love and grieving for her and sorrow for her poor old father, weighed as
lead in me when I thought of it.
We were within a fortnight’s sail of Bombay, when there broke a dawn
thick and dirty as smoke, with masses of sooty vapour smouldering off the
edge of the sea in the west and darkening overhead till the trucks faded
out in the gloom. Yet the glass stood high, and I made nothing of the
mere appearance of this weather. It lasted all day, with now and again a
distant groan of thunder. A weak, hot breeze held the canvas steady, and
the ship wrinkled onward, holding her course, but sailing through a noon
that was as evening for shadow.
We dined at seven. The deck was then in charge of the second mate,
Wickham. Before going below I told him to keep a bright look-out, and
took myself an earnest view of the sea. The dusk lay very thick upon
the cold, greasy, gleaming surface of the ocean, there was not a star
overhead, and maybe a man would not have been able to see a distance of
half a dozen ship’s lengths.
About the middle of dinner I heard a great bawling, a loud and fearful
crying out as for life or death. The mate, Aiken, who sat at the foot
of the long cuddy table, caught the sound with a sailor’s ear as I did,
and sprang to his feet, and we rushed on deck together. I had scarcely
passed through the companion hatch when the ship was struck. She heeled
violently over, listing on a sudden to an angle of nearly fifty degrees,
and a dismal, loud, general shriek rose through the open skylight,
accompanied by the crash of timber overhead. Along with this went a wild
hissing noise and an extraordinary sound of throbbing.
I rushed to the side, and saw that a large steamer had run into us. She
was a big black paddle-boat, one of the few large side-wheel steamers
which formerly traded betwixt England and the East Indies by way of the
Cape. The sky seemed charged with stars from the spangles of fire which
floated along with the thick smoke from her chimney. She was full of
light. Every cabin window looked like the lens of a flaming bull’s-eye.
I sprang on to the rail, and, hailing the steamer, asked him to keep
his stem into us till we found out what damage he had done, and then
roared to the mate, but obtained no reply. I yelled again, then shouted
to Wickham to tell the carpenter to sound the well. The passengers came
crowding on to the poop. I told them there was no danger; that, though it
should come to our leaving the ship, the steamer would stand by us and
take all aboard.
The well was sounded, and two feet of water reported. On this I instantly
understood that the ship was doomed, that to call the hands to the pumps
would be to exhaust them to no purpose; and, hailing the steamer afresh
as she lay hissing on our bow, with her looming stem-head overshadowing
our forecastle, I reported our condition, and told him to stand-by to
pick us up.
We immediately lowered the boats and sent away the women and as many
men as there was room for; a second trip emptied the _Hecla_ of her
passengers. Meanwhile the steamer, at my request, kept her bows right
into us. At this time there were seven feet of water in the hold. It was
very black, and we worked with the help of lanterns. The mate appeared
amongst my people now, and I asked him with an oath, out of the rage and
distress of that hour, where he had been skulking. He answered, he was
from the forecastle. I told him he was a liar, and ordered him whilst the
ship swam to take a number of the hands into the cabin and save as much
of the passengers’ effects as they could come at.
Not much time was permitted for this: every minute I seemed to feel the
ship settling deeper and deeper with a sickening, sullen lift of her
whole figure to every heave of the swell, as though she rose wearily
to make her farewell plunge. Now the vessels were disengaged, and the
steamer lay close abreast. I lingered, almost heart-broken, scarcely
yet realizing to its full height this tragic disaster to my ship and
my own fortunes; and then, hearing them calling to me, I got into the
mizzen-chains, thinking, as I did so, of Minnie Mills, wishing to God I
was at rest and out of it all where she lay, and entered one of the boats.
The commander of the steamer received me in the gangway. The decks were
light as noontide with lanterns. He was a grey-haired man, tall and
somewhat stately, dressed in a uniform after the pattern of the old East
India Company’s service. When he understood I was the captain he bowed,
and said—
“It’s a terrible calamity, sir. I hope to live to see the day when they
will compel all masters, by Act of Parliament, to show lights at sea at
night.”
A lantern was sparkling on his fore-stay, but our ship was without
side-lights, and when I turned to look at her the roar of her bursting
decks came along in a shock hard as a blow on the ear, and the whole pale
fabric of canvas melted out upon the black water as a wreath of vapour
dies in the breeze.
