The indications of bad weather which had been observed were not
misleading, for it not only became what Terrence O'Connor had termed
"durty," but it went on next day to develop a regular gale, insomuch
that every rag of canvas, except storm-sails, had to be taken in and the
hatches battened down, thus confining the passengers to the cabins.
These passengers looked at matters from wonderfully different points of
view, and felt accordingly. Surroundings had undoubtedly far greater
influence on some of them than was reasonable. Of course we refer to
the landsmen only. In the after-cabin, where all was light, cosy, and
comfortable, and well fastened, and where a considerable degree of
propriety existed, feelings were comparatively serene. Most of the
ladies sought the retirement of berths, and became invisible, though not
necessarily inaudible; a few, who were happily weather-proof, jammed
themselves into velvety corners, held on to something fixed, and lost
themselves in books. The gentlemen, linking themselves to articles of
stability, did the same, or, retiring to an appropriate room, played
cards and draughts and enveloped themselves in smoke. Few, if any of
them, bestowed much thought on the weather. Beyond giving them,
occasionally, a little involuntary exercise, it did not seriously affect
them.
Very different was the state of matters in the steerage. There the
difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in
passage-money. There was no velvet, not much light, little space to
move about, and nothing soft. In short, discomfort reigned, so that the
unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of tin
panikins and plates, the crashing of things that had broken loose, the
rough exclamations of men, and the squalling of miserable children,
affected the nerves of the timid to such an extent that they naturally
took the most gloomy view of the situation.
Of course the mere surroundings had no influence whatever on the views
held by Bob Massey and Joe Slag.
"My dear," said the latter, in a kindly but vain endeavour to comfort
Mrs Mitford, "rumpusses below ain't got nothin' to do wi' rows
overhead--leastways they're only an effect, not a cause."
"There! there's another," interrupted Mrs Mitford, with a little
scream, as a tremendous crash of crockery burst upon her ear.
"Well, my dear," said Slag, in a soothing, fatherly tone, "if all the
crockery in the ship was to go in universal smash into the lee scuppers,
it couldn't make the wind blow harder."
Poor Mrs Mitford failed to derive consolation from this remark. She
was still sick enough to be totally and hopelessly wretched, but not
sufficiently so to be indifferent to life or death. Every superlative
howl of the blast she echoed with a sigh, and each excessive plunge of
the ship she emphasised with a weak scream.
"I don't know what _you_ think," she said, faintly, when two little boys
rolled out of their berths and went yelling to leeward with a mass of
miscellaneous rubbish, "but it do seem to be as if the end of the world
'ad come. Not that the sea _could_ be the end of the world, for if it
was, of course it would spill over and then we would be left dry on the
bottom--or moist, if not dry. I don't mean that, you know, but these
crashes are so dreadful, an' my poor 'ead is like to split--which the
planks of this ship will do if they go on creakin' so. I _know_ they
will, for 'uman-made things can't--"
"You make your mind easy, my woman," said her husband, coming forward at
the moment and sitting down to comfort her. "Things are lookin' a
little better overhead, so one o' the men told me, an' I heard Terrence
say that we're goin' to have lobscouse for dinner to-day, though what
that may be I can't tell--somethin' good, I suppose."
"Something thick, an' luke-warm, an' greasy, _I_ know," groaned Peggy,
with a shudder.
There was a bad man on board the ship. There usually is a bad man on
board of most ships; sometimes more than one. But this one was
unusually bad, and was, unfortunately, an old acquaintance of the
Mitfords. Indeed, he had been a lover of Mrs Mitford, when she was
Peggy Owen, though her husband knew nothing of that. If Peggy had known
that this man--Ned Jarring by name--was to be a passenger, she would
have prevailed on her husband to go by another vessel; but she was not
aware of it until they met in the fore-cabin the day after leaving port.
Being a dark-haired, sallow-complexioned man, he soon became known on
board by the name of Black Ned. Like many bad men, Jarring was a
drunkard, and, when under the influence of liquor, was apt to act
incautiously as well as wickedly. On the second day of the gale he
entered the fore-cabin with unsteady steps, and looked round with an air
of solemn stupidity. Besides being dark and swarthy, he was big and
strong, and had a good deal of the bully in his nature. Observing that
Mrs Mitford was seated alone in a dark corner of the cabin with a still
greenish face and an aspect of woe, he staggered towards her, and,
sitting down, took her hand affectionately.
