
fishermen's stockings.
I exchanged a few words with him about the boy Bobby, inquired the
situation of the yacht, and after some talk of this kind, during which
I gathered that he was taking advantage of the breeze, and shaping a
somewhat more westerly course than he had first proposed, so that he
did not expect to make the English coast much before three or four
o'clock in the afternoon, I went below to refresh myself after the
laborious undertaking of the night.
On quitting my berth I found the boy Bobby laying the cloth for
breakfast, and Grace seated on a locker watching him. Her face was
pale, but its expression was without uneasiness. She had put on her
hat, and on seeing me exclaimed:
"Herbert, dear, take me on deck. The fresh air may revive me," and she
looked at the boy and the cloth he was laying with a pout full of
meaning.
I at once took her by the hand and conducted her through the hatch.
She passed her arm through mine to balance herself, and then sent her
eyes bright with nervousness and astonishment round the sea, breathing
swiftly.
"Where is the land?" she asked.
"Behind the ocean, my love. But we shall be having a view of the right
side of these waters presently."
"What a little boat!" she exclaimed, running her gaze over the yacht.
"Is it not dangerous to be in so small a vessel out of sight of land?"
"Bless your dear heart, no. Think of the early navigators! Of course
mam'selle taught you all about the early navigators?"
"When shall we reach Penzance?"
"Supposing the wind to blow fair and briskly, in three or four days."
"Three or four days!" she exclaimed, and glancing down at herself, she
added, "Of course you know, Herbert, that I have only the dress I am
wearing?"
"It will last you till we get ashore," said I, laughing; "and then you
shall buy everything you want, which, of course, will be more than you
want."
"I shall send," said she, "to Mam'selle Championet for my boxes."
"Certainly--when we are married."
"All your presents, particularly the darling little watch, are in those
boxes, Herbert."
"Everything shall be recovered to the uttermost ha'porth, my pet."
I observed Caudel, who stood a little forward of the companion, gazing
at her with an expression of shyness and admiration. I told her that
he was the captain of the yacht; that he was the man I had introduced
to her last night, and begged her to speak to him. She coloured a rose
red, but bade him good-morning nevertheless, accompanying the words
with an inclination of her form, the graceful and easy dignity of which
somehow made me think of the movement of a bough heavily foliaged, set
curtseying by the summer wind.
"I hope, Miss," said Caudel, pulling off his Scotch cap, "as how I see
you well this morning, freed of that there nausey as Mr. Barclay was a
telling me you suffered from?"
"I trust to get used to the sea quickly--the motion of the yacht is not
what I like," she answered, with her face averted from him, taking a
peep at me to observe if I saw that she felt ashamed and would not
confront him.
He perceived this too, and knuckling his forehead said, "It's but a
little of the sea ye shall have, miss, if so be it lies in my power to
keep this here _Spitfire_ awalking," and so speaking he moved off,
singing out some idle order as he did so by way of excusing his abrupt
departure.
"I wish we were quite alone, Herbert," said my sweetheart, drawing me
to the yacht's rail.
"So do I, my own, but not here--not in the middle of the sea."
"I did not think of bringing a veil--your men stare so."
"And so do I," said I, letting my gaze sink fair into her eyes, which
she had upturned to mine. "You wouldn't have me rebuke the poor,
harmless, sailor men for doing what I am every instant guilty
of--admiring you, I mean, to the very topmost height of my capacity in
that way--but here comes Master Bobby Allett with the breakfast."
"Herbert, I could not eat for worlds."
"Are you so much in love as all that?"
She shook her head, and looked at the flowing lines of green water
which melted into snow, as they came curving, with glass-clear backs,
to the ruddy streak of the yacht's sheathing. However, the desire to
keep her at sea until we could land ourselves close to the spot where
we were to be married made me too anxious to conquer the uneasiness
which the motion of the vessel excited to humour her. I coaxed and
implored, and eventually got her below, and by dint of talking and
engaging her attention, and making her forget herself, so to speak, I
managed to betray her into breaking her fast with a cup of tea and a
fragment of cold chicken. This was an accomplishment of which I had
some reason to feel proud; but then, to be sure, I was in the secret,
knowing this; that sea nausea is entirely an affair of the nerves; that
no sufferer is ill in his sleep, no matter how high the sea may be
running, or how unendurable to his waking senses the sky-high capers
and abysmal plunges of the craft may be, and that the correct treatment
for sea-sickness is--not to think of it. In short, I made my
sweetheart forget to feel uneasy. She talked, she sipped her tea, she
ate, and then she looked better, and indeed owned that she felt so.