The steamer was the _Nourmahal_, Bulstrode commander. She was half full
of invalided soldiers and other folks going home, and when our own people
were aboard she was an overloaded craft, humanly speaking; but after a
consultation with me the captain resolved to proceed. He was flush with
water and provisions, and had the security besides of paddles, which
slapped an easy ten knots into the hull. And then, again, she lifted the
yards of a ship of twelve hundred tons, and showed as big a topsail to
the wind as a frigate’s.
All that could be done was done for us. Men turned out of their cabins
to accommodate the ladies and children, and a cot was slung for me in
the chief officer’s berth. But I needed no pillow for my head that first
night. There was nothing in laudanum short of a death-draught that could
have given me sleep.
But to pass by my own state of mind, that came very near to a suicidal
posture. At eight bells next morning, the mate whose cabin I shared
stepped in and exclaimed, “Did you know you had a woman dressed up as a
man amongst your passengers?”
“No!” I exclaimed, “not likely. I should not permit such a thing.”
“It’s so, then,” said he: “our doctor twigged her at once, and handed
her over to the stewardess, who has berthed her aft. She’s a lady, and
a devilish pretty woman,—mighty pale, though, with a scared, wild blind
look, as though she had been dug up out of darkness, and couldn’t get
used to the light.”
“What name does she give?” said I.
“I don’t know.”
I wished immediately to see her. An extraordinary suspicion worked in my
head. The mate told me she was in the stewardess’s berth, and directed me
to it. I knocked. The stewardess opened the door, and I immediately saw
standing in the middle of the berth, with her hands to her head, pinning
a bronze tress to a bed of glowing coils, Miss Minnie Mills!
I stared frantically, shouted “Good God!” and rushed in. She screamed
and shrank, then clasped her hands, and reared herself loftily with a
bringing of her whole shape, so to speak, together.
“So,” said I, breathing short with astonishment and twenty conflicting
passions, “and this is how they commit suicide in your country, hey?”
The stewardess enlarged her eyes.
“I don’t mean to marry Mr. Joseph Moxon,” said the girl.
“In what part of the ship did you hide?” I exclaimed.
She made no answer.
“Was Mr. Aiken in the secret?”
Still no reply.
“Oh, but you should answer the captain, miss,” cried the stewardess.
The girl burst into tears, and turned her back upon me. I stepped out and
asked for Captain Bulstrode. He received me in his cabin, and then I told
him the story of Miss Minnie Mills.
“I never would take charge of a young lady,” said he, half laughing,
though he was a good deal astonished, “after an experience I underwent in
that way. I’ll tell it you another time. Let’s send for your mate, and
see what he has to say for himself.”
Presently Mr. Aiken arrived. He was pale, but he carried a lofty,
independent air; the fact was, I was no longer his captain. The ship
was sunk, and Jack was as good as his master. I requested, representing
Captain Mills as I did, that he would be candid with me, tell me how it
stood between him and Miss Mills, if he had helped her in her plot of
suicide, where he had hidden her in the ship, and what he meant to do.
I thought Bulstrode looked at him with an approving eye. I am bound to
repeat he was an uncommonly handsome fellow.
“Captain Cleaver,” he said, addressing me with a very frank,
straightforward face and air, “I am perfectly aware that I have done
wrong, sir. But the long and short of it is, Miss Mills and I are in love
with each other, and we mean to get married.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so?” I said.
He looked at me knowingly. I felt myself colour.
“Well,” said I, “anyhow, it was so confoundedly unnecessary, you know,
for her to pretend to drown herself, and for you to hold her in hiding.”
“I beg your pardon—you made it rather necessary, sir—you will remember
that night——”
“So unnecessary!” I thundered out in a passion.
“Where did ye hide her?” said Captain Bulstrode.
“I decline to answer that question,” replied Aiken.
And the dog kept his word, for we never succeeded in getting the truth
out of him, or the girl either; though if she did not lie secret in the
blackness of the after-hold, then I don’t know in what other part of
the ship he could have kept her: certainly not in his own cabin, which
the ship’s steward was in and out of often, nor in any of the cuddy or
steerage berths.