"Dear Peggy," he began, but he got no further, for the little woman
snatched her hand away, sprang up, and confronted him with a look of
blazing indignation. Every trace of her sickness vanished as if by
magic. The greenish complexion changed to crimson, and the woebegone
tones to those of firm resolution, as she exclaimed--
"Ned Jarring, if you ever again dare to take liberties with _me_, I'll
tell my 'usband, I will; an' as sure as you're a-sittin' on that seat
'e'll twist you up, turn you outside in, an' fling you overboard!"
Little Mrs Mitford did not wait for a response, but, turning sharply
round, left the cabin with a stride which, for a woman of her size and
character, was most impressive.
Jarring gazed after her with an expression of owlish and unutterable
surprise on his swarthy countenance. Then he smiled faintly at the
unexpected and appalling--not to say curious--fate that awaited him; but
reflecting that, although lugubrious and long, Mitford was deep-chested,
broad-shouldered, and wiry, he became grave again, shook his head, and
had the sense to make up his mind never again to arouse the slumbering
spirit of Peggy Mitford.
It was a wild scene that presented itself to the eyes of the passengers
in the _Lapwing_ when the hatches were at last taken off, and they were
permitted once more to go on deck. Grey was the prevailing colour. The
great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into
which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and
tipped with white. The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on
black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little
vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a drizzling, heaving, hissing
ocean.
The coxswain's wife stood leaning on her stalwart husband's arm, by the
foremast, gazing over the side.
"It do seem more dreary than I expected," she said. "I wouldn't be a
sailor, Bob, much as I've bin used to the sea, an' like it."
"Ah, Nell, that's 'cause you've only bin used to the _sea-shore_. You
haven't bin long enough on blue water, lass, to know that folks'
opinions change a good deal wi' their feelin's. Wait till we git to the
neighbour'ood o' the line, wi' smooth water an' blue skies an' sunshine,
sharks, and flyin' fish. You'll have a different opinion then about the
sea."
"Right you are, Bob," said Joe Slagg, coming up at that moment. "Most
people change their opinions arter gittin' to the line, specially when
it comes blazin' hot, fit to bile the sea an' stew the ship, an' a dead
calm gits a hold of 'e an' keeps ye swelterin' in the doldrums for a
week or two."
"But it wasn't that way we was lookin' at it, Joe," returned Nellie,
with a laugh. "Bob was explainin' to me how pleasant a change it would
be after the cold grey sea an' sky we're havin' just now."
"Well, it may be so; but whatever way ye may look at it, you'll change
yer mind, more or less, when you cross the line. By the way, that minds
me that some of us in the steerage are invited to cross the line
to-night--the line that separates us from the cabin--to attend a lectur'
there--an' you'll niver guess the subjec', Bob."
"I know that, Joe. I never made a right guess in my life, that I knows
on. Heave ahead, what is it?"
"A lectur' on the `Lifeboat,' no less! But it aint our lifeboat
sarvice: it's the American one, cause it's to be given by that fine
young fellow, Dr Hayward, who looks as if suthin' had damaged his
constitootion somehow. I'm told he's a Yankee, though he looks uncommon
like an Englishman."
"He's tall an' 'andsome enough, anyhow," remarked Massey.
"Ay, an' he's good enough for anything," said Nellie, with enthusiasm.
"You should see the kind way he speaks to poor Ian when he comes to see
him--which is pretty much every day. He handles him, too, so tenderly--
just like his mother; but he won't give him medicine or advice, for it
seems that wouldn't be thought fair by the ship's doctor. No more it
would, I suppose."
"D'ee know what's the matter wi' him?" asked Mitford, who had joined the
group.
"Not I," returned Massey. "It seems more like gineral weakness than
anything else."
"I can tell you," said a voice close to them. The voice was that of
Tomlin, who, although a first-class passenger, was fond of visiting and
fraternising with the people of the fore-cabin. "He got himself
severely wounded some time ago when protecting a poor slave-girl from
her owner, and he's now slowly recovering. He is taking a long voyage
for his health. The girl, it seems, had run away from her owner, and
had nearly escaped into Canada, where of course, being on British soil,
she would be free--"
"God bless the British soil!" interrupted little Mrs Mitford, in a tone
of enthusiasm which caused a laugh all round; but that did not prevent
some of the bystanders from responding with a hearty "Amen!"
