THE CRISIS AT LAST.
On the morrow, a gale like that we have described carried the ship
still farther on her course; but again, towards evening, the sea and
wind went down together, and a calm and lovely night stole over the
world of waters.
Morley had intended to speak to the two Barradas about what he
suspected--his knowledge of their secret history. Had he found an
opportunity for doing so, much evil would, perhaps, have been
averted, as he might have exercised a little influence over them; but
one time they were aloft in the rigging, at another, tarring down the
backstays, clapping on chafing gear, or otherwise occupied most of
the day, as they now began to feel a _personal interest_ in the ship;
so no opportunity occurred, and the fatal evening of the intended
mutiny crept on.
And, notwithstanding that he was a quiet and peaceable man, and
possessed of much of the caution usually attributed to his
countrymen, matters were precipitately brought to a crisis by
Morrison, Tom Bartelot's Scotch mate, as we shall soon have occasion
to show.
On this night our old friend was at the wheel, as a volunteer; and,
as the atmosphere was singularly calm, Morley and Ethel, Rose and
Heriot, were on deck, sometimes seated in pairs, conversing in low
and confidential tones, or promenading, arm-in-arm, between the break
of the deck and the taffrail.
Mr. Basset and the captain were smoking near the companion-hatch, Mr.
Quail had turned in below, and the second mate, Foster, had charge of
the ship, whose lofty spread of snow-white canvas shimmered with a
weird effect in the light of the rising moon, which heaved up at the
horizon, the size of three European moons--sublime and vast--to shed
a blaze of silver radiance far across the sea.
Noah's hints had already made Captain Phillips take in his
studding-sails and royals, so the ship was now running snugly and
easily, under the fore and main-course, topgallant-sails, jib and
spanker.
Ethel sat silently, with her hands clasped on Morley's left arm, for
the moonlight on the water, the stars above, and his familiar voice,
made her think of home, and the beautiful garden at Laurel Lodge,
with its ribbon-borders of pinks, mignonette, and scarlet geraniums;
its roseries, its gigantic sweet peas, her sister's boasted azaleas,
which Hawkshaw had ridiculed in an evil hour; its avenues of laurels
and stately old sycamores.
She now drew forth her mother's miniature, which she wore in her
breast, at the end of a slender gold chain. It had been taken in
that dear mother's youth, when she closely resembled Ethel herself.
Who that surveyed that soft, bright, smiling face, could realise the
idea that it was the image of one who had long been dead, and had
passed away.
So, as Ethel gazed upon it, her mother's figure, expression of face,
and tone of voice, the embodiment of that gentle friend and loving
mentor, all a mother should be, "the best and most beautiful of
earth's creatures," rose to memory, strangely mingled with
recollections of her death and of her funeral, on a sunny day, in
peaceful Acton churchyard, while the familiar bell tolled solemnly in
the old grey Norman tower, and when the turf looked so green, the
fresh earth so brown, and that awful and mysterious grave, as it
yawned beneath the old yew tree, so deep, so terrible!
Then there was the reverend rector, her father's dearest friend,
reading the beautiful and impressive service for the faithful
departed, while his voice faltered and his eyes glistened. It was
the last day of an English autumn, when the leaves of the tall oaks
in the Chase, and the foliage of every coppice, were brown and crisp,
and when all the world seemed hushed and still; when even the village
urchins who clambered on the churchyard wall were mute, and sat
uncovered, and no sound stirred the air but the rector's voice, and
the solemn bell that boomed in the time-worn tower, and shook its ivy
leaves.
So all that sad and mournful day came vividly back and unbidden to
memory now.
"Mamma, dear, dear mamma! she did so love you, Morley!" said Ethel,
as she closed the miniature, and placed it tenderly in her bosom.
Inspired by livelier thoughts on the other side of the quarter-deck,
merry Rose Basset and the doctor were leaning over the bulwarks, and
watching the luminous animacula that gleamed in the passing waves.
In the second chapter of our history, we have related how Mr. Basset
had considered the early engagement between Morley Ashton and Ethel
the mere fancy of a boy and girl--a fancy which separation, or the
spirit of change, might cause to wear away and be forgotten.