To end this: there was a clergyman in the ship; and Bulstrode, who,
without personal knowledge of Captain Mills, had heard of him and
respected him, insisted upon the couple being married that same forenoon.
They were not loth, and, the parson consenting, they were spliced in the
presence of a full saloon. I shook the girl by the hand when the business
was over, and wished her well; but from beginning to end it was all so
unnecessary!
_THE MAJOR’S COMMISSION._
My name is Henry Adams, and in 1854 I was mate of a ship of 1200 tons
named the _Jessamy Bride_. June of that year found her at Calcutta with
cargo to the hatches, and ready to sail for England in three or four days.
I was walking up and down the ship’s long quarter-deck, sheltered by the
awning, when a young apprentice came aft and said a gentleman wished
to speak to me. I saw a man standing in the gangway; he was a tall,
soldierly person, about forty years of age, with iron-grey hair and
spiked moustache, and an aquiline nose. His eyes were singularly bright
and penetrating. He immediately said—
“I wanted to see the captain; but as chief officer you’ll do equally
well. When does this ship sail?”
“On Saturday or Monday next.”
He ran his eye along the decks and then looked aloft: there was something
bird-like in the briskness of his way of glancing.
“I understand you don’t carry passengers?”
“That’s so, sir, though there’s accommodation for them.”
“I’m out of sorts, and have been sick for months, and want to see what
a trip round the Cape to England will do for me. I shall be going home,
not for my health only, but on a commission. The Maharajah of Ratnagiri,
hearing I was returning to England on sick-leave, asked me to take charge
of a very splendid gift for Her Majesty the Queen of England. It is a
diamond, valued at fifteen thousand pounds.”
He paused to observe the effect of this communication, and then proceeded—
“I suppose you know how the Koh-i-noor was sent home?”
“It was conveyed to England, I think,” said I, “by H.M.S. _Medea_, in
1850.”
“Yes; she sailed in April that year, and arrived at Portsmouth in June.
The glorious gem was intrusted to Colonel Mackieson and Captain Ramsay.
It was locked up in a small box along with other jewels, and each officer
had a key. The box was secreted in the ship by them, and no man on board
the vessel, saving themselves, knew where it was hidden.”
“Was that so?” said I, much interested.
“Yes; I had the particulars from the commander of the vessel, Captain
Lockyer. When do you expect your skipper on board?” he exclaimed, darting
a bright, sharp look around him.
“I cannot tell. He may arrive at any moment.”
“The having charge of a stone valued at fifteen thousand pounds,
and intended as a gift for the Queen of England, is a deuce of a
responsibility,” said he. “I shall borrow a hint from the method adopted
in the case of the Koh-i-noor. I intend to hide the stone in my cabin, so
as to extinguish all risk, saving, of course, what the insurance people
call the act of God. May I look at your cabin accommodation?”
“Certainly.”
I led the way to the companion hatch, and he followed me into the cabin.
The ship had berthing room for eight or ten people irrespective of the
officers who slept aft. But the vessel made no bid for passengers. She
left them to Blackwall liners, to the splendid ships of Green, Money
Wigram, and Smith, and to the P. & O. and other steam lines. The overland
route was then the general choice; few of their own decision went by way
of the Cape. No one had booked with us down to this hour, and we had
counted upon having the cabin to ourselves.
The visitor walked into every empty berth, and inspected it as carefully
as though he had been a Government surveyor. He beat upon the walls and
bulkheads with his cane, sent his brilliant gaze into the corners and
under the bunks and up at the ceiling, and finally said, as he stepped
from the last of the visitable cabins—
“This decides me. I shall sail with you.”
I bowed and said I was sure the captain would be glad of the pleasure of
his company.
“I presume,” said he, “that no objection will be raised to my bringing
a native carpenter aboard to construct a secret place, as in the case of
the Koh-i-noor, for the Maharajah’s diamond?”
“I don’t think a native carpenter would be allowed to knock the ship
about,” said I.
“Certainly not. A little secret receptacle—big enough to receive this,”
said he, putting his hand in his side pocket and producing a square
Morocco case, of a size to berth a bracelet or a large brooch. “The
construction of a nook to conceal this will not be knocking your ship
about?”
“It’s a question for the captain and the agents, sir,” said I.
