The thought of his story of the Barranco Secco; of his having too

surely associated in California, and elsewhere, with such men as

Pedro and Zuares Barraddas; and she remembered many episodes of his

Mexican life, which he had incidentally related, and at which, though

she and Rose had been wont to laugh at them, she shuddered now, and

knew not why!

She perceived, too, that Hawkshaw wore his own ring once more, so

Morley Ashton must have formally returned it to him on that fatal

evening.

Prior to Morley's final arrangement to accompany them, Ethel had

schooled her little heart to bear the separation, consequent on their

anticipated sea voyage, and change of home, contemplating it as a

sorrow that might have a happy end when brighter fortune smiled upon

them all; but now she had lost him by a separation that would endure

while life lasted.

The slight tinge of colour which her delicate cheek usually wore

faded completely away. Her eyes lost their brilliant and calm

expression, her lips their wonted smile, her spirits all their

buoyancy.

Mr. Basset, we have said, saw this with alarm, and by every means in

his power hastened to break up his household, and leave Acton-Rennel.

His daughter's thoughts were with the dead; but still the living, and

the duties of life, claimed her care. One cannot live in the world

and not be of it; thus, one of her last days spent at pleasant Laurel

Lodge was occupied in paying farewell visits--supported between Rose

and Hawkshaw--to her old pensioners and dependents in the thatched

cottages among those lovely green lanes, that ere long were to know

her footsteps no more, and these old people mingled their blessings

with tearful hopes of her happiness and long life, in the new home to

which she was about to depart.

On the tenth day after Morley's disappearance she found herself, with

her father, Rose, Hawkshaw, and old Nurse Folgate, seated in a

first-class carriage, speeding along the London and North-Western

line towards the metropolis.

Laurel Lodge had long since vanished, with its whole locality.

Steeped in summer haze, the landscape flew past like the wind; but

Ethel was listless. To her it seemed that the purpose of life, the

joy of existence, the romance of love, and the charm of youth, had

all gone for ever.

Hawkshaw was seated opposite to her. She lowered her veil to conceal

her face; he held the last number of _Punch_ well up to conceal his.

As Morley had disappeared thus, and beyond all trace, and as his

berth was secured in their ship, the _Hermione_, which was to sail

for the Isle of France, as soon as her cargo was all hoisted in,

Hawkshaw availed himself of the circumstance to go in his place; by

which means this most enterprising Texan officer secured his passage

free.

CHAPTER XL

DARKNESS MADE LIGHT.

We last left Morley Ashton and Hawkshaw seated near the verge of

Acton Chine.

The former was extracting from his portemonnaie the ring which Ethel

Basset had so unwisely commissioned him to return, and he remained

with it in his hand for a minute or two, forming in his own mind the

least offensive mode of tendering it. At that time the chimes of the

church of Acton-Rennel rung out joyously their closing peal, and the

sound, together with the beauty of the evening, the softness of the

wooded landscape on one hand, and the wild grandeur of the

surf-beaten rocks on the other, were not without a most soothing

influence on the somewhat poetic and imaginative temperament of

Morley, who reflected on the shortness of the time he would be

permitted to look on that familiar scene, and the changes that must

take place ere--if ever--he saw it again.

He said something of this kind to Hawkshaw, who was alternately

silent or nervously garrulous, adding, with a sad smile--

"I never hear the chimes of old Acton, ringing over the woodlands,

without thinking of the lines--

"'Those evening bells, those evening bells,

How many a tale their music tells,

Of youth, of home, and native clime,

When last I heard their soothing chime.'

And then the scenery here about is so glorious, and so thoroughly

English in its character and fertility!"

"Bah! you don't call this scenery, do you?" asked Hawkshaw, brusquely.

"Is it not charming?"

"May be so to you; but to me, who have hunted, scouted, and trapped

over the mighty Sierras, which divide Texas from New Mexico--Sierras

covered to their cloud-clapped summits with forests of oak, pine, and

cedar, and all alive with wild horses and cattle; or to me, who have

seen the yet denser woods out of which the Arkansas and Trinidad

rivers come roaring to the sea, your mild, Dutch-looking, English

landscape, is no more than a rat-ranche would be if compared to St.

Paul's Cathedral?"

"It must be somewhat dangerous, a land teeming with wild horses and

cattle?" said Morley, to change the subject, and smiling, as he lit a

fresh cigar.

"Dangerous? _Caramba_! I rather calculate it is!"

"How?" asked Morley, carelessly.

"In those mountain ranges are wild trappers, and lawless bandidos,

like those Barradas I told you of one evening--do you remember?"

"Perfectly."

"Fellows of all colours--white, black, and brown, yellow, and

copper-coloured--who may be off with your purse and scalp before you

know where you are. Then there are bears, conguars, buffaloes,

panthers, wolves, foxes, and alligators. I was nearly gobbled up by

one when bathing in the Red River. Immortal smash! I had a close

run for it, and only kept him off by splashing and kicking like a

sunfish in a breeze."

After a pause--

"I wish we had the ladies here," said Morley; "the evening is so

lovely--the sunset is so rich."

"Aye--our Ethel is romantic, very!" observed Hawkshaw; "she rather

likes 'Thaddeus of Warsaw,' and copies verses in a hot-pressed album;

sighs often when alone, no doubt, and always ties the ribbons of her

bonnet in a true-lover's knot."

Morley looked fixedly at the speaker, for the whole speech, and the

phrase, "our Ethel," displeased him.

"Mr. Hawkshaw," said he, gravely, "there is something of a sneer in

your tone, which I do not understand."

"Sneer--not at all. Do you imagine that I would sneer at one so

charming as our friend, Miss Basset--one whom we mutually admire so

much?" replied Hawkshaw; but as he spoke the fire of secret hate

mingled in his eye with that of the admiration, we cannot term it

love, he bore for Ethel.

"Apropos of Miss Basset," said Morley, now careless whether he

offended or not, "I have here a ring of yours, Captain Hawkshaw,

which she commissioned me to return to you, as, on reflection, she

cannot think of depriving you of so interesting a relic of your

Mexican campaigns."

"Thank you," replied Hawkshaw, with a quiet stare, as he took the

ring from Morley, and placed it on one of his fingers, even his bushy

moustache failing to conceal the fierce quiver of his upper lip; "I

received it at a ball, from the eldest daughter of General Santa

Anna, and so can well afford to receive it back from a daughter of

old Scriven Basset."

This was the third or fourth history of the ring Morley had heard;

but he only smiled in silence.

"You think you have done your duty," resumed the captain, as the

resolution to quarrel became strong in his breast, so strong that he

cared not to repress it; "but I reckon, friend Ashton, that you are

slightly up a tree, as the Yankees say."

"Sir, I do not understand you," said Morley.

"I am not so vernal as to fail in perceiving that you are awfully

spooney upon Miss Basset."

"If I am to construe your slang into meaning that I love her, you are

quite right," replied Morley, coldly, as he rose up.

"But you cannot think of marrying her, even if old Basset be donkey

enough to let you!"

"Captain Hawkshaw!"

"For one who can scarcely float himself, it is thankless work to take

a sinking craft in tow," continued the captain, whose phrases were

quite as often nautical as Mexican.

"Sir, you are impertinent."

"_Caramba!_ not at all--but truthful--only truthful," replied

Hawkshaw, with a studied insolence of manner, as he continued to

knock the ashes off his cigar, so that they flew all over Morley's

face. "If I had you in Mexico, I would give you advice more

seriously; as it is, in this tame, stupid land of good order,

coroners' inquests, rural police, and city bluebottles, I must

content myself with what I have said."

"Stand back, sir, and permit me to pass you!" said Morley, haughtily,

as he found that, on rising, he was unpleasantly near the verge of

the rocks, and that Hawkshaw, with a dark and dangerous gleam in his

eyes, stood menacingly between him and the safer portion of the edge.

It was at that moment, that unexpectedly as a star falls, or light

flashes, a diabolical idea occurred to Hawkshaw, just as if a fiend,

unseen, was at his ear to whisper and to urge him on.

A sudden silence seemed to fill the air--to pervade the land and sea.

He ceased to hear the roar of the waves in the Chine below, or the

screaming of the wild sea-birds in mid air. A clamorous ferocity--a

terrible anxiety, seemed to possess his whole soul.

He cast a hasty glance around him; not a person was near, and no eye

was upon them, save One in heaven, and that dread eye he forgot. He

gave the unsuspecting Morley a dreadful blow with his clenched hand,

and then a violent push. The victim staggered backward, reeled

forward, and as he fell, clutched wildly at the turf which fringed

the edge of the rocks.

"Oh, Heaven!" burst from his lips; "Hawkshaw--you cannot--you dare

not mean this! Save me--Ethel!"

The pieces of turf he clutched so desperately gave way, and without a

sound he vanished into the awful profundity below!

Hawkshaw lingered a moment by the fatal spot, for in that moment all

his senses were paralysed. His breath, his sight, and hearing were

gone, and he felt as one who had ceased to live.

Then he glanced carefully, fearfully, and stealthily around, to

assure himself again that the dreadful deed he had committed was

unseen by mortal eyes, and anon, turning, he proceeded rapidly to

descend the winding pathway from the Chine, and then sought the road

to Laurel Lodge.

The minutes spent in descending seemed to be so many hours. His feet

felt as if glued to the dusty path, and his knees trembled under him.

Before he reached the highway the fierce fever of his blood had

cooled, though his heart still beat wildly, and his temples throbbed

painfully.

There was a revulsion of feeling now, and he began to wish the cruel

deed undone. It was an act so tremendous, so fearful to be

perpetrated among civilised people, that it appalled him more than he

could have expected, though he had witnessed, yes, and acted in many

a deed of cruelty and bloodshed, in climes where the law, unless it

were Lynch law, was unknown even in name.

The sun had set, and the sombre shadows of evening were deepening on

the land and sea.

Hawkshaw walked hurriedly, taking a great circuit, that the

perturbation of his spirits might subside a little before he

presented himself at Laurel Lodge; but the throbbing of his temples,

and the leaping of his heart, continued the same as he hastened on;

and now, as the twilight deepened, the trees and shadows began to

take strange and threatening forms, and ever before him he seemed to

see the last despairing glance of Morley's eyes, and in his ears to

hear the rending of the turf as it gave way, with the awful sound of

the poor victim's voice, as with the terror of a dreadful death in

his soul, he so vainly sought the pitiless destroyer to save him.

In the cool flow of a wayside runnel, he bathed his trembling hands

and flushed forehead. Then he began to consider that, as no one had

seen him commit the act, he need scarcely wish it undone; that he

should dismiss the palsying fear that was gnawing at his heart, for

in time he would strive to forget, as he had forgotten and lived down

many a thing before.

He had removed a troublesome rival from his path, and fearfully had

he punished Ethel for her rejection of his addresses but two hours or

so before, it now seemed years ago, and for her open preference of

the hapless Morley Ashton; and yet--and yet the emotions of that

man's soul were what no pen can depict.

The summer moon that rose so broad and redly from the distant sea now

showed her clear, bright, silver disc above the rocks of Acton Chine,

but Hawkshaw dared not look upon her lest he might see murder on her

face, as slowly, with parched lips, pallid cheeks, and trembling

hands, he left the long, green lane, and proceeded up the avenue that

led to Laurel Lodge.

CHAPTER XII.

ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP "HERMIONE," OF LONDON.

Amid the glare, the roar, and bustle of the mighty world of London,

ten days passed away like a painful dream, an unrealisable

phantasmagoria, to Ethel, and like a dream, too, appeared the

embarkation at the crowded docks (which seemed crammed with all the

vessels in the world) one board the _Hermione_, a fine clipper ship

of 500 tons register, which, with all her canvas loose, and blue

peter flying at the fore, was towed down the crowded river by a

puffing, panting, noisy little paddle-tug, which rejoiced in the name

of _Garibaldi_.

Blackwall, with its docks; noble Greenwich, with its terraces and

domes; Woolwich, where, now and then, a drum beat sharply, or a

cannon boomed through the air, were speedily passed; vast fleets of

merchantmen, crowded river steamers, and lumbering barges, sidling

down with the tide were glided between; each bend of Father Thames

was traversed, and soon the _Hermione_ was off Gravesend so busy as a

watering-place, and ever alive with whistling trains and smoking

steamers, in its noise, bustle, and gaiety contrasting with sombre

Tilbury, on the flat Essex shore, with its brick-faced bastions,

double-ditch, and moat--an old cannon or two lying among the sea

slime, and a solitary sentinel pacing to and fro before King

Charles's Gate.

