which I had heard the Indiamen intended to take in company; a
piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake
the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water
again, where, being the only ship from Bombay, she would no doubt
part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in
the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the
war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam
close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance
of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing
that troubled me most: somehow or other, whenever the picture of
Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with
all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck
would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate
craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the
channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait
for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long
after she cleared the Leychelles islands, where a lonely enough
stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the
thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in
the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy
up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue
land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes
to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west,
dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out
above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing
and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy
the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a
suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought
I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and
her lips parting to speak--till I actually stamped on the deck, my
fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the
schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on
me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there
was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had
made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it
annoyed me most to feel him seeing into _me_, as it were, without
troubling himself. "We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round
Cape Mary yonder," said he, stepping forward. "So I expect, myself,
Mr Jones," said I, "though you evidently know the coast better
than I do." With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all
appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had
seen it two or three times before.
With the evening we were once more running sharp on a wind up
channel; and when she did get her own way in a good breeze, the
schooner's qualities came out. 'Twas a perfect luxury to look over
the side and see the bubbles pass, her sharp bows sliding through it
like a knife, she eating into the wind all the time in a way none
but a fore-and-aft clipper could hope to do, with a glassy blue
ripple sent back from her weather-bow as far as the forechains: then
to wake of a morning and feel her bounding under you with a roll
up to windward, while the water gushed through and through below
the keel, and ran yearning and toppling away back along the outer
timbers into her boiling wake, working with the moving rudder. And
our man-o'-warsmen were quite delighted with the Young Hebe, as
they still called her. Snelling was in his element while we were
having the new spars sent up aloft--a set of longer sticks than
before--till she had twice the air, as well as a knowing rake aft.
Next thing was to get the long-brass nine-pounder amidships from
under the boat, where the Frenchmen had kept it, besides which we
found another in her hold; so that, added to six small carronades
already on deck, we made a pretty show. Meanwhile, for my own
part, I kept cracking on with every stitch of canvass that could
be clapped upon the spars, including studding-sails. Jones himself
didn't know better than I did by this time how to handle the craft,
schooner though she was, in the way of making her use what weather
we had to the best purpose. Variable as it proved, too, I was aware
the Indiamen would have pretty much the same now as we had; so that,
on going aloft with the glass, as I did every watch in the day, I
soon began each time expecting one or other of them to heave in
sight.
As for the five hands from Cape Town, they seemed to have fallen
in cheerfully enough with our own; and as soon as the fine weather
came, the gang of Lascars were set to duty like the rest. Snelling
would have them even trained to work the guns; although, if it blew
at all hard, not one could be got to go aloft except their old
_serang_, and the _tindal_, his mate. What surprised me most was
the harbour officer himself at last asking, as Mr Snelling told
me, to be put in a watch; but as the midshipman said there was no
doubt Webb had made a voyage or two before, somewhere or other, I
agreed to it at once. "I'm not sure, sir," added the midshipman,
with one of his doubtful double looks, "but the gentleman may have
seen blue-water the first time at Government expense, and not in
the service either--he don't look fore and aft enough, Mr Collins,
harbour officer though he be; but never mind, sir, I'll see after
him!"--"Pooh," said I, laughing; "if he does turn to, Mr Snelling,
it shan't be in the watch _you_ have to do with! Hand him over to Mr
Jones." By this time I had changed the mid into my own watch, and
given Jones charge of the other--so to him the harbour officer went.
