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DENIS DENT
[Illustration: "NAN" (Copyright, 1903, by Frank Leslie Publishing
House)]
DENIS DENT
A Novel
BY ERNEST W. HORNUNG
_Author of "The Amateur Cracksman,"
"Raffles," "No Hero," etc._
[Illustration]
_With a Frontispiece by_
HARRISON FISHER
NEW YORK . FREDERICK A.
STOKES COMPANY . PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1903_,
BY FRANK LESLIE PUBLISHING HOUSE
_Copyright, 1903_,
BY E. W. HORNUNG
_All Rights Reserved_
This edition published in January, 1904.
To P. M. MARTINEAU, Esq., J. P.
DEAR MR. MARTINEAU,
The little picture of the past attempted in this tale
owes more than one touch to your kindness. I only wish
that the whole were nearer the mark aimed at, and so
worthier to bear your name upon this page.
Yours very sincerely,
E. W. HORNUNG.
Reform Club,
October 27th, 1903.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SECOND OFFICER 1
II. SAUVE QUI PEUT 10
III. THE CASTAWAYS 18
IV. LOST AND FOUND 30
V. A TOUCH OF FEVER 37
VI. NEW CONDITIONS 48
VII. DENIS AND NAN 57
VIII. COLD WATER 70
IX. THE CANVAS CITY 79
X. THIEVES IN THE NIGHT 90
XI. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS 102
XII. EL DORADO 114
XIII. THE ENEMY'S CAMP 122
XIV. THE FIRST CLAIM 133
XV. A PIOUS FRAUD 146
XVI. A WINDFALL 158
XVII. HATE AND MONEY 168
XVIII. ROTTEN GULLY 178
XIX. NEW BLOOD 187
XX. THE JEWELER'S SHOP 196
XXI. THE COURIER OF DEATH 211
XXII. ATRA CURA 220
XXIII. BROKEN OFF 231
XXIV. DEATH'S DOOR 243
XXV. BEAT OF DRUM 251
XXVI. HOMEWARD BOUND 265
XXVII. THE GREAT GULF 277
XXVIII. NEWS OF BATTLE 289
XXIX. GUY FAWKES DAY 299
XXX. THE SANDBAG BATTERY 310
XXXI. TIME'S WHIRLIGIG 319
DENIS DENT
CHAPTER I
THE SECOND OFFICER
"Land ahead!"
The _North Foreland_ had been made advisedly snug for the night. In the
middle watch she was under her three lower topsails and fore topmast
staysail only. Not that it blew very hard, but the night was dark and
hazy, with a heavy swell. And it was the last night of the voyage.
At eight bells there had been a cast of the deep-sea lead, with the
significant result that the skipper had been the first to turn in;
gradually the excited passengers had followed his example, instead of
staying on deck to see the Otway light. The second mate had said there
would be no Otway that night, and what the second said was good enough
for most. The saloon skylight had become a clean-edged glimmer in the
middle of the poop, the binnacle a fallen moon; not a port-hole twinkled
on the rushing ink; and the surviving topsails, without visible stitch
or stick aloft or alow, hovered over the ship like gigantic bats.
Four persons remained upon the poop: the middy of the watch, tantalized
by muffled guffaws from the midshipmen's berth in the after-house; the
man at the wheel, in eclipse above the belt, with the binnacle light
upon one weather-beaten hand; and on the weather side, the second mate
in reluctant conversation with a big cigar that glowed at intervals into
a bearded and spectacled face, the smooth brown one of the young officer
sharing the momentary illumination.
"It's all very well," said the senior man, in low persistent tones, "but
if we don't have it out now, when are we to? You know what it will be
like to-morrow: we shall land first thing, and you'll be the busiest man
on board. As for the rules of the ship, if an owner can't use his
discretion he might as well travel by some other line."
The young fellow was smiling pleasantly as the other puffed again.
"Very good, Mr. Merridew! I don't object if the captain doesn't; and of
course I must tell you anything you want to know."
