I QUESTION WETHERLY
It had now become so much one thing on top of another with us, and
everything happening in a moment, so to speak, too: first our being
left on the wreck all in a breath as it were: then our being picked up
by this barque without the dimmest prospect, as my instincts advised
me, of our falling in with the _Countess Ida_ this side of Bombay:
then our destitute condition aboard a craft whose skipper’s sanity I
was now honestly beginning to distrust, and whose people, if he did
not lie, were for the most part a gang of scoundrels: then this sudden
narrow shave of being boarded by above a score of miscreants whose
undoubted hope was to seize the _Lady Blanche_ and to use her in the
room of their own extinguished brig; I say it was so much one thing
on top of another--a catalogue of adventures scarcely conceivable in
these safe-going days of the ocean mailboat, though real enough and in
one way or another frequent enough in my time, I mean in the time of
this narrative--that I protest something of the dismay which possessed
Miss Temple visited me, though I struggled hard in the direction of
a composed face, as we talked over the incident of the morning, and
took a view of the singular staring figure who had charge of the
barque, and directed our eyes at the crew, all hands of whom hung
about forward, briskly yarning, as I might suppose, about the Spanish
longboat’s attempt (and with God knows what sympathy, I would think, as
I peered at the groups), or as we sent our eager gaze into the blue and
brilliant ocean distance in search of any little leaning flake of white
that might flatter us with promise of escape from our disagreeable
situation.
‘I have fully and immovably formed my opinion on two points,’ said
Miss Temple to me as we continued to pace the deck together for some
half hour after the boat had disappeared astern: ‘one is, that Captain
Braine is mad; and the other that he is firmly bent on making you serve
him as his mate.’
‘I own that I now believe he is madder than I first suspected,’ I
answered. ‘His manner and language to you just now were extraordinary.
But as to his employing me as mate--I think this: if the man is crazy,
he may easily go wrong in his navigation; if we sight nothing that will
carry us home, we must obviously stick to the barque, and her safety,
therefore, is ours; consequently, it is desirable, I think, that I
should know what her skipper is doing with her from day to day; and
this I can contrive by consenting to oblige him with taking sights.’
‘I see what you mean,’ she exclaimed thoughtfully. ‘I had not taken
that view; but it is a cruel one to entertain; it implies our remaining
on board until--until---- Oh, Mr. Dugdale! this sort of imprisonment
for the next two or three months is not to be borne.’
‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘you now understand that our very safety demands we
should know where that fellow is carrying his ship. If, then, he should
request me to shoot the sun as we call it, you will not be vexed by my
compliance?’
‘Who am I, Mr. Dugdale, that you should trouble yourself about my
opinion?’
‘You can make yourself felt,’ said I, smiling; ‘I should consider your
eyes matchless in their power to subdue. There is a little passage in
Shakespeare that very exquisitely fits my theory of you.’
‘I would rather not hear it,’ she answered, with a slight curl of her
lip and a faint tinge of rose in her cheeks. ‘You once applied to me a
sentence from Shakespeare that was very unflattering.’
‘What was it?’
‘You compared my complexion to the white death that one of
Shakespeare’s girls talks about.’
‘I remember. I am astonished that your aunt should have repeated to you
what she overheard by stealth.’
‘I do not understand,’ she exclaimed, firing up.
‘She was behind me when I made that quotation, and I was unconscious
of her presence. She should have respected my ignorance. I meant no
wrong,’ I went on, pretending to get into a passion. ‘Your complexion
is pale, and I sought to illustrate it to my little friend Saunders by
an expression of striking nobility and beautiful dignity. If ever I
have the fortune to find myself in your aunt’s company, I shall give
her my mind on this business. How am I to know but that her repeating
what she had heard me let fall excited in you the disgust I found in
your treatment of me?’
She cooled down as I grew hot.
‘The extravagance of your language shocks me,’ she exclaimed, but with
very little temper in her voice. ‘Disgust? You have no right to use
that word. You were always very courteous to me on board the _Countess
Ida_.’
‘Am I less so here?’ said I, still preserving an air of indignation.
‘Do not let us quarrel,’ she said gently, with such a look of sweetness
in her eyes as I should have thought their dark and glowing depths
incapable of.
‘If we quarrel, it will not be my fault,’ said I, disguising myself
with my voice, whilst I looked seawards that my face might not betray
me.