But now, by his most providential restoration, by the strength of
their mutual regard, by what the poor fellow had undergone; by what
Ethel, too, had suffered, and, more than all, by the necessity for
securing her future happiness, he felt himself bound to do the utmost
in his power to advance Morley's interests, when they all reached
their new home in the Mauritius, and a reiterated promise to this
effect had made the young pair supremely happy.
Rose and the doctor were the next consideration; what was to be done
with them?
The excitement consequent to recent events; the expected outbreak
among the crew; the discovery of the wreck, its occupants, and their
story, together with Hawkshaw's villainy, had so fully occupied the
attention of all on board, that Heriot had scarcely found an
opportunity for broaching a matter, which Captain Phillips's jokes
had quite prepared our friend, the judge, to have laid before him,
for his earnest consideration and kindly sympathy--neither of which
he had quite made up his mind to accord; but Rose had always flirted
with some one; and when two favourable occasions came to pass, Heriot
was dissuaded by her thoughtlessly saying:
"Now, don't bother yet, my dear old darling Leslie," for this was her
unromantic style ("a jolly one," the doctor thought it) of addressing
him.
Mr. Basset would have been blind indeed, had he not seen the growing
intimacy which existed between them; but he had no idea that matters
had proceeded the length of interchanged promises. Neither did he
observe the ring which Rose now wore on her engaged-finger--to wit
(for the information of the uninitiated), the third of the right
hand; and to use a hackneyed phrase, "as fairy" a finger as ever
rejoiced in that pleasant decoration, for among Rose's chief beauties
were her hands, plump, white, and tiny.
Recent events, we have said, prevented explanations, or any account
of what the doctor's prospects were.
"Not much, they are, certainly, dear, dear Rose," whispered Heriot,
as they sat together in the moonlight, while the ship still sped
before the wind, with all the reefs out of her topsails. "I have,
one way and another, but 100_l._ a year at present. Had I more, I
would have sought out a snug practice at home, and not roved about as
the surgeon of a sea-going merchantman."
"Then you would not have met me, sir," said Rose, with waggish
asperity.
"But I have an uncle, a jolly old fellow, who loves me well, for my
mother was his only sister; and he loves me for that, perhaps, rather
than any merits of my own."
"My poor modest Leslie! well--and this uncle?"
"When he dies--distant may the day be when he does so!--I shall come
into 400_l._ per annum more. If at the Isle of France, I could
battle the watch----"
"Battle what?"
"Oh, it is an old college phrase; I mean, fight my way into a
practice somehow. With you to cheer me on, we should do very well.
Then, an M.D., to get a practice, must have a wife."
"Why?"
"What is the difference between a doctor and a student? 'There is
but a degree between them,' says some one; but until the student has
the magical letters M.D. added to his name, he is nothing, and even
then he will never get the _passepartout_ to private houses, unless
he has a wife; and where could I find one dearer, sweeter, more
playful and joyous, more charming than----"
"Me, you would say?"
"Yes."
Then here, as no one was looking, there followed a sound which made
honest Morrison, who was at the wheel, "prick up his ears," and laugh
quietly to himself in the moonlight.
A ship, of course, does not offer the lover-like facilities of shady
lanes, green thickets, rosy bowers, or flowery garden walks; but it
produces a thousand occasions for polite attention, amidst its
rolling, tumbling, and pitching about, its extreme discomfort and
peculiarity, which are not given by the solid and immovable earth,
and which the fair dwellers thereon do not require; but it is,
nevertheless, a very awkward place for indulging in little bits of
osculation--a phrase for which I refer my fair reader to her
dictionary, if she knows it not.
All as yet was quiet in the _Hermione_.
The embers of discord were still smouldering amid the crew, and the
brave ship flew steadily over the shiny waters of the moonlit sea,
her ghostly shadow falling far across them.
Inspired by the calm and beauty of the night, Morrison, as he leaned
thoughtfully over the wheel, his left hand grasping an upper spoke,
and his right hand a lower one, thinking, perhaps, of his present
shattered prospects, without ship or funds, his distant home, and his
mother's cottage by the Dee, was singing to himself in a low and
plaintive voice.
