"Let me pass. Quick! I want to see the captain."
"But you can't go on the bridge, miss; it's against orders." And the
stalwart quartermaster barred with his substantial form the steps
leading up to the bridge.
"But I must see the captain, and I will. Do you hear? Let me pass,"
with a quick stamp of the foot.
Seen by the electric lights the speaker was a well-formed, beautiful
girl, her face pale, and her eyes glowing with excitement and purpose.
Behind her, a little in the background, buzzed a throng of excited
passengers.
"Very sorry, miss, but it can't be done," reaffirmed the quartermaster,
not without misgivings, for the speaker was a favourite on board, and
not a little so with the captain himself, a grizzled and, withal, crusty
salt, of whom those under him stood considerably in awe. "If there were
any message now, miss, I might make so bold as to take it," he added
conciliatorily.
"Message? Message? No; I must tell him myself," came the quick
rejoinder, accompanied by another stamp of the foot. "Let me up! Man,
man, a life--lives--depend on it--at any rate one."
The seaman gave way, resigning himself to a "logging," and, perchance,
other pains and penalties. In a moment the girl had gained the bridge.
The captain and two of the officers turned in anger, which subsided on
the part of the latter as they saw the identity of the intruder. The
first still looked grim.
"Well, young lady?" he began in a voice that would have sent most of the
other passengers down double quick with a stuttered apology, but with
this one it went for nothing.
"Captain, that ship we just ran into--there was someone on board."
The captain looked grimmer still. "Just ran into" had a
characteristically ugly sound in his ears.
"Humph!" he snorted. "Just ran into! Just ran into! That infernal old
blasted derelict hulk, whose owners ought to be--" And then he
remembered the sex and identity of the speaker, and with a gulp went on.
"Now, how the--how the--well, how d'you make out there's anyone on
board her?" he rapped out in a sort of subdued hurricane blast of a
voice.
"Because I saw. I saw a man lying on her deck as plainly as I see you
and Mr Gibson now. Do turn back and see--quick--or you may never find
her again in the dark. I saw him, mind you--I swear to God I saw him--
by the deck lights as we crashed past. You can't leave him alone to
die. You can't!"
"Saw him? Saw a mare's nest," grumbled the captain. "Let me tell you,
young lady, it's not my business to start overhauling derelict hulks at
midnight--brutes that might have sent us to the bottom. Fortunately, we
only scraped this one. Well, well," he appended sourly, "we're ahead of
our time, so we might as well make sure of this. Put her round,
Gibson."
"Ah! I thought sailors were always ready to help each other," said the
girl triumphantly.
An order was given, and, in the result, the _Runic_ changed her course,
and was bearing round, going dead slow, so as to head for the late
dangerous obstruction. The excitement was intense among the passengers,
who thronged the bulwarks at every coign of vantage, eagerly scanning
the dark, silent sea. Suddenly the engines stopped, and a boat was
lowered.
"Where is she? Can you see her?" were among the buzzed, eager comments
as the boat's lantern receded into the gloom. Soon came a hail and the
sound of gruff voices over the water. The light of the lantern grew
larger and larger. The boat was returning.
Heavens! what was this? With the boat's crew there stepped aboard a
tall, bearded man burned almost to the copper hue of a savage and
wearing what looked like the attire of one. Thus he appeared in the
electric lights to the eyes of the excited throng.
"Who are you, my man, and what's your ship?" began the captain
brusquely.
"Thank God, I'm going home at last!" exclaimed the stranger, gazing
around in a weary and dazed sort of way.
"Yes--yes; but--who are you?" repeated the captain more crisply.
"Why--it's Mr Wagram!"
The interruption or answer proceeded from the girl who had been the
cause of the search. The castaway turned, looking more puzzled than
ever.
"Yes; that's my name," he answered. "But--I ought to know that voice,
and yet--and yet--"
"Of course you ought," and, casting all conventionality to the winds,
the girl sprang forward, seizing one of his hands in both of hers. "Oh,
how thankful I am that we have been the means of saving you! What must
you have been through! Welcome--a thousand times welcome!"