At that moment the captain called out my name: ‘Can I have a word with
you, sir?’ he cried along the short length of poop, standing as he was
at the wheel, whilst we were conversing at the fore-end of the raised
deck.
‘With pleasure,’ I answered.
‘I shall go into the cabin,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it is too hot here. You
will come and tell me what he wants.’
I waited until she had descended the ladder, and then strolled over
to the captain, determined to let him know by my careless air that
whatever I did for him he must regard as an obligation, or as an
expression of my gratitude; but that I was not to be commanded. I
believed I could witness an expression of embarrassment in his fixed
regard that I had not before noticed in him. He eyed me as though lost
in thought, and I waited.
‘Would you object,’ said he, ‘to ascertain our latitude at noon to-day?’
‘Not in the least.’
He seemed to grow a little brighter. ‘And I should feel obliged,’ he
continued, ‘if you’d work out the longitude.’
‘With pleasure,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘But I have no sextant.’
‘I have a couple,’ he exclaimed; ‘I will lend you one;’ and down he
went for it with a fluttered demeanour of eagerness.
I lingered till I supposed he had entered his cabin, then put my head
into the skylight and called softly to Miss Temple, who was seated
almost directly beneath for the air there: ‘He wishes me to take an
observation with him.’
‘What is that?’ she answered, also speaking softly and turning up her
face.
‘I am to shoot the sun--you know, Miss Temple.’
‘Oh, pray, contrive to make some error--commit some blunder to make him
suppose’---- She checked herself, and I heard the captain say that it
was very hot as he came to the companion steps.
In a few moments he arrived on deck, hugging a brace of sextant cases
to his heart. He told me to choose; I took the one nearest to me,
perceived that the instrument was almost new, and as it was now hard
upon the hour of noon, applied it to my eye, the captain standing
alongside of me ogling the sun likewise. I could see the men forward,
waiting for the skipper to make eight bells, staring their hardest at
the now unusual spectacle to them of two sextants at work. For my
part, I should have been shocked by the weakness of my memory if I had
not known what to do. During the two years I had spent at sea I was
thoroughly grounded in navigation--such as it was in those days; and as
I stood screwing the sun down to the horizon, the whole practice of the
art, so far as my education in it went, came back to me as freshly as
though I had been taking sights ever since.
We made eight bells. Mr. Lush came aft to relieve the deck, and I went
below with Captain Braine to work out the barque’s position.
I smiled at Miss Temple as I entered the cuddy; she watched me
eagerly, and the movement of her lips seemed to say, ‘Don’t be long.’
In fact, her face had that meaning; and I gave her a reassuring nod
ere turning to follow the captain into his berth. The apartment was
small and cheerful, plainly stocked with the customary details of a
humble skipper’s sea bedroom; a cot, a small table, a cushioned locker,
a few mathematical instruments, a little hanging shelf of strictly
nautical books, and so on. His chronometer was a good one, handsome for
those days, of a quality one would hardly expect to find in a little
trading-barque of the pattern of this _Lady Blanche_. There was a bag
of charts in a corner, and a small chart of the world lay half unrolled
upon the table, with a bit of the Atlantic Ocean visible exhibiting the
skipper’s ‘pricking’ or tracing of his course down to the preceding day.
‘Here’s ink and paper, sir,’ said he; ‘sit ye down, and let’s see if we
can tally.’
I was always a tolerably quick hand at figures, and had soon completed
my calculations, feeling as though I was at sea again in sober
professional earnest. The captain worked with extraordinary gravity;
his singular eyes overhung the paper without a wink, and his yellow
countenance, with his blue chops and chin, wore the melancholy of a
mute’s face, mixed with an indefinable quality of distress, as though
his mental efforts were putting him to physical pain. We agreed to a
second in our latitude, but differed in our longitude by something over
seven miles.
‘You’ll be in the right, sir--you’ll be in the right!’ he cried,
smiting the table with his fist. ‘It is clear you know the ropes, Mr.
Dugdale. I’ll abide by your reckonings. And now I want ye to do me a
further sarvice.’
‘What is that, captain?’ said I.