The main character aboard of us, to me at any rate, was this Jones
himself. The fact was, at first I had my doubts of him altogether,
partly owing to the queer way we got hold of him, partly on account
of his getting the upper hand so much through chance, in the
tremendous weather we had at the outset, till I wasn't sure but it
might come into the fellow's head of itself, to be upon some drift
or other that might cost me trouble, as things stood. However, I no
sooner felt where I was, and got the craft under my own spoke, than
I came to set him down for nothing but one of those strange hands
you fall in with at sea sometimes, always sailing with a "purser's
name," a regular wonder of a shipmate, and serving to quote every
voyage after, by way of a clincher on all hard points, not to say
an oracle one can't get beyond, and can't flow sky-high enough. To
tell the truth, though, Jones was as thorough a seaman as ever I met
with--never at a loss, never wanting on any hand; whether it was
the little niceties we stood in need of for setting the schooner's
rigging all right again, which none but a blue-water long-voyage
sailor can touch, or, what comes to be still better in tropical
latitudes, a cool head and a quick hold, with full experience for
all sorts of weather, 'twas much the same to him. He was all over
like iron, too, never seeming to stand in need of sleep, and seeing
like a hawk. At any hour I came on deck in his watch, there was
Jones, all awake and ready, till hearing him walk the planks over my
head of a fine night made me at times keep my eyes open, listening
to it and the wash of the water together. I fancied there was
something restless in it, like the sea, with now and then an uneven
sort of a start; and at last it would come to full stop, that gave
me the notion of how he was standing quiet in the same spot; whether
he was looking aloft, or thinking, or leaning over the side, or what
he was going to do, troubled me wonderfully. The only want in his
seamanship I noticed, he evidently wasn't used to handle a large
ship; but craft of some kind I was pretty sure he had commanded in
the course of his life. As for taking observations, he could do it
better than I could then; while the knowledge he had on different
heads, that came out by chance, made you think more of a Cambridge
graduate than a common sailor, such as he had shipped for with us.
The strangest part of all about him, though, was what I couldn't
well name, not to this day: 'twas more grained in his manner, and
the ring of his voice at particular moments, as well as his walk,
though these were the smart seaman's no less; but one couldn't help
thinking of a man that had known the world ashore some time or
other, in a different enough station from now--ay, and in a way to
bring out softer lines in his face than reefing topsails or seeing
the main-tack ridden down would do. The nearest I could come to
calling it, far apart as the two men stood, was to fancy he reminded
me of Lord Frederick Bury himself; especially when he looked all
of a sudden to the horizon in that wide, vacant kind of fashion,
as if he expected it farther off than it was: only Jones's face
was twice the age, like a man's that had had double the passions
in it at the outset, and given them full swing since then; with a
sleeping devil in his eye yet, besides, as I thought, which only
wanted somewhat to rouse it. Only for that, I had a sort of leaning
to Jones myself; but, as it was, I caught myself wishing, over and
over, for something to make us fall regularly foul of each other,
and get rid of this confounded doubtful state. One hitch of a word
to take hold of, and, by Jove! I felt all the blood in my body would
boil out in me to find how we stood, and show it; but nothing of the
kind did Jones let pass--and as close as the sea itself he was in
regard to his past life. As for the men from the frigate, at least,
they seemingly looked on him with no great fondness, and a good deal
of respect, in spite of themselves, for his seamanship; whereas,
if he had been left in the forepeak in place of the cabin, I've no
doubt in a short time it would have been no man but Jones. You light
now and then upon a man afloat, indeed, that his shipmates hold off
from, as healthy dogs do from a mad one; and you saw they had some
sort of an inkling of the gloomy close nature Jones had in him, by
the way they obeyed his orders. Webb's three Cape Dutchmen seemed
to have a notion he was some being with mysterious powers, while
the Lascars ran crouching at his very word--some of them being, as
I found, Malays, and the rest Mussulmen from Chittagong; but Jones
could send them about in their own language, Dutchmen and all--a
part of the matter which did not tend to keep me less careful over
him. Still I observed, since his coming aboard, that Jones never
once touched liquor, which had plainly enough been his ruin ashore;
whether on account of meaning to pull up once for all and mend, or
only to have a wilder bout at next port, or else to keep himself
steady for aught that might turn up, I couldn't settle in my own
mind. Though deucedly doubtful of its being the first, the very idea
of it made one feel for the man; and, in case of his doing well, I
had no small hopes of something in the upshot to save a real sailor
like him from going to the devil altogether, as he seemed doing.