At Gravesend, where the _Hermione_ lay for a time, with blue peter

still flying, and her foretopsail loose, as a double signal "for

sea," she was joined by her captain, who came by the down train from

town; the tug was paid off and a pilot taken on board, with the last

of the sea-going stores.

Then sail was made on the ship, and the sunset of a fine May evening

saw her past Sheerness, with its vast basin, docks, and storehouses,

and the guard-ship at the Nore, which pealed her evening gun across

the silent sea.

The wind was freshening as the eventful day went down.

Ethel and Rose, with old Nance Folgate, were all below now, sick and

ill. Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw trod the lee side of the quarter-deck

together. Both were silent. Mr. Basset was gazing sadly at the

shore along which they were running, and anon at the red hulk of the

floating light, which is anchored four miles north-eastward of

Sheerness, and the lamps of which were now twinkling amid the haze

and obscurity far astern.

Hawkshaw was full of thought, too. He felt a secret joy at being

scatheless and free from England; though, when reflecting, he

thought, in the words of Jane Eyre: "It is not violence that best

overcomes hate, nor vengeance that most certainly heals an injury."

The _Hermione_, we have said, was a 500-ton ship. She was one of the

finest of her class that ever left the slips at Blackwall, and this

was only her third voyage; thus, in addition to being new, she was

well found and well fitted up in every respect.

John Phillips, her captain, was a bluff, ruddy-visaged, jolly little

man, with cheeks turned red by exposure to sun and sea-breeze. He

had three mates; the senior, Mr. Samuel Quail, was a plain, honest,

rough seaman, who expected next voyage to have a ship of his own; the

second, Mr. Foster; but the third was Adrian Manfredi, an Italian, a

quiet and rather gentlemanly young man, of whom we shall hear more an

on.

The _Hermione_ had a surgeon, Leslie Heriot, a Scotsman, of course,

and F.R.C.S.E.; a boatswain, carpenter, blacksmith, and a crew of a

somewhat mingled kind, as we shall have unfortunate cause to show ere

long. She was bound for Singapore, but was to touch at the Isle of

France on her way out.

Her cabin was handsome and spacious, and little cabins, called

state-rooms, opened off it with sliding doors.

Ethel, Rose, and Nance Folgate had one of them. Mr. Scriven Basset

and Hawkshaw had the berth opposite. The others were occupied by the

officers of the ship, and all bade fair to form a pleasant little

community during the long voyage before them.

For two days the _Hermione_ lay at anchor off Deal; on the third day

she put to sea. By this time Ethel and Rose had nearly got what

Captain Phillips bluntly termed "their sea-legs under them," and sat

on the quarter-deck seats after breakfast, well muffled in cloaks;

for though a lovely May sun was shining on the rippling sea, and all

over the fertile coast of Kent, the atmosphere was chill, as the

breeze swept over the watery Downs.

The day was charming, the wind was fair, and, with everything set

upon her that would draw, even to her topgallant studding-sails

rigged aloft, the _Hermione_ flew before it.

The chalky cliffs of Kent; Dungeness lighthouse, with its miles of

shingly headland; gay Brighton, with its far extent of sandy bay,

that stretches from Beechy Head to Selsea Hill; the chalky ranges

that look down on the wooded weald of Sussex--were soon passed, and

ere long the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, gilded by the evening sun,

rose on the starboard bow.

Rose Basset, about whom, attracted by her girlish beauty and

_espièglerie_, the young Scotch surgeon and the Italian mate were

both disposed to hover, asked questions from time to time--those

silly, but, perhaps, natural questions which landfolks will ask on

board ship, which, somehow, did not sound quite so silly when asked

by the rosy lips of such a pretty girl as Rose--while poor Ethel

remained seated in silence, with her eyes fixed on the distant coast,

and wondering how far Laurel Lodge and Acton-Rennel were beyond those

shadowy cliffs of chalk.

Her reflections or thoughts were all chaos--a mere mass of confusion.

Thus, at times she could scarcely realise where she was, or how she

came to be on board the _Hermione_, whether the journey by rail to

London, her ten days' sojourn there, and her being at present on the

sea, were not all a dream--a protracted nightmare, from which she

would waken and find herself in her familiar bed-room in dear old

Laurel Lodge, which her eyes were never more to see.

She thought, "How bright the evening sun may be shining on it now;

how gaily down the long leafy vistas of Acton Chase, and on poor

mamma's grave. How little could she have conceived that we should be

so far from it? But the Lodge--ah, others inhabit it now; others

look through the windows and pass through its rooms; others promenade

the gravelled walks and play croquet on its grassy lawn, or cull

flowers in its conservatory. The place that knew us once, knows us

no more; we shall never see it again; never tread its soil, or

breathe its air; never more, never more!"

Her tears fell, tears that fell hot and fast.

"Oh, to be with Morley and at rest," she sighed in her heart. "But

then there is papa, poor papa, who loves me so well, and Rose."

Her father's kind and benevolent face, sweet, ruddy Rose's happy

smile, and the familiar visage of Hawkshaw (who had become exceeding

gentle and attentive), were ever before her. But Laurel Lodge, with

its home life, its elegance, and quiet details, with the face, voice,

image, existence, and loss of Morley Ashton, seemed all to have

passed away to a vast distance from her.

In a very few days she seemed to have lived a great many years in

thought and suffering.

"Cheer up, Ethel--permit me to call you so," said Hawkshaw, who had

been silently regarding her sweet, pensive face. "Cheer up," he

repeated, in a low voice; "think of what is before us in the

Mauritius--the lovely Isle of France--the land of Paul and Virginia,

that amiable little Virginia, about whom every lady at least once in

life sheds so many tears, especially when in her early teens. We

must go over all the places depicted by Bernardin St. Pierre in his

novel; the Shaddock Grove, the Mount of Discovery, Cape Misfortune,

and the Bay of the Tomb--eh?"

"In pity leave me to myself," said Ethel, on whose sensitive ear his

half-jocular voice sounded gratingly.

"As you please," he muttered, under his breath, with impatience, as

he went to leeward and lit a cigar.

Next evening Ethel wept again, as she saw the last of England--the

lovely coast of Devon, with all its apple-bowers mellowing in the

sun--fade into a blue streak, that blended with the evening sea.

Then, for the first time, sea and sky, cloud and water were around

them, and she strove to rouse herself from the apathy that had been

oppressing her faculties, and endeavoured, if she could not speak, at

least to listen to the conversation of others.

"Our crew are indeed a mixed lot, Mr. Basset," she heard Captain

Phillips say to her father; "mixed in character and in colour; more

like a gang shipped in the Mersey than in London."

"How so, sir?" asked Mr. Basset.

"We have Yankees, West Indians, and Mexican Spaniards--some of these

last are the worst of the lot."

"Been a good many years in Mexico, Captain Phillips," said Hawkshaw,

assuming a jaunty air.

"Have you?"

"Yes, and should like to see some of your fellows."

"They are quarrelsome, I presume," observed Mr. Basset.

"Very, and very apt to use their knives. Keep her away a point or

two to the southward, Ellerton," said he to the man at the wheel.

"Mr. Quail, desire the watch to bring those lee braces more aft."

"They should be restricted in the use of such weapons as

sheath-knives, by law," said Mr. Basset, emphatically, and thinking,

perhaps, of his judge's wig, which he had been recently trying on.

"So they should, sir, but the law seldom reaches far into blue water,

unless so be as a Queen's pennant is floating over it. Do you see

that fellow out upon the arm of the mainyard just now?"

"Ah!--what is he perched up there for?--amusement?" asked Mr. Basset.

"He is busy securing the eye of the stun'sail boom."

"Well, captain?"

"To my mind, he is the very model of a pirate."

They all looked up, and saw a large-boned, powerful, athletic,

dark-skinned, and black-whiskered fellow, clad in a red shirt, and a

pair of remarkably dirty canvas trousers, secured about his waist by

a black belt, in which a long sheath-knife was stuck.

He was astride the yard-arm; the bronze-like soles of his muscular

bare feet were turned towards the group, and, as the captain said, he

was doing something to the studding-sail boom.

"A foreigner, I presume, by the rings in his ears," said Mr. Basset,

with his hands thrust into the pockets of his ample white waistcoat.

"A Mexican Spaniard," said Captain Phillips; "we have two of them on

board, brothers, and a pretty pair of rascals they are. But there

goes the steward's bell for tea, ladies; Miss Basset, may I have the

pleasure of taking you below? She's running on a wind now, and will

be pretty steady. Doctor Heriot, oblige me by doing the attentive to

Miss Rose."

The young surgeon (whom the captain's request was meant to quiz)

hastened, smilingly, to proffer his arm as directed, and the whole

party, including Quail, the first mate, Manfredi, the third (as the

second had charge of the deck), descended to the cabin, where Rose

did the honours of the captain's tea-table, for Ethel was still too

weak or too listless to do so.

The last to leave the deck was Cramply Hawkshaw. As he turned to

descend, he looked up at the Spanish seaman, whose outline and dark

profile were clearly defined against the sky.

"'Tis Pedro Barradas," he muttered; "confusion and a curse! the

Barradas here."

His face was white as that of the dead--white as on the fatal evening

when he entered Laurel Lodge; and he seemed scarcely to know what he

was doing, as with one of his stealthy glances cast around, he

descended to the cabin, from which he did not issue for the remainder

of that night.

CHAPTER XIII.

ACTON CHINE.

More than three weeks have now elapsed since that eventful evening

which saw Hawkshaw and Morley Ashton ascending the steep pathway that

leads to Acton Chine, and which, moreover, saw the first-named

personage traversing the same path homeward--but _alone_.

Though Morley was flung over the cliff, and though the turf which he

grasped gave way, so that he actually fell into the yawning gulf

below, he was not fated to perish.

But before the turf parted in his despairing grasp, poor Morley lived

a lifetime, as it were, of keen agony.

He knew the profundity of the awful abyss that yawned in blackness

far down beneath him, and he heard the roaring of the fierce waves,

that leaped and boiled as if impatient of their prey.

The chine we have stated as being about 400 feet in height; its

depth, to the bottom of the sea, we have no means of knowing, the

foundation of its rocks being far below where mortal eye can fathom.

After the name of Ethel escaped him, he had no power to utter another

cry, for the terrible expression which he read in the malignant face

of Hawkshaw, while standing safely on the brink above, paralysed him,

and he remained silent--but silently desperate, in his wild and

despairing attempts to raise himself up, and to regain a footing on

the cliff; but he had no purchase (to use a mechanical term); thus,

while clinging by his hands, his feet and knees scraped fruitlessly

on the hard face of the basaltic rocks.

Mechanically, too, he moved his body, as one who, in sleep, dreams,

and is afraid of falling.

He felt the turf rending, the last clutch of life parting, by the

very efforts he made to save it. Then a blindness seemed to come

upon him--a mist, through which the form of Hawkshaw seemed dilated

to colossal proportions, towering between him and the sky like a

destroying angel, while the roaring of the sea beneath seemed to fill

all space, as with the roll of thunder.

Bead-drops of agony oozed upon his icy brow, while despair and the

terror of death were in his heart, and though the whole episode

lasted little more, perhaps, than a single minute, Morley Ashton

lived, as we have stated, _a lifetime of agony_!

The turf gave way! a sigh--it seemed his parting soul--escaped him;

_he fell_, and vanished from the eyes of Hawkshaw.

But Heaven had ordained that the poor lad was not to perish. About

thirty-five, perhaps forty feet below the verge of the chine, there

extends a ledge or abutting piece of rock, about five feet broad, and

eight or ten feet long, so far as the eye may judge of it from the

seaward, as mortal hand has never measured it; and on this natural

shelf he fell heavily, and almost senseless by emotion and the shock.

A thick coarse moss, of a kind that has grown there for ages, mingled

with a species of guano deposited by the sea-birds, received him

softly, and broke the force of his fall, which, had the face of the

basalt been bare, must have produced the most fatal injuries.

For some time Morley thought all was over, and he lay still--half

stunned alike by the shock and by the suddenness of the whole event.

Then his heart filled with a gush of gratitude to Heaven that he was

saved, till reflection brought a thrill of horror that he was now

utterly lost.

He heard still the ceaseless roaring and bellowing of the breakers,

gurgling, sucking, and surging in the chine; he heard also the wild

screaming of the sea-birds above and below him, as the astonished

gulls and cormorants wheeled in circles, or alighted on the shelf of

rock beside him, and flapped their wings with a sharp and at times

booming sound.

The evening passed away, and night came on before Morley dared to

stir, to move, or look about him. In all its starry splendour, he

could see the Plough and the glorious stream of the Milky Way.

Then the moon, that whilom rose as we have said, red and round as a

crimson shield, at the far verge of the watery horizon, had gradually

reached almost to the zenith, when her disc, small and sharply

defined, shone like a ball of glowing silver amid the sparkling ether.