He replaced the case, whose bulk was so inconsiderable that it did not
bulge in his coat when he had pocketed it, and said, now that he had
inspected the ship and the accommodation, he would call at once upon the
agents. He gave me his card and left the vessel.
The card bore the name of a military officer of some distinction. Enough
if, in this narrative of a memorable and extraordinary incident, I speak
of him as Major Byron Hood.
The master of the _Jessamy Bride_ was Captain Robert North. This man had,
three years earlier, sailed with me as my chief mate; it then happened I
was unable to quickly obtain command, and accepted the offer of mate of
the _Jessamy Bride_, whose captain, I was surprised to hear, proved the
shipmate who had been under me, but who, some money having been left to
him, had purchased an interest in the firm to which the ship belonged. We
were on excellent terms; almost as brothers, indeed. He never asserted
his authority, and left it to my own judgment to recognize his claims. I
am happy to know he had never occasion to regret his friendly treatment
of me.
He came on board in the afternoon of that day on which Major Hood had
visited the ship, and was full of that gentleman and his resolution to
carry a costly diamond round the Cape under sail, instead of making his
obligation as brief as steam and the old desert route would allow.
“I’ve had a long talk with him up at the agents’,” said Captain North.
“He don’t seem well.”
“Suffering from his nerves, perhaps,” said I.
“He’s a fine, gentlemanly person. He told Mr. Nicholson he was twice
wounded, naming towns which no Christian man could twist his tongue into
the sound of.”
“Will he be allowed to make a hole in the ship to hide his diamond in?”
“He has agreed to make good any damage done, and to pay at the rate of a
fare and a half for the privilege of hiding the stone.”
“Why doesn’t he give the thing into your keeping, sir? This jackdaw-like
hiding is a sort of reflection on our honesty, isn’t it, captain?”
He laughed and answered, “No; I like such reflections, for my part. Who
wants to be burdened with the custody of precious things belonging to
other people? Since he’s to have the honour of presenting the diamond,
let the worry of taking care of it be his; this ship’s enough for me.”
“He’ll be knighted, I suppose, for delivering this stone,” said I. “Did
he show it to you, sir?”
“No.”
“He has it in his pocket.”
“He produced the case,” said Captain North. “A thing about the size of
a muffin. Where’ll he hide it? But we’re not to be curious in _that_
direction,” he added, smiling.
Next morning, somewhere about ten o’clock, Major Hood came on board with
two natives; one a carpenter, the other his assistant. They brought a
basket of tools, descended into the cabin, and were lost sight of till
after two. No; I’m wrong. I was writing at the cabin table at half-past
twelve when the Major opened his door, peered out, shut the door swiftly
behind him with an extraordinary air and face of caution and anxiety,
and, coming along to me, asked for some refreshments for himself and the
two natives. I called to the steward, who filled a tray, which the Major
with his own hands conveyed into his berth. Then, some time after two,
whilst I was at the gangway talking to a friend, the Major and the two
blacks came out of the cabin. Before they went over the side I said—
“Is the work finished below, sir?”
“It is, and to my entire satisfaction,” he answered.
When he was gone, my friend, who was the master of a barque, asked me who
that fine-looking man was. I answered he was a passenger, and then, not
understanding that the thing was a secret, plainly told him what they had
been doing in the cabin, and why.
“But,” said he, “those two niggers’ll know that something precious is to
be hidden in the place they’ve been making.”
“That’s been in my head all the morning,” said I.
“Who’s to hinder them,” said he, “from blabbing to one or more of the
crew? Treachey’s cheap in this country. A rupee will buy a pile of
roguery.” He looked at me expressively. “Keep a bright look-out for a
brace of well-oiled stowaways,” said he.
“It’s the Major’s business,” I answered, with a shrug.
When Captain North came on board, he and I went into the Major’s berth.
We scrutinized every part, but saw nothing to indicate that a tool had
been used or a plank lifted. There was no sawdust, no chip of wood:
everything to the eye was precisely as before. No man will say we had not
a right to look: how were we to make sure, as captain and mate of the
ship for whose safety we were responsible, that those blacks under the
eye of the Major had not been doing something which might give us trouble
by-and-by?
“Well,” said Captain North, as we stepped on deck, “if the diamond’s
already hidden, which I doubt, it couldn’t be more snugly concealed if
it were twenty fathoms deep in the mud here.”