"Anything! My good young man, if I am to consider this matter for a
moment (which I don't promise) I must at least know everything that you
can tell me about yourself first; for what," continued Mr. Merridew,
taking the cigar from his teeth, "what do you suppose I know about you
at this moment? Absolutely nothing except that you seem to be a
first-class sailor, as they tell me you are, and a very nice fellow, as
I have found you for myself--aboardship; but of your shore-going record,
of your position in life at home, and of your people and their position,
to speak quite plainly, I know nothing at all."
Mr. Merridew delivered himself with a certain dispassionate unction, as
one who could do the judicial to a turn, and enjoy it. Yet his tone was
kindly, and the periods free from wilful offense.
"You may make your mind easy about my people. I have none," said the
sailor, bitterly. A fatherly hand found his shoulder on the word.
"My dear fellow! I am so sorry."
"You mean relieved."
"I mean what I say," said Mr. Merridew, removing his hand.
It was the young man's turn to apologize, which he did with much
frankness and more feeling.
"The truth is, sir, my parents have been dead for years; and yet they
are nearly everything to me still--they were all the world until this
voyage! My mother was Irish; her name would not be new to you, but it
will keep. It may not be necessary for you to know it, or anything more
about me, and in any case it can't alter me. But I am half-Irish through
my mother--though you wouldn't think it."
"I would think it," remarked Mr. Merridew, blowing at his cigar as at a
forge, until the red light found him looking wise through his
spectacles, but the officer with one eye on his sails and no perceptible
emotion in the other.
"My first name," he went on, "is as Irish as you like; it's Denis; and
you may say that I've been living up to it for once!"
"Denis!" repeated Mr. Merridew, with interest. "Well, I know that name,
anyhow; one of our partners--Captain Devenish's father--he's Denis
Devenish, you know."
"Indeed," said Denis Dent, and there was a strange light in his spare
eye. "Well, so much for my mother; my father was a Yorkshire dalesman,
as his father and his father's father were before him. I am the first of
them to leave the land."
"May I ask why?"
"It isn't our land any more. My father gave up everything to take my
mother abroad, when her life was despaired of in England, and when her
people--her own people--I can't trust myself to speak of them!"
And the young fellow turned abruptly aside, while Mr. Merridew puffed
and peered at a massive though clean-cut face, whose only Irish feature
was a pair of bright brown eyes, bold and resolute, yet quick to
laughter, if quicker still to fire.
The south-easter sang through the unseen rigging; the ship rushed a
fathom through the unseen sea. The second had a look at the compass,
and came climbing back to windward with his hands in his pea-jacket
pockets.
"And yet," said Mr. Merridew, flourishing his cigar, "and yet--you want
to marry my daughter!"
"If she will have me, sir," said the sailor, with an uncertainty on that
point in becoming contrast to his certainty of himself.
"But whether _I_ will or not."
"I never said that, Mr. Merridew. I should be very sorry to take up such
a position, I can assure you, sir."
"You would be sorry, but you would do it," retorted Mr. Merridew with
acumen. "You would do as your father evidently did before you."
"I hoped we had finished with my parents, sir."
"But they left you nothing, if I understand aright," rejoined Merridew,
changing his ground and his tone with some dexterity. "And you would
marry my daughter on the pay of a junior officer in the merchant
service."
"I never said that either. I have my captain's certificate, sir, as it
is."
The new tone was the tone to take. Mr. Merridew went so far as to give
his daughter her name.
"And Nan," said he, "might have ten thousand pounds for her marriage
portion. I don't say she would, but for all you know she might have
more. Her husband ought to bring at least as much into settlement, even
as a self-respecting man, don't you think? And yet you would make her a
merchant skipper's wife!"
The young man winced, as though for a flash he saw himself wholly in the
wrong. Then his face hardened--all but the Irish eyes--and it was the
face of a man who would justify himself with his life's blood. Impulse,
initiative, temerity, were in the eyes, indomitable endurance in their
solid setting.