‘Well, ye may reckon, of course, that I can write,’ he answered; ‘but
I never was topweight with my pen, as Jack says, nor, for the matter
of that, was Chicken much of a hand. There was some words which he was
always making a foul hawse of. Now, what I want ye to do, Mr. Dugdale,
is to keep my log for me.’
‘All this,’ said I carelessly, yet watching him with attention, ‘is
practically making a chief officer of me.’ He did not answer. ‘Of
course, I don’t object,’ I continued, stimulated more perhaps by Miss
Temple’s than by my own views, ‘to oblige in any possible manner a
gentleman’----
‘I am no gentleman,’ said he, with a wave of the hand.
‘----to whom Miss Temple and myself owe our lives. But I may take it
that it is thoroughly understood the young lady and myself are to quit
your hospitable little ship at the first opportunity that may offer.’
He regarded me in silence for I should say at least a minute; I was
positively beginning to believe that he had fallen dumb. At last he
seemed to come to life. He nodded slowly three times and said very
deliberately: ‘Mr. Dugdale, you and me will be having a talk later on.’
‘But good God, captain,’ cried I, startled out of my assumed manner of
indifference or ease, ‘you will at least assure me that you’ll make no
difficulty of transhipping us when the chance to do so occurs?’
He was again silent, all the while staring at me; and presently, in a
deep voice, said, ‘Later on, sir;’ and with that stood up.
‘How much later on?’ I inquired.
He tapped his brow with his forefinger and answered: ‘It needs
reflection, and I must see my way clearly. So far it’s all right. I’m
much obliged to ye, I’m sure;’ and he went to the door and held it
open, closing it upon himself after I had stepped out.
At the instant I resolved to tell Miss Temple of what had passed; then
swiftly thought no! it will only frighten the poor girl, and she cannot
advise me; I must wait a little; and with a smiling face I seated
myself by her side. But secretly, I was a good deal worried. I chatted
lightly, told her that there was nothing whatever significant in the
captain’s request that I should check his calculations by independent
observations, and did my utmost, by a variety of cheerful small talk
referring wholly to our situation, to keep her heart up. Nevertheless,
secretly I was much bothered. The man had something on his mind of
a dark mysterious nature, it seemed to me; and I could not question
that it formed the motive of his interrogatories as to my seamanship,
and of his testing my qualities as a navigator by putting a sextant
into my hand. Whatever his secret might prove, was it likely to stand
between us and our quitting this barque for something homeward bound?
It was most intolerably certain that if Captain Braine chose to keep me
aboard, I must remain with him. For how should I be able to get away?
Suppose I took it upon myself to signal a vessel when he was below: the
hailing, the noise of backing the yards, the clamour of the necessary
manœuvring, would hardly fail to bring him on deck; and if he chose to
order the men to keep all fast with the boat, there could be no help
for it; he was captain, and the seamen would obey him.
These thoughts, however, I kept to myself. The day passed quietly.
Again and again Miss Temple and I would search the waters for any
sign of a ship; but I took notice that the barrenness of the ocean
did not produce the same air of profound misery and dejection which
I had witnessed in her yesterday. In fact, she had grown weary of
complaining; she was beginning to understand the idleness of it. From
time to time, though at long intervals, something fretful would escape
her, some reference to the wretched discomfort of being without change
of apparel; to the misfortune of having fallen in with a ship, whose
forecastle people, if her captain was to be believed, were for the most
part no better than the company of brigands whom we had scraped clear
of that morning. But it seemed to me that she was slowly schooling
herself to resignation, that she had formed a resolution to look with
some spirit into the face of our difficulties, a posture of mind I was
not a little thankful to behold in her, for, God knows, my own anxiety
was heavy enough, and I did not want to add to it the sympathetic
trouble her grief and despair caused me.
All day long the weather continued very glorious. The captain ordered
a short awning to be spread over the poop, and Miss Temple and I sat
in the shadow of it during the greater part of the afternoon. There
was nothing to read; there was no sort of amusement to enable us to
kill the time. Nevertheless, the hours drifted fleetly past in talk.
