"EHEU!"
The homeward-bound mail steamer had hauled out from the Cape Town docks,
and lay moored to the jetty. In less than an hour she would cast loose
and start upon her voyage to Old England.
The funnel of the _Siberian_ shone like a newly blacked boot, as did her
plated sides, glistening with a coating of fresh paint. Her scuttles
flashed like eyes in the sun, and the gleam of her polished brasswork
was such as to cause semi-blindness for five minutes after you looked at
it. The white pennon of the Union Steamship Company with its red Saint
Andrew's cross fluttered at one tapering masthead; at the other the blue
peter.
On board of her all was wild confusion. Her decks were crowded with
passengers and their friends seeing them off, the latter outnumbering
the former six to one; with hawkers of curios and hawkers of books; with
quay porters and stewards bringing on and receiving passengers' luggage;
with innumerable hat-boxes, and wraps, and hold-alls, and other loose
gear; with squalling and rampageous children; with flurried and excited
females rushing hither and thither, and getting into everybody's way
while besieging every soul--from the chief officer to the cook's boy--
with frantic inquiries. The Babel of tongues was deafening, and over
and above all the harassing rattle of the donkey engine lowering luggage
into the hold. And to swell the clamouring crowd, an endless procession
of cabs, driven by broad-hatted Malays, came dashing up to the jetty--
laden with passengers and band-boxes and bananas and other truck of
nondescript character.
Moving among the throng upon the ship's decks vere two ladies--one
elderly, plethoric, matronly; the other young, vivacious, tastefully
attired, and in short a very beautiful girl. Many a male glance was
cast at her, accompanied by an aspiration--spoken or unspoken--that she
was going to sail, and was not one of the "seeing-off" contingent.
"Don't you think, Violet," said the elder lady, "we'd better go down to
your cabin now? They'll have taken your luggage there by this time."
"Not yet, Mrs Aldridge. I can still see my brown portmanteau among
that heap for the hold. I want to see it go down myself, and be sure of
it. Besides, there must be some more of my things under that pile of
boxes."
"What a fine ship that New Zealand boat is!" said the old lady, looking
at a large steamer anchored out in the bay and surrounded by a swarm of
tiny craft, depleted or added to by a continuous string of boats between
it and the shore. She, too, was flying the blue peter.
"Isn't she!" acquiesced Violet. "She's the _Rangatira_, and is nearly a
thousand tons larger than the _Siberian_. I wonder if she'll be the
first to start. Ah! there goes my portmanteau. Now I think we may go
below."
The crowd in the saloon was not less dense than that on the decks,
certainly not less noisy. Champagne corks were popping in all
directions. Every table, every lounge was crowded. Stewards were
skurrying hither and thither with their trays of bottles and glasses,
steering their way with marvellous dexterity among the people, harassed
by a chorus of orders, expostulations, objurgations from expectant or
disappointed passengers. Groups were making merry, and pledging each
other in foaming bumpers, the "seeing-off" contingent in particular
making special play with the sparkling "gooseberry," all chattering,
talking, laughing. The din was deafening, but the two ladies managed to
thread their way through it at last.
"Well, it's quiet here, at any rate," said Violet, as they gained her
cabin, of which by favour she was to enjoy the sole possession. "Quiet,
but not cool--ugh!" for the scuttle being shut, that peculiar close
odour which seems inseparable from all ship cabins, and is in its
insufferable fugginess suggestive of seasickness, struck them in full
blast.
"I'm glad I'm not going with you," said Mrs Aldridge. "I never could
stand the sea. I declare I'm beginning to feel queer already."
"Oh no. All imagination," said Violet, gaily, flinging open the
scuttle.
"And now, dear," went on the old lady, "I suppose we haven't many
minutes more together. I needn't tell you how glad I have been to have
had you with me, and Chris. Selwood will like to know that I saw you
off, bright and cheerful."
Violet kissed her heartily. A strange compunction came over the girl.
The old lady had been very kind to her during her brief stay. Mrs
Aldridge was a relation of Selwood's, and to her care Violet had been
consigned for the few days during which the _Siberian_ should be lying
in Cape Town docks. Upon which good ship Selwood had safely conveyed
her, having, at considerable inconvenience to himself, escorted her to
Port Elizabeth, and seen the last of her safe on board.
"Oh, where is my brown hold-all?" cried Violet, suddenly looking round.
"It contains all my wraps--sunshade--everything. Dear Mrs Aldridge, do
wait here and mount guard over my things while I go up and find it. The
stewards are so careless. Besides, they might put some one else in the
cabin, and then it wouldn't be so easy to get them out."
As Violet gained the deck, the short sharp strokes of the ship's bell
rang out its warning summons. The "seeing-off" contingent must prepare
to go ashore, unless it would risk an involuntary voyage. Mrs
Aldridge, naturally prone to flurry, sitting there among Violet's boxes
and bundles, started at the sound.
"Oh dear! I shall be carried to sea!" she ejaculated, piteously. "Why
doesn't she come?"
Minutes slipped by, and still Violet did not appear. Again rang out the
sharp imperative strokes of the bell.