"I agree with you, Mrs Mitford," said Tomlin; "but the owner of the
poor slave did not think as you and I do. The girl was a quadroon--that
is, nearly, if not altogether, white. She was also very beautiful.
Well, the owner--a coarse brute--with two followers, overtook the
runaway slave near a lonely roadside tavern--I forget the name of the
place--but Dr Hayward happened to have arrived there just a few minutes
before them. His horse was standing at the door, and he was inside,
talking with the landlord, when he heard a loud shriek outside. Running
out, he found the girl struggling wildly in the hands of her captors.
Of course, he demanded an explanation, though he saw clearly enough how
matters stood.
"`She's my slave,' said the owner, haughtily. He would not, perhaps,
have condescended even with that much explanation if he had not seen
that the landlord sympathised with the doctor.
"This was enough, however, for Hayward, who is a man of few words and
swift action. He was unarmed, but carried a heavy-handled whip, with
this he instantly felled the slave-owner and one of his men to the
ground before they had time to wink, but the third man drew a pistol,
and, pointing it straight at the doctor's head, would have blown out his
brains if the landlord had not turned the weapon aside and tripped the
man up. Before he could recover Hayward had swung the girl on his
horse, leaped into the saddle, and dashed off at full speed. He did not
draw rein till he carried her over the frontier into Canada, and had
placed her beyond the reach of her enemies."
"Brayvo! the doctor," exclaimed Slag, heartily.
"Then he found," continued Tomlin, "that he had been wounded in the
chest by the ball that was meant for his head, but made light of the
wound until it was found to be serious. The ball was still in him, and
had to be extracted, after which he recovered slowly. The romantic part
of it is, however, that he fell in love with Eva--that was the girl's
name--and she with him, and they were married--"
"Ah, poor thing," said Mitford; "then she died, and he married again?"
"Not at all," returned Tomlin, "she did not die, and he did not marry
again."
"How--what then about that splendid wife that he's got in the
after-cabin _now_?" asked Mitford.
"That's her. That's Eva, the quadroon. She's not only as white as Mrs
Massey or Mrs Mitford there, but she's been educated and brought up as
a lady and among ladies, besides having the spirit of a _real_ lady,
which many a born one hasn't got at all."
There were many fore-cabin passengers who "crossed the line" that night
in order to hear the gallant American lecture, but chiefly to see the
beautiful lady who had been so romantically rescued from slavery.
"Not a drop of black blood in her body!" was Mrs Mitford's verdict
after the lecture was over.
"An' what if there was?" demanded Slag, in a tone of indignation. "D'ee
think that white blood is worth more than black blood in the eyes o' the
Almighty as made 'em both?"
The lecture itself was highly appreciated, being on a subject which Bob
and Joe had already made interesting to the steerage passengers. And
the lecturer not only treated it well, but was himself such a fine,
lion-like, yet soft-voiced fellow that his audience were quite charmed.
Soon the _Lapwing_ was gliding through the warm waters of the equatorial
seas, and those of the passengers who had never visited such regions
before, were immensely interested by the sight of dolphins, sharks, and
especially flying-fish.
"I _don't_ believe in 'em," said Mrs Mitford to Mrs Massey one day as
they stood looking over the side of the ship.
"I do believe in 'em," said Mrs Massey, "because my Bob says he has
seen 'em."
Not long after this double assertion of opinion there was a sudden cry
that flying-fish were to be seen alongside, and Mrs Mitford actually
beheld them with her own eyes leap out of the sea, skim over the waves a
short distance, and then drop into the water again; still she was
incredulous! "Flyin'" she exclaimed, "nothin' of the sort; they only
made a long jump out o' the water, an' wriggled their tails as they
went; at least they wriggled something, for I couldn't be rightly sure
they _'ad_ tails to wriggle, any more than wings--never 'avin' seen 'em
except in pictures, which is mostly lies. Indeed!"
"Look-out!" exclaimed Slag at the moment, for a couple of fish flew over
the bulwarks just then, and fell on deck almost at Mrs Mitford's feet.
When she saw them there floundering about, wings and all, she felt
constrained to give in.
"Well, well," she said, raising her hands and eyes to heaven, as though
she addressed her remarks chiefly to celestial ears, "did ever mortal
see the likes? Fish wi' wings an' no feathers! I'll believe _anything_
after that!"
Peggy Mitford is not the first, and won't be the last woman--to say
nothing of man--who has thus bounded from the depths of scepticism to
the heights of credulity.