Miss Temple was more communicative than she had ever before been;
talked freely of her family, of her friends and acquaintances, of her
visits abroad, and the like. She told me that she was never weary
of riding, that her chief delight in life was to follow the hounds;
and indeed she chatted so fluently on one thing and another that she
appeared to forget our situation: a note almost of gaiety entered her
voice; her dark eyes sparkled, and the cold, marble-like beauty of her
face warmed to the memories which rose in her. I gathered from her
conversation that she was the only living child of her mother, and that
there was nothing between her and a very tolerable little fortune, as
I might infer from her description of the home Lady Temple had kept
up in her husband’s life, and that she still, though in a diminished
degree, supported for the sake of her daughter, though she herself lay
paralysed and helpless, looked after in Miss Temple’s absence by a
maiden sister.
I recollect wondering whilst I listened to her that so fine a woman as
she, and a fortune to boot, had not long ago married. Was she waiting
for some man with whom she could fall in love? or was it some large
dream of title and estate that hindered her? or was it that she was
without a heart? No, thought I; her heart will have had nothing to
do with it. Your heartless girls get married as fast as the rest of
them. And was she heartless? It was not easy to let one’s gaze plumb
the glowing liquid depths of her eyes, which seemed to my fancy to be
charged with the fires of sensibility and passion, and believe her
heartless.
There was something wild in the contrast betwixt the imaginations she
raised in me by her talk of her home and her pleasures with her own
beauty at hand to richly colour every fancy she inspired--betwixt
my imagination, I say, and the realities about us, as I would most
poignantly feel whenever I sent a glance at old Lush. He was a mule of
a man, and stood doggedly at a distance, never addressed nor offered,
indeed, to approach us, though sometimes I would catch him taking me
in from head to toe out of the corner of his surly eyes. Possibly, my
showing that I had a trick of navigation above his knowledge excited
his spleen; or maybe his hatred of the captain led him to dislike me
because of the apparent intimacy between the skipper and me. Anyway,
I would catch myself looking at him now with a feeling of misgiving
for which I could find no reason outside of the mere movement of my
instincts.
It was in the second dog-watch that evening; Miss Temple was resting in
the little cuddy, and I stepped on to the main-deck to smoke a pipe.
The topmost canvas of the barque delicately swayed under a cloudless
heaven that was darkly, deeply, beautifully blue with the shadow of
the coming night. A large star trembled above the ocean verge in the
east; but the glow of sunset still lingered in the west over a sea of
wonderful smoothness rippling in frosty lines to the breeze that gushed
from between the sunset and the north.
The carpenter had charge of the deck; the captain was in his cabin.
Whilst I lighted my pipe, I caught sight of the man Joe Wetherly seated
on the coaming of the fore-hatch past the little galley. He was puffing
at an inch of dusky clay with his arms folded upon his breast, and his
countenance composed into an air of sailorly meditation. This seemed
an opportunity for me to learn what he had to tell or might be willing
to impart about the inner life of the _Lady Blanche_, and I went along
the deck in an easy saunter, as though it was my notion to measure the
planks for an evening stroll. I started when abreast of him with a
manner of pleased surprise.
‘Oh! it is you, Wetherly? My old acquaintance Smallridge’s friend! No
sign of the Indiaman, though. I fear we have outrun her by leagues. And
always when you are on the lookout for a sail at sea, nothing heaves
into sight.’
He rose to my accost, and saluted me with a respectful sea-bow, that
is, by scraping his forehead with his knuckle with a little kick back
of his left leg.
‘That’s right enough, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been sailing myself in a
ship for six weeks in middling busy waters, too, with ne’er a sight of
anything--not so much as the tail of a gull.’
‘Pray sit,’ said I; ‘I’ll keep you company. This is the right spot for
a smoke and a yarn; quiet and cool and out of the road of the poop.’
He grinned, and we seated ourselves side by side. I talked to him
first about the _Countess Ida_, explained the circumstance of my being
in company with Miss Temple, told him who she was, and spoke of her
shipwrecked condition so far as her wardrobe went, and how eager she
was to return to England; but the old sailor made very little of her
being in want of a change of dress.
‘There is no need, sir,’ said he, ‘for the lady to distress her mind
with considerations of a shift o’ vestments. I allow she can use a
needle for herself; there’s needles and thread at her sarvice forrads;
and how much linnen do she want? Why one of the skipper’s table-cloths
’ud fit her out, I should say.’ He turned his figure-head of a face
upon me as he added: ‘’Tain’t the loss of clothes, sir, as should
occupy her thoughts, but the feeling that she’s been took off that
there wreck and is safe.’