"Miss Calmour, surely? Why, of course it is. How glad I am to see you
again." And in the face of this sun-tanned and unkempt-looking savage
here under the ship's lights Delia could detect the same look as that
which had glanced down upon her in the park at Hilversea that glowing
summer afternoon after the life-and-death struggle with the escaped
beast. "I was a passenger on the _Baleka_, captain," he went on to
explain.
"Passenger on the _Baleka_ were you? Then, my good sir, it's lucky
we're homeward bound, because your people will be just about beginning
to go to law over your leavings," returned the captain, who was of a
cynical bent. "The only passenger missing from her was given up as
lost. But--you haven't been aboard that old hooker ever since, I take
it?"
"No; indeed. I've had some strange experiences--can hardly believe I'm
not dreaming now. What ship's this?"
"The _Runic_. White Torpedo line, bound for London from Australian
ports."
"And what of the _Baleka's_ people? Were they found?"
"Yes; all picked up, some here, some there."
"Captain," interrupted that same clear, sweet, fluty voice, "I'm
surprised at you. Here's a shipwrecked mariner been thrown on board,
and instead of doing all you can for him you keep him standing here all
night answering questions."
"By Jove! you're right, Miss Calmour," was the bluff reply. "Gibson,"
turning to the chief, "take the gentleman to the saloon, and tell the
stewards to get him all he wants."
"I don't want much at present, thanks," answered Wagram. "A barber, and
some clothes are my most urgent needs; but I suppose we can compass
something in that line to-morrow."
"Why, of course," said Delia; "but don't throw away that picturesque
costume. Come along below, now. I'm going to take care of you this
evening."
And she did--laying her commands upon the stewards for this and for that
as if the whole ship belonged to her. Then she sat and talked to him as
he ate some supper, forestalling every possible want, pressing this and
that upon him, and yet without ostentatious fuss. And the castaway, who
for months had beheld no woman's face save those of brutal, debased
blacks, wondered uneasily whether he were dreaming, as this beautiful
girl sat there attending to his wants with an almost loving assiduity.
Yes; he decided, she certainly was beautiful. Time, change, the
conditions of a new life, had put the last touches to the sufficiency of
her attractiveness as he remembered her.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the chief officer, who had dropped in to hear some
of the castaway's story, "you've had some pretty rough ups and downs,
and no mistake; and you might as well have tumbled into the boats with
the rest after all, for the kid was all right and not left below at
all."
"Is that a fact?" said Wagram eagerly.
"Rather. You were throwing away your life going below at such a time in
any case, and in this instance it was all for nothing."
Delia had been wishing the chief officer anywhere. She wanted Wagram to
herself, and here Gibson sat prosing his tiresome old sea yarns. Now,
however, she brisked up, and insisted upon hearing the whole story. She
had been quite out of the way of newspapers of late, and had not even
heard of the loss of the _Baleka_, or that the man sitting here before
her had been given up as lost, a victim to his own heroic act.
"By George! I must go," said the chief. "Mind you ask for anything you
want, Mr Wagram, for I conclude you've come aboard in a state of
temporary and complete destitution."
"That's just my case," laughed Wagram. "Funny, isn't it?" turning to
the girl in time to catch the look in her eyes called there by the story
she had just heard. "And now tell me about yourself, and how they all
are in Bassingham."
"We've left Bassingham, you know, Mr Wagram. My father died soon after
you went, and we couldn't stop on at Siege House. So we went up to
London, and--well, things were not easy."
"I didn't know; I have had no news from Hilversea for a long, long
time--have been so on the move, you know."
"How you must long to get back. Dear old, beautiful Hilversea!"
The bright spirits and former lightheartedness seemed to have left her.
Her voice was sad. The other made a mental note of it, and deduced that
they had fallen upon hard times. Well, that he would certainly do his
best to remedy by some means or other. Then she told him about herself;
how her other sister--not Clytie--had married in Australia, married very
fairly well, too, and had got her out there on a visit. But they had
not got on--she did not tell him that the other had conceived a jealousy
of her from the very first--and so she was returning to England.