A broad flake of her glorious sheen poured aslant into the gaping

chine, increasing, perhaps, its weird and ghastly aspect; but this

broad stream of light enabled poor Morley to examine the place of his

fall, and he soon saw in all their details the horrors of his

hopeless situation.

Above, the rock ascended sheer as a wall to the height we have

stated--a wall up which it was hopeless to think of climbing.

Below, the cliff receded from the ledge on which he lay, so that in

reality the sea was foaming completely beneath him.

From the land-side his position could neither be seen nor even

discovered in any way whatever; and even if it were so, in what way

were the finders to succour him?

How many ships might pass before even a sailor's ready eye might

detect a human figure perched so far up, among the hungry cormorants

and shrieking sea-mews?

Without shelter, food, or water, how long could he survive on the

giddy shelf of that storm-beaten sea-cliff, where he dared not close

an eye lest he might roll into eternity below?

To ascend was impracticable; to descend was to die!

How awful it was to see the white sea-birds skimming the ocean with

wings outspread, or floating in the air, and know that they were more

than 300 feet below him!

If descried by the crew of a fisher-boat, the idea occurred to him of

risking a plunge into the water: but from this desperate thought his

heart recoiled at once. To fall whizzing through the air from such a

height would insure his falling breathless into the sea, so that its

waves would close over him when his lungs were empty, and he would

never rise again.

Days might pass, and nights would certainly pass, during which no eye

could see him, save those of the sea-birds that wheeled in circles

round him, as if impatient of their repast, from which his apparent

life and power of action--as he "who-whooped" from time to time to

scare them--as yet denied their craving beaks and bills, but only as

yet, for he anticipated with horror a time when, faint and expiring,

they might pounce down in one voracious flock and rend him piecemeal.

And thus Ethel, life, hope, and the world, were all cut off from him

at one fell swoop, by a single blow of Hawkshaw's felon hand.

Conquered, powerless, and crushed by the united horrors of his

situation; unseen, unknown, left to die within a pistol-shot of help,

within forty feet of safety, he cowered his face between his knees,

and murmuring, "Oh, villain! villain!" he wept like a child.

So the breakers continued to boom, so sickening in their monotony,

far down below, and the night passed on. Morley strove to pray, but

his mind was a chaos; he could neither thank Heaven for his first

escape, nor implore aid for the future. For a time he was stupefied.

So the wild sea-birds--the black-billed auk, the mouse-coloured

guillemot, the huge white gull, the rank, coarse cormorant, whose

shape Milton describes Satan as assuming, when devising death, he

perched upon the Tree of Life--continued to wheel and scream around

the miserable Morley, who remained on his lofty perch in an agony of

spirit.

The sea ebbed and flowed again; the moon paled and waned; the clouds

gathered in heaven and divided again. Day stole over the brightening

ocean, and gradually a bright May morning--the same morning when,

creeping from Rose's side, the weeping Ethel drew the curtains of her

window, and looked forth upon the upland path that led to this fatal

spot.

The morning star twinkled brightly and propitiously above the edge of

the chine, and then its light faded into radiance of the growing dawn.

And with day came hope, that if he was doomed to die it might not be

unseen. Morley wiped his damp brow and eyes with his handkerchief,

for though the season was summer, the atmosphere was damp and chill

upon the cliff above the sea.

He heard once the voice of a lark, but it was high above him.

From the place where he sat, Morley's eye could command a range of

about eight miles of sea, and as the day dawned he anxiously swept

the offing, but in vain; nothing was visible, but what the Ancient

Mariner saw, "the sea and sky, the sea and sky," till about sunrise,

when a white sail and the smoke of a steamer, both hull down, could

be seen at the horizon, some thirty miles off; thus, so far as

succour was concerned, they might as well have been beyond the

equator.

Fourteen hours had he now been missing.

What would be the emotions, the bewilderment, the grief of

Ethel?--what the specious, the artful, it might be the villainous

story framed by Hawkshaw to account for his disappearance? It might

be one that would blast his character, blacken his memory, and sever

even her love from him.

Was not a murderer capable of anything?

Now a fisher-boat, brown and tarry, with a patched lugsail, of no

particular hue, bellying out in the fresh morning breeze, with the

snow-white foam bubbling under her sharp prow, shot into sight about

two miles off.

Morley shouted, though he might have saved himself the trouble, for

the two men who formed her crew could no more have heard him than if

he had been in the moon; but he could not repress the impulse that

made him halloo to them again and again.

He waved his white handkerchief frantically. If observed, it would

seem but a sea-bird's wing at such a distance; but the two black

specks in the fishing-boat were seated with their backs to the shore,

one intent upon handling his tiller, the other grasped the sheet, and

both were enjoying their pipes and gazing seaward; so the boat, with

her bellying sail, and foam-dripping prow, passed on, and Morley

remained still unseen and alone.

Other three boats passed, under a press of sail, towards the fishing

ground; but they were far off--so far that he scarcely made any

attempt to signal them.

He felt no hunger; but now a thirst, which he had no means of

allaying, and which the saline property of the atmosphere tended to

increase, came upon him to add to his troubles and misery of mind and

body.

Now a steamer passed, bound for Ireland, or the Isle of Man.

She was nearly ten miles off; but in the hope some idling tourist or

passenger might be scanning the coast with a telescope or lorgnette,

he continued, with anxious vigour, to wave his handkerchief, but

waved it in vain, for she sped on her course and rapidly disappeared,

though the long, smoky pennant, emitted by her funnel, lingered for

hours across the sky before it melted into thin air and passed away.

And still the angry waves boomed below, and the greedy sea-birds

wheeled and screamed around him. How he longed for wings like the

latter!

"Oh, Heaven!" he exclaimed, "aid, inspire, and sustain me for a

little time, or let me perish at once, and end this day of horror!"

More than once, he actually conceived the idea of endeavouring to

lure a couple of gulls within his grasp, and then to plunge into the

sea, in the hope that their flapping and outspread pinions might

break the force of his descent; and once safely in the ocean, he knew

that he could swim round the chine, and reach the level beach that

lies about a quarter of a mile to the westward of it.

But he might as well have hoped to catch the distant clouds or the

hues of the rainbow, as those wild gulls and gannets.

So the weary day passed on, and, with horror, he contemplated the

prospects of another night of hopeless watching, of sleeplessness and

thirst, for he dared not close his eyes, even for a moment, lest

drowsiness should come upon him, when he might topple from his perch

into the eternity that yawned below.

The rising wind moaned in the chine, and waved the tufts of samphire

below, and those of the grass forty feet above his head.

The sun was verging to the westward. The breeze, which had been soft

and mild all day, changed, and blew keenly against the cliff, rolling

the sea in billows before it; and now, about six o'clock in the

evening, so far as Morley could judge--as his watch had been broken

in his fall--a smart, square-rigged vessel--a ship, as he soon

perceived--lying as near the wind as she could, on a long starboard

tack, came gradually near the shore.

When she first hove in sight she might have been six miles off, but

was running steadily towards the chine.

Morley knew that she would come within half a mile, or less, of the

coast, without going about or shortening sail, as the water was so

deep; so he resolved not to miss this chance of life and rescue!

To have a larger signal than his handkerchief, he drew off his white

shirt, and, holding it by the sleeves, permitted the whole garment to

wave out like a banner on the wind.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RESCUE.

On came the beautiful ship, with all her white canvas shining in the

setting sun. Her deck, on which, from his fearful perch, Morley

could look completely down, was spotless, and her crew seemed

pigmies, herself a toy, but one, nevertheless, instinct with life, as

she flew before the breeze, careening gracefully over, with the white

foam curling under the bows, and sweeping past her counter, to form a

long grey wake in the green sea astern.

Frantically Morley waved his impromptu banner, his signal of

distress; and long he continued to do so, bathed in perspiration, and

enduring an agony of hope and anxiety, before he could perceive the

crew hastening to the bows, the forecastle bitts, and some ascending

into the fore-rigging, as if to have a better look at him.

"Hurrah! and blessed be God, they have seen me!" he exclaimed.

At that moment up went the scarlet ensign to the gaff-peak, from

whence it was dipped once, and hoisted again, as a signal that he had

been observed.

On she comes; and now she is about half a mile distant from the rocks

of Acton Chine. A man is heaving the lead in the fore-chains, but no

soundings are there for more than forty fathoms; and borne over the

water, and upward through the ambient air, the words of command came

clearly to Morley's excited ear.

Now the headsails shiver, heavily flap the jib, forestaysail, and

foretopmast-staysail, round swings the main and maintopsail yards

sharp to windward, and now she lies to, with her broadside to the

shore.

A quarter-boat is lowered; six men--Morley can count them--drop into

her; something is thrown in, Morley knows not what, but a telescope

would have revealed that it is a coil of stout rope.

Now the oars are shipped. Bravo! she is shoved off, and the dripping

blades flash in the last rays of the setting sun, as she darts from

the ship's side, and sweeps round the promontory, and out of sight,

towards the little cove, where Morley knew there was a landing-place

and little strip of white sand.

Morley waited nearly an hour--it seemed an age--after this. The ship

still lay off the rocky shore, rolling heavily on the ground

swell--so heavily, that the cracking flap of her loose canvas reached

his ear sometimes. Once the mainyard was slued round, and sail was

made on her for a little way, as if she had been drifted by wind and

current rather too close in shore; but again the yard was backed,

and, as before, she lay to, motionless and still.

The sun had gone down, dusk was stealing over the land, and the warm

saffron flush that bathed the western sea and sky became obscured by

masses of copper-coloured clouds.

Morley's heart beat wildly; he listened, but heard only the boom of

the eternal breakers in the horrid grave that yawned below, and the

screaming of the sea-birds around him.

Suddenly he heard a cheer--the mingled shout of several voices--ring

in mid-air above him. Oh, how his poor heart bounded at the sound!

He looked upward, as he had done a hundred times before, but saw

nothing, save the impending rock, for a time, till suddenly something

appeared to swing over it, between him and the sky.

Down it came, and soon he grasped it, and the rope to which it was

attached.

Wrapped round with a seaman's neckerchief, it proved to be a pint

bottle, with a memorandum, written in pencil, twisted round the neck.

"_Take a pull at the bottle, to give you strength, and lash the line

round you; tie the knot well, for your life depends on it. Then pass

up the word to hoist away, and never fear but we shall pull you up._"

Such were the directions pencilled on the scrap of paper.

With a sigh of joy and gratitude, Morley, faint, weary, and trembling

in every limb and every nerve, uncorked the bottle, which contained

brandy-grog--stiff half-and-half. As directed, he took a hearty

"pull" thereat, for strength and coolness were alike necessary now.

He then cast the bottle into the profundity below. No sound followed

its descent: and the fall of a sixty-four-pound shot would have

caused none there.

He tied the rope round his body, under the arm-pits, but with

considerable difficulty, as his hands trembled like aspen leaves.

"All ready? heave away!" he shouted.

After a time the rope was tightened from above; a few sharp tugs

followed, as if those who sought to save him wished to assure

themselves that all was secure below.

Then followed the familiar "Yeo-heo!" of merchant seamen when pulling

together, and Morley felt his scalp bristling as he was lifted off

his feet and swung into mid-air.

The hated ledge of rock--hated, though, but for its lucky

intervention, he must long ago have "slept the sleep that knows no

waking"--receded below him, and he was dragged up the face of the

bluff so speedily that all his care was requisite, by the use of

hands and feet, to save his face and knees from being bruised and

torn.

At last he reached the verge--that awful verge, close to where the

tufts of grass had parted in his seeming death-grasp. Here a

stoppage, a trivial delay, occurred; Morley was too blind and giddy

to know why or wherefore, but he was not without fear that the knot

his feeble hands had tied might break loose, or that the chafed cord

might part, here, as it were, upon the threshold of the world and a

new lease of existence; nor did he feel secure until he felt himself

grasped bodily by the strong hands of several sturdy seamen, dragged

in, as it were, and landed like a huge fish on the grass. Pale,

panting, weak, weary, and becoming breathless, he fainted outright.

"Here's a coil, mate," said one of the seamen. "The poor fellow has

gone right off into a swound, and is as useless as a wet swab."

"What's to be done now, Mr. Morrison?" asked another.

"We can't leave him, dying, it may be, of starvation," replied the

seaman addressed--one in authority, apparently, and who spoke English

correctly, but with a Scottish accent. "No house is nearer than

yonder hamlet. He is well rigged, and don't look like a poor

samphire gatherer, after all. How the dickens did he get up or get

down there, unless on a grey gull's back?"