"I must go and look for her," cried the old lady, starting up with that
intent. Peering wildly around she reached the deck. Still no sign of
Violet.
Two great red conveyances, each drawn by four horses, came clattering up
the jetty. They were the mail carts. With lightning swiftness their
contents were transferred to the deck and to the hold. The captain,
resplendent in buttons and gold lace, was on the bridge. The steam-pipe
was roaring as though impatient of further restraint. Already the
passing to and fro between the steamer and the jetty had about ceased.
"Violet--Violet! Oh, where can she be?" cried the old lady, in a
perfect agony of mind.
Ah, she might have gone back to the cabin. She would go and see.
Turning, she was hastening to carry out that idea when again the brazen
clang of the bell, this time startling in its peremptory note, caused
her to stop short.
"Now, marm--if you're not going with us it's time to leave," said a
gruff voice at her side. "Quick, please, she's a-moving already," and
half thrusting, half lifting the bewildered old lady, the burly
quartermaster transferred her to the gangway plank, which no sooner had
she crossed than it was withdrawn.
The great steamer slid gently from her moorings, a crowd following her
to the end of the jetty, hooraying violently, waving handkerchiefs,
bawling out parting fragments of chaff and snatches of songs, and amid
all this champagne-bred enthusiasm, its blaring clamour drowning the
real grief of the sorrowing few, the propeller of the good ship
_Siberian_ throbbed faster and faster, as she swung steadily into her
course _en route_ for the Old Country.
Left there upon the jetty, hardly knowing whether she stood on her head
or not, poor old Mrs Aldridge was quite overcome. What had become of
Violet? Could any harm have happened to the girl? Could she have
fallen overboard unseen? No, that could hardly be. They must have
missed each other in the crowd and confusion. That was it. Still the
thought that she had not taken a last and more affectionate farewell
filled the good old lady with profound regret. Well, standing there
would not mend matters. She must get home.
And as she turned to leave the jetty, the warning notes of the shore
bell on board the New Zealand steamer came floating across the bay.
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Through the creaming surges of Table Bay the _Rangatira_ is speeding on
her southward course. The loom of the mountainous coast has faded into
night, and now the dark velvety vault above is ablaze with mysterious
stars, crowding the zenith, hanging literally in patches of sheeny gold
rather than twinkling with the feeble and scattered glimmer of more
chilly latitudes. There is a damp, sensuous richness in the atmosphere,
just tempered by the keen whiff of the salt sea.
The prow of the mighty vessel cleaves up a rushing lustrous wave on
either side, and streaming afar in her wake lies a broad band of milky
phosphorescent whiteness, striving to rival the very heavens in the
starry atoms gleaming in its depths. The tall, tapering masts reel
wildly against the spangled sky, and the harsh clang of the labouring
engines make weird harmony with the thunderous throb of the propeller as
the great ship drives in her power before the chasing billows.
On the hurricane deck, under the lee of one of the boats swung inward
and resting on chocks, leaning over the taffrail, stand two figures--one
tall, powerful, masculine--wrapped in a long ulster, the other lithe,
graceful, feminine--cloaked and hooded, for, if the atmosphere contains
no chill, it holds a dampness which bids fair to do duty for the same.
Surely that oval face, those delicate, regular features can belong to no
other than Violet Avory. No need to identify her companion.
"You did that well, Violet," Sellon was saying. "The idea of that old
party sitting there mounting guard over your wraps on board the wrong
ship is a reminiscence that'll set me up in laughter for the rest of my
life."
"Poor old Mrs Aldridge," said Violet, with a touch of compunction.
"I'm afraid she won't get over it in a hurry--and she's a good old
thing. But it's all Hilda Selwood's fault. She shouldn't have set her
relations on to `police' me." And the speaker's tone became hard and
defiant.
"Ha, ha! It wasn't in them to upset our little programme, though. When
old Selwood put you on board the _Siberian_ at Fort Elizabeth, he
reckoned it was all safe then. So it was, as far as he was concerned.
He's a good chap, though, is Selwood, and I wouldn't willingly plant
such a sell upon him if I could help it, but I couldn't. It's ever a
case of two `sells' as between him and me, to distort his old joke. It
was nearly a third one, though, Violet, for I was beginning to make up
my mind you were never coming. In another minute I should have gone
ashore again when I saw your cab tearing along like mad. As it was, we
only fetched the _Rangatira_ by the skin of our teeth, and a royal
honorarium to the boatmen."
"Ah, Maurice, I have got you now--and you are mine. Are you not,
darling?"
"It looks uncommonly like it."
"For life?"
"For that identical period. So now, cheer up, my Violet. The world is
a mere football at the feet of those who have the means to exploit it,
and we have. That wretched little foggy England isn't the whole world."
The great steamship went shearing on through the midnight sea, heaving
to the Atlantic surge, as she stood upon her course. But the other
vessel swiftly speeding northward--soon would she arrive with a
forestalment in a measure--in the unaccountable non-appearance of one of
her passengers--of the terrible news which must eventually be broken to
Violet's mother.
But whereas Violet's own will was the sole principle which had been
allowed to govern her life from the day of her birth, it must be
admitted, sorrowfully, that her mother was now only reaping what she had
sown.