Now, after our getting clear of the rough Cape weather, and the
dead-lights being taken out of the stern-windows, I had given a
look, for the first time, into the schooner's after-cabins, which
were pretty much as the people she belonged to before had left
them, except for the rough work the gale had played. There were
two of them, one opening into the other; and I must say it was a
melancholy sight to meet the bright sunlight streaming into them
from off the water astern, with all the little matters either just
as if the owners were still inside, or else tumbled about at sixes
and sevens. One drawer, in particular, had come out of a table,
scattering what was in it on the deck: there was a half open letter
in a woman's hand, all French, and showing a lock of hair, with
a broken diamond cross of the French Legion of Honour, besides a
sort of paper-book full of writing, and two printed ones bound in
morocco. I picked up the letter and the cross, put them in again,
and shoved the drawer back to its place, though I brought the books
away with me to have a glance over. What struck me most, though, was
a plaster figure of the French emperor himself, standing fastened on
a shelf, with one hand in the breast of his great coat, and looking
calmly out of the white sightless eyes; while right opposite hung
a sort of curtain which you'd have thought they were fixed upon.
When I hauled it aside, I started--there, on a shelf to match the
other, was a beautiful smiling child's head to the shoulders, of
pure white marble, as if it leant off the bulkhead like a cherub
out of the clouds. Spite of all, however, the touch of likeness it
had to the head I got such a glimpse of at Longwood, even when the
hot sunlight showed it in my spy-glass so pale and terrible, was
sufficient to tell me what _this_ was,--Napoleon's own little son,
in fact, who was made king of Rome, as I remembered hearing at the
time. The thought of the schooner's strange French captain, and his
desperate scheme, came back on me so strong, joined to what I saw he
had an eye to in fitting out his cabins, that, for my own part, I
hadn't the heart to use them myself, and at first sight ordered the
dead-lights to be shipped again, and the door locked.
'Twas a good many days after this, of course, and we had made a
pretty fast run up the Mozambique, in spite of the sharp navigation
required, sighting nothing larger than the native and Arab craft to
be seen thereabouts; we were beginning to clear out from amongst
the clusters of islands and shoals at the channel head, when two
large sail were made in open water to nor'-eastward. Next morning
by daybreak we were to windward of the weathermost,--a fine large
Indiaman she was, crowding a perfect tower of canvass. Shortly
after, however, the schooner was within hail, slipping easily down
upon her quarter, which seemed to give them a little uneasiness,
plenty of troops as she seemed to have on board, and looming like a
frigate. After some showing of keeping on, and apparently putting
faith in the man-o'-war pennant I hoisted, she hove into the wind,
when we found she was the Company's ship Warringford, and the other
the something Castle, I forget which, both for Calcutta. The next
thing, as soon as they found we were tender to his Majesty's frigate
Hebe, was to ask after the Seringapatam; on which I was told she was
three or four days sail ahead with the Mandarin, bound to China,
neither of them having put in at Johanna Island to refresh. I was
just ready to put our helm up again and bid good-bye, when the
tiffin gong could be heard sounding on the Indiaman's quarterdeck,
and the old white-haired captain politely asked me if I wouldn't
come aboard with one or two of my officers to lunch. Mr Snelling
gave me a wistful glance--there were a dozen pretty faces admiring
our schooner out of the long white awnings: but even if the notion
of bringing up Snelling himself as my first officer hadn't been
too much for me, not to speak of either Jones or Webb, why the
very thoughts that everything I saw recalled to me, made me the
more eager to get in sight of the Seringapatam. "Thank you, sir,"
answered I. "No--I must be off after the Bombay ship."--"Ah," hailed
the old captain, "some of your Admiral's post-bags, I suppose. Well,
keep as much northing as you can, sir, and I daresay you'll find her
parted company. She's got a jury fore topmast up, for one she lost
a week ago; so you can't mistake her for the Mandarin, with a good
glass."--"Have you noticed any suspicious craft lately, sir?" asked
I. "Why, to tell you the truth, lieutenant," sang out he, looking
down off the high bulwarks at our long nine-pounders and the knot of
Lascars, "none more so than we thought _you_, at first, sir!" The
cadets on the poop roared with laughter, and an old lady with two
daughters seemed to eye Snelling doubtfully through an opera-glass,
as the reefer ogled both of them at once. "By the bye," sang out the
captain of the Indiaman to me again, "I fancy the passengers in that
ship must have got somehow uncomfortable--one of our Bengal grandees
aboard of her wanted a berth to Calcutta with us, 'tother day in the
Mozambique; but we're too full already!"--"Indeed, sir?" said I; but
the schooner's mainboom was jibbing over, and with two or three more
hails, wishing them a good voyage, and so on, away we slipped past
their weather-bow. The Warringford got under weigh at her leisure,
and in an hour or two her topsails were down to leeward of us. On
I cracked with square and studding-sails to the quartering breeze,
till the schooner's light hull jumped to it, and aloft she was all
hung out of a side, like a dairyman's daughter carrying milk; with
the pace she went at I could almost say to an hour when we should
overhaul the chase.
Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the
Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the
Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner
was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must
be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a
knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain
of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to
rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering
them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta--Fancy the
thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually
being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it--the lively
schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the
sole passengers aboard--why, the idea of it was fit to drive me
crazy with impatience.
Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole
night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From
where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the
stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt
the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and
fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I
couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on
the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into
the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to
read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less
than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced
overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for
a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker
to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of
the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the
unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough--a regular story,
in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At
another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd
hours--and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards;
but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was
_Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française_,
and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond
what I knew before, to be carried out in India,--when it struck me
there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute
through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over
the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a
jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.
It was middle watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all
was quiet--Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang,
and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars
of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle
planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept
hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a
long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his
leathery Hindoo face and mustache like a firefly in the root of a
banian, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour.
These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics;
and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice
to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw
me--a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any
rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red
trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The
day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in
the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put it in
my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good
English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time, the serang
stopped his talk, and sidled off.
However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in
the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon
shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her
bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like
dew-drops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the
sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon,
through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's two
long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had, too,
blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft,
and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells, as deep in the
hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small
sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant,
one couldn't say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled
taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her
slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down
and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced
amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an
overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky
through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength
of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western
quarter, till you saw a star in it. The night was so lovely, in
fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times,
when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of
the watch on the weather quarterdeck, which surprised the more in
Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and,
to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping
for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by
the weather side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him
leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as
I thought, apparently speaking to some one down the schooner's side;
upon which I stepped across. Jones's back was to me as I looked over
too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash
of the water, which was louder there than inboard, while you heard
the plash from her bows every time she forged, he evidently didn't
hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading loud out
to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had
no doubt left in the dining-cabin--the book open in both hands--he
giving it forth in long staves, with a break between--and regular
Greek it was, too: you'd have thought he timed them to the plash
alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words
flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose
once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost
fancied I made a meaning of them--each like a wave, as it were,
sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it
you can't conceive; and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood
the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of
the kind, he stopped.[8] "There!" said he, "there, old Homer--women,
wine, and adventure--what could the devil ask more, blind old
prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash
away, lying old blue-water, you cant wash _it_ out--and wine--no,
not the strongest rum in Cape Town--can wash _you_ out!" With that
Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand,
muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. "Still it
rouses the old times in me!" said he. "Here comes this book across
me, too. Ay, ay, and the Rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek
out of old wild Homer all week day--and--and his girl slipping out
and in--'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of
the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh--then warn me
against the sea--ha!" The laugh that came from him at that moment
was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering
"Women, wine, and adventure, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess
too; still he _was_ a good old man the Rector--no guile nor evil
in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire
seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with--ah,
the less of that. 'Twas in me, though, and all the blood--and in
_her_ dark eyes, too, Mary, though she was! Damnation!" he broke
out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something
under the side, "I didn't take her the first time I came home--nor
the second--but--but--ay, I came _back_! Oh that parting-stile, in
sight of the sea--and that packet-ship--but oh God! that night, that
night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue--blue--" And
he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. "Hellish,
hellish by God!" he said, suddenly standing upright and looking
straight aloft, with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky,
and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the
high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened
along the gaff. "She was pure to the last!" I heard him say, though
I had walked to the other side of the boom; "ay, though I rot to
perdition for it!--Down, old fiend!" as he lifted his one hand with
the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away
astern.
[8] Looking into Homer's _Iliad_ here for a passage to correspond
with the account given by the naval man, one is somewhat at a loss;
but at the end of the second book of the _Odyssey_ there occur lines
which might not improbably have been those recited. They are such
as might well, in the original, excite longings after sea-life, and
revive feelings of the kind most natural to the seafaring character,
apparently known to Captain Collins only as "Jones." Will the
readers of Maga accept, illustratively, of a rough translation?--