"Take a leg and an arm, Bill. Heave ahead. We must get him down

from this 'tarnal steep bluff, somehow."

And, carrying Morley as carefully as they could, the seamen, who were

six in number, proceeded downwards by the narrow path which led to

the beach.

So intent had these worthy fellows been on their humane operations,

that they had completely failed to observe how the dense clouds had

been banking up to seaward; how the waves were curling up, white and

frothy, and how the wind was freshening, till it swept the

spoon-drift off each foaming crest, into the trough between; or how

the ship had doused her royals, and handed her topgallant-sails, to

make all snug for the coming blast.

"We have not a moment to lose," said Morrison, the mate. "It is

almost dark already, lads--very dark for a May night. A breeze in

shore is coming on fast. Let's be off to the ship without delay."

"But this poor fellow, sir."

"Can't be left to die upon the beach. It would be clear murder,

mates."

"Let us take him aboard with us, and send him ashore with the first

in-shore craft we overhaul after he gets his sea-legs."

"In, in! Here comes the gale! Out oars! Shove off!"

And thus Morley Ashton, still insensible, or completely stupefied and

passive, in three minutes more was speeding over the rising waves, as

fast as six oars could bear him, towards the unknown ship.

CHAPTER XV.

AN OLD SHIPMATE.

For twenty-four hours after he was on board, Morley Ashton was

alternately faint and delirious. His nervous system had been

overstrained, and thus, for a time, he knew not where he was, by whom

rescued, or by whom surrounded, and, at times, he still fancied

himself on his awful perch above Acton Chine, and still in his ears

he seemed to hear the roar of the waves and the screaming of the

sea-birds.

Meanwhile a heavy gale had sprung up, and the ship which sheltered

him had been compelled to stand off to sea, pursuing her course

south-south-west, and thus the land had vanished astern some seven

hours before Morley recovered complete consciousness, and began to

look curiously and inquiringly around him.

Was he in a dream?

Whence the strange and not unfamiliar odour of new paint and tar, and

the close atmosphere, so undeniably that of a ship's cabin? Then

there were the creaking of timbers, the jarring of all sorts of

things, the swaying to and fro of a chained lamp, of a brass

tell-tale compass, that swung in the skylight--the swaying, also, of

berth-curtains on brass rods and rings, the rattle of racks and

plates and dishes in an open locker, the clatter of blocks on deck,

and the gurgling wash of water against the outer sheathing, with the

jolting of the rudder, and the rasping of its chains.

Aided by the gleams of uncertain radiance that came down the square

skylight, and sometimes with prismatic hues through the yokes that

were inserted in the planking of the deck, Morley looked around him,

and became assured, beyond a doubt, that he was a-bed in the cabin of

a ship under sail, and in no dream at all.

At that moment footsteps were heard descending the companion ladder,

and a seaman, muffled in a storm jacket and sou'-wester, both of

which were shining with salt spray, approached the berth in which

Morley lay.

"Bartelot--Tom Bartelot! old friend and school-fellow," he exclaimed,

with bewilderment, "where on earth did you come from?"

"Not from among the clouds and gulls, as you did, Morley," replied

the other, laughing.

"And so--so you are beside me!"

"Of course I am, and right glad to see you again, Ashton; but this is

a queer business of yours, old fellow."

"How?--why?--where am I?"

"Aboard my ship, to be sure."

"Then I have had fever again, and have never been at home; have never

seen Ethel! Have never been thrown into Acton Chine! I have had

dreams, Tom--oh, such dreams!"

"I rather think you have, Morley."

"How mad I must have been, and such queer things I must have said.

Did I speak about the Bassets and the Isle of France? I would have

sworn that I had seen Ethel, had spoken to her, and--and kissed her

many times. Dear Ethel! And so we are still on board your brig in

the Bonny River?"

"Now, what are you talking about? You are most awfully at sea, in

more ways than one!" exclaimed Bartelot, thrusting his hands deep

into his trousers pockets, and regarding Morley with great surprise.

"My poor chum, Ashton, you are not aboard my old brig, the _Rattler_,

of Liverpool, at Foche Point, with the yellow flag--the sign of

fever--flying at the foremasthead, but aboard of my new ship, the

_Princess_, of London, of 300 tons register (we won't say what

burden) and Al at Lloyd's, bound for Rio de Janeiro, with a mixed

cargo, and now about eighty miles off the Land's End and Cape

Cornwall."

"Tom, Tom, how you bewilder me," groaned Morley.

"We are just clearing St. George's Channel with a glorious

breeze--quite aft--though it will soon be upon the starboard quarter,

I fear. So now, my boy, tell me how the deuce you came to be perched

up aloft among the gulls and gannets on yonder rocks? A most fearful

place it is, and a world of trouble it cost my first mate, Bill

Morrison, to get you towed up in safety."

The silence almost of stupefaction succeeded this information, and

some time elapsed before Morley could understand or realise the truth

of it.

Meanwhile, let us describe Captain Thomas Bartelot, of the ship

_Princess_, of London.

He had a free, open, jovial, and merry expression, a fresh and ruddy

complexion, a pleasant voice, and a very winning manner. He was a

stout, rather gentlemanly man, about ten years older than Morley, but

more muscular, better developed, and thicker, especially about the

arms, the biceps whereof indicated that he had been used to a good

deal of pulling and hauling in his time. He had on a glazed

sou'-wester, the strings and ear-laps of which he untied, and a

storm-jacket of tarred canvas, secured by horn-buttons, of which

attire he now proceeded to disencumber himself, for on deck the

weather had been rough, and the spray was flying in showers of foam

over the catheads, occasionally over the quarter, and he "had just

left the ship in charge of Morrison," he said, "and come below for

the double purpose of seeing how Morley was getting on, and procuring

a caulker from the steward's locker." After a pause, during which

time the said "caulker" was imbibed from a square case-bottle: "When

you were brought on board, Morley, by Morrison and the boat's crew, I

was so surprised at recognising you," said Bartelot, "that I scarcely

knew whether my head or heels were on the deck. You were in a

death-like faint, or I would have sent you ashore again. The night

was fast becoming dark, and the weather foul. We couldn't keep

dodging about the coast, as Admiral Fitzroy had telegraphed, 'Gales

of wind expected from all quarters;' so I resolved to give the land a

wide berth (lucky it was for you that we hugged it so close!) and

stood off to sea. I am sorry for that, Morley, but I couldn't help

it, old boy; insurance brokers, ship agents, and owners won't stand

trifling nowadays, so console yourself that it was no worse. You

couldn't have fallen into better hands than Tom Bartelot, eh? Look

there," he continued, pointing to a small yellow map of Britain,

framed and glazed on the bulkhead, and having all the coast

surrounded by little black spots. "Each of these spots, Morley,

marks a wreck of last year. It is the 'Wreck Chart,' published by

the Life-boat Institution, and it shows quite enough of black spots

in the Bristol Channel to warrant me in getting out to sea; and

somehow, to my mind, we have had three gales now for one we used to

have before Admiral Fitzroy took to telegraphing about his south and

north cones, storm-drums, and what not. Old Gawthrop, one of our

men, swears he whistles up the very gales he telegraphs. But speak,

Morley, why don't you say something? Am I to have all the talking to

myself?"

"Oh, Tom, I owe my life to you."

"To Bill Morrison, rather."

"Who is he?"

"My Scotch mate."

"But this adventure, and my being taken off to sea, I know not

whither----"

"Rio de Janeiro, I told you."

"It ruins my prospects for ever!"

"Sorry to hear you say so; but we'll put you aboard the first

homeward-bound craft we overhaul. Till then, you are heartily

welcome to swing your hammock in my cabin, and to share our junk and

grog."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow; but a homeward-bound ship will avail me

little."

"The deuce!--would you wish to swim or fly?"

"Unless I could be landed near Acton-Rennel, and within a week, it

matters not where I am; for Ethel Basset, if she lives--survives my

supposed loss--don't laugh in that way, Tom, please--must be, like

myself----"

"How--where?"

"Upon the sea."

"Drink this," said Bartelot, handing him a tumbler of wine-and-water;

"and now tell me all about this matter, for I own to being rather

curious about it."

Morley related his story briefly and rapidly.

"My berth was secured and paid for on board the _Hermione_, of

London."

"I know the craft well, and jolly Jack Phillips, her captain, too,"

said Bartelot; "a fine old fellow he is, and your friends are in

capital hands."

"I was to have sailed with them for the Isle of France," said Morley,

in a voice like a groan; "sailed once more in search of fortune--the

blind jade! Ah, Tom, the Romans were right when they depicted her as

a woman, for she has much to do in the happiness or misery of man."

"Is that the wine or water talking now?" asked Tom, supplying himself

with another measure, nautically named "a caulker," from the

before-mentioned square case-bottle.

"Don't chaff me, Tom, for mine is an evil destiny."

"Oh, bother! don't talk of destiny, like a fellow in tights, with a

broad-brimmed tile, addressing the lustre, or the footlights, at the

Surrey. Every man who has a steady heart--a heart, mind you, that

don't yaw even when the wind is foul--and keeps a strong hand on the

tiller of perseverance, is the maker of his own destiny. I learned

that long ago, before I knew the mizzen-top from a marlin-spike.

This spirit will make a man go right before the wind, through even

Hamlet's 'sea of troubles,' and never heed the waves or breakers

thereof."

"Why, Tom," said Morley, with a sad smile, "you are a regular

salt-water preacher."

"A philosopher if you will; but no preacher--oh, d----n it, I haven't

come to that. I suppose that piratical beggar--what's his name?"

"Hawkshaw--Cramply Hawkshaw," replied Morley, through his clenched

teeth.

"I suppose he will consider you quite a gone 'coon, as the Yankees

say; but you must haul up for the Mauritius (if we can find a ship

for thence at Rio, which is not very likely) and have the fellow

exposed, tried, and punished as he deserves."

"Punished! how know I that ere I can reach the Mauritius, penniless

as I am----"

"Penniless! You young swab, don't you know that you can command my

purse--no great matter certainly--to the last farthing?"

"Thanks, my dear Bartelot."

"Well, as you were about to say, before you may reach the

Mauritius----"

"He may be--he may be----"

"What?"

"The husband of Ethel Basset."

"Whe-e-e-uh!" whistled Tom Bartelot.

"How can I foresee what one so subtle, so daring, so reckless as

Hawkshaw may achieve!"

"Well, drink your wine-and-water; remain quiet in the meantime. You

may keep all your night watches below if you like, and, till you

regain your strength, content yourself with exercise by day--a

Dutchman's promenade, three steps and overboard, eh?"

There was a pause, during which Morley sighed deeply.

"Cheer up, Morley," said jolly Tom Bartelot; "look firmly ahead, and

boldly face the little spray and black scud of misfortune. Pursue

your present way contented for some time at least, with confidence

and hope, and never look astern. It is no use, as nothing ever comes

that way, either for good or for evil. It would be a poor love that

won't outlast a sea voyage, however long it might be, and if Miss

Basset forgets you----"

"Forgets me--agony! Tom, she may be made to believe that I have

deserted her."

"Impossible!"

"That I have been murdered, then!"

"Hawkshaw would not tell upon himself, surely?"

"That I fell over the cliff and was drowned!"

"Ah--that would be a likely tale enough."

"I know not what specious tale the villain may form to deceive Ethel

and her father," continued Morley, impetuously.

"When at Rio, write to her all about it."

"Write! By the ship that bore my letter, I would fly to her."

"I should prefer sailing; but every man to his taste. In another day

or so, according to your own showing, she will be upon the sea!"

"True--true, and with that wretch, most probably," said Morley,

relapsing into wretchedness, and striking his forehead with his hand.

"Come, come," urged Bartelot, patting him on the shoulder, "turn out

and take a sniff of the breeze on deck. Another glass of wine first;

drink and be jolly, man. What says the old song? for it is an old

song of Captain Topham's, and none of mine, be assured!

"'You bid me my jovial companions forsake,

The joys of a rural recess to partake;

With you, my good friend, I'll retreat to the vine,

Its shelter be yours, but its nectar be mine;

For each 'twill a separate pleasure produce,

You cool in its shade, while I glow with its juice;

For own no delight with his rapture can vie,

Who always is drinking, yet always is dry.'"

"Many a night have we sung that together when in the Bonny River, on

board the dear old _Rattler_," said Morley, listening with pleasure

to the song which Bartelot trolled forth with a fine mellow voice.

"Ah!--the _Rattler_," said Bartelot, sighing; "they broke her up for

firewood--think of that. I sent my old mother at Liverpool a table

made out of her timber."

"Go ahead, Tom--finish your song."

