Come over, come home
Through the salt sea foam.
Never, perhaps, on all that old highway of the waters, that silent
road along which so many had steered their course to fabled Ormuz and
to Ind, nor amidst fierce sea-fights 'twixt Arab and Persian, or Arab
and European in later centuries, nor in the howl of storm when the
waters closed around the shipwrecked and doomed, had there arisen a
more piercing shriek than that which now issued from Bella Waldron's
blanched lips.
'My God!' she screamed, repeating the second mate's words. '"The name
is Bampfyld!" Oh, it's Gilbert--Gilbert! There is no other in the Navy
List. Let me go to him, uncle!'
'No, no,' the master said, while good Mrs. Pooley put her arms round
the girl as she stood there by the poop-rails and endeavoured to calm
and soothe her. 'No, no, Bella; they will bring him on board directly,
then,'--and in his desire to ease the girl's heart he raised the ghost
of a smile to his lips--'then you shall nurse him till he is well.
Yet,' he muttered to Charke, as he walked over to where the first mate
stood, 'yet, how on earth does he find himself in that infernal dhow!'
'Heaven knows,' the other answered. 'But, perhaps, 'tis not so
strange, after all. There may have been a fight between his ship and
the slaver--though there's not much fight in them when they get a
sight of the British Flag!--or he may have been sent to board her and
got cut down, or half-a-hundred things. All of which,' he added, with
his now usual cynicism, 'are equally likely or unlikely. Anyhow, he is
here--or will be in a few moments--and we shall have him for a
passenger to Bombay. Your niece is in luck, sir,' and he turned on his
heel and went down the ladder to the deck to see to the raising of the
boat, which was now making its way back to the ship.
To Stephen Charke, still loving the girl as madly as he did, still
raging inwardly at the knowledge that every knot which the ship made
was bringing her nearer to the man who, as he considered, had torn her
from him, this incident seemed the last and most crushing blow of all.
God knows what hopes the mate had cherished in his bosom since first
he had learnt that Bella was to be a passenger in her uncle's ship for
about four months; what ideas might have been revolving in his mind as
to whether, in those four months, something extraordinary, something
almost unheard of--not to be dreamt of nor foreseen--might happen to
give him one more chance of winning her. He was a romantically-minded
man, a man with so rich an imagination that, to him, there sometimes
came ideas that few are ever burdened with. And, in that full and
teeming imagination, there had been pictured to him visions of the
_Emperor of the Moon_ being wrecked and Bella and he alone spared--he,
of course, saving her at the peril of his own life and winning her
away from her more aristocratic lover by so doing. Or, he dreamt of
that lover being himself wrecked and lost, or pierced by an Arab spear
in some affray, or shot in a hand-to-hand fight with a particularly
bold slaver (since he knew well enough that the ships of the Bombay
station were often enough down here) or--or--or he cherished any mad
vision that first rose to his brain.
And now--now--this very man, this successful rival, this aristocratic
naval officer, with his high birth and future peerage, was actually
being brought aboard the ship where the woman was whom they both
loved--brought on board 'slightly wounded,' and his own last chance
thus gone. Gone for ever now! Perhaps, therefore, it was no wonder he
should bite his lip and smother unholy murmurs deep down in his
throat; perhaps, too, he merits compassion. He had loved this girl
fondly since first he set eyes on her, and once, at one time, he
thought he had almost won her. Then this other had come in his way,
had swept him out of Bella's heart, or the approach to it, and his
chance was over. Yet, once again, they had met through an almost
unheard of, and scarcely to be imagined, opportunity, and--lo! here
was his successful rival once more at hand to thwart him. It was hard
on him, or, as he muttered to himself, 'devilish rough.'
The quarter-boat was coming back to the ship now, Fagg steering her,
while, between him and the stroke oar, there lay the body of the young
naval officer, clad in his 'whites.' And again as Bella, madly
whispering 'Gilbert, Gilbert, my darling,' stood by the head of the
accommodation ladder--which had been lowered while the boat was gone
to the dhow--the men brought her lover gently up and laid him on the
deck under the awning.
'Oh, Gilbert!' she cried again, as now she bent over him, while
stroking his hair, which, on the left side of his head, was all matted
with thick coagulated blood, 'Oh, Gilbert! to think that we should
meet thus! Sir!' she screamed to Fagg, who was about to descend again
to the boat to fetch off the others still in the dhow, 'where is he
wounded? Where? Have you had time to discover?'
'I have looked him over, Miss Waldron, and, to tell you the truth, I
do not think there is much the matter with him.'
'Thank God! Oh, thank God!'
'That blood,' the second mate continued, 'comes from a heavy contusion
at the side of his head, but the skull is uninjured. Also there is no
concussion--observe the pupils of the eyes are not at all dilated.'
Then he turned away and went swiftly down the ladder again, muttering
that, if he was to save the Arabs and the negroes, there was no time
to be wasted. The dhow was filling fast, he added. There was a big
hole in her below the waterline, and a quarter of an hour would see
the end of her.