They talked on until even the other passengers, who, by twos and threes,
had been passing through the saloon in quite unusual numbers to catch
another glimpse of the castaway, had disappeared, and the stewards were
rolling up the carpets.
"Good-night, Mr Wagram," said the girl as they parted. "I can't tell
you how glad I am to see you again, and what a happiness it is to think
that the ship I was on board of was the one to rescue you. To-morrow
you must tell me your adventures in full. You will--won't you?"
He promised, with some reservations, and they parted. But Delia found
that sleep utterly refused to come her way--and she wanted to sleep,
wanted to look her best in the morning. Her cabin mate, an elderly
lady, was fast asleep, but she herself seemed doomed to night-long
wakefulness. The scuttle was open and she lay with her face to it,
watching the dark sky with its twinkle of misty stars, half lulled by
the rush and "sough" of smooth water from the sides of the liner. What
wonderful workings of Fate had thrown this man here? And he would not
have been here but for her. But for her persistence he would have been
miles and miles behind, left to perish miserably on the lonely deep.
The other passengers had treated her statement with good-humoured
ridicule; the captain himself would hardly be persuaded to put back--and
what if he had not? But he had--and it had been entirely due to her
that he had. She had saved Wagram's life--as surely as any life ever
had been saved--she and she alone.
The sweetness of the thought began to soothe her, and sleep seemed to be
coming at last. Then, through it, something--perhaps the sight of the
smooth sea through which the great liner was rushing on even keel--
brought back to her mind certain words uttered on a woodland road in the
dusk of a winter afternoon; weird words about green seas, smooth and
oily, and a battered ship, and terrors--and, perhaps, death, but, if not
death, then great happiness. The croakings of the old gipsy came back
now--and, good heavens! what coincidence was this? Here were all the
conditions--the smooth seas and the battered hulk--the terror gone
through--terrors of every kind, up to that of being left on the
derelict--the agony of seeing this ark of safety recede from reach of
call. "Perhaps death?" He had been snatched from death at that moment,
snatched from it by her, as surely as though by her own hand. "But, if
not death, then great happiness." In the hot, thick stillness of the
night Delia's brain was busy. The prediction had been directed to
herself, not to him. And then it seemed to merge into a joint
prediction, but--great happiness? Well, was it not? She had rescued
him from death--she alone. Was not that a great happiness? Further, it
would be nearly a fortnight ere they reached England, and during that
time she would see him daily, talk with him, under conditions of which a
week was equivalent to a year under the old state of things. Would not
that be "great happiness?"
And then she remembered not only the prediction, but the scorn and
contempt with which he had treated both it and its utterer, extending
just an overflow ripple of it to her. And with a smile at the
recollection she fell into a quiet sleep. Nearly a whole fortnight of
happiness--great happiness--lay before her.
In the event so it proved. From the next morning, when they met--he
clothed and barbered, and looking exactly as she remembered him in the
dear old days of yore--"clothed, and in his right mind" as he smilingly
told her in his old, dry, humorous way--pacing the deck in the cool
hours, or seated in some snug, shady corner in roomy deck-chairs,
talking about home--they two were nearly always together; and the
home-sick wanderer felt at home already, and the girl forgot for the
time her own dreary prospects, with the struggle for life all opening
out before her, to be begun and gone through again. He would go back to
luxury and his high estate, while she--? Yet even this she forgot in
those sweet, dreamy, sunny days which would soon--only too soon--be
over.
There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so
welcome, and who--for human nature is human after all--fervently wished
this picked-up castaway--well--back again on the hulk from which he had
been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and
sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of
the passengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been
long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.
"I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,"
Wagram had said to her. "You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome
old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things
lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an
interloper."
"Am I tiring you, then?" she would answer softly.
"Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish."
"You--selfish? What next?"
"I'm afraid I am--very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress
dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help
them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying
yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of
thing actively myself."
She did not answer that "that sort of thing" was an inane and vapid
method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary
conversation with him. She complied--and submissively. Incidentally,
she found that the "enjoyment" involved a heated passage-of-arms with
the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom
she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as
air under the circumstances.
Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of
Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. The
_Runic_ would soon be securely docked in her berth.