"You take it for granted that I will never be anything more!" he
exclaimed. "But, sir, once a sailor isn't always one. I've got on well
at sea. I'd get on well on land--anywhere--at anything! You may smile. I
feel it in me. Mr. Merridew, it may seem what you please, but I'm pretty
young even for what I am now. Surely, surely, you would give me time--if
she would?"
It was the Irishman speaking, the Irish blood spurting out in words, and
Mr. Merridew distrusted the bulk of that race; but his cigar glowed
again upon a mouth and jaw that came of harder stock, and for the moment
his mind was illuminated too.
Here was this Denis Dent, not one young man, it struck him, but two
young men in one, each with a very name of his own. Dents from the
Dales, Denis from old Ireland! Mr. Merridew smiled through his
spectacles, pleased with his conceit, not altogether disposed to regard
it as such, but incontinently interested in a personality to which he
had been so clever as to supply the key. The heart of the discoverer
warmed toward his own. There was an attractiveness in Denis, a solid
worth in Dent. Denis might win the girl. Dent would deserve her. And
Denis Dent might have carried her own father with him, had he been the
only young man in the case, or even on the poop of the _North Foreland_
as she drove through the haze on the last night of her voyage.
But as the pair stood eye to eye, the pregnant pause between them was
interrupted by a loud and startling laugh, and a tall figure loomed
through the first gray tinge of approaching dawn. It was that of a young
man in a tasseled dressing-gown, with an ornate meerschaum pipe pendent
between the bushy black whiskers of the day.
"Well, if that doesn't take first prize for cheek!" cried he, and
lurched toward them in his slippers as one who had never found his
sea-legs.
"We are having a private conversation, Ralph," said Mr. Merridew in mild
rebuke.
"A private conversation that you could hear on the forecastle-head!"
jeered Ralph Devenish, who was full of liquor without being drunk. "I
suppose he's so proud of it he wants the whole ship to know!"
And the meerschaum pointed jerkily at Denis, who stood the heaving deck
as a circus rider stands a horse, his hands still deep in his pea-jacket
pockets.
"Captain Devenish," said he, "it's against the rules to speak to the
officer of the watch, but you shall speak civilly if you speak at all.
Otherwise I advise you to take yourself off the poop before you're put
off."
"By God!" snarled Devenish, "but you shall pay for that! Before one
owner to another owner's son, on the last night of the voyage! It's your
last in the Line, Mr. Officer of the Watch! And you dare to lay a hand
on me! Come on. You dare. I know your blustering breed, you damned
Jack-in-buttons!"
"And I know yours--you Devenishes! I know you too well to soil my hands
on any one of you!"
The concentrated bitterness of this retort had an opposite effect on
either hearer; one it stupefied, the other it flooded with a sudden
light; but Devenish was the first to find his tongue, and for the moment
there was none more foul before the mast. The deplorable torrent was
only stemmed by the startling apparition of a square little man in a
still more awful, because a more articulate and more righteous, rage.
"I'll teach you to break the rules of my ship! I'll teach you to curse
my officers, drunk or sober! Out of my sight, sir, or I'll have you in
irons before you're a minute older!"
"Come, come, Captain Coles," said Mr. Merridew, with dignity; "there has
been more provocation than you imagine; and this, you must remember, is
Captain Devenish."
"I don't care a dump if it's Devenish Merridew and Company lumped into
one!" roared the little skipper. "You can have your way ashore, but I
mean to have mine at sea; and as for your iron coffin of a ship, I'll be
thankful to come off her alive, let alone sailing in her again. No two
compasses alike, thirty-six hours since we got the sun, the darkest
night of the voyage, and Australia anywhere! Yet this is the night you
choose, you owners, to bully and browbeat my officers of the watch!"
But it was no longer the darkest night of the voyage, or even night at
all. The group stood visible and divisible in a cold gray haze. The
lower topsails were no longer detached from the ship; there was a misty
mast to each; and the ship was running dry-decked through the high
smooth seas.
It was at this moment that the haze lifted like breath from a mirror;
and a subtle new sound was just beginning to insinuate itself upon the
ear when the look-out man drowned it with his roar from the forecastle
head.