The Major’s baggage came on board on the Saturday, and on the Monday we
sailed. We were twenty-four of a ship’s company all told: twenty-five
souls in all, with Major Hood. Our second mate was a man named Mackenzie,
to whom and to the apprentices whilst we lay in the river I had given
particular instructions to keep a sharp look-out on all strangers coming
aboard. I had been very vigilant myself too, and altogether was quite
convinced there was no stowaway below, either white or black, though
under ordinary circumstances one never would think of seeking for a
native in hiding for Europe.
On either hand of the _Jessamy Bride’s_ cabin five sleeping-berths were
bulkheaded off. The Major’s was right aft on the starboard side. Mine was
next his. The captain occupied a berth corresponding with the Major’s,
right aft on the port side. Our solitary passenger was exceedingly
amiable and agreeable at the start and for days after. He professed
himself delighted with the cabin fare, and said it was not to be bettered
at three times the charge in the saloons of the steamers. His drink he
had himself laid in: it consisted mainly of claret and soda. He had come
aboard with a large cargo of Indian cigars, and was never without a long,
black weed, bearing some tongue-staggering, up-country name, betwixt his
lips. He was primed with professional anecdote, had a thorough knowledge
of life in India, both in the towns and wilds, had seen service in Burmah
and China, and was altogether one of the most conversible soldiers I ever
met: a scholar, something of a wit, and all that he said and all that he
did was rendered the more engaging by grace of breeding.
Captain North declared to me he had never met so delightful a man in all
his life, and the pleasantest hours I ever passed on the ocean were spent
in walking the deck in conversation with Major Byron Hood.
For some days after we were at sea no reference was made either by the
Major or ourselves to the Maharajah of Ratnagiri’s splendid gift to Her
Majesty the Queen. The captain and I and Mackenzie viewed it as tabooed
matter: a thing to be locked up in memory, just as, in fact, it was
hidden away in some cunningly-wrought receptacle in the Major’s cabin.
One day at dinner, however, when we were about a week out from Calcutta,
Major Hood spoke of the Maharajah’s gift. He talked freely about it;
his face, was flushed as though the mere thought of the thing raised a
passion of triumph in his spirits. His eyes shone whilst he enlarged upon
the beauty and value of the stone.
The captain and I exchanged looks; the steward was waiting upon us with
cocked ears, and that menial, deaf expression of face which makes you
know every word is being greedily listened to. We might therefore make
sure that before the first dog-watch came round all hands would have
heard that the Major had a diamond in his cabin intended for the Queen of
England, and worth fifteen thousand pounds. Nay, they’d hear even more
than that; for in the course of his talk about the gem the Major praised
the ingenuity of the Asiatic artisan, whether Indian or Chinese, and
spoke of the hiding-place the two natives had contrived for the diamond
as an example of that sort of juggling skill in carving which is found in
perfection amongst the Japanese.
I thought this candour highly indiscreet: charged too with menace. A
matter gains in significance by mystery. The Jacks would think nothing of
a diamond being in the ship as a part of her cargo, which might include a
quantity of specie for all they knew. But some of them might think more
often about it than was at all desirable when they understood it was
stowed away under a plank, or was to be got by tapping about for a hollow
echo, or probing with the judgment of a carpenter when the Major was on
deck and the coast aft all clear.
We had been three weeks at sea; it was a roasting afternoon, though I
cannot exactly remember the situation of the ship. Our tacks were aboard
and the bowlines triced out, and the vessel was scarcely looking up to
her course, slightly heeling away from a fiery fanning of wind off the
starboard bow, with the sea trembling under the sun in white-hot needles
of broken light, and a narrow ribbon of wake glancing off into a hot
blue thickness that brought the horizon within a mile of us astern.
I had charge of the deck from twelve to four. For an hour past the Major,
cigar in mouth, had been stretched at his ease in a folding chair; a
book lay beside him on the skylight, but he scarcely glanced at it. I
had paused to address him once or twice, but he showed no disposition
to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable, I
observed a restless, singular expression in his face, accentuated yet
by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea, or glances at the deck
forward, or around at the helm, so far as he might move his head without
shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labour with some
scheme. A man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of
a play, or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of a
novel piece of mechanism.
On a sudden he started up and went below.