Ethel looked up and listened, though she scarcely knew the language
in which he sang--a portion of a sweet little song (by some local
poet), and which he recalled, as we do now, from memory, though
perhaps he may have heard it from his mother, to whom this brave and
honest fellow was attached, with a devotion that was almost childish.
"The tear dims my e'e
As I look to heaven hie,
And sigh to be free
Frae want and frae wae;
But I dinna see the road,
For between me and my God
A darkness has come doon,
Like the mist on the brae.
"The nicht is wearin' past,
The mist is fleein' fast,
And heaven is bricht at last
To the closin' e'e;
In the hollow o' the hill,
The weary feet are still,
And the weary heart is hame
To its ain countrie."
At that moment the ship's bell clanged.
"Stand by to heave the log--relieve the wheel," cried Mr. Foster.
After considerable delay Badger, the Yankee, came slowly shambling
aft, to "take his trick" at the helm, and at the same time the whole
crew came scrambling noisily up the fore-scuttle, where the watch on
deck joined them, and they gathered in a group about the
windlass-bitts.
Captain Phillips, Mr. Basset, and Tom Bartelot, exchanged glances of
intelligence and inquiry, while the second named, inspired by some
miserable foreboding, grew deadly pale.
"You have not hurried yourself, mate," said Morrison.
"No; didn't intend to, I reckon," drawled the Yankee, in his nasal
twang.
"Why did you not come aft the moment the bell struck?"
"Now, stranger," said Badger, in a tone of mock expostulation, "d'ye
wish your few brains blowed out with the cook's bellows, or not, that
you asks questions or gives orders here?"
"Take the wheel, and take it in silence," said Morrison, haughtily
and sternly; for, although no mate on board the _Hermione_, he still
felt the habit of authority strong within him.
"I knowed a man at Cape Cod, in the state of Massachusetts,"
continued Badger, still delaying, and speaking slowly through his
long nose; "a Scotchman he was, Mr. Morrison, and the very moral o'
you, with a hook nose and chin, that 'ad hold a ginger-nut between
'em, who fed sea-gulls with iron filings, and sold their wings for
steel pens. A 'cute crittur! But, as I said, he was called a
Scotchman, though I calc'lates he was a Yankee Jew of Hirish
parentage."
"If you don't take the wheel, I'll show you the foretop with a
vengeance, my fine fellow," said Morrison, who could stand anything
but sneers at his country.
"You're riled a bit, you air, and your monkey's getting up. You've
been too well fed, mate," drawled Badger. "I reckons that at home,
in your own little clearin' of a country, you fed upon fir shavings
and cold water. As for decent junk, reg'lar old hoss, and plum-duff,
I calc'late you never heerd on 'em afore. Now, in this here craft,
as the junk's atrowcious, so that even an 'ungry Scotchman or a blue
shark wouldn't look at it, we mean to have a blow-out to-night in the
cabin, and on the best in the steward's locker too."
At that moment Mr. Foster, who, with Joe, had been heaving the
log-line, on hearing words, came aft, and took the wheel from the
hands of Morrison, who was trembling with suppressed passion.
"Go forward, you rascally carrion," said the Scotchman, "or, by the
heavens above us, I soon will make blue sharks' meat of you."
Badger drew his knife, which gleamed in the moonlight, but at the
same instant he was laid sprawling on the deck by a blow from the
butt-end of a revolver with which Captain Phillips had armed
Morrison, and which the latter swung at the full length of his arm
and with no unsparing hand.
The cry of rage uttered by Badger was answered by a yell from the
forecastle, and all the crew came rushing aft, armed with knives,
capstan-bars, and some with pistols, which they had hitherto secreted
in their sea-chests.
"Below, ladies, below--into the cabin, and barricade the door; quick,
quick!" cried Captain Phillips, as Ethel and Rose, to their
astonishment and terror, were hurried, almost thrust down, the
companion-stair.
Then several pistol-shots were exchanged, and a furious struggle
instantly took place on deck.