And now Gilbert was carried to the cabin corresponding with Bella's on
the port side of the vessel, aft of the saloon, and Mrs. Pooley, with
the steward, went in to undress him, telling Bella that, as soon as he
was comfortably placed in the bunk, she should come and take her place
by his side. Whereon the girl, distracted by both her hopes and
fears--hopes that the second mate was right in his surmises as to her
lover's wounds, and fears that he was wrong--sat herself down on the
great locker that was in the gangway, and gave herself up to tearful
meditations.
'Ah, if he should die!' she murmured; 'if he should die! Then my heart
will break.'
Though, as you shall see, and have undoubtedly divined, Gilbert was
not to die then, at least.
But, by this time, other things were taking place above which were
almost as startling as the discovery of Lieutenant Bampfyld in that
slave-dhow. Startling, not only because of the unexplained cause that
had brought the Arab slaver into this portion of the Indian Ocean, but
also because of the strange and mysterious behaviour of those others
who were now being conveyed on board the _Emperor of the Moon_. Ere
they came, however, Mr. Fagg had sent over information surprising
enough in itself, and sufficient to prepare all on board the ship for
what, a little later, they were to see.
'The owner--if he is the owner,' he cried, 'the man who fell down
while steering, is dead. He is stiffening. I presume I had best leave
him to go down with the dhow?'
'Ay,' called back Pooley. 'Ay. What about the others?'
'I cannot make them out. The negress seems well enough, but terribly
frightened. As for the four men below, they all appear blind. We have
taken their shackles off and they grope their way about as though in
the dark. My men have to lead them up the ladders--yet their eyes look
clear enough.'
'Have they been kept in the dark, think you, and is the sun dazzling
them now?'
'No, sir. The open gratings have furnished the part of the hold they
were in with plenty of light.' He paused a moment, and those in the
_Emperor_ saw him gazing down steadfastly to that hold; then he called
again: 'We must come away now, sir. The water is pouring in. The dhow
will not swim much longer.'
'Do so,' answered back Pooley; and five minutes afterwards the boat
was on her way to the ship, laden with the rescued negroes. Mr. Fagg
had proved right in his surmise as to the necessity for leaving the
slaver at once. For, ere he came on board, she was observed to heel
over a little to starboard, then to further do so with a jerk; then,
suddenly, she righted until she was on a level keel--and, next, sank
below the waves like a stone, the body of the dead man, who had fallen
down while steering, alone remaining above the heaving waters, and
being swirled round and round in the whirlpool caused by the wreck,
until it too went down.
Creeping up the companion, their hands directed to the side-ropes by
the sailors; feeling the steps with their huge splay feet--as a mule
feels its way along the thin line of insecure path that rounds the
smooth face of a precipice--those stricken men came; huge, splendid
specimens of the swart negroes of Wyassa and Wahiyou and Wagindo, whom
the Arab slaver ships from Kilwa, below Zanzibar, and transports to
Bussorah and Mohamra, whence they often reach the more distant Turkish
harems. Now, looking at them as they stood on the deck of the _Emperor
of the Moon_, it seemed as though their course was almost run. For,
though these men would never be slaves to Arab or Persian or Turk, of
what use to himself or any one else is an unhappy blind nigger who, to
exist at all, must work like a dray-horse?
'Poor wretches!' said Pooley to Charke as they both stood regarding
these blacks, 'see how the shackles have eaten into their ankles. Poor
brutes! They say that sometimes these fellows sell themselves
willingly into slavery; I doubt much if these have done so. Ah, well!
we must take them with us to Bombay, where, at least, they will be
free. I wish,' he added, 'we could communicate with them somehow and
learn who and what they are.'
'Perhaps,' said Charke quietly, unemotionally as ever, 'Lieutenant
Bampfyld can tell us when he comes to. Since he was in the dhow, he
probably knows what she was and where she came from.' Then, breaking
off to cast his eye around, he said: 'Sir, there is a breeze coming
aft. Shall we not make sail?'
'Ay,' cried Pooley, springing to the poop, 'ay, we have had little
enough wind for some days. Summon the watch.'
A few moments later the order to square the yards thundered along the
deck; the men rushed to the braces. Far off, up from the dusky, wizard
south, the wind was coming as they fisted the canvas, and the
_Emperor_, heeling over, gathered way and sped once more towards
India. She gathered way faster and faster as outer jib and topsails
were loosed and sheeted home, fore and main top-gallant sails and
spanker yards braced sharp up, and main-sail, main-royal and mizzen
top-gallant sails set, as well as jibs and staysails. She talked, as
the sailors say, as she went through the water; she hummed and sang
beneath the breeze that came up from far down by the Antarctic
circle--a breeze whose cool breath was gone and was, instead, perfumed
now by the warm spicy odours of adjacent Mauritius and Reunion. Away,
over the vast waste of golden waters she flew, and the master,
standing on the poop, called down to his first mate joyfully to ask
him if this would not do well enough for Bombay.
'Ay, ay, sir,' answered Charke, turning round from giving orders to
the men aloft to answer his chief. 'Ay, ay, sir.'
While to himself he muttered: 'Bombay! India! Well, when we are there,
all is ended for me!'