I fully agreed with him, with some inward laughter, wondering what Miss
Temple would think if she had overheard his speech. One thing led to
another; at last I said:
‘Wetherly, I am going to ask you a plain question; it is one sailor
making inquiry of another, and you’ll accept me as a shipmate, I know.’
He nodded. ‘Is not your captain wanting?’ and I touched my head.
‘Well,’ he answered after a pause, ‘_I_ think so, and I’ve been
a-thinking so pretty nigh ever since I’ve been along with him.’
‘What caused his mate’s death?’
‘He died in a swound,’ he answered--‘fell dead alongside the wheel as
he was looking into the compass.’
‘Have the sailors noticed anything queer in their captain?’
‘They’re such a party of ignorant scow-bankers,’ said he, with a slow
look round, to make sure that the coast was clear, ‘that I don’t
believe they’re capable of noticing anything if it ain’t a pannikin of
rum shoved under their noses.’
‘I don’t mind whispering to you,’ said I, ‘that the captain hinted
to me they were not a very reputable body of men--talked vaguely of
mutineers and convicts, with one fellow amongst them,’ I went on,
bating my voice to a mere whisper, ‘who had committed a murder.’
He stared at me a moment, and then tilted his cap over his nose to
scratch the back of his head.
‘He’ll know more about ’em, then, than I do,’ he responded; ‘they’re
ignorant enough to do wrong without troubling themselves much to think
of the job when it was over. Mutineering I don’t doubt some of ’em
have practised. As to others of ’em being convicts, why who’s to tell?
Likely as not, says I. But when it comes to murder--a middling serious
charge, ain’t it, sir? Of course I dunno--who might the party be, sir?’
‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, ‘it was a vague sort of talk, as I told you. But
if Miss Temple and I are to stick to this ship till we get to the
Mauritius, it would comfort her, and me, too, for the matter of that,
to learn that her crew are not the band of ruffians we have been led to
imagine them.’
‘Well, sir,’ he exclaimed thoughtfully--‘I’m sure you’ll forgive me,
but I don’t rightly recollect your name.’
‘Dugdale.’
‘Well, Mr. Dugdale, as you asks for my opinion, I’ll give it ye. Of
course, it’ll go no furder, as between man and man.’
‘Certainly not. I am myself trusting you up to the hilt, as what I have
said must assure you. You may speak in perfect confidence.’
He cast a cautious look round: ‘There’s but one man to be regularly
afeerd of, and that’s Mr. Lush. I believe he’d knife the capt’n right
off if so be as he could be sure we men wouldn’t round upon him. I
don’t mean to say he han’t got cause to hate the capt’n. He’s a working
man without knowledge of perlite customs, and I believe the capt’n’s
said more to him than he ought to have said; more than any gen’leman
would have dreamt of saying, and all because this here carpenter han’t
got the art o’ dining in a way to please the eye. But this here Mr.
Lush feels it too much: he’s allowed it to eat into his mind; and if so
be there should come a difficulty, the capt’n wouldn’t find a friend in
him, and so I tells ye, sir. I don’t want to say more n’s necessary and
proper to this here occasion of your questions; but though the crew’s
a desperate ignorant one, ne’er a man among ’em capable of writing or
spelling any more’n the carpenter hisself, there’s only _him_ to be
afeerd of, so far as I’m capable of disarning; though, of course, if he
should tarn to and try and work up their feelings, there’s naturally no
telling how the sailors ’ud show.’
‘They seem a pretty smart set of fellows,’ said I, finding but little
comfort to be got out of this long-winded delivery; ‘the ship is
beautifully clean, and everything looks to be going straight aboard of
you.’
‘Oh! every man can do his bit,’ he answered; ‘but if I was you, sir,
being in charge, as you are, of a beautiful young lady, for the likes
of which this here little barque, with nothen but men aboard and such
shabby food as goes aft, is no proper place--if I was you, I says, says
I, I’d get away as soon as ever I could.’
I mentally bestowed a few sea-blessings on the head of this marine
Job’s comforter, but contrived, nevertheless, to look as though I was
much obliged to him for his information and advice; and after we had
continued discoursing on a variety of nautical topics for some ten
minutes or a quarter of an hour longer, I proceeded aft, and spent the
rest of the evening in conversing with Miss Temple in the cabin or in
walking the deck with her.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.