"Ah, there is life in the old dog yet, I see," replied Bartelot as he

resumed:

"'The lover (that's you, Morley) may talk of his flames

and his darts,

His judgment of eyes and his conquest of hearts;

May smile with the wanton, and sport with the gay,

Enjoy when he can and desert when he may;

Yet the warmest adherents of love must deplore

That its favours when tasted are favours no more;

Then how can such joys with his ecstasy vie,

Who always is drinking, yet always is dry?'"

As Tom concluded (he was not a bit of a toper, as we shall show ere

long, though he sang so bacchanalian a ditty), the sunlight died

away, the cabin became gloomy, the rolling of the ship and the noise

on deck increased.

"The gale freshens," said he, "and the glass is falling fast. We

shall have the wind blowing great guns to-night, so we must close our

shutters, as I once heard a lubber call them. Don't you remember,

Mr. de Vavasour Spout, the Cockney supercargo? Steward, pass the

word to Mr. Morrison to have the dead lights shipped. I must be off

to the deck, Morley, and have some more cloth taken off her--send

down the topgallant yards, get the lumber out of the tops, and bend

the trysail aft."

Morley was too feeble to leave his berth for that night, especially

as the _Princess_ encountered a heavy gale of wind.

He could slumber, but his dreams were wild, and disturbed by starts,

visions, and memories of all he had undergone; and every thought of

Acton Chine and its horrors caused a shudder to pass through his

frame.

CHAPTER XVI.

UNDER THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN.

Next morning, when Morley ventured up, everything was dripping wet;

on deck and aloft all bore cheerless evidence of a rough night that

had passed.

The _Princess_ had but little canvas spread, for the sea was rising

still; the fore, main, and mizzen topsails were taken off her, and

ere long she was speeding before the wind and sea under a

close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Morrison, one of the most powerful men on board, with another grim

old seaman, named Noah Gawthrop, whose weather-beaten visage

resembled nothing on land or sea but a knot on a gnarled oak tree,

were at the wheel, and it was with the utmost difficulty they could

keep the helm, so heavily did breaker after breaker poop the ship.

Though heavy, the wind was fair for the _Princess_, but it bore her

away from the shores of Britain, was Morley's first and regretful

idea.

No other craft was in sight, and the gray sky imparted an opaque tint

to the dark and tumbling sea, which seemed to follow her

brine-dripping sides, as swiftly she darted on, at times cleaving

asunder, or riding across, the long rolling mountains of water that

burst in hissing showers over the varnished bowsprit and gilded

catheads, over the iron windlass and forecastle bitts, and after

drenching the cowering watch, poured away through the scuppers to

leeward as the buoyant ship rose on each successive wave, like a

gallant sea-bird trussing her pinions.

Amid that waste of waters, no living thing was visible from the deck,

save a brown flock of Mother Carey's chickens, the stormy petrels,

tripping with outspread wings up the slope of one wave and down the

slope of another.

Though accustomed to the sea, by his past voyaging, Morley gazed

around him with a bewildered air. He addressed something--he knew

not what--to the men at the wheel, but the Scotch mate was too full

of anxiety about his steering to reply, and, as for Mr. Noah

Gawthrop, he heard the remark with stolid indifference, and

expectorated vociferously to leeward.

The bronzed face and keen gray eyes of the Scotchman were turned

alternately to the leech of the close-reefed foresail, the bellying

of the storm staysail, and the compass-box, while his feet were

planted firmly on the deck-grating, and his weather-beaten hands

grasped the wheel like his shipmate on the other side.

Neither of these men ever spoke to each other. Instinct and skill

taught them simultaneously and mutually when to keep her full and by,

when to let her yaw, or when to let her ship a sea.

Wearied with toil, and the double watching of the past night, Captain

Bartelot was asleep in his damp clothes on the cabin-locker. So noon

passed away, and still the _Princess_ flew on through mist and spray,

under her close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Another vessel, similarly stripped of canvas, flew past them on the

opposite tack, and, like a spectre, disappeared in the wrack and

gloom; but, anon, the wind and sea went gradually down together, the

clouds burst asunder, and the sun came joyously forth.

The gale gradually abated to a fine spanking breeze, the mainsail was

set, and the reefs shaken out of the foresail; topsail after topsail

were hoisted and sheeted home. Then followed the studding-sails and

royals, and the _Princess_, with everything on her that "would draw,"

swept out into the waters of the mighty Atlantic.

A lovely evening followed, and a rosy sunset, but not a ship was in

sight, and Morley now calculated that they must be more than 200

miles from land.

"By Jove, this is excellent!" exclaimed Tom Bartelot, lounging back

in his chair, after a late dinner (for on this day the cook's fire

had been washed out of the caboose); "how happy I am to have you

here, Morley. Confess, old fellow, that you couldn't have fallen

into better hands."

"I do confess it most willingly; but, my dear old friend, I must be

set on shore, if possible, at the first opportunity. I have Hawkshaw

to punish, and Ethel to save from the insult of his presence."

"On shore, with the breeze blowing thus--the Scilly Isles more than

150 miles astern, and not a sail in sight."

"But, Ethel--the Bassets--what will they think of my sudden

disappearance? What story may that rascal tell them?"

"Nothing that you can't unsay by-and-bye."

"Unsay when it may be too late."

"Too late!"

"And to have Ethel left in the power, or rather, subjected to the

wiles and addresses of one so cruel, so artful."

"Tut, tut, if she would slip from her moorings by the old man's side,

to sail in company with a rascally pirate, she's not worth much,

friend Morley, and certainly not worth regretting."

"Ethel shall judge what I have suffered, by what she is suffering

herself."

"Try some of that brandy-and-water, and don't get into the doldrums.

Light a cheroot--there's a box of capital ones on the locker behind

you. Have patience; in a few months at farthest----"

"Months! You talk to me of patience, Tom, as if you had never seen

me practise it."

"In what way?"

"Have you forgotten when I was broiling, for a pittance, on the Bonny

river? how I toiled, worked, aye, slaved, and cheered myself with the

thoughts of Ethel Basset, and an English home? For three years I had

patience, amid adversity and illness. Heaven knows how I got through

those three years, Tom."

"Just as you shall get over the three months that must pass before

you reach the Mauritius after visiting Rio."

"Well, I returned, as I have told you, to find that her future home

was to be elsewhere than in England; that we were to be separated,

perhaps, hopelessly; that I had a rival, too, a kinsman, a _protégé_

of her father's, a son of a certain Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn--a

fellow without honour, honesty, money, or scruple."

"I'd like to give him a dip at the end of a deep-sea line."

"Sail, homeward-bound, on the weather-bow!" reported Morrison, one

morning, a few days after this.

Morley's heart leaped, and he rushed on deck to look at the

stranger--a smart bark, close-hauled, with all her starboard-tacks

aboard. She was evidently a foreigner, being painted a pale

pea-green.

"A Baltic craft, I take her to be," said Morrison. "Here she comes,

running sharp on a wind, with a bone in her teeth."

"A bone?" repeated Morley.

"Yes; the spray flying under her cutwater, and over her catheads.

Don't you remember the fun we used to have with De Vavasour Spout,

the cockney supercargo, when talking all manner of nautical rubbish

to him. Morrison, run up our ensign; lay the mainyard to the mast;

steward, hand up the trumpet, we'll overhaul her."

The orders were promptly obeyed; the stranger also backed his

mainyard, and showed his ensign--black and white.

"Prussian," said Morrison.

"Bound for the Elbe," added Bartelot, whose hail was answered in a

hoarse dissonance, that made even Noah Gawthrop's grim visage relax

with a smile, as he sent the debris of his quid to leeward, and

anathematised foreigners in general, and their Hugos in particular,

while each vessel stood off on her course again.

"No chance for you, Morley," said Bartelot, "so we'll give it up and

think no more about it."

Ten days elapsed after this, and, in all that space never once did

the _Princess_ come within hail of a homeward-bound ship, so Morley

strove to resign himself to his fate.

"Rio de Janeiro be it," said he.

He took his watch with the rest of the crew, and endeavoured to make

the time pass; but weary, weary was his lot for days and weeks--days

and weeks of mental suffering, during which he fretted, chafed, and

loathed, at times, the floating prison which bore him away, almost

hopelessly, from the watery path which he now concluded Ethel must be

traversing--she, due southward, towards the sun; and he,

south-westward, towards the land of fire.

It is an age of swift postal arrangements, of telegrams, magnetic and

electric, but nothing could avail Morley there on the wide, wide sea;

the appliances of modern science were there as nugatory and of as

little avail as in the days when Columbus ploughed the same waters in

search of the western world--he had nothing to console him save

patience and hope.

She might be dying of grief for his loss, for people sometimes do die

of grief, though, pardon me for the heresy, fair reader, people

seldom die for love; and, unless assisted by some good genii or

spirits of the air, Morley was powerless, and without the means of

acquainting her that he was safe, alive, well, and had miraculously

escaped a most foul and deliberate attempt to assassinate him.

So, weary were the days and more weary the nights, while the swift

ship flew on, making a most prosperous voyage towards a clime of

sunnier skies and brighter seas than those of England; but, weary

though it seemed, and insufferably slow, the time passed,

nevertheless.

Each day the sun grew hotter and rose higher overhead.

The Line was passed; Father Neptune came on board in all the

splendour of oakum wig, tar, and yellow ochre; and Morley, having

crossed the Line before, escaped being shaved with a hoop and bathed

in salt water, though old Noah Gawthrop, who personated the god of

the ocean, and Morrison, who personated Amphitrite, the mother of

Triton, had some very waggish views respecting him. And now the

atmosphere was hot, indeed.

"When I was last at Rio," said old Noah, whose voice, like worthy Tom

Pipes's, had "a cadence like that of an east wind singing through a

cranny"--"the crabs and winkles were roasted in their shells upon the

shore."

The winds continued favourable; the _Princess_ steadily held her

course, and the day on which they would probably see Rio Janeiro was

already confidently spoken of by Tom Bartelot and his first mate,

Bill Morrison, for both were practical seamen, and holders of

first-class certificates.

Though a grave and stern man, and one deeply imbued with many of the

northern superstitions of his country, with a few--but luckily a very

few--of its theological whim-whams, Morrison became a great friend of

Morley, and, though a believer in mysterious lights, warnings, and

presentiments, in second sight, second hearing, and so forth, he was

remarkably well informed, well educated, and spoke Latin, and more

than one European language fluently.

His face was browned by long exposure to every climate in the world;

he had faced all the dangers of the deep, and their name is legion;

he was hardy, tough, and athletic, and, being at times

conversational, he learned from Morley, long ere the voyage was over,

the whole history of his love, rivalry, and adventures.

"Take heart, young gentleman," said he, as they kept their watch

together on a lovely moonlight night, when drawing near the tropic of

Capricorn; "when I was a bairn at home, my mother (God bless her puir

auld body!) aye taught me that 'the ways o' Providence were dark and

intricate, perplexed wi' mazes and distressed wi' errors,' and I have

seen but little reason to alter my opinion in manhood, or as I grow

aulder in the horn, as we say in Scotland. But something tells me

that you will bring this rascally piccaroon up wi' a round turn yet."

"But Miss Basset?"

"If _she_ countenanced him," interrupted the Scotchman, turning his

keen gray eyes and knitted brows to Morley, "why, then, I say, e'en

let her go with a flowing sheet."

"Which means----"

"That you'll be well free of so unseaworthy a craft."

So, at this period of their story, the loved and the loving, Morley

Ashton and Ethel Basset, are both traversing the same mighty ocean.

Morley knew that, if Ethel lived, she would now inevitably be sailing

for the Isle of France; but she, alas! believed that her lover was no

more, and lost to her indeed for ever!

Will they ever meet more?

They may meet peacefully and happily again, never to separate; or, it

may be, that they shall be united never more on this side of the

grave, for both are now upon the sea, and the perils encountered by

those who go down into the great deep and see the wonders

thereof--wreck, storm, fire, mutiny, piracy, and famine--may be the

lot of one or of both.

The wheel of fortune turns, and anon we shall see!

CHAPTER XVII.

SECOND HEARING.

The Scotch mate, Morrison, spun many a strange yarn to Morley, when

together they kept their watches at night under the glorious radiance

of a tropical moon, when the vast sea shone like a silver flood, over

which the _Princess_ glided before the trade wind, with all her

canvas, topsails, and topgallant sails set.

"When falling over those rocks, on which we found you, Ashton," said

he, on one of those occasions, "did you utter any person's name?"

"Not that I remember of--why?" asked Morley, with surprise.

"Because--I have known of such things--_that_ person might have heard

your cry, however far distant."

"I do not understand."

"I mean on the principle, or rather the theory, of polarity. In the

terror and despair of such a moment, your thoughts would flash, or

rush to some one whom you loved--say Miss Basset--who became the

recipient of the force, the hearer of your cry, by that faculty which

is called in some countries _second hearing_."

Morley, though he coloured at Ethel's name, smiled, for he knew that

this was another of Morrison's strange theories.

"I never heard of an instance of this," said he; "have you?"

"I shall tell you," replied Morrison; "but, perhaps, you won't

believe me?"

"Why?"

"Because you English are so sceptical about the mystic, generally."

"I shall try, however."

"When I was third mate of the _Queen of Scots_, a clipper ship of

Aberdeen, on a voyage home from Memel, we encountered in the North

Sea a dreadful gale from the westward. We stripped the ship of

everything, until at length we hove her to under a close-reefed

main-topsail.

"The night was dark--black as pitch, as the saying is; the sea white

as snow with foam, and the wind blew as if the clerk of the weather

was determined to blow his last.

"The captain was on deck, holding on by the weather mizzen rattlings

by one hand, while the other held his speaking trumpet.

"'Away! forward! Morrison,' he shouted to me, 'and see the

flying-jib stowed,' for somehow it had got loose.

"It was a perilous duty to perform at such a time, and in such a wild

night. So, being loth to order a man for it, I undertook the task

myself.

"I _felt_ my way, like a man in the dark, along the wet and slippery

bowsprit, which one moment seemed tilted up in the air, and the next

went surging, cap under, in the seething trough of the sea, when the

bows of the _Queen_ plunged down. Then I felt as if my heart was in

my mouth, for I was but a young sailor, and thought of what would

come of poor old mother and dad at home, if I should perish, and

there would be no share of my wages to get monthly from our owners.

"At that moment I planted my feet on the leeward foot-rope, and

nearly fell into the world of waters that yawned and whirled below.

"In my fall I caught a rope, and swung at the end of it, like a

salmon grilse at the end of a line.

"None spoke to me, lest even to suggest anything might cost me my

life, and none could aid me, for I was beyond the ship altogether.

My shipmates seemed paralysed by the same peril that filled my own

heart with despair and dread of death. I was but a youth; so the

exclamation, 'God help me, mother!' escaped me, and was swept away by

the howling wind.

"At length, favoured by a lurch of the ship, I somehow regained my

footing on the bowsprit, stowed the jib in its netting, crept along

the dripping spar, and regained the deck, where the men crowded round

me with congratulations on my escape; for, had I remained even one

moment longer among the foot-ropes, I should never have been seen

again, as thrice in succession, with awful rapidity, the ship went

forward, plunging bows and bowsprit under the sea with such force,

that the starboard cathead and all our headrails were swept away.

"Well, sir, at that very hour--aye, at that very moment--my poor old

mother, who was a-bed and asleep in her cottage by the Don, was

awakened by a voice, which, with true maternal instinct and terror,

she knew to be mine, crying as if in agony, and from a vast

distance--'God help me, mother!'

"In the still and silent night, it rang dreadfully in her startled

ears, and in her anxious heart. She roused her neighbours, and

declared--poor auld body--with loud lamentations, that her dear

Willie, her sailor laddie, her only bairn, was drowned; but it was

only my thoughts that had rushed homeward, and she had received them

in her sleep.

"It was, indeed, my voice she had heard, swept--He who holds the

great deep in the hollow of his hand alone knows how--over the wide,

roaring waste of the North Sea, and she never ceased to mourn for me,

till our ship was signalled off the Girdleness, and all reported safe

on board."

As Morley was neither so superstitious nor so deeply read as his

Scotch friend, and consequently was ignorant of Dr. Ennemoser's queer

theory of polarity, he could only listen in silence, as this was only

one of many anecdotes such as Morrison was wont to beguile the

watches of the night with.

At the time he fell over the cliff, and clutched the turf at

Hawkshaw's feet, the name of "Ethel" escaped him, as we have related;

but Morley had no recollection of the circumstance, and though at

that dread moment his very soul seemed to fly to her, no warning

voice came to poor Ethel's ear, so, in this instance, the first

mate's theory was at fault.

"How steadily the trade wind holds," said he. "Watch, ahoy there,

forward! set the royals and top-gallant studding-sails, and up with

the flying jib--quick, lads, rouse it out of the netting, and hoist

away."

These orders were promptly obeyed, and faster flew the _Princess_

through the phosphorescent water, which seemed to smoke under her

counter, and gleamed in millions of sparks in the long wake, that

could be traced astern for miles upon the moonlit sea.

"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Ashton, what would be the emotions of

a murderer, at such a moment as that I endured, when clinging among

the hamper of the wet bowsprit, on that night in the North Sea, or

when in any similar peril," observed the mate, recurring to his

anecdote, as they trod to and fro.

"His emotions would be anything but enviable. That man, Hawkshaw,

must feel himself a deliberate and cold-blooded assassin, and I

frequently wonder how he comforts himself."

"I should not like to go to sea with that fellow," said the mate; "no

ship that has a murderer on board can reach its destination in

safety, or at least without accident."

"Another of your theories, I hope; but pray don't say so," said

Morley, thinking of the Bassets; "yet he was only an assassin in

intent--not fact. Moreover, he may not be on board the _Hermione_ at

all."

"Will you be surprised if I tell you that I was once accused of

murder?" asked Morrison, turning his grave, grim Scotch face with a

smile to Morley; "aye, and marooned, too, as one, though innocent as

the babe that is unborn. It is a queer yarn, so I don't mind telling

it to you.

"Before I shipped aboard the _Queen of Scots_, I was a foremast man

of a Peterhead whaler that was bound for a fishing trip to the north.

"Off the Noss-head, a rocky bluff on the south of Sinclair's Bay, and

which has a dry cavern in it always full of seals, we encountered a

tremendous storm, which carried away our flying jib-boom snapping it

like a clay pipe right off at the cap; at the same time we lost our

long-boat with all our live stock; so, amid whirlwinds of foam, we

ran round Stromo, hauled up for Thurso Bay, and came to anchor under

the lee of the land in Scrabster Roads to refit.

"Our skipper ordered another long-boat from old Magnus Sigurdson, a

boat-builder at Scrabster, who had a fine one nearly complete, and

ready on the stocks in his yard, and which, for certain reasons of

his own, he was remarkably anxious to get rid of at almost any price.

Thus, ere she was brought aboard and lashed to the boat-chocks

amidships, strange stories concerning her preached the ears of our

crew, when drinking in the public-houses of Thurso.

"It would seem that when old Magnus, his wife and family were a-bed

at night, they were roused by the sound of a hammer knocking at the

sides of the boat in the building-yard; then came the clinking, as of

nails being driven into her planks, with other noises, so exactly

like those made by Magnus when at his daily work, that his gudewife,

Alie Sigurdson, had some difficulty in believing that he was in bed

beside her.

"'Perhaps it is some idle callants amusing themselves among the

chips,' said Magnus, on the third night, and tried to sleep; but

louder grew the hammering; so at last he leaped from his bed, dressed

himself, and went forth to the yard. But no one was there; the

strange sounds had ceased; the night was starry and still, and he

only heard the hollow booming of those great billows that roll for

ever, in snow-white mountains, over the Kirkebb, against the rocks of

the Bishop's Castle, the cliffs of Pennyland, and the piers of

Thurso: for there three vast currents meet from the German, the

Atlantic, and the Northern oceans.

"All the family of old Sigurdson heard the hammering, night after

night, while the boat remained on the stocks, and the sound thereof

made his poor bairns cower and nestle in the recesses of their box

beds with affright; yet not a mark could be seen upon its ribs,

thwarts, or sheathing, even after she was painted.

"At last the boat was upon rollers, and ready to be run to the beach.

"On that night the din of hammers in the yard of Magnus Sigurdson

exceeded any that had ever rung there before. Quicker, thicker,

faster than ten smiths' hammers ringing upon as many anvils, rang the

strokes, and the old man listened with fear and trembling.

"Bible in hand, he crept forth at last.

"Still there was nothing to be seen, save the unlucky boat standing

on its props in the broad moonlight; but in the lulls or intervals of

the breakers that rolled upon the distant beach, he heard moans of

distress, sighs of fatigue, and faint mutterings, which seemed to

proceed from the boat itself.

"Such was the history of our new longboat, a story still current in

the north of Scotland; and such was the craft in which I found myself

at midnight, alone amid the North Sea, marooned and abandoned by my

shipmates on a charge of murder.

"You may imagine what I felt in such a situation.

"Despising the stories that were current concerning the boat, our

skipper had it shipped, paid Magnus Sigurdson his money, and we

sailed from Scrabster Roads for the whale fishery. Four days after

we were becalmed in the North Sea, some fifty miles or so beyond the

Skaw of Unst.

"Day succeeded day, night succeeded night, and there came no wind.

Around us--strange it was in such a latitude--the sea seemed like

oil, so still, so glassy and waveless. Loose in its brails, the

canvas flapped against the masts and yards; and now, when too late,

the men whispered anew, and murmured about the bewitched boat of

Magnus Sigurdson.

"At the far horizon we more than once saw craft passing under easy

sail, but the breeze that bore them on never reached us.

"From murmuring, the crew became clamorous; so, yielding to their

entreaties, and being perhaps a little impressed or scared himself,

our skipper ordered the mysterious boat to be shoved overboard and

cast adrift; and heavily, with a thundering plunge, she fell

bow-foremost into the glassy sea; but by that power of attraction

which larger bodies possess over smaller in the water, she lay close

to the ship, and jarred there with every roll she gave on the long

oily ridges that swelled up from time to time.

"Three days followed, and still no wind.

"In vain the captain whistled and consulted the dog-vane; in vain the

first mate blew up a feather, and cast bits of burnt wood over the

side, to watch which way the stream went.

"Some urged that we should sink the boat by scuttling her; but at

last Harold Trasnaldson, an old Orkney whaler, red-faced and

yellow-bearded, from the Isle of Stronsay, said, openly:

"'This will never do, mates; there's one aboard of us with human

blood upon his hands, and the mark of Cain upon his brow, though we

can see neither. So here this ship will float, mayhap, till

doomsday, for who ever heard of such a calm in these seas?'

"So, in five minutes after this, we were all casting lots at the

capstan-head.

"Three times we drew, and three times the fatal lot fell upon me.

"Denial, threats, and entreaty were alike vain. I was roughly

hustled overboard into the enchanted boat. Two biscuits, a bottle of

water, and an oar were given me, and I was peremptorily ordered to

shove off and scull to a distance from the ship, which I was supposed

to pollute by my vicinity, and was mockingly desired to keep company

with Mother Gary and her chickens, Mr. David Jones, and the Flying

Dutchman.

"With a heart bursting with mortification, rage, and many real and

imaginary fears, I sculled the heavy boat away from the ship, and,

strange to say, in ten minutes after I felt a coolness in the air and

saw a catspaw on the water. Gradually it freshened. A breeze

came--a breeze at last!

"The sails of the whaler filled; topsails and courses were sheeted

home; up went jib and spanker; the ocean began to ripple under her

bluff, iron-plated bows, and the crew gave me a cheer of derision,

while my poor heart died within me, as she stood away upon her course

to the whaling-ground, and ere the sun set, had disappeared, leaving

me alone upon the gloomy North Sea.

"I shall never forget, Mr. Ashton, the horror of feeling myself

marooned in such a craft, and under such an accusation; and such is

the power of imagination, that, as the boat rolled and lurched on the

waves of the dark and midnight sea, I almost fancied that I could

see, between me and the stars, while crouching in the bow-thwarts, a

huge shadowy figure, like the Spirit of Destruction, which haunted

the boat of Ronald of the Perfect Hand.

"But when day dawned I saw the rocks of Balta, the most eastern of

the Shetland Isles, shining redly at the horizon, and soon after I

was picked up by the _Thorson_, a Danish galliot, bound for Leith,

where I was safely landed a few days after."

"And the whaler?"

"She and her crew were never heard of again. So whether she had

really a breaker of the commandments on board, or whether the boat of

old Magnus Sigurdson, of Scrabster, wrought the mischief, I cannot

say. I only spin the yarn as it occurred to me. Strike the bell

there, Gawthrop."

"Aye, aye, sir," growled old Noah, who had been dozing astride the

spanker-boom.

"Call the next watch; it is Captain Bartelot's, and now, Mr. Ashton,

'tis time for you and I to leave the deck, and turn in."

CHAPTER XVIII.

RIO DE JANEIRO.

On a gorgeous tropical morning, when the _Princess_ was nearing her

destined port, and when Morrison declared that already he could see

the "land-blink" in the sky, Morley watched with some interest the

result of what is termed in nautical astronomy, "taking a sight," or

"making an observation," by noting the altitude of any heavenly body,

in order to estimate the latitude and longitude.

"What is the time?" asked Bartelot.

"Twelve, sir, by the sun," replied Morrison.

"And by the chronometer?"

"Twelve."

"Then bring me the correct latitude, while I calculate the longitude.

I have had a capital sight to-day."

He then relinquished the quadrant, and proceeded, compass in hand, to

"prick off," as the sailors term it, the ship's place upon the chart.

Looking the while at a large chart of the Southern and Northern

Atlantic, Morley asked:

"Where should a vessel, bound for the Mauritius, be now, if she left

London at the same time I said the _Hermione_ would sail?"

"Always the same thought, Morley?" said Bartelot, looking up with a

smile.

"Well, Tom?"

"If winds are fair, and all went well"--at these words Morley gave a

sigh of anxiety--"she should now be here, about St. Helena, or a few

miles to the southward, and off the African coast."

"And we are how far from that?"

"Farther than I should like to fly, Morley."

Poor Morley sighed again, and looked eagerly at the chart; thereon,

by three spans of his hand, he could compass the world of waters that

lay between him and Ethel Basset.

On the 6th July, the _Princess_ was in latitude 19 deg. 57 min.

south; longitude, 37 deg. 48 min. west; and Cabo Frio (or the cold

cape of South America) bore about forty-five miles to the westward.

They were drawing very near Rio de Janeiro, and many ships bound for

the same quarter were in sight daily.

The trade-wind continued steady and fine; Morley looked with keen

interest on the ships that veered from time to time in sight. Among

them all, might be one that would have a freight for the Isle of

France.

To search for such was to be his first object and occupation on

landing; and worthy Tom Bartelot assured him that money should not be

wanting to further his double purpose of joining Ethel and punishing

Cramply Hawkshaw.

"But, ah, Tom," said he, on one occasion, "how, or when, is a poor

devil such as I to repay you?"

"Think of that when the time comes," said Tom, laughing.

About 10 A.M., on the morning of the 9th, the look-out man, old Noah

Gawthrop, who was in the forecrosstrees, sung out, in his queer voice:

"Land a-head!"

"Where away?" asked Morrison, jumping off the companion seat.

"Land on the starboard bow, sir," added Noah.

Morley's heart leaped at the sound, and the telescopes of Bartelot

and Morrison were speedily levelled in the direction indicated.

"It should be Cabo Frio," said the Scotchman.

"And Cabo Frio it is!" added Bartelot, emphatically. "Look, Morley,

that is the great headland on the coast of Brazil."

"It was there the _Thetis_ frigate was wrecked in 1830," added

Morrison; "she had lost her reckoning, on a dark December night, and

was borne more than twenty-four miles to leeward by the current."

"Then we shall see Rio to-night?" said Morley.

"No, no; Rio lies sixty-four miles beyond the Ilha de Cabo Frio--the

cold cape, rather a misnomer in this season, at least," replied the

mate.

"Steward, bring up the case-bottle; let the men forward have each a

tot of grog, while we'll have a glass below on the head of this."

"Head of what, Tom?" asked Morley.

"Scenting the land, to be sure," replied Bartelot, as the three

descended to the cabin.

"You are a clever seaman, Tom, and have made the land to a minute, at

the time you foretold a week ago."

Bartelot laughed, and said:

"Father wanted me to go into the navy, where he said I was certain to

shine, as I never was out of scrapes and turmoils at school and at

home; but I had no ambition. What does old Topham's song end with?"

and pouring out his grog, Bartelot began to sing:

"'Ambition, they tell me, has charms for us all,

But well I'm convinced they are charms that must pall;

The pageant of splendour may lure for a while,

But soon we grow sick of its weight and its toil;

Nor can it compare with us, Morley, my boy,

Whose appetites strengthen the more we enjoy.

Then deign ye, kind powers! with this wish to comply--

May I always be drinking, yet always be dry!'"

After the long voyage, sixty-four miles from the Cabo to Rio seemed a

trifle to Morley. He strove to be thankful and content in his heart,

that the first portion of his watery pilgrimage was nearly

accomplished, and that he had now attained what was rather more than

the beginning of a future end.

By 5 P.M. they were within seven miles of the land, and the rocky

Cabo, a vast insular mass of granite, which terminates a long range

of mountains, was glowing redly in the light of the Brazilian sun.

The highest summit there has an altitude of more than 1,500 feet; the

sea and sky around were both serene and beautiful.

The water possessed a strangely pure and crystalline aspect; so much

so, that at times the bed, or what appeared to be the bed of the

ocean, was visible, but this was only the flowers of the sea.

Long and mysterious plants (the _Nereocystis_), which, with a stem no

thicker than a spunyarn, grow from their roots in the deep bed of the

ocean to the length of 300 feet and more, and have at their upper end

a huge bulbous-shaped vesicle, filled with air, which floats upon the

surface, or near it, and from this bulb there springs a thick crown

of dusky leaves.

These tremendous marine vegetables are more commonly found on the

north-western than on the eastern shores of America, but many are to

be seen at times off the coast of the southern continent.

Elsewhere Morley's eye could discern masses of rock or coral reefs,

that rose to within fifty or sixty feet of the surface, showing a

freight of shellfish, sea-anemones, wondrous creeping things, and

fibrous tufts of giant seaweed.

But the scene changed with tropical rapidity, when with midnight

there came on sudden black squalls, with heavy rain, deep hoarse

thunder, and vivid red lightning, that seemed to flash and play about

the granite summits of the Cabo Frio with a brilliance that eclipsed

the gleam of its lighthouse, which marks now where our frigate, the

_Thetis_, perished.

Bartelot reefed his fore and mizzen topsails; but when the weather

faired he shook out the reefs again. He set his main

topgallant-sail, mainsail, and jib, and the rising sun that gilded

the mountains which bound the plain of the Corcovada saw the

_Princess_ running fair into the lovely bay of Rio de Janeiro, with

the British ensign flying at the peak, her private colours at the

foremast-head.

Now were heard the rattle of the chain-cables, as they were hauled up

from the tier, laid along the decks in French-fake, that is, in lines

all clear, and bent to the working anchor.

The harbour of Rio, one of the finest in the world in size and form,

stretches twenty nautical miles inland, widening to the breadth of

eighteen miles at its centre. On its western slope stands the city

of Rio, or, as it is sometimes called, San Sebastian, crowded with

magnificent edifices.

The entrance to the bay from the ocean is bounded at its southern

extremity by the Pao d'Asucar, or sugarloaf, a conical mountain, more

than 1,200 feet in height.

On the northern side the ocean rolls in snowy foam, against a mighty

rock of glistening granite, at the base of which stands the castle of

Santa Cruz, with a triple platform, from which 120 pieces of cannon

point towards the sea.

Looking beyond this entrance, the bay is seen to be studded with

little isles, nearly eighty in number, clothed with glorious verdure,

brilliant with fruit, giant flowers, and wondrous foliage, though

here and there the grim muzzle of a cannon shows where a battery is

built, and among these isles a fleet of small steamers are always

puffing and gliding.

Beyond all this and around it--a new scene, indeed, to Morley--the

great mountains of the new world rise in a thousand fantastic forms,

covered to their summits with wood, forming a vast amphitheatre

around Rio de Janeiro, the City of Palaces, a title which it well

deserves.

Morrison, who had been getting the cable clear, and the anchors

hoisted over the bows, now came to Morley's side, and pointed out the

church of Nossa Senhora da Gloria, on the lofty hill that juts into

the sea, between the city and the Praya de Flamengo; and then

indicating the castle, on which the gaudy flag of the Brazilian

Empire floated, he said, in his deep Scotch accent:

"In 1515, where that great castle stands, there stood only a wooden

fort, built in that year by Juan Diaz de Salis, to be a place of

refuge for Protestants, and forty years after they named it the

Castle of Coligni; but the Portuguese came upon it in the night, and

put every living thing in it to the sword. It was Juan Diaz who gave

the place its name, Janeiro, as his ship ran into the bay in the

first days of January. A wild place it must have been then."

"Hands prepare to shorten sail--stand by the anchor!" were now the

orders of Bartelot.

The canvas was clewed up preparatory to being handed, and the light

warm breeze from the wooded shore swept through the bared rigging and

spars.

Already the seamen were hurrying up aloft; the small bower anchor was

let go with a plunge; hoarsely rushed the chain-cable as it vanished

from the deck through the hawse-hole; and now the _Princess_ rode at

her moorings in eight-fathom water, in the noble harbour of Rio de

Janeiro--the region where eternal spring and endless summer reign.

And now, leaving Morley Ashton to push his way among the skippers and

merchant-officers in the Rua Direta, and all its branching streets,

seeking a mode of transit to the Isle of France, while Tom Bartelot

sends his crew ashore, and procures a copper-coloured gang to "break

bulk" and start his cargo, we shall return to Ethel Basset, whom we

left five chapters back, with her quondam lover, on board the

_Hermione_, of London.

CHAPTER XIX.

ETHEL AMID THE ATLANTIC ISLES.

Unlike the _Princess_, which, as we have shown, accomplished a most

prosperous voyage, the _Hermione_ encountered a series of head-winds

and hard gales; she had several of her spars carried away, and even

before skirting the Bay of Biscay, had to put in requisition her

spare foretopmast and topsail yards.

This was considered by all on board a singularly unlucky beginning,

as Captain Phillips said; all the more so, that a pair of sparrows

had built their nest in the forecrosstrees, during the time that the

ship lay in the London-dock, and had finished it, too, undeterred by

all the noise and bustle around them.

This was considered so good an omen, that the event was actually

recorded in the ship's log; biscuit crumbs were scattered in the tops

for their support, and orders were given not to disturb the birds, if

possible, so they went to sea with the ship. So the female sat upon

her eggs, while the male hopped and twittered about the top and below

in search of the scattered crumbs; but in the first tough breeze, as

some ill-disposed fellow--supposed to be Pedro Barradas--was going

aloft at night, the nest was destroyed, and flung with its two little

eggs on the deck; the poor birds were swept away to sea, and hence,

as Mr. Quail affirmed, came the ill-luck, the head-winds and hard

gales, encountered by the ship.

After passing the Madeira Isles her foremast was carried away, and at

the very time when Tom Bartelot was informing Morley Ashton that she

should be somewhere off St. Helena, the _Hermione_ was creeping

slowly under a jury foremast into the harbour of Teguise (the chief

town of Lanzarota, one of the Canary Isles), to refit; and there the

dockyard appliances were so small and so poor, that she was delayed

for more than a fortnight.

Mr. Basset took Ethel and Rose to a posada in the town, where, though

the accommodation was miserable, as usual in all Spanish posadas, it

was a vast relief, after the discomfort, circumscribed space, and

monotony of the ship, to tread on _terra firmâ_, under the cloudless

sky of the Canary Isles, and to see the sheep, and goats, and camels,

too, browsing in the grassy pastures.

The inevitable Hawkshaw, glad, for certain cogent reasons of his own,

to keep clear of the ship, or, at least, of its crew, of course

accompanied them, as Mr. Basset's guest.

It should have been mentioned that when the captain came on deck next

morning, after recognising Pedro Barradas on the yard-arm overnight,

so complete was the change in his costume and toilet, that scarcely

anyone knew him.

His thick, luxuriant brown beard, and most cherished moustaches, were

shaved clean off; his hair, of which he had a great quantity, was now

shorn quite short. In lieu of the scarlet tarboosh, in which he had

been hitherto wont to figure, he wore a white wide-awake; and his

military boots, with brass heels, were exchanged for a pair of white

shoes with yellow soles.

For the natty, short sack-coat, and Spanish sash beneath it, a

surtout and vest of most ample and business-like cut had been

substituted. On the whole, his _tout ensemble_, if less picturesque

and striking, was infinitely more respectable.

"Lor' bless me!" exclaimed old Nance Folgate, terrified to meet on

the companion-stair a man whose eyes and voice she alone could

recognise.

Captain Phillips and Mr. Basset laughed heartily at the change; even

Ethel smiled, and Rose made great fun of it; and it was soon remarked

that, with his hirsute appendages, the ci-devant captain relinquished

all his South American reminiscences, the Spanish interjections and

Yankeeisms, with which his conversation had been so fully flavoured

hitherto--a change greatly for the better.

Hawkshaw pleaded the heat they were soon to encounter as a reason for

his new toilet, though they were scarcely clear of the "chops of the

Channel." For many weighty reasons, best known to himself, he kept a

nervous watch upon Pedro and Zuares Barradas; and the appearance of

either of these seamen coming aft, to take the wheel, or perform any

other ship's duty, sent the Texan captain below, with a celerity and

abruptness which was so often repeated, that there were

times--especially when he was conversing with the young ladies, Mr.

Basset, Captain Phillips, or Dr. Heriot--that it became so strange as

to excite remark, though no one could have understood what his

conduct meant.

The rough weather encountered by the _Hermione_ after leaving the

British Channel afforded ample excuses for remaining below; but how

to avoid his dreaded South American acquaintances during the months

of a protracted voyage he knew not, and he felt the wretched

conviction that it was impossible!

Whether it was a dread of some destructive revelation, or whether his

growing love for Ethel had somewhat purified this luckless and guilty

fellow's mind, we know not; neither can we say whether he repented

the terrible past, as that could be known to Heaven and himself only.

It is very possible that he may have felt alike repentance and

remorse, with gleams of hope for the future, as no human character is

so utterly bad as to be without one redeeming point at least.

"No time," says Robert Burns (in one of his unpublished letters

preserved at Edinburgh), "can cast a light further on the present

resolves of the human mind; but time will reconcile, and has

reconciled, many a man to that iniquity which at first he abhorred."

The appearance of Zuares had even a more exciting effect on Hawkshaw

than that of Pedro.

Zuares, the unwitting matricide of the Barranca Secca, was a more

youthful but equally picturesque-looking ruffian. He was decidedly

handsome, with well-cut features; his eyes and nose were very fine;

but he had a cruel and savage mouth, which he inherited from his

Mexican blood.

It seemed the very machination of Satan, or of a retributive destiny,

that, after he had so fearfully rid himself of Ashton, now placed him

in the same ship with these two men.

If seen by them, if known and recognised, he felt himself lost with

Ethel, Mr. Basset, and all on board.

Should they meet him face to face, he dare not decline their

recognition, and with that recognition the assumption or resumption

of an old and insolent familiarity, from which he had everything to

dread, and from which he shrank instinctively now.

Poor wretch! his position was far from enviable.

He felt conscious, probably, that he had led a wild and reckless, a

wandering and unprofitable life; but softened now by his regard for

Ethel Basset--though even that regard was full of self-interest and

selfishness--he mentally resolved that, if he were spared from this

disaster, this hourly terror of exposure, and if he escaped the toils

and perils in which those Barradas could involve him, that he would

turn over a new leaf, and be for the future a better man.

"Ah, these new leaves!" exclaims Digby Grand; "if the half of them

were turned over, what a gigantic volume they would form in the life

of many of us!"

With this resolution, perhaps, he strove to soothe the remorse, or

guilt, he felt for the outrage on Morley Ashton. It was not his

first crime, probably, nor the first time he had taken the life of a

fellow-creature in some fashion.

"Barradas--Barradas!" he never ceased to mutter. "How the wheel of

fortune turns! What fiend brought us together again? But fate is

fate, and there is an end of it!"

Consequently, right glad was he to avail himself of a fortnight on

shore at the Canaries, till the _Hermione_ was reported ready for

sea, and had the blue peter fluttering at her new foremast head.

Rose found, in the Canaries, and boat visits to Santa Clara,

Aleguenza, and Graciosa (three islets adjoining Lanzarota), and to

the old Spanish Castle, which, in 1596, the Earl of Cumberland

assailed at the head of 600 men-at-arms, ample materials for the

diary she was keeping; and Ethel wrote letters to the Pages, and

other dear friends at Acton-Rennel, dated from the Posado de St.

Iago, opposite the Canal de Bocagna, detailing the terrors and

dangers they had undergone, in such exaggerated terms as young ladies

generally resort to when excited, or fired by a desire to run into

flowery description.

A fine day in July--but all days are fine in that region, save those

of October and November--saw the _Hermione_ entirely refitted, her

spars and hamper all a-taunto, under a heavy press of sail, once more

at sea, and leaving the Cape of Mascona rapidly astern, while the

sharp cone of Teneriffe rose as rapidly from the ocean on her

weather-bow.

For some time after this the voyage was truly delightful, and, as Mr.

Basset had anticipated, the change of scene and of air acted most

beneficially on Ethel. She was in excellent medical hands, too; for

young Dr. Heriot, though more disposed to be attentive to Rose, was

unremitting in his care of Ethel, to whose pale cheek the colour was

gradually returning.

The atmosphere, especially in the evening, under the quarter-deck

awning, was charming, and a day seldom passed without something

occurring to break the monotony of the voyage.

The Canary Isles were passed in succession; one day they had a

glimpse of Africa, about twenty miles distant. It was the great

headland forming the extremity of Jebel Kahl, or the Black Mountains

of Sahara.

Low, and dim, and distant looked that little strip of blue coast.

How strange to think it was a portion of that vast continent of

perils and wonders--the land of Park, Lander, Livingstone, Speke, and

Grant!

After leaving the Canaries they had a tedious calm for nearly three

days--a fresh delay.

The ocean was still as the waters of an English mere in summer. The

sails hung straight and motionless upon the yards, though the ship

kept sheering round from time to time, her bowsprit pointing to all

the points of the compass in slow succession, and occasional swells

that heaved slowly up and sunk noiselessly down in the glassy sea,

jerked the neglected rudder and its wheel a few inches to and fro.

Ethel and Rose sat reading under the awning; the doctor was fishing

over the taffrail; the mates were forward superintending the men, who

were busy cleaning the forecastle.

Captain Phillips sat somewhat moodily on a spare topsail-yard, that

was slung alongside, smoking, with his short fat legs dangling over

the water, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he was waiting to

see the coming breeze.

Tempted by the heat, Manfredi was about to strip for a bathe about

the ship's bows, when the Yankee, Bill Badger, who was busy painting

the grating of the head-boards, sung out:

"Take care, mate! for here comes a fellow that gobble up the prophet

Joaney. Once in his ballast port, I calculate you'll never be a

capting, Mr. Manfreddy. Blowd if I don't get a harpoon, and have a

shy at the beggar!"

"Look, Miss Rose," cried Captain Phillips, from his perch on the

spare topsail-yard, "there goes a sea-lawyer."

Rose looked at her papa and laughed, while the ship's cook threw over

a piece of rancid pork, with a sharp skewer in it, for mischief, as

there is a natural antipathy between Jack Tar and Jack Shark.

The shark--a white one--turned on his back, and the piece of pork

that floated steadily on the oily sea vanished into his capacious

maw, the opening and shutting of which made the girls shudder, and

old Nurse Folgate, who was knitting beside them, utter a "Lor' a

mussy me!" with great earnestness.

Hawkshaw hoped the heat might tempt either of the Barradas to take a

bathe alongside, but they were much too cautious to do so.

"How horrible!" said Ethel, as the monster sailed away, with his

black triangular fin erect.

"A fellow like that would dart at a man in the sea, and snap him up

as a snipe would a fly," said Dr. Heriot. "I have heard, Miss

Basset, of the master of a Guinea ship, among whose cargo of slaves

there prevailed a strange rage for drowning in the belief that, after

death, they would be restored to their native country, their tribes

and wigwams; to cure them of this, or to convince them that they

could not reanimate their dead bodies, he ordered one, a gigantic

negro, who had died at a ring-bolt, to be towed overboard by the

heels at the end of a line. A shark rose. In an instant twenty men

tailed on the rope to haul the body in, yet that instant did not

suffice. The shark devoured every morsel save the feet and ankles,

which were tied by the end of the rope."

One day a whale rose suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the

ship, and brought a shriek of dismay from old Nance Folgate, who

clung to Manfredi, the Italian mate, on seeing it floating steadily,

like Sindbad's island in the sea; and still greater was her terror

when he spouted a cloud of water in the air, stuck up his flukes, and

went surging down with a sound like a roar to the depths below.

On another day there came a shoal of porpoises from windward of the

ship, rushing in madlike and headlong career.

On they come, on and on, surging, rollicking, flashing in the

sunshine, as they leaped from one bank of water to the other, all

keeping time in their ocean race, all going together, and all

crossing the ship's bows in one frolicsome shoal. So close do they

pass that their little red eyes can be seen twinkling and glancing;

and away they go, surging and leaping on towards the far horizon,

till they are lost or blinded amid "the grey and melancholy wastes"

of ocean. It is always on a breezy day that these living shoals are

seen. Rose clapped her hands, as if at a horse-race, when they

passed.

"You English call them porpoises, from our Italian term,

_porco-pesce_," said the soft voice of Manfredi; "but is it not

strange, Mees Rose, that they do go so very fast with only three

fins?"

"Only three, Mr. Manfredi?"

"Yes; one on the back, placed rather below the middle, and two on the

breast--no more."

But greater was the excitement when a water-logged vessel, whose deck

was almost flush with the sea--a brig which the waves of some mighty

storm had swept of everything from stem to stern, so that the stumps

of her two masts, and a few weather-worn timber-heads, alone were

visible above her planks--was passed, drifting, silent and alone,

about two miles to leeward.

The melancholy object excited, of course, much remark, and made Ethel

and her sister weep, and speculate upon the probable fate of her

crew, their story, and the story of that poor deserted ship, to the

rusty chain-plates of which the barnacles and seaweed clung, as it

drifted away into the wastes of sea and sky; and Ethel thought of the

oft-quoted words of the Psalmist--words she had heard again and again

in the old church at home:

"They who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great

waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the

mighty deep."

Dr. Heriot, who was a very enterprising young man, Hawkshaw, and

Manfredi, proposed to have a boat lowered for the purpose of visiting

the wreck, and ascertaining her name; but the _Hermione_ was running

free, under a press of sail, and Captain Phillips and Mr. Quail

flatly refused permission; so that the old wreck was rapidly dropped

astern.

On the warm summer Sunday mornings, when the quarter-deck--that

looked so very small when they came on board at first--got an extra

drenching, holystoning, and swabbing; when the running rigging aft

was more neatly coiled over the belaying-pins, and between the four

six-pound carronades; when the binnacle lamps and other brasses had

received an extra polish; when camp-stools, cushions, and hassocks

were brought from the cabin, and "a church was rigged;" when the

somewhat motley crew assembled in their cleanest attire, and stood

by, bareheaded and respectful (to all outward appearance), to hear

jolly Captain Phillips read the grand and impressive service of the

Church of England, with Mr. Quail, the first mate, or Dr. Leslie

Heriot, acting as clerk, making all the responses; while the great

ship, with her vast spread of white canvas bellying on the wind, and

shining in the sun, with the British flag flying aloft in honour of

the day, though no other eyes could behold it, save those in heaven;

when all this took place weekly, we say, Ethel was indeed soothed and

charmed by the solemnity of the scene, upon that illimitable world of

waters, and her thoughts naturally reverted to the gray old house of

God at home, with its Norman spire and Gothic porch, the pew where

last she had sat by the side of Morley Ashton, and then she seemed to

see the old yew-tree that cast its shadow on her beloved mother's

grave--the grave which lay in that dear English soil she never more

might tread, never more might see.

CHAPTER XX.

MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA.

At such times as the Divine service on Sunday, when there was a great

muster of the crew, Hawkshaw always remained below on one pretence or

other, unless he had assured himself that his two _bêtes noire_, the

Barradas, were neither at the wheel nor in "the church," which was so

easily improvised upon the quarter-deck.

On these occasions, it was observable that Rose Basset and the young

Scotch doctor always read from the same book.

This did not fail to attract the notice of Captain Phillips, who,

being unable to resist a joke thereon, gave them once or twice a

remarkably knowing wink, in the very middle of the service he was

reading so solemnly, a proceeding which very much scandalised Mr.

Samuel Quail, and made Rose colour and glance nervously at her papa.

And there was one Sunday when, after prayers had been read, the crew

dismissed forward to smoke, sing, or mend their clothes, as usual on

Sundays, and the passengers had assembled in the cabin for lunch, he

proceeded to quiz poor Rose and the doctor, by offering, in his

"double capacity of skipper and parson, to perform a Scotch marriage

for them on the high seas."

Rose reddened again with so much real annoyance at this broad jest,

that Captain Phillips offered a species of salt-water apology, which

rather made the matter worse; so the handsome young doctor blushed

too, all the more so, perhaps, that his soup was scalding hot, and

the thermometer on the bulkhead stood at eighty in the shade.

"After the rigs I have seen run by those who live by salt water,"

continued the jolly captain, "I have always thanked my

stars--wherever they may be--that I am still a bachelor; yet had I,

in other times, met such a young lady as you, Miss Rose, mayhap I'd

have struck my colours and changed my mind--who knows? But perhaps

things are best as they are."

"You should be ashamed of saying so, captain," said Rose; "and I am

certain that some one has missed a good kind